How It All Started For Me

My musical life

Oct 27, 2023

Welcome to Music! I am launching a brand new section on Mark Starlin Writes! called Music. This section will be mainly about my music, but I may also write about other music.

If you have no interest in the musical part of my creativity, you can unsubscribe to the Music section. I put instructions at the bottom of this newsletter.

I thought I would begin by sharing the story of how I became a musician.

Music has always been a part of my life. I can’t remember a time when it wasn’t. Some of my earliest memories are listening to my Dad’s 8-tracks while riding in the car. The excitement I had when a big bus would pull up to our little corner church and a gospel quartet would perform a concert. And Saturdays, when my Dad would play albums on the stereo at home.

I have always loved music. And the sound of the guitar in particular. But there was one pivotal moment when I went from listening to music to having a strong desire to be the one creating music.

When I was nine or ten, someone left a guitar at our house for a couple of hours. I don’t remember who or why, but there it sat, up against our couch. I couldn’t resist. It seemed magical. I knew it could be used to make music. And music was magic to me. I slowly made my way closer and closer. I knew I probably shouldn’t touch it, but it was irresistible. I gently touched one of the strings. It made a sound. My heart jumped. I brushed my fingers across all the strings. The sound was fascinating. I was hooked. I knew at that very moment I would become a guitar player.

“Don’t play with that. It’s not a toy,” my Mom said.

I stopped, but I never forgot the feeling of sound coming from my fingers touching strings.

I spent the next two years hounding my parents for a guitar. They suggested I try a band instrument at school first. So I took a year of trombone. I actually wanted to play the flute, but the band instructor told me that “girls play the flute” and that I needed to play the trombone. Obviously, he just needed a trombone player for the band. My heart wasn’t in it. I wanted to play guitar. I quit at the end of the school year.

Finally realizing I would not abandon my begging, my parents bought me a cheap guitar for my 12th birthday. That was the start.

My parents never complained when, as a teen, I played guitar six hours straight, late into the night. In fact, my Mom said she had a hard time going to sleep at night after I moved out because there was no guitar playing. Nor did they complain when they had to drive me a half hour to Ann Arbor, Michigan, for a half-hour guitar lesson.

I had outgrown the guitar teacher across the street and began taking lessons from a jazz guitarist named Robert Richter. Although I wanted to be a rocker, he introduced me to many genres of music and taught me to appreciate them all. I also fell in love with the melodic jazz and sambas he taught me as I progressed as a guitar player.

After 51 years, making music is still one of the most enjoyable things I do. Along the way, I have also learned keyboards, bass, and ukulele.

Making music transports me to another place. A place of pure creativity. I love it. It is still as magical to me now as when I was a boy brushing my finger across those guitar strings for the very first time.

Mark