…Or a portrait of the artist at 19 and 20.

When I was 19 I was gifted my first guitar: a Fender Starcaster. It’s the kind of guitar you can pick up at Costco or Sam’s Club (where my parents got it): entry level while still being a very decent guitar to learn on and abuse. It was one of the best gifts I ever received.

Over the next few years, I made it my own. First with a few stickers, but also art, and some bawdy poems I am not sharing right now. What’s left is a snapshot of what I was like at a very specific time in my life. I played the hell out of this guitar, but only for about two years. After that I had more room and brought an electric guitar (that I had inherited from my dad) to school with me. It’s also notable that this guitar is the last gift my dad gave me before he died.

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So what’s on it?

The shark is something I drew, the rest are stickers or things I scavenged from the school. The green abomination is from a flyer promoting a Kathy Griffin show.

There are many Tegan and Sara references on this guitar. There probably would have been even more, but even at the time I knew it was not a great idea to exclusively cover the guitar in Tegan and Sara.

The A. Weiss sticker is from an artist who no longer goes by that name at all. I would remove it, but I think that sticker is on there for good. Sorry about that.

And finally, True Blood? What can I say, I always had trashy taste in TV.