Mastering the cure for ‘coronafluff’
I’ve invented a word for the weight we’re all gaining from stress eating during our isolation – coronafluff.
Stress and boredom make us crave carbs, apparently, and that’s why I peanut-buttered my way through half a sleeve of saltines last night before I’d even noticed.
It was time to stop the creeping coronafluff. So I wandered around the house for something to do, and I saw it. There under the sofa was the mandolin the farmer bought me for my birthday five years ago. I’d ignored it all these years, because I was busy or lazy or put off by the memory of how hard it was to play when I first picked it up.
But now was the time.
“Well hello there,” I said as I pulled the instrument from the velvet case. Do all instruments smell so good, and what is that smell? Wood, maybe, and the polish that makes it so shiny.
YouTube has hundreds of instrument tutorials. My favorite is the mandolin man who posts the chords as he plays songs. By the end of the first practice session, I’d learned, but hadn’t quite mastered, three chords.
“My fingers are too big,” I told the farmer as I struggled to push down those tight, doubled strings. The neck of a mandolin is skinny, and those strings sit close together. I wondered aloud whether I should instead have asked for a guitar, whose neck is wide and its strings more spaced out.
But I’d asked for the mandolin because I love its sparkly sound, how bluegrass seems to live inside of it, and how the band REM’s “Losing My Religion” has the best mandolin riff ever.
G, C and D: It took a few days, but I mastered those three chords. Turns out they are all I really need to play most any popular, rock or folk tune. Can it be that professional musicians have been tricking us, parading their supposed virtuosity when they’d been goldbricking all along?
A week into this, I can play and sing the following: “You are my Sunshine,” “Feelin’ Groovy,” “Wagonwheel,” “The Weight,” “Amazing Grace,” “Peaceful, Easy Feeling,” and my favorite, “Brown Eyed Girl.”
Oddly, one of the most frequently sung songs is not on the list. “Happy Birthday” requires weird, many-fingered chords I’ve yet to conquer.
My goal is to add one new chord to my repertoire every day. After that, I might teach myself how to pick out a melody, so I can play that REM riff.
But even if I become proficient at playing, I’ll never be suitable for singing for anyone but those who love me. I have a regrettable singing voice, a lowish alto. I might even be a baritone.
A few days ago, feeling probably over-confident, I played and sang a few songs for my daughter and her equally-stranded college friend. They listened politely and then began to look mortified and eventually went back to eating their Frosted Flakes.
Talk about stress eating.
The new puppy doesn’t care for my efforts, either. The first time he heard, he howled his disapproval. Now, when he sees me pick up the mandolin, he paws at the door to go outside to escape.
People are doing all sorts of things to keep themselves busy and out of the fridge these days. My friend Gina has been crocheting little hats for stuffed animals.
Me, I’ll continue to strum away. The fingers on my left hand are growing calluses. I’m going to practice every day of my confinement.
My birthday’s coming up in May. I want to be ready to strum.