seek and destroy.

I read somewhere that social media has replaced hobbies, and I hate how true that rings. Admittedly, there’s something distinctly old-fashioned about the idea of a hobby. Even the word itself sounds stuck in the mid-century, conjuring up images of housewives playing mahjong or an introvert’s stamp collection. But with constant distraction pretty much on tap, I’ve learned that a hobby might just save us, the forcing mechanism to pull away from the noise, the anxiety, the politics…

Living in France, I've found that this forcing mechanism is somewhat built into the culture where we haven’t completely given up on the concept. Every September during the rentrée, our town hosts a local hobbies fair where everyone from kids to seniors signs up for a club, from yoga and gymnastics to theater and martial arts. Sure, not everyone signs up, but the concept is so pervasive that being asked if you have an "activity" is incredibly common.

One year, I braved solfège. Why I thought learning music theory in French would be “fun” speaks to my overachieving, claustrophobic post-COVID mindset of wanting to get out of the house, even if it meant restructuring everything I knew about music. Because here, the notes aren’t A, B, C, D, but Do, Ré, Mi, Fa… which is more disorienting than it sounds. Still, I survived, and the success story attached is I can now read very basic sheet music.

These days, though, I’ve narrowed my activities down to things that don’t make my brain swell, like singing, which keeps me humble; and my guitar lessons, which allow me to imagine my past life as a 1960s folk singer who never quite made it.

When I tell people I’ve been playing since I was 13, they’re impressed, imagining I can shred. Please. To set the record straight, I confess that I was a total teenage slacker guitarist. I just wanted to play the easiest chords in Nirvana and Pavement songs, and once a song got too hard, I moved on. As an adult, though, I wanted to learn the right way, which tasked my teacher Michel with undoing decades of terrible habits, from random strumming to flat-out skipping chord shapes my fingers didn’t “like.” My teenage reasoning was that no one would notice if I just stopped playing for a measure or two.

But, ah, with age comes wisdom because as it turns out: people do tend to notice things like that. Last Friday was my annual guitar recital where the expectation to hit every note correctly is not only a requirement but judged upon. As tradition stands, we perform our chosen piece in front of the other students, their families, and a jury who then point out everything we did wrong.

It’s brutally French.

When Michel asked what I wanted to perform, I had to weigh my options. Folk is comfortable and safe. Rock is fun. Pop is a nightmare of finger-bending chords trying to mimic elaborate studio production. For my singing recital, I had played it safe, which resulted in a forgettable performance. Determined to go bigger this time, I asked for heavy metal—well, heavy metal within reason—and he handed me the sheet music to Metallica’s “Seek and Destroy.”

Because I don’t listen to metal, a song called “Seek and Destroy” made the exercise feel all the more daring and deliciously absurd. At first glance, the pages were misleading in their simplicity until I realized there were some bends, chord ringing, and a fair amount of what we call “noodling.”

It took discipline and focus as I powered through the self-doubt, as well as the urge to procrastinate. I kept my phone in another room and let the walls of my comfort zone crumble around me as I leaned into the clumsiness of learning something entirely new. I showed up on Friday with my Surf Blue Telecaster and sweaty palms, as ready as I could be to present the song to the other guitar students, as well as their families.

With my son, my husband, and my father-in-law in the second row giving me all sorts of thumbs-up on a hot Friday night, I played with all the intensity my fingers could muster. It wasn’t perfect; I tripped up once or twice, the jury gleefully pointed it out, but for a moment in time, I was a mom playing metal. My former teenage self was in awe.

Afterward, I got to bask in the afterglow of achieving the absurd as this weekend’s Fête de la Musique kicked off. Had it not been for taking up a hobby I have to show up to every week, I wouldn’t have buckled down to learn a song I didn’t even know. The guitar would have collected dust in my living room, but every week, I’m forced to hide the phone, unplug from the world, and focus on one note at a time that eventually adds up to a complete song.

I don’t think I am destined for musical greatness, so instead, I write about it. But that’s the beauty of a hobby because it doesn’t demand greatness, just presence and some patience. And when opportunity strikes, you get to lock into something bigger than the quotidian. For me, it’s a song where I might just channel a character from my novel. In that moment, I’m showing up for them, for my teenage self, and for my son to make something happen—where every so often I get to seek and thus, destroy.🤘

Have a great week! And stay cool. I think we have a global heat wave going on, so I hope you’re near water or have some ice cubes at your disposal. (I’m on my third iced coffee right now.)

And for those curious, here’s the video of my recital with my teacher Michel in the background. Full disclosure: we slowed the song down by 20 BPM otherwise it would’ve been too fast!