NOTE: forgot to post yesterday, so you’ve got what they call a “double shot” on classic rock stations.
The post after this one contains dolphins!
So if I say “I watched nearly all of ‘A Bug’s Life’ this morning before 10:30 AM” you might say:
Dude, employed?
You have a great job
Let me guess: someone called in sick at the children’s dentist office, and they were running late.
Dingdingding for number 3. Knowing I might be long in the waiting room I got up early, queued up some posts for the work blog, then duly fired them off via iPhone on the hour, every hour. Sat in the waiting room with nervous child, watching the most unjustly ignored Pixar film, and laughing, and marveling: it’s quite a leap, technologically, from “Toy Story,” and everything Pixaresque is there in generous portions. But no one talks about it. They use “Cars” to ding the studio for having the temerity to turn out something less than wonderful (not my opinion; once you get past the notion of cars as animate self-aware beings without opposable thumbs who have created a sophisticated industrial infrastructure, it’s a lovely meditation on several American 20th century self-definitions, but that’s another story) and every other movie is used to bolster this point or that, but no one ever brings up “Bug’s Life.”
Why? It’s funny, it has the best cast of supporting characters in any Pixar movie, it has the best villain of any Pixar movie – which usually rely on The Plot to stand in for a nemesis, except for “Incredibles” and “Monsters,” the latter of which had villains that were demonstrably defeatable – and it paces its marvelous set-pieces with effortless skill. I think I could watch it every week and find something new and amusing. AND I WILL IF MY DAUGHTER DOESN’T FLOSS MORE.
I’m still recovering from the vacation. Not that it was strenuous, at all. Wasn’t. Not like I swam the Panama Canal. But returning to the cold seems to have deposited an enormous block of lethargy in the middle of my brain, and the return to routine has a psychological effect that makes me wander to the office restroom every half-hour and make the Munch “Scream” face into the mirror. Plus, I can’t write. Or rather I just don’t want to. Never had a problem with not being able to write, but sometimes the . . . what’s the word? It’ll come to me.
Which reminds me: when I was doing a speech on the ship I played a very cheap trick. I was discussing a movie that introduced the police procedural into the noir genre, showed the cops logging evidence, conducting ballistics, and finally putting out something to catch the crooks, what’s the word, oh dang it just slipped my brain completely -
“Dragnet,” a few people said. Right, right, Dragnet. Anyway, there was a young fellow working on that movie, had a role as a ballistics technician, and he was interested in this style of storytelling, and he would later propose a radio show that followed cops around and showed what they really did, as opposed to the c’mon boys turn on the sirens let’s drive fast and let the tommyguns bark style of radio cop show. His name was Jack Webb, and his show was . . . right! Cheap, like I say, and unplanned, but the fun part about speaking extemporaneously is figuring out ticks and riffs, working the pauses, and so on. Bless Rhoda Hansen, now in the ground, for her withering critiques in high school speech and debate. Because of her I will never speak with my hands folded in front of me: fig leaf. Or clasped behind my head: reverse fig leaf.
Anyway. What’s the word for the thing that keeps me from writing? Inspiration. But as I keep telling my daughter, oft to no avail, the trick is not to wait for inspiration to write, but simply to start writing and call “follow me!” to inspiration in the hopes it’ll catch up. This was one of the boring Lessons on Art I was giving her this morning en route to the dentist, trying to keep her mind off the inevitable needle. We’re having Issues with piano, again, and I’m trying to walk a very thin line. By thin I mean dental floss, on the snow, and you’re blind. Can’t quite find it. You want to make all this stuff enjoyable, but you also have to instill habits and basic know-how, and after years of combining sight-reading with memorization, we’re cracking down on sight-reading. Not pleasant, and it takes all the fun out of playing.
This is where the Tiger Mom comes into it, I suppose; you probably read something about the woman who wrote a book about the superiority of Chinese Moms. They make their kids play three hours a day so they’re perfect, even if it means childhood is essentially drained of joy and social interaction. Upside: kid learns discipline, piano. Downside: child will probably not be a concert pianist, may resent loss of childhood to Chopin. I don’t know. I kick myself for not being harder, but I’ve never thought you should take piano so you can learn piano. You should take piano so you get a feel for music from the production side, as a participant, not an onlooker.
Which is an excuse for not being rigorous, probably. It’s frightening how much this mirrors my own experience. I hated practicing and I struggled with sight reading; at a certain point the music struck me the same way it hit Bugs in Rhapsody Rabbit:
It’s like that. So I understand, but part of the responsibility of parenting is not to pass off your own failings on your child, but to pass on what you’ve learned. Right? Or, put another way, you punish your kid for being yourself. We’re not going to have two losers around here, no sir!
Anyway. She’s ten. I’m not particularly worried. And I should probably stop having conversations on the way to the dentist about drawing something besides the things she likes to draw. But when I hear “I’m not good at landscapes,” my hackles bristle, and my bristles hackle. You don’t know that. It’s too early to give up on landscapes. Then I remember what I was doing at ten, which was A) hating piano practice, and B) generally being a “smart” kid without many outlets aside from Tom Swift books and doodling pictures of the Titanic exploding in my school tablet. As it turned out I did not become an artist noted for his brilliant depictions of stick figures falling off a ship, complete with dotted lines to indicate their trajectory, but I did give a lecture on the Titanic on a ship 40 years later, so there’s that.
