On simplicity, night visions & doing what you damn well please.
When Andrew was a little boy in Jamaica, his mama gave him a six-string guitar.
He didn’t know how to play it, and nobody was willing to teach him, so he hid it under his bed.
But all he wanted to do was sing & make music.
Then one night, he had a dream — a vision of an old man giving him a new guitar, big & yellow.
But this guitar was different — it had only one string. In his dream, Andrew played his one-string guitar, while lions & elephants whooped & cheered.
When Andrew woke up, he popped the strings off his guitar: six-five-four-three-two … one. He was jazzed. He was thrilled. He was making his dreams become real.
His uncle laughed & told him, “there’s no such thing as a one-string guitar.”
But Andrew started to play that one string, anyway.
And play.
And play.
And play.
Until one day …
In time, Andrew earned a nickname — Brushy One-String — and began to travel the world, delighting audiences from Japan to England to New York City, securing national radio coverage & even a significant role in a documentary film.
There’s a lesson here, so clear & pure that I barely even need to articulate it.
But I will.
If you have a simple dream, simply do it.
If you have an un-simple dream, strip it down to one string.
And play.
And play.
And play.