I won't hesitate no more...

I have a ukulele. It’s not really my uke...it’s more sort of a family thing, coming from a small collection passed down on my dad’s side of the family, and it’s spent about 40 of its roughly 85 years living beside my Mom’s piano. (Beside the bowlback mandolin and the tinny, plunky banjo, both of which, along with the piano, have a similar history.)

For a short while, during the era when I was comfortable teaching church school to wee bairns, I used it to plunk out the chords to a few easy sing-along ditties. But then it went back to its spot beside the old upright piano while I got interested in (respectively) my own 1926 mini-upright with its ivorine keys, an assortment of Irish whistles, and my sister’s old fiddle (from Holzapfel’s violin shop in Baltimore which no longer exists.)

For simplicity we’re going to refer to it as mine. Anyone who wishes to contest that usage, please inquire within, and we’ll discuss the fact that my brother Jim has custody of the Gibson dark mahogany guitar with the painfully high frets. My uke is a Gibson too. Or should we say, it’s a “The Gibson.” Also dark mahogany, and a near match for a circa ’27 Gibson U3 model, currently offered for sale at McKenzie River Music in Eugene, Oregon (snap it up Beth and Martin) for $2000. Mine has fewer scratches. But I wouldn’t sell it even if it were indisputably mine.

Soprano ukuleles are really small. Truly, a baby guitar in appearance, but with only 4 strings in the classic “my dog has fleas” tuning. So, I could blame my clumsiness with fingering on the miniatureness of the instrument, or I could blame it on my personal wiring. In any event, blame will get us nowhere, and I was recently seized with the notion that I would write a song. On ukulele.

I will warn you that my being seized with any notion is not necessarily a fine idea. The last time I was seized with a comparable notion was in about 2000, and what resulted was The Legend of Logjam, 1st edition. If you do your research (and I don’t recommend that you do,) you will know that that is the first book I wrote, which was followed over the next 10+ years by 3 other works of suitably mediocre fiction. So take any notions that go around seizing me with a large grain of salt. Oh, I’m sure it will happen--I’ll write a song alright--but it will be a fitting member of my literary and musical canon, and well...that’s just how it’s going to be.

Meanwhile, I am doing some of the things I should have done when I was 12 years old, and actually performing the fingerboard stretching exercises, and strumming practice, and chord acquisition that would enable a not-so-old dog to learn a new trick. Yeah, I blew it. But I was a kid. I can’t really help that I was a lazy kid with little insight or foresight, so forgiveness is essential. As is picking up where I left off (which is almost at the beginning.)

For now, I’m doing the terribly cliche thing of trying to play “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz, and finding that sustaining the proper reggae strum pattern while singing lyrics which are beyond syncopated in their randomness is a little like patting your head and rubbing your belly. Only worse. I bet that both Jean Carper and Doctor Oz (those mercenary sillies,) would approve of this as brain exercise. But who cares about them? I approve of it as a suitable distraction in this interim between caregiving and...whatever. So, off we go.

Literally? no.

Caution: the next paragraph could be offensive to some.

This morning I stumbled upon what I think is a clear and somewhat obvious thought--it is that I can stop worrying about the fact that I can’t reconcile myself with Christian theology in any normal way (only a problem in that I am fond of the particular faith community with which I grew up.) The thought is this: For a theological theory premised heavily on the stories of a guy whose whole shtick was parables, is it not odd that they went on to insist on a literal understanding of some of the things he said about himself? The problem with Christianity is not the worldview described by Jesus in parabolic form--the problem is the next several centuries of unnecessary to harmful add-ons, and the stick-up-the-arse determination of countless ensuing “teachers” to insist on a literal adherence to their particular choice of interpretation. Christianity and the myths that grew out of the death of a political rebel are and should be parables for concepts that are more sublime than what can be captured in the rigid framework of any religion. There. I was actually going to talk about that more, but I don’t want to.

Instead I’m going to talk about the ukulele.