My ukulele finally arrived yesterday. It is no longer experiencing an exception, in UPS-speak.
And it’s lovely, and I’m very happy with it, and my fingertips are already very tender from trying to play it.
The cats are enthralled. All I have to do is start fumbling around with it, and I have an attentive feline audience. But I’m a long way from playing on streetcorners; despite having great manual dexterity, there are some things these hands are not accustomed to doing, and fingering chords is one of them.
Developing the muscle memory is going to take a while, but that’s okay; I’m in no hurry. By now I know that every time I learn a new skill like this, I have to keep plugging away at it diligently, day by day. Progress is slow for a while. But then comes the day when all of a sudden my body knows exactly what to do, and I no longer have to think about it. And eventually I get to the point where I can’t think about it, or my body locks up and forgets how to do it. (While at a stoplight today, I made the mistake of thinking about how to work the clutch–bad idea. I stalled out twice before I managed to not-think about it again.)
Besides, learning to play the ukulele well enough to not embarrass myself is only part of this. It’s not just about teaching my fingers to do something new, or creating a different sort of social life; it’s about rewiring part of my brain, too. Every time you learn a new and somewhat-difficult skill, your brain changes. New neural connections form. It doesn’t matter whether it’s dancing or sudoku or tennis or speaking a new language; giving your brain a vigorous workout is a good thing. And I admit I’m curious to see how plonking around on the ukulele, and learning to think like a musician, will change the way I think as a writer, a visual artist, and in other areas of my life. What other connections will be made?