But that’s the other pitfall, isn’t it? I did X and I turned out okay. You never know. You just can’t, so you do what you must, and should, and can.
Have to do a column now, about God only knows what.
Pass it along, if you wish
64 Responses to A Dad’s Life
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One of my favorite classical music-themed cartoons, “Rhapsody Rabbit.” One of Bugs’ funniest lines comes from that cartoon:
*Bugs plays high notes*
*Phone rings*
BUGS: Eh, what’s up, Doc? Who? Franz Liszt? Never heard of ‘im. Wrong number!
It’s even funnier when you know that the piece Bugs is playing is “Hungarian Rhapsody #2″, which has been featured in many a WB ‘toon, and was written and composed by, who else?
Franz Liszt.
Bug’s Life: I think that BL also had the most overtly gruesome end for the villain–thrown into a pit of giant monsters and eaten alive. (Sure, Incredibles had sucked-into-a-jet-engine, but you know how those things go: just an explosion, never saw the body, he’ll be back for the sequel if that there *is* one.)
Few regrets in this life, but the big one is that I didn’t “apply myself” and learn to play the piano, or some instrument, when I was young. Everything like that gets harder as you get older, and learning music is like learning your native language–you’ve pretty much learned your entire working vocabulary by age 12 or so. If you don’t acquire the musical ear and basic skillz by then, you probably won’t.
@DryOwlTacos: ahh, but you’ve listened to music, right? you already know the Circles of Fifths by heart through listening to music.
“Hello. I’m Sebastian Bach, and I’m addicted to Circles of Fifths.”
“Hello, I’m Ozzy Osbourne. am I? got any bats? I’m jonesin’ for bats. I can see ‘em but I can’t grab ‘em.”
like that.
so learning to play is probably quite possible.
never say never.
Re:Chinese mothers
Tips on raising children – it is easier, FAR EASIER, to tell someone what not to do when raising their kids than it is to tell them what to do.
Raising kids is basically a 40 year uncontrolled experiment with an infinite number of variables and little consensus on outcome.
How could anyone have the generalized right answer to that?
@Cory. me. I got it. right here, teach.
Don’t Eff This Up.
what more do you need?
swschrad:
works in theory.
gets effed up in practice.
@Kev says: Want more ammunition for the value of learning music? You cannot live not a fully human life unless you have some understanding of music. Even if you never play an instrument or even sing, if you’ve been taught how to appreciate good music, you’ve been given a gift that will enrich your life immensely.
@Kevin: I know exactly what you mean about being transported; it happens to me too. Music for me is like a drug–I go into altered states of consciousness.
@GardenStater: Your boys are still young. They will eventually find out that a young man with a fine singing voice will have the young ladies flocking to him.
Regarding music. I took piano lessons for four years in grades 5 through 8. Was quite good at it too. My 8th grade recital piece was an abridged version of–wait for it–Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody #2. But I stopped taking lessons after that: I thought high school would keep me too busy. In reality, I was just being lazy. Got back into it a bit when I was in college–taught myself to play Sinding’s Rustle of Spring and Chopin’s Minute Waltz. I can read music, but not sight read. But I can memorize almost anything.
Now in my mid 50s, I hope some day to get back to it. I still sing in church so that helps satisfy my musical itch some. I was lucky that when I was a grad student my church choir had a core of professional singers, so I learned to sing by singing with pros. The choir director was also very talented. I’ll always be thankful for that experience.
When I was younger, I used to have dreams periodically of playing the piano beautifully and effortlessly. Those were great dreams.
Ah, c’mon, it’s really a Two Fer
Tuesdayer, Thursday?I play piano by ear but never learned to sight read (except painfully slowly), thereby frustrating my parents and my piano instructor. They wanted me to learn classical pieces but I wanted to play pop, rock etc. I had a music teacher in high school who had songbooks of pop songs from the 40′s on back. He got me hooked – I probably know hundreds of them when I can remember them all. But I play well enough to keep people entertained at classic car shows and such, and have some fun too.
Coming back to this thread a day later, it warms my heart to see so many of you involved in music in your adulthood. I teach at a two-year college, and one of my jazz combos includes people from their late teens through their late fifties. They may have never otherwise met, but they unite every week to make some really good things happen. Music really is the “great equalizer” in that way.
And for those of you who regret giving up an instrument when you were younger: Barring any physical ailments, you can always come back. One of my students is a guy in his 70s who was off the horn for 40 years. He’s been back for five years now, and he’s loving every minute of it.
[...] salvation and redemption. I always find something that re-lights my fire. Always. And today (well, yesterday) was no exception. What’s the word for the thing that keeps me from writing? Inspiration. But as [...]
Sight reading isn’t necessarily all that important; it all depends on what kind of music you want to do. I took piano for nine years as a kid, but managed to avoid learning to sight read. I had a good ear, so all I had to do was wait for my teacher to get frustrated enough to play through the piece for me.
Eventually I quit piano lessons, but I never quit playing. I went on to a hobby of songwriting and recording my own compositions, and the thought of writing music on paper seems absurd to me. Obviously, if I were playing in a classical ensemble, I’d have different needs.
I’d argue that every Pixar film has a villain, though they’re not always central to the story: Sid, Hopper, Al, Randall, Darla, Syndrome, Chick Hicks, Skinner, Auto, Muntz, Lotso.
@Cory:In theory, there’s no difference between practice and theory; but in practice there is.