Ｓｉｘ Ｓｔｒｉｎｇｓ Ａｂｌａｚｅ

ＭＡＲＫ　ＧＯＤＦＲＥＹ

Iremember the first guitar I bought, handed down from a dusty shelf at the Xidan Department Store in Beijing. The shop assis-tant, in striped blue-white shirt, knew as little as I did about the strings. It was a Starsun, a name suggest-ing nature and dreams, like those names suggesting har-mony and nature stamped in gold letters on yellow pen-cils from China, which I car-ried to school in the 1980s. The guitar's wood smelt like those pencils too.