I picked up my ukulele today for the first time in months. I think I was inspired by all the musicians at Vic and Julie's wedding, but it could have been the 30 minutes I spent singing "Friend of the Devil" to myself as I walked Lucy this afternoon. I just got it into my head that I could play it and sing it, and briefly even imagined being confident enough to have performed at the jam session after the rehearsal dinner.
"Can you play?" my friend from high school asked when she was here a few weeks ago and noticed my ukulele.
"Not really," I shrugged. "But I do work on it sometimes," I laughed.
"For me music is like a foreign language that just never clicks," she said, and I realized I felt the same way.
Despite the years of French I took, I never achieved anything near fluency. "She's very good at the class," my high school teacher told my parents. "She probably just needs to get drunk in France and start talking!"
It was the 70s, and no one considered the advice unsuitable in the least. Plus? She may have been right. Even though I continued taking French in college, I never did get over the fluency hump.
I'm not sure if music is the same way. I do know that I've been strumming away on my ukulele on and off for nearly 15 years. I've even had lessons, and I still can't say I play. Maybe I just need to get drunk in French Polynesia.
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