Why do I own an alto recorder I can’t play? Why do I want to own a ukulele? Why do I wish I had time to read and write fiction whenever I’m reading and writing philosophy, and vice versa? I’ll need therapy before I can answer the last question, but I can say a little bit about the ukulele.
When my brother Tim and I were kids, our favorite kooky relative was Uncle Herb. He did magic tricks for us when we would come to Elkhart, Indiana on visits: the disappearing matchstick, the coin pass, a couple of tricks requiring apparatus, such as the finger-in-the-guillotine, which is really scary every single time, since you know you’re not in the hands of a professional. He never did card tricks—cards were implicated in gambling, which was the devil’s work. Herb would play scratchy 78rpm records of Amos ‘n’ Andy, a comedy act, I would imagine, now reviled for its racism. Uncle Herb had strange theories. He discontinued his longstanding subscription to National Geographic when they dared to publish material suggesting that we humans were “descended from the crocodiles.” He maintained throughout his retirement, after a career as a house painter, that breathing the latex fumes over the years had gotten to him, and he was now sensitive to everything outside his own house. (I’m with him on that one.) Herb had a wood shop downstairs, where he made toys, presumably from his own childhood: helicopter sticks with a propellor mounted on the end and a spiral surface that you could rub to launch the thing in the air; cars with wooden wheels; slingshots—not street legal nowadays, I’m sure.
Uncle Herb also made ukuleles, in different colors and sizes, and he gave Tim and me each one. Tim’s had a white front, I recall. Given my brother’s superior stewardship of important objects, I wouldn’t be surprised if he still had his uke around somewhere. Mine, a smaller brown model with a sort of checkered faux-mother-of-pearl piping around the center hole, is long gone.
I am at the point in life where I realize that playing a ‘major’ instrument other than the trumpet with enough technique to bring me joy is not in the cards. Ah, but the minor instruments: recorder, tablas, bongos, ocarina, penny whistle, harmonica, kazoo, Jew’s harp, zither, autoharp. There might lie redemption. Each satisfies a primal musical urge, be it percussive, melodic, accompanimental. Some are portable: I have dallied with the recorder, ocarina and tin whistle, although as a player of a melodic instrument I long for something that can play chords. Try carrying a zither or an autoharp around everywhere you go (ditto for the small drums, though these would provide the most elemental fix of rhythmic hypnosis). The autoharp is weird. Sort of a musical paint-by-numbers kit. It would be better to carry around a little Celtic harp, except that those require a lot of skill, or so I imagine. I find I just don’t like the sound of the kazoo, which is just distorted humming, or the Jew’s harp (that name is probably as politically incorrect as Amos ‘n’ Andy; sorry, I don’t know the modern term).
A larger instrument well worth toting around with you, and identifiable in its case as a source of bohemian street cred, is the guitar. But there again, the skill problem. And this brings me back to the ukulele. All I want to do is learn a few chords, memorize a few songs, and sing when I’m in the mood. In private, of course. I like the size. I like the soft nylon strings. I like that ukes are made of wood. I like that they’re not trying to be anything they’re not. And I like to think it would have made Uncle Herb, now long gone, proud to know that the trifles he went to such trouble to bestow on his nephews had been noticed.
Ephebe's Journal 