I can’t say I’m particularly unhappy to see 2011 come to an end. It hasn’t been the best year. Over the last eight months I’ve had a good friend die, had to euthanize two beloved pets that I’d owned for years (a horse and a dog) and had surgery. Adding salt to the wound, the package of Christmas gifts I mailed to my brother never arrived and I woke up on Christmas Day with a vicious head cold.

I asked myself what could I do to feel better? The answer was clear. Buy a new electric guitar. Granted I already own several but I’ve wanted a Fender Strat for years. So I bought a beautiful bright red one. The pickups, the mid range boost … I’m in heaven. When I took my new guitar out of the case for the first time I got goose bumps. A sensation that brought me back to my childhood when I first fell in love with the instrument and with rock music.

That sensation of awe also reminded me of a discussion here at R&T about my colleague Jeff Keuss’s post on “what constitutes rock.” In comment #3, another R&T colleague, Dave Nantais, lists his five “random associations” with rock music explaining that the only thing they appear to share in common is that they all that give him goose bumps.

Goose bumps. What a great way to describe a sensation we feel when something moves us, takes us, emotionally and spiritually, to a special place. A place that can’t be described visually because it’s a feeling deep down in your gut, in your soul. I would describe such experiences as moments of transcendence.

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