In the early days of the current ordeal, before our patience and our hope was ground to a dull nub, everyone had a plan for self-improvement during the pandemic. We downloaded language training apps, determined to master conversational Russian (you know, just in case). Bread flour and baker’s yeast flew off the grocery shelves as folks who didn’t know a boule from a boulder decided to reinvent themselves as artisanal bakers. We dusted off exercise equipment and long forgotten guitars and those notebooks from college, vowing to write the Great American Novel or become the next Bob Dylan or develop abs that make Chris Hemsworth say, “Crikey!”
Weeks turn into years, how quick they pass. The weeks have actually turned into months, but you don’t mess with a Hal David lyric, and honestly, this summer has felt like a decade. The weather got warmer and COVID-19 didn’t “disappear, like a miracle,” and most of our self-improvement efforts dissolved into endless hours of Netflix and a diet centered on Cheez Whiz and Oreos, all the noble reinventions withering like neglected houseplants.
Self-improvement is hard. Those “Great British Baking Show” types make artisanal bread look easy as, well, pie. You watch slack-jawed as some wispy little British dandy produces a loaf of pumpernickel in the shape of a meticulously detailed scale model replica of St. Paul’s Cathedral and sniffs, “Sir Christopher Wren has always been a personal hero,” and you think, “Oi! I can do that!” except your bake ends up denser than tungsten, horribly misshapen and so inedible that even the dog won’t touch it.
Everyone thinks Russian is impossible because of the unfamiliar Cyrillic alphabet. It takes about a half-hour to learn the Cyrillic alphabet. It’s the rest — the labyrinthine grammar, the endless homonyms, the maddening battle to differentiate between “hard” and “soft” sounds — that leaves you shrieking like the subject of an Edvard Munch painting and frantically ordering your computer phone to “delete Duolingo.” And rock-hard abs? Please. We’re a nation of La-Z-Boy recliners and oozing orders of animal-style fries. There aren’t enough sit-ups in the universe to make a six pack out of us.
It’s disheartening.
In our house, self-improvement took the form of the humble ukulele. Invented by the Portuguese and perfected by the Hawaiians, the uke has become my nemesis, my obsession, my tiny four-stringed white whale.
This was not my choice. I live in a musical household. My wife and daughter are both elementary school music teachers, and our eldest son is a former all-state tenor. They are the masterminds behind Team Ukulele.
My own musical experience is limited and fraught with failure. I played the cello in elementary school, an instrument chosen by my mother with my enthusiastic approval, because I thought she said “oboe,” and Sara Larsen played oboe, which meant I finally had something in common with Sara Larsen. Instead of sharing lingering cafeteria school luncheons of hot dogs and tater tots as Sara and I discussed the merits of soft versus medium soft reeds, I spent two years hauling around a hunk of maple roughly the size of New Hampshire and suffering the indignity of being the first and worst left-handed cellist in Meadow Drive Elementary School history. I hated that cello, and it hated me, and I’m pretty sure Mr. Grande, our long-suffering music teacher, hated both of us.
Tuesday was cello private lesson day. I was the school’s only cellist, so it was just Mr. Grande and me in the music room, my corduroyed knees gripping that awful hunk of maple, Mr. Grande pulling an ashtray and a pack of Winstons from a desk drawer, lighting up and exhaling after a deep drag, sighing, “What do you have for me this week, Mr. McMurray?” I’d screech through “Exercise in A” or “Le Petit Lievre” while Mr. Grande stared into space and pondered his life choices. When I finally quit cello after 18 miserable months, I had not progressed past book one.
“Ukulele will be different,” my wife promised. “Anybody can learn to play the ukulele. Even you.”
We started with Christmas music. The plan is to establish a small but crowd-pleasing repertoire and wow our friends and loved ones by performing this December as a socially distanced ukulele caroling squad.
Sunday afternoons are practice time. Those first few practices were as tense as Jay-Z sharing an elevator with Solange. There was lots of anger. There was lots of yelling. All of it came from me.
While the rest of the family plinked merrily along, my stubby peasant fingers rebelled. I was Marty McFly at the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance, dizzy and sweating, my rebellious right hand playing havoc on the fingerboard, my family slowly disappearing before my eyes.
Marty got better. I didn’t.
After weeks of effort, those stubby peasant digits finally began to obey. Callouses formed on my fingertips. I slid from C to F to G with the fluidity and grace of the marginally competent.
That’s when I learned about strumming.
There are a variety of ukulele strum patterns, the most common being the down, down up, up down up “Island Strum.” Rhythm and tempo are key to successful playing. Too fast or too slow, and it doesn’t matter whether your fingers are creating the right chords — the song will be unintelligible. Chords are the Cyrillic alphabet, rhythm and tempo the labyrinthine grammar. Expecting this cello class dropout to master rhythm and tempo is like hiring a rhesus macaque to pilot a Boeing 737. Things will happen. None of them will be good.
I wanted to quit. “You’re getting better. Keep it up!” my family encouraged. I kept playing. Forty-eight years ago, a stringed hunk of maple defeated me. I would not lose again. In the middle of a really bad day at work, I impulsively bought a nice wooden uke to replace the cheap plastic job I’d been using. It features a stars and stripes motif. I feel like a Hawaiian Buck Owens.
Five months in, and the only song I can play with even a small degree of proficiency is José Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad.” It’s a good feeling, strumming away, wanting to wish you a merry Christmas, from the bottom of my heart. I’ve tried adding other tunes, everything from The Cure’s “Friday I’m In Love” to the Grateful Dead’s “Ripple.” “I Am A Child Of God,” a beloved church song, is also on my practice list.
They all sound like “Feliz Navidad.”
The 19th-century author Elizabeth Charles writes, “The woods would be very silent if no birds sang there but those that sing best.” I like being one of the birds who don’t sing so well. It’s liberating. And who doesn’t need a little liberation these days?
Bake your terrible bread. Write your awful novel. Sing your wretched song. Do your crunches, even if you’ve got a plate of Double Stuf Oreos balanced on your chest the entire time. If the closest you come to conversational Russian is waving your arms and yelling, “Moose and Squirrel! Moose and Squirrel!” and expressing your affection for “Fearless Leader,” you’re probably ready to be an undersecretary of state.
There are mediocre paintings to be painted, and recipes to be botched, and all sorts of instruments to be misplayed. Put down the remote, seal up the chip bag and get going.
Let’s fill the woods with our songs. Even if they all sound like “Feliz Navidad.”
McMurray is a Houston businessman and a frequent contributor to Gray Matters.
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