In September last year my baby was nine months old. We had just come through a rough patch with her waking in the night. I had more or less physically recovered from the birth and was starting to adjust to daily life with a baby. And it was starting to dawn on me that a part of my former life was missing, namely, having my own interests and activities. Last September, I realised that I needed to do something for myself each day. Otherwise, I could go crazy.
Two of the things I liked best to do - reading and writing - were not ideally done with a baby around. Unless of course I was content to read and re-read the collected works of Spot. So I had to find something else to pass the time. That was then I decided to learn to play the guitar. Actually learn it this time, that is. I had tried on two previous occasions to learn it and, after a burst of initial enthusiasm, had quickly let it slip. This time was going to be different. Not least because, as my husband commented, if I was keen for my daughter to learn an instrument in the future, then having had me, rather than just him, role-model that, might help. The gauntlet had been thrown down.
It seemed the perfect solution. I already owned a guitar, a legacy of the last time that I had tried to learn it. I could keep one eye on the fret board and one eye on a crawling baby, as I tried to manipulate my fingers into the right chord shapes. My baby seemed to approve of this plan, and graciously allowed me up to 45 minutes a day to make strange noises with the funny-shaped object. She also liked to crawl over and pat it, leaving trails of smudged tiny prints in her wake. With the guitar sitting up on its base, she’d also happily pluck at the strings and try to eat the plectrum.
Encouraged by her delight at making sounds with her own hands, I kept to my practice each morning. The amount of practice I could do - while not a lot on any given day - did add up over the course of a week. I could soon make all of the basic chords and play some simple songs (i.e. ones with three chords that were not too fast). Over the next weeks and months, I built up my repertoire of songs, upping the difficulty level and aiming to increase the number I knew by heart.
Nearly a year has gone past, and I still practice every week, although a little less often now that I have returned to work. But, as she is able to amuse herself a little more than when she was a baby, I’m able now to practice for a bit longer when I do. Learning more difficult songs, and trying to play along with them to work out the strumming pattern has increased my enjoyment of the music and made me appreciate in a different way the skill that goes into it.
But why is my new-ish hobby featuring in a blog on feminism and motherhood you may ask? Certainly not to show off - I may be better than I was a year ago, but there’s still plenty of room for improvement. And I haven’t even mentioned my singing yet! Rather, it’s to reflect on how patriarchal constraints work in leisure activities, as well as in work. There are many reasons why I didn’t properly learn the guitar the last two times I tried, and the main one is that I didn’t commit enough time and energy to it.
But why didn’t I do that?
Part of the reason is because I received over and over the message that, on the whole, girls don’t make the kind of music I like. Their main role is to listen to it, support the guys who play it, and - if they’re really lucky - feature in the lyrics. Sure there are exceptions: in my hometown, for example, there was an all-female band, and a few bands who had one or two female members. The first time I tried to learn the guitar was also the moment more widely when Riot Grrrl received a lot of attention, and - contrary to the retroactive mythmaking - Britpop produced a range of female-fronted and female-dominated bands. But it’s hard not to conclude that these amazing women received such attention because they were (and are) exceptional. As Dr Johnson might have said, ‘a woman’s guitar-playing is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.’ More conventionally, women are meant to be the object, not the subject of art. Or, put another way, women are supposed to inspire it rather than make it.
Let me give you one example of the kind of gate-keeping that put me off in the first place.
Feeling very enthused about my decision, I told one of my male friends at the pub one night that I had just taken up the guitar. I thought, mistakenly, that he would be similarly enthusiastic and maybe offer some words of encouragement. Wrong.
Instead, he said, ‘Give me your hand.’
‘Huh?’ I thought. Mystified, I held out my hand.
Grabbing it, he dug his fingernails sharply into the soft flesh on the tips of my left hand. I looked at his grinning face a bit blankly and wondered what he was doing.
‘Can you handle this?’ he asked.
‘Handle what?’ I said.
‘This,’ he said and dug his fingernails in more sharply.
‘What are you doing?” I said, snatching my hand away.
Satisfied to get the reaction he wanted, he said, ‘That’s what you need to handle if you want to play the guitar.’
The fingernail test stung a little, but not as much as the clear message that I was trespassing somewhere I didn’t belong.
Thinking back on this incident, I wish I’d had the wit to say something like ‘Every month my body of its own accord subjects me to way more pain than this could ever be and I cope with it. Do you really think a little bit of temporary isolated pain in my fingertips is going to bother me? Go and shove your sexist bullsh*t.” But I didn’t. And, a little while later, I stopped learning the guitar.
Many years later, a combination of boredom and a new-found appreciation of my physical capabilities, took me back to the guitar. Now in my late ‘30s, I have no illusions about what learning the guitar will lead to, other than some relaxation, enjoyment and another way to interact with my daughter.
And, although I don’t have any strong feelings about whether she should be a musician or not, I want to offer her the chance to make the music rather than simply inspire it.
