I bought a harmonica a while ago. Not because I am necessarily musically inclined or talented, but because I’m trying to be cool. Not the high school type of cool, the blond mini-skirted never a hair out of place cool, or the I wear the right brand of sweaters cool, the I wear glasses with no lenses cool, but the indescribable kind of cool. The kind where it doesn’t matter if all your hair’s out of place, because no matter what you rock it. The kind where, effortlessly, you’re just that person everyone wants to hang out with.
These are the people I joke about adding to my harem, the people who I like so much for no apparent reason that I want to marry them, other than the fact that for the most part, they’re not people I would actually want to sleep with. Mostly I just want to bask in the glow of their awesome.
Music has always been the gateway to that kind of charisma. Not necessarily listening to music, because everyone does that, and the world of music is so huge these days that it’s hard to find someone who has even heard of all your favorite bands. It’s more about creating music.
Because being able to make music makes you cool. I’ve spent enough time enamored with and entranced by watching someone playing a guitar to attest to that. But even in the realm of coolness I’m fascinated by the weird. You know, banjo cover songs, that sort of thing. I like my instruments like I like my people — awkwardly endearing. Unusual. The French horn. The accordion. The harmonica.
It’s hard to talk about the physical act of playing the harmonica without sounding like a giant “that’s what she said!” joke. Each of the reed chambers across the harmonica has a number, and corresponds to two notes on the scale. One for in, one for out. There’s a lot of blowing involved, and at a certain point, when you learn a song, you stop concentrating on exactly which square chamber you’re hitting — suddenly you just know, and the harmonica rocks back and forth across your mouth almost of its own volition, natural as breathing.
There was a kid I knew in high school who played the harmonica exactly as it was meant to be played, like he was a hobo riding a cargo train across the country. He brought it to speech tournaments and would whip it out between rounds, sitting on a cold, dusty linoleum floor in some high school’s hallway for a few minutes at a time. He played no recognizable tunes; he would just sit there and jam. On his fucking harmonica.
Once, overcome by his coolness, I told him I loved him. He peeked his huge eyes out from under his Ivy cap, wearing his lime green shirt and matching tie, and said, in the freakishly sincere way he said everything, “Thank you.” He was four years younger than me, but like most of the population, he had long ago surpassed me in suavity. A few notes slid across a harmonica, and he could feasibly become an object of fascination, on a level unattainable to him otherwise.
Because music has that kind of a sway over you. To make you pay $30 just to stand in front of someone and tap your foot while they sing at some point vaguely above your head. To make you stop doing your homework while you try to eavesdrop on the girl down the hall playing her guitar. Maybe even to make you throw your bra onstage at someone who doesn’t even know who you are.
There are stupider things you could try to do to look cool, I guess. Drugs. Leg warmers. Cheerleading. There are stupider things I myself have done to look cool, on a far less successful level. Remember when I thought I could become a scene kid?
Since my harmonica arrived in the mail, I’ve learned to play two songs: one recognizable as what it is supposed to be, the other just a strange amalgamation of notes that, if know what you’re listening for and you’re listening hard, sounds like a pop song. I’ll probably never be cool, because I can’t improvise. Coolness requires a fluidity my entire life of music lessons hasn’t provided me. I will forever be tied to the notecards on which I’ve scratched out rows of numbers that correspond to notes I don’t really know yet.
But now that I’ve bought it, and broadcast to the world of my Facebook that I mean to play it, I have a certain responsibility to be cool enough to at least pretend to be a harmonica player convincingly. I’ll probably never reach the level of cool my harmonica demands of me.