Do you want a purple guitar? She peeped from the Parlour, somehow asking the question as a statement.

What do you mean, spoken more like a demand (explain yourself!). I genuinely did not understand the question, as if “purple guitar” was code for something other than a purple guitar.

She explained she bought it a while ago when she had a bit of money, but didn’t play it anymore. Never really played it then either, her fingers don’t fit right, they don’t work like that. (I am familiar with the logic, I use it to justify my lack of banjo progression.) She can’t bring herself to sell it, it means too much, doesn’t feel right, but she wants it to be appreciated, and she feels like I would appreciate it, gesturing to Betty White (the banjo) and Blanche (the ukulele).

I briefly made eye contact with the musical instruments hanging on the Parlour wall, something I avoid doing when I’m feeling guilty about their lot in life, relatively unused, silent eye candy. I didn’t want her to get the wrong idea. Ehhh, I don’t really play them much either, but I do find them to be magnificent art pieces, I came clean. It’s true, they really add to my museum, looking particularly stunning in the Parlour. 

But she didn’t seem bothered that I probably wouldn’t play the purple guitar either. Opposite actually; she definitively decided it belonged here. Tosha, you’re the most generous person I know, let me give you this guitar. Before I could object, Here let me show you. She goes for her car keys. 

Wait, Where are you going? She lives two hours away, I assumed this was a down-the-line, the next time I see you I’ll bring a guitar type thing, she didn’t need to get it now. 

To get the guitar. 

You have it with you? Why do you carry around a purple guitar you don’t play? 

SO I CAN GIVE IT AWAY. Spoken with a listen, I had no idea why I was carrying this guitar around for months either, but it’s all coming together now, Ahhhh-bviously tone. 

She had bought it sometime after her divorce, representing a sort of freedom, a new life chapter, I can be whoever I want to be, and this is who I want to be moment, turned into a who am I, who do I wanna be? deeper dive. I live on that roller coaster, it’s a wild ride. It had a broken string, the purple guitar. One of her girls destroyed it in a tantrum, probably in a direct attempt to hurt Angela, pre-teens are funny like that, with their chosen weapons of destruction. She’s not exactly rolling in the dough, sometimes it’s tricky even coming up with the ingredients, making her desire to pass it on to me meaningfully genuine. 

Angela is one of my oldest friends from my hometown. Together with our younger sisters of the same age, we ruled the route between our two houses, over railroad tracks, through alleyways, past dead ends, midnights on the golf course, the closest we’d ever be to belonging to that world, manifesting our crushes to return the favor by moonlight from the bunkers. High school lead us down different pathways, but these days we reconnect sporadically over the years sometimes in chunks, sometimes with long hyphens, our six day apart February birthdays always a good reminder to check in.

And every time we do, it’s like going back in time to the comfort level of a basket of kittens, and though both of us have gotten preposterously weirder as we’ve aged, neither of us bat a single eyelash at the latest curiosity development, instead embracing the eccentricity with a tell me more fervor. We’re very Aquarian. After our connections, no matter the duration or activity, I feel energized in a way that can only be achieved by the feeling of pure acceptance with zero explanation. Battery charged. In short, to be gifted her purple guitar was an honor. 

It was a quick unexpected visit, she was was just popping in before heading onto other friends and family for the New Year. Within ten minutes of her departure, as I scurried down to Spruce Tree to see about fixing those strings, because the longer I waited the less likely it was to happen (ever), and the only thing worse than having a bunch a instruments you don’t play, is having a bunch of broken instruments that no one can play just taking up valuable plant space, it dawned on me that acquiring musical instruments had become somewhat of my New Year’s tradition. 

Back when I turned 40, you know, the age to reevaluate your Life’s Work, I decided the only square really missing from my patchwork quilt of existence was not a partner, nor children, or a vacation home on the lake, but musical prowess. Which isn’t a terrible place to be at 40.

You know that ice-breaker question people ask, if you could have any talent, what would it be? (I’ve always wondered why they’re called ice-breakers. Why is everyone so icy in the first place? Maybe that should be the question. Why are you creating all this ice for me to break?) For as long as I can remember, my wishful talent was that I played an instrument. I was 40 years old when I realized I had to stop waiting for my parents to sign me up for piano lessons, and like, I could grab that musical bull by the horns and turn that wish into reality with my adult powers, if I really wanted to. 

For my birthday, I give myself one of two presents every year, either (1) acquire a new skill or (2) make a change. I mean, I mastered Rockin’ Easy on the recorder when I was in elementary school, how hard could it be to learn Happy Birthday on the harmonica 32 years later? I put a subpar amount of research into finding a decent harmonica, but like, not a great one, lest I come off as someone who actually knew what they were doing. I ended up getting two in different keys, because if you can say one thing about me, it’s that I go 110% for at least the first few weeks of anything. Once I puffed and sucked a could-pass-for-Happy Birthday all the way through, I was satisfied. If there’s a second thing you can say about me, it’s that I’m easy to please.

High on my harmonica success, I dreamed big for Year 41. That New Year’s Eve, the day Betty White died, I walked into Spruce Tree and bought a used Deering banjo. Well I bought a banjo. Then got home and learned Betty White died. Then eyed the banjo suspiciously and named her Betty White.

