Greetings readers. My name is Dan Crane. My stage name: Björn Türoque (pronounced too-RAWK).
I am a professional air guitarist.
Yes, I realize this may be confusing for some, troubling for others (my parents, for a start), and utterly ridiculous to the rest.
Yes, air guitar is ridiculous. But bear with me.
I am currently writing from the backyard garden of two-time world air guitar champion Zac "The Magnet" Monro, an architect by trade who lives in Brixton, a neighborhood in London. I am here because last Friday night I had the honor of serving on the jury at the first official UK Air Guitar Championships. Prior to my adjudicating duties in London, I was at the Edinburgh Film Festival in Scotland with the award-winning documentary, Air Guitar Nation, in which I co-star. I also hosted a couple of Aireoke parties in Edinburgh, which were, if I don't say so myself, quite inspired.
But let's rewind a bit.
What is air guitar, you may ask? And how does one become a "professional" air guitarist?
In its simplest form, air guitar is the simulation of playing guitar. But air guitar is much more than that. Air guitar is liberation from the mundane. It is freedom from the desultory! Air guitar is, as Zac "The Magnet" Monro once so profoundly stated, "The purest art form that there is left!"
The Origin of Air
In 1996, a few radical students in Oulu, Finland, decided that the world peace movement was going nowhere. In response, they decided to launch the annual Air Guitar World Championships according to the philosophy that if one is busy playing an air guitar, one cannot also be holding a gun at the same time; therefore, air guitar will inevitably promote world peace.
Keep in mind that the average annual temperature in Finland is thirty-six degrees Fahrenheit.
It wasn't until 2003 that the first US Air Guitar Championship arrived on our shores. I competed and took second place. After that night, my entire life changed. How could I have predicted I would travel the world in the name of an invisible art form? One might say the answer was blowin' in the wind...
Since then I've competed in eleven competitions, from New York to Denver to Los Angeles to Oulu, Finland. I've come in second place five times ? thus firmly establishing myself as the perennial bridesmaid, the Susan Lucci, the "Dan Marino/Jay Z" (according to The Village Voice) of competitive air guitar.
I've written a book about the experience titled To Air is Human: One Man's Quest to Become the World's Greatest Air Guitarist, which is obviously being sold by this fine website, and which of course I cannot recommend more highly. The book is not simply about air guitar, however. It's about the idea of committing oneself to a dream ? no matter how absurd that dream may be.
So, here I am, in a backyard garden in Brixton, living the dream...
Edinburgh
Last week, at the Edinburgh Film Festival, I joined Alexandra Lipsitz, director of Air Guitar Nation, and Cedric Devitt, one of the founders of US Air Guitar, to screen the film. It was the first time I had seen it with a non-American audience and I was a bit worried, since it is a very American film at heart. At the end of the film, they clapped politely, and I was concerned it might not have translated. But once the Q&A began, it was obvious they loved it completely. It turns out the Scots are simply polite moviegoers.
It was later, though, at the bar during the Aireoke* after-party that their true feelings came out.
"Re-speeeeeect! NO! RE-speeeeeeeeeeect!" shouted a gigantic lumbering inebriated Scotsman with a brogue as thick as haggis, nearly hugging me to death. He apparently loved the film immensely. Others told me it was literally the funniest movie they had ever seen. (Could this be true? Did Over the Top never make it to Scotland?) Suffice to say, the film was a big hit.
The Edinburghians get their air on.
*(Aireoke is a party which I host where people pick songs from a list ? much like karaoke ? and then get up on stage and play air guitar to them. Air drummers, bassists, cowbellists, and entire air bands are all encouraged.)
We had two Aireoke parties. Both were incredibly amazing, sweaty affairs. The Scots proved they could rock as hard (or harder) than the rest, and Cedric (a/k/a Aer Lingus) got a ride on the shoulders of another gargantuan local.
For a short respite from the madness of air guitar, Alexandra, Cedric, and his girlfriend, Minji (my personal air guitar costume designer, btw) and I took a relaxing journey up to the utterly gorgeous Isle of Skye in the Scottish Highlands.
About an hour into the drive we got a flat tire.
"Front left tire?" asked the Norman-Bates-from-Psycho-meets-Jack-Torrence-from-The-Shining B&B proprietor, under the watchful gaze of taxidermic birds of prey.
"Yep," said Cedric, who had been driving at the time of the puncture.
"Americans," he said, shaking his head. "Always the front left."
(Recall that in the UK, they drive on the opposite side of the road).
While changing the tire, we were attacked by a swarm ? literally, a SWARM! ? of blood-sucking midges: tiny white bugs that nibble on one's flesh.
The next day we took a hike through a bog, getting lost and covered in mud. We then went fishing for