It was over 2 months ago that I decided to lean into my whiteness and learn how to play the ukulele. I’ll immediately address the Zooey Deschanel in the room and clarify that I have not started wearing pinafore dresses, and I have no desire to cover Mazzy Star, or start speaking like a coked out Sesame Street presenter. I’m not hollow boned enough to pull off ‘quirky’, or culturally appropriative enough to want to play ukulele on stage. But these days I find it difficult to stick with anything, an instrument, a book, a crossword puzzle, unless it can fit comfortably on the left-hand side of my bed, next to my cat as she rests on her own little bed that doubles as my laptop, and the sunken memory of your body that sometimes still contorts itself absurdly around the cat to reach me, even though it’s been years and we don’t really talk anymore.
My ukulele is painted a bright turquoise, and has a small wooden shark saddle stuck to the body, an anchor for the strings under the ‘soundhole’ (yes, it’s really called that). Holding it makes me want to use my soundhole to say words like ‘cowabunga’ and ‘do you have any Bondi Sands in stock’. It gives me the same vibes as that time I bought a Roxy backpack in High School so the girls who sprayed sun-in in their hair at recess would think I was cool. The top right of my ukulele’s squat body has a small dent from dropping it when I tried to strum standing up for the first, and last time. The fucking C-string rattles. I’ve wasted hours tinkering with the headstock, using a collection of screw drivers apparently designed to screw with me, not for me. But I’ve come to terms with the discordant vibrato, and the fact that you might have been my last best shot at starting the kind of life I thought I wanted, the kind where I would have to worry about morning breath, and learn how to install a car seat, and sometimes eat Thai food even though I fucking hate Thai food, because I know that you love Thai food, and what is the point of being in love if you aren’t trying to facilitate someone else’s joy.
For a week I was too anxious to play, certain this instrument was destined to become yet another rotting effigy of my failure, incubating life inside my parents rat infested garage next to my keyboard, my guitar, my keytar (yes), and that panic inducing text you sent me about wanting to grow old together, like the Golden Girls, even though you were a Rose and I was clearly a Blanche.
That garage is chockas at the moment. At least the ukulele is small, I thought. It’ll leave room for all my failures yet to come.
But, on a Monday, I practiced. And not just because I was overcome with an urge to see what it’s like to be a giant playing a human sized guitar, although I can testify that it’s kind of awesome.
I can also testify that after two months and one week, I can play the ukulele. Not well enough to moonlight at a cavoodle cafe, but I’m getting there. I didn’t fail, which is a shock to myself, and to my parents, who bought me that keytar/baby rat chew toy many, many years ago. But, I guess I told you that story already.
I know you asked, but I don’t really have tips on how to learn, except to watch a lot of youtube tutorials and fixate on practicing until your fingers blister so you don’t have to think about a quick spreading global pandemic that could easily kill your extremely vulnerable parents and leave you finally, and completely alone inside your childhood home that you were supposed to move out of three months ago to restart your life as a functional adult who dates and hangs out with friends and drinks a variety of beer that isn’t Crown Lager (which you’ve been stuck drinking because your dad refuses to compromise and you’re not so into beer that you would bother setting up your own Dan Murphy’s delivery account), but you can’t move out now because the world is ending and you’ve lost half your income to the impending recession and the other half to a severe bout of depression that makes you feel like a huge piece of yourself packed up its bags and left during the few hours of the morning that you managed to actually get some sleep, and now you have no idea where it is or why it left, but you think it might have something to do with the fact that you haven’t showered in five days, so I guess what I’m saying is that if you want to learn how to play ukulele as quickly as I have, exist as a single person during a pandemic and stop showering.
Anyway, I’m learning some Elliott Smith, and The Smiths, and really any music that sounds exhausted because it’s easiest for me to move my fingers at the pace of a heroin addict coming down. I don’t miss you, but I’ve been thinking about you — I’ve only recently come to realise there’s a difference. Playing the music I love is a bit like allowing push notifications from Facebook memories, but with (slightly) less cringe, and I’ve been playing a lot of music I love that you introduced me to, that reminds me of us and how miserable we were together, with you reluctantly holding back your 2 car garage dreams after realising my writing career isn’t very lucrative, and me force feeding myself pad see ew because I thought that that was what love is.
I’m drawn to these songs because I feel right now what I felt back then, the rib-crushing comfort of stagnancy, the grotesque reassurance of looking ahead at myself and seeing the exact same person, but older.
We limited each other’s opportunities for change, and a lack of opportunity for change is certainly a theme in 2020. Or, at least, a lack of control over how we change, and why.
A piece of me has escaped this, fucked off to wherever hearts and sanities go, but the rest of me is stuck home drinking crown lager and trying to stretch my fingers into an Fmaj7 (impossible). I was so desperate to have some form of control over my life right now that I became a ukulele player.
It’s a small change — and the jury is out on whether it’s a positive one — but I do feel extremely lucky for having the opportunity to make it.
So yeah, I’ll send you some links.