Music Trumps Politics and Ideology, Every Time

When I was making my feeble attempt to learn German, I bought a book of poetry, in German, at a used bookstore. Something the editor wrote (in English) in his introduction has stuck with me ever since.

I don't remember the exact wording, but the gist was: Poetry is best enjoyed when it is not fully understood. I took this to mean that, when you leave certain things to your imagination, when you don't look for exact meaning, but take some time to just revel in the beauty of language, even if you don't understand every word, and if you can get some idea of the sentiment it is trying to express, you are getting a fuller appreciation of a poem than you would if you assiduously tried to assign a certain meaning to every word, every line, every verse.

It's the same, I think, with music. Music is man's attempt to express what is ineffable, what can't necessarily be expressed in a simple explanation, as careful as you might be in trying to choose the right words. It communicates on a deeper level than we can reach with reason or logic.

I thought about this while watching, for the umpteenth time, the video above, which was recorded in the Old City of Jerusalem. If you wander through the Old City, you realize that, besides those who are dressed according to the dictates of their faith -- Orthodox Jews, for example, with wide-brimmed black hats, or Muslim women in burkas -- it's not always easy to tell, at a glance, who is an Arab, who is Jewish, who is Christian, who is Muslim. (Tourists like myself, of course, are easy to identify).

When I watched this video today, again, for the umpteenth time, I focused on the young boy who seems to be taking such joy in the music. Is he Arab? Is he Jewish? Who knows? Who cares? He's caught up in the music, and it's a joy to watch him be carried away by it. My guess is that, whatever his ethnicity or faith, he didn't care much whether the musicians were Jewish, or Muslim, or Christian, or Druze, or completely secular. He was experiencing the pleasure of watching and listening to people create something that took them beyond themselves; creating rather than destroying. The recognition of that creative force is embedded in all of us, I think, deep in our souls.

I'm certainly not proposing an easy, utopian solution to intractable problems. Politics matter; ideology matters. People die, and are oppressed, and suffer every day because of such things. I know exactly how I feel about those who subscribe to wrong-headed and misbegotten ideologies, and those who believe that their political stances represent truth with a capital "T". But music, poetry, and art are capable of taking us outside the human realm and into the Divine. It's a realm we all live in, and maybe we don't take the time to recognize or acknowledge it.

Mark Helprin once wrote, "The greatest substance of the world is immaterial, the province of the heart, and its study cannot be forced or reasoned. Merely to touch upon the edge of things in praising their mechanics is to forswear their fullness, for the entry to this fullness lies not in science but in art. I cannot prove this, for it cannot be proven, but I claim, assert, and have seen it." I have seen it, and my guess is that we all can see it too, if we look and listen carefully enough. I've said it before, and while I can't prove it, because it can't be proven, I claim it and assert it: Music trumps politics and ideology every time, because it has a unique ability to touch our hearts. Thank God for that.

Top Hat

Sunday afternoons in summer are now time for old movies with my mom. Last Sunday was Singing in the Rain; this afternoon was Top Hat. The plots, of course, are not the point. It's the amazing, effortless dancing. In the case of Top Hat, Astaire and Rogers (and Fred Astaire never got credit for being such a great singer as well). And, of course, the genius of Irving Berlin. It is being delighted by the ability of human beings to move together with such grace and control, and seeing my mom delighted as well. I looked up reviews of the movie, and found this from the late Roger Ebert:

Because we are human, because we are bound by gravity and the limitations of our bodies, because we live in a world where the news is often bad and the prospects disturbing, there is a need for another world somewhere, a world where Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers live. Where everyone is a millionaire and hotel suites are the size of ballrooms and everything is creased, combed, brushed, shined, polished, powdered and expensive. Where you seem to find the happiness you seek, when you're out together dancing cheek to cheek. It doesn't even matter if you really find it, as long as you seem to find it, because appearances are everything in this world, and ... 

Let the rain pitter patterBut it really doesn't matterIf the skies are gray.Long as I can be with you,It's a lovely day.

Beautifully said. As the late Dick Buckley used to say about this time on Sunday afternoons at the end of his show on WBEZ, "Happiness."

Flying Home

On Friday, after the kids and I took my father to the airport for his flight back home, I felt a bit at sea. During his visit, I had taken him to most of the places I frequent in Evanston. I walked downtown after dropping him off at the airport and the kids at our apartment, and passed many of those same places. I returned some books to the library, then went across the street to an Irish pub, a place I like to go and have a sandwich and a drink sometimes on a Saturday afternoon.

We had been at the same place just a week prior, and I already felt his absence. My father has this gift. He can talk to anyone, at any time, and actually