Adventures in Harpistry. Harperstry?

harperism?

The first time I decided I wanted a harp, I was about 13, and I was on an airplane.

People out there who are familiar with either harps or the numerous enticing delights offered to the average airplane-viewer in SkyMall may be familiar with the model.
It's celtic. So's my family! It's pretty! I like pretty! It was $400. I was aware that I was never going to have that harp.

The next time that I thought about harps, I was in 11th grade, on a school trip to Ashland, OR. I'd sort of tagged along with my sister and her friends, but they'd ditched me with a person who I hardly knew, who wasn't interested enough in musical instruments to want to stay in the music store more than a few minutes. There were harps there, and each one had a "please do not touch the harp" sign on them.
I didn't touch the harps.

Then, I was 20. I lived in Ashland. I was an arty, theatre person. The front of my hair had pink streaks in it. I played the ukulele, and I carried my ukulele around with me everywhere. When my friend and I had gone to the park to film some water, I slipped on the bridge in the park and ended up slamming my ukulele into the railing. Nothing was hurt except a broken string.

The music store here wasn't like my music stores I'd been shopping at. There aren't high school kids coming in and playing Stairway to Heaven and Sweet Child o Mine on an amp that badly needs the mids adjusted. There's no one playing anything. There's signs  on the instruments that say, "please ask before touching," and "do not touch." There are double basses. And there's the harps. I knew the store. I knew I'd been there before.
I didn't touch the instruments. I said I needed a new set of strings for a concert ukulele, he asked low G or high, I said high, and do you have Aquillas, he said he only had Aquillas, I gave him however much he wanted and he wrote it out longhand on a piece of paper with carbon pieces to duplicate my receipt.
The small harps were six hundred dollars. I didn't see the price on the big ones.

I didn't touch the harps.

I didn't finish the Winter 2012 term at school. I almost didn't finish that year at life. I almost didn't make it back to Ashland.

I didn't even think about harps until January of 2013. I had a gross job cleaning up after other people. I was really finding my place building costume crafts for the school's high-quality productions. I didn't have pink hair.
I now had two ukuleles.

I had a 50+ year old ukulele that had belonged to my grandfather, which had the kind of problems that 50+ year old instruments have. I needed a metal or rubber washer with a 3/16"-1/4" hole and a total diameter of no more than 3/8". I took it to the music store downtown.
The man who owned the store, who'd sold me the ukulele strings, wasn't there. There was a younger guy.
The ukulele got a lot of praise, and got handed around to everyone who was there, and played a lot. I got told repeatedly that there was nothing wrong with the tuners, based on their 3 minutes of playing it, they knew for sure. I got legitimately mansplained about how friction pegs worked, never mind that I'd actually built two ukuleles by this point, obviously I didn't know.
But I got one thing.
I got to play a harp.
While they were handing around George Hammond the Ukulele like he was the hot drunk girl at the frat party, I asked before I touched the harp.

It wasn't magical. It was an instrument. I played a lot of them I didn't know what I was doing and it felt just like it feels every time you start doing something you have no clue what you're doing. Confusing, and really awkward. I was already a bit self-conscious because they clearly thought I knew nothing about anything, and a little more than annoyed that I'd implied that I'd like my super-cool priceless artifact from history back now, please, and gotten ignored.
I was too pissed off about that to have a magical moment with a harp that I knew I'd never afford.

Somehow in 2013 I ended up watching one or two or maybe 35 of these girls' videos. That one up there wasn't uploaded yet, but it's my favorite. I started thinking about levers and pedals in harps and how harps were tuned. I was writing a story for November 2013's National Novel Writing Month, and it had a symphony in it, and one of the characters played the harp because it was funny that he had a fifty thousand dollar harp and lived in a terrible, terrible apartment that didn't even have an elevator, and it gave him an excuse to always be at the symphony's rehearsal room and therefore close to the plot. I researched a lot about harp prices. I realized that none of them were in my reach. I had pink hair, but I was still working the same crap job (though with more hours) and I hadn't had $700 in my saving's account since the brief moment that time that the school accidentally refunded to my account instead of my dad's.

Even the most affordable harps I could find were $650.

Admittedly, the Sharpsicle is really cute and comes in bright pink, and it's not like I was planning on being a serious harpist who was going to play for my money, but I couldn't spend $600 on a harp when I needed things like a computer.
I wanted the Sharpsicle instead of the cheaper Harpsicle, not because of the sharping levers, but because of the bridge pins. I knew from the start that I wanted a harp I could add levers to as I was able to afford them. No point buying something that expensive without being able to invest in it. What I really wanted was a floor harp, like the one I'd played before. The more research I'd do, the more I was forming an idea in my mind of what I wanted and what I didn't want, and every want and every dislike added to that price I could never, ever afford.

I never saved up for a harp. I had other hobbies, cheaper hobbies, to spend time and money on. I had other instruments to play my music on.

And then I found out about the Waring Harp. You build it yourself, and it's made of cardboard, and it's $150.
It was a harp I could get.

I never did, largely through never remembering that I wanted it except for times when I couldn't spare the money, but I thought about it. I'd been doing some busking with my ukulele, and sometimes with my friends, and we'd been noticing that when we used the cigar box ukuleles I'd built, we got more money. 

People took pity on us, I guess, or we were more sympathetic when we weren't using nice, expensive-looking instruments, or they liked crafty people who could make things on their own.

My harp dreams started solidifying into something I could reach. I'd taken stagecraft and prop building classes as part of the theatre degree that I never completed. I was confident that I could make it and have fun in the process. I had a friend who would have a blast painting a cardboard soundbox if I asked her.

Sure, it wasn't a 26+ string harp with full levers, or at least some levers, and it wasn't pretty, and I couldn't add levers. It failed to check about six boxes in my harp dreams. But it was one I could get. I didn't care.

So, fast forward to this year, when my mom asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I gave a list of the Green Day CD's that I don't own, and chucked "and a Waring Harp," on the end for good measure.

I had never told my mom anything about the details in my harp goals. I don't think I'd told her I wanted to play the harp since the day I saw them in Sky Mall.

I think what happened is that my mom's Google-fu failed her, and she ended up with a different harp kit. A much more high-quality one. I'm building my dream harp right now, and loving every minute of it.

(I was ready to let this blog die, but I'm bringing it back. The content's going to be new, and it's just goingto be my music blog, but I'm keeping the name because I think it's catchy, and I'm keeping the first 21 posts because I still find them useful for my personal use, whihc is really whjat this blog was from the start)