guest column by Max Holmquist (South of Lincoln)

There’s a picture of me at Christmas when I'm 16 years old, sitting at the dinner table playing the first guitar I ever owned. It's a dark-brown Johnson acoustic. I didn’t know more than a few chords and could play only one song (I believe it was by Brand New) — that’s the song I'm singing in the picture. I never would have dreamed that I’d be releasing albums and writing songs about people and places. I just powered through my awkward inability to strum with any sort of rhythm.

Almost eight years later, I'm standing in front of a crowd of 17 octogenarians at the Long Term Care Facility in Firth, Neb., dining chairs made erroneous by their wheelchairs, half of them sitting like idle marionettes, heads drooped, arms limp, half asleep, raising their heads and arms to clap at songs that no one would have guessed they even noticed.

A woman with a giant ball of white hair resembling something atop the head of a Lego person looks at me and calls out in a voice that's somehow both a whisper and a yell, asking how long I’ve been playing. It takes me a second to process the answer.

“Almost 8 years,” I say, loudly.

“What?”

“Almost 8 years,” I say, clearer.

She half closes her eyes and shakes her head. Her hand moves in a dismissive motion.

“I can’t hear you,” she says, her tone suggesting that I not bother.

Another man, to my left, asks where I’m from and whispers something quietly about lakes and rivers by my hometown of Douglas, Neb. I have to move so close that we’re inches from each other.

I begin pacing from my spot in the corner of the room to my coffee on the table, unsure how to interact with these people full of so much experience and knowledge yet so incapable of sharing it, their minds fading slowly. I hold on tightly to my guitar, waiting for the nurses to wheel the rest of my audience into the room, one at a time.

A man named Randall shares a story with me as we wait, about a friend of his from some distant time, long before now, who owned a guitar. This friend had moved from Arkansas to St. Louis and, “boy, could he play,” he says, recounting a certain song that his friend used to sing, an indeterminable folk song from the deep South. “Thank you for sharing that!” I say.

I begin playing and close my eyes as I always do. Alarms go off from time to time as some residents attempt to get out of their wheelchairs, setting off their “wander guards,” alarms triggered by a cord attached to them and designed to prevent them from leaving their chairs. The whole thing brings a deep sadness to me, the fact that these people have lived long lives and made great sacrifices and share experiences that I will never endure in my time. Yet, they’ve been resigned to sitting in their chairs, not allowed to walk freely for fear they may harm themselves.

So here I stand, singing my sad songs, watching as these people — who lived through the eras and experiences that inspire me — watching them as the nurses tell them they need to sit back down in their chairs, nurses who could easily be these peoples’ grandchildren.

After finishing my last song, I sit and eat chocolate ice cream across from Randall. He tells me three times about the time he rescued a little girl in the waters along the dividing line between North and South Korea while in the Navy. Each time, the story is a little different, but the telling of it is almost exactly the same. Somehow, that story is more interesting each time. I want to know more. I look into his eyes and see them full of experience and knowledge and a life lived fully. I want to grab his wheelchair and run out of there, saying, “RANDALL! WE’RE BREAKING OUT!” but I can't. I say my goodbyes, get my gas money from the event coordinator and walk out feeling strange.

South of Lincoln: Man Pt. 1 from Love Drunk on Vimeo.

I’ve done something great. I’ve brought these people something that they rarely get. Something different. Or have I just given them a taste of something they’d once had: freedom. Will they remember me when I return? When they lay their heads down on their pillows, will their crooked bodies resonate with the words I sang to them or have their lives been too full to contain anything else? Should I be happy that they’ve lived full lives and that I've been able to share with them a gift that has been given so freely to me, or should I be sad to know that they’re living their final years in a confined space, all of their choices and decisions made for them?

What I do know is that I should never forget that picture. I should never forget the day that I picked up that first guitar and stumbled through the same two simple chords of the only song I knew. I should never forget the gift that has been given so freely to me. I should never forget that I have a responsibility to share it with all people and we all have a responsibility to be passionate and share that passion with the world.

Max Holmquist performs as South of Lincoln. Leave comments below, or contact him at maxholm1@gmail.com.

Do you have a Nebraska-music-related story to tell? Email HN editor Andrew Norman at andrewn@hearnebraska.org, or simply post it as a blog on the homepage.