Ukulele small and fierceful

Today marked the end of an era: I found my beloved ukulele, Hannah, broken beyond (affordable) repair. I think the culprit was my recent move.

I’ve played ukulele for three years now. Hannah came to me as a whimsical, thoughtful gift after I joked that it might be the only instrument simple enough for me to learn. When a friend gave me one she didn’t use, I slapped some stickers on my new instrument, named her, and promptly began learning to play with left-handed. I am, by the way, right-handed, but I carefully held my ukulele in the same position as all the videos I watched on Youtube and learned two Johnny Cash songs backwards before figuring out there was good reason I was having a hard time getting my strum patterns right.

I corrected my mistakes and struggled, always very terribly but with great joy, though Neutral Milk Hotel, Weezer, more Johnny Cash, Counting Crows, Jeff Buckley, the Eels, the Be Good Tanyas, Avett Brothers and even some Britney Spears. I felt happily silly reveling in my tiny instrument and her tinny, slightly discordant sounds. I was never comfortable enough to play much around other people, but alone I let myself rasp and roar and rip at the strings without a second thought.

Playing the uke also gave me some hipster cred and an easy “fun fact about yourself” to pull out of the bag in new settings. Then came Amanda Palmer’s song “Ukulele Anthem,” which made me feel even more awesome for my secret jam sessions. Playing was up there with writing as something I could do with no purpose other than self-fulfillment (and maybe annoying my neighbors).

I’m pretty bummed Hannah is gone; as I’m still looking for work, I can’t justify replacing her at the moment. But I can celebrate her and look forward to the noise I’ll make when I can get another ukulele.

Here’s a poem for Hannah and for my last couple of years.

One Art
Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day.
Accept the fluster of lost door keys,
the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.