Genesis: And on the fifth day, The Lord feeling sort of Woodstockian, invented the guitar. On the sixth, having spent a sleepless, tormented night because of the yowling, His eyes weeping battery-acid, He tottered into His workshop, where He invented a range of scalpels with which to remove guitarists' fingers, a task He reserved for the seventh day, after which He would banish all cutting-tools from His earthly kingdom, writes Kevin Myers.
But, of course as He only discovered when He arrived for work, union rules prevented Him from labouring on the Sabbath, and hence a world full of lethal instruments, and worse still, one full of musically illiterate guitarists, was born. And each day since, The Lord God grindeth His Gnashers exceeding small.
The guitar is at once the easiest and the most difficult instrument to play. Any halfwit can pick it up and go strum strum strum, as millions of fools - who probably think that Segovia is a sort of cream pudding - yearly do.
Indeed, the possession of a guitar can often enough be a sign of irredeemable and congenital idiocy, especially these days, when electrification can make a guitar sound like a cat in a microwave. 10 pm. Yiaoooowwwww. Midnight. Yiaoooowwww. 4 am.
Yiaoooowwww. Dawn, and a burst of machine gun fire ends it all, while up in Heaven, there is the sound of cheering.
Its ubiquity among morons is the greatest tragedy of the guitar, because it is easily one of the most beautiful of instruments; contemplative, melancholic, brooding - or dynamic, dramatic, charged and highly sexual. We tend to associate it with Spain, though in fact most cultures have at various times fallen in love with the guitar: with the arrival of the Guitar Festival of Ireland this week in Dublin, it seems to be our turn now.
The first person to dream up the idea of the festival was a young guitarist, Alec O'Leary, who spoke to his fellow guitarist Mick O'Toole about it. They are now respectively Festival and Artistic Directors. They made the initial approach to the Arts Council, and brought on board the veteran arts promoter Barney Whelan, and he in turn approached Waltons, who are now the primary sponsor. But perhaps the unsung heroes of this festival are Michael and Margaret O'Leary, Eric's parents.
Michael O'Leary has heard every single joke, many times over, that it is possible to make about his name. ("Don't tell me. When your wife puts the tea down on the table she snarls, that'll be £15 sterling please. And if you ran a bus service between Jobstown and Kilbarrack, it would be marked Killiney-Howth." Yes, he's heard them all ...)
Still, the name does us allow the opportunity to ponder on this: why do people with names like O'Leary call their sons Michael? Why do it? What is the reason for this cruelty?
We all know at least 10 Michael O'Learys, upright citizens all, who, because of the unbelievable ubiquity of the name, spend their entire lives fighting bankruptcy because their bank transfers all their money to another Michael O'Leary - though not the same Michael O'Leary that is the Bader Meinhof Black September INLA leader who triggers sirens and flashing red lights in every airport in the world; nor is that the same Michael O'Leary as the infamous child pornographer, and as for the Michael O'Leary who runs the Colombian cocaine cartel, why, he is a different character altogether, though indeed, to the joy of computers and innocent Michael O'Learys everywhere, all men of this share the same birthday.
Perhaps this was the reason why Alec's father and mother spent much of last winter at home, probably hiding under the stairs, licking stamps and writing letters to bring the festival together.
The two co-founders, Michael O'Toole and Alec O'Leary approached the great John Williams, tentatively wondering would be support the festival. He would indeed: the very coup which they needed. (Mr and Mrs Williams: why John? Please, Why John? Do you know how many John Williams there are in this world? There is John Williams of Bader Meinhof, and there is John Williams, child pornographer....)
The John Williams concert at the National Concert Hall this Saturday is sold out, as indeed are places for students at his master-classes, though tickets are available for the public to attend them. But this is a full guitar festival, and includes a four-day guitar course at Trinity, with vacancies still available for residential and non-residential. (Registration starts tomorrow, with the course lasting from Thursday to Sunday. Residential fees are just €465, only €100 more than non-residential, with all the conveniences of being on campus. Interested? See below).
The festival features many artists, including the two original organisers, Michael O'Toole and Alec O'Leary, as well as John Feely, Louis Stewart, Clive Carroll, and many others - though I would draw your attention the French steel guitarist Pierre Bensusan, who is performing at Liberty Hall on Thursday night.
He is a little known but a quite dazzling performer, his repertoire covering the entire world of guitar music.
This not just a guitar festival, but the first of an annual series. There are many times when guitarists gather that the Lord is tempted to reach down with His divine pruning shears, neatly a harvest of objectionable fingers. But this week in Dublin He will exult at His labours on the fifth day, as they truly attain their intended triumph.
Inquiries at www.guitarfestivalofireland.com, or for proper human beings, at 059 914 6287, where, if you're lucky, you can speak to a real living and breathing, law-abiding Michael O'Leary.