Over the next few weeks I made fast friends with Jim Pankey’s YouTube. I liked how he got real close to the camera, leaning real over and real in from his perch on his chair. I liked how he gave instructions, kind of like, hey man, it’s up to you, here’s what I suggest, but you know, it’s a suggestion, but you should definitely do it, but what do I know. Everything. He knows everything. And he believed in me. Every date felt like he was in my living room. Naturally I wanted to impress him, so I tackled the first few lessons with that gusto of learning a new thing, before you come to the ultimate realization that learning a new thing is hard, and it becomes less fun. Like learning to snowboard as an adult. It’s something else watching a grown ass 30+ year old navigating their body strapped to a foot sled.

I discovered I liked the banjo, but what I really wanted to be doing was shooting the shit with Jim Pankey in my living room with a few beers listening to all his tales, hopefully most of them tall. But he stayed focused. He just wanted to keep teaching the banjo, and eventually I stopped reaching out and our visits tapered off. 

Having amateured (it’s not a word, but it should be, like mastered, but for people like me) a few lessons on the banjo, Year 42 I opted for a less aggressive endeavor. Ukulele. My friend CT Lin had suggested on several occasions in the ancient past that I would probably very much enjoy it, so I bounced off to Spruce Tree again, selected not the bottom of the line, but absolutely no need for the top. I like nice things, but I’m perhaps overly cognizant on matching tools to the reality of my situation after making a few high end mistakes. I crushed lesson 1-3 in the book and strummed out Silent Night. All of my musical prowess dreams were coming true.

Year 43 likely would have come and gone without an instrument crossing my mind, or maybe this is exactly what was supposed to happen, why I wasn’t thinking about it. Because the purple guitar found me.

After Spruce Tree said sure they could restring it, bring it on in (this is the kind of place you check first, the amount of expertise and musical memory living under that roof will blow your mind, you can feel it when you walk in, which I deeply respect and am wholly intimidated by), I ran back home, hoisted it awkwardly by the strap (I have no idea how to cooly carry a guitar) and walked the three blocks back. And because I’m the main character in my story, I felt the need to tell them my realization they had become a part of my New Years tradition, which is even better considering how when I went back three days later for a guitar stand, the guy was like, what kind of guitar and I was like, the purple one you restrung a few days ago. He did not recall. Probably get a lot of purple guitars. I get it, that small space is always jam packed with like five customers, which is about all it can fit without knocking the harps over. 

So yeah, I guess I’m starting a band with no musicians. If you build it, they will come, said the best movie ever made. It appears I’m doing that for a bluegrass band to knock on my door, I just need a mandolin and a fiddle, so this is me manifesting those to arrive on my doorstep, because they are spendy. I’ll pass on the stand up bass, might be a big stretch for my tiny Parlour. Also, if you are a musically inclined baseball player, just show up on my doorstep. You are welcome any time, always. We’ll make a confusing sequel.

Is it weird to collect instruments I don’t really play? I don’t know. I want to be able to play them, I do. But do I? My friend MiNo read somewhere you can be an expert in anything, all it takes is 10,000 hours of doing that thing you want to do. Natural talent be damned, 10,000 hours and you will get real good at it. So. In the end, if I am being honest with myself, I just don’t want it enough. That’s what it really boils down to, doesn’t it? I want to be good at something, but I don’t want to put in the effort it would take me, a soon to be 43-year-old woman, to actually get good. It’s not my fingers. It’s not my inability to read music. It’s because I don’t want to put in the work it takes to make it past Lesson 4. If you really want something to happen, you gotta do the work. It’s not enough to wish for it. You have to work for it.

But that’s also what makes me admire musicians so much. I know how hard it is to get my fingers to make the shape they need to make notes on the banjo. It feels awkward. When I see people jamming away on stage, multi-tasking, singing, moving and playing the notes without even looking at their fingers?!??! I mean, I’m impressed by people who can just hold a guitar and look like they know what they are doing. Have you ever held a guitar? It’s awkward, bulky. Strange. Not smooth. I look and feel ridiculous.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s better off this way. I’ve always been fascinated by the weather, but then I took a weather class in college, and everything was explained by science and I became less fascinated; it was less mysterious. I’m impressed by talents I don’t possess, but I think I’m also impressed by the process, the idea those people wanted something, and made it happen. They wanted it enough to work past the fourth lesson. Sure, natural talent helps. But so does putting in the work.

Thats what life is, isn’t it. Constantly reasoning with yourself. About what just happened, what didn’t, what to do next. How you feel. Why you did what you did. Why you’re choosing not to. Personally, as long as it’s not hurting anybody else, I like to reach feel good conclusions. I’m not collecting instruments, I’m collecting art. I don’t focus on the fact I can’t play them, I admire those who can. Because does it really matter if I can play the musical instruments I seek out (or seek me out)? Nah. It’s your life. Creative your narrative.** Own it.

No I can’t play these, turns out, don’t really have that burning desire, but aren’t they beautiful? Who’s gonna argue with that.

All this from a purple guitar. Happy New Year to you, from me and my silent music menagerie. 

**^{_{(offer not valid for narcissists)}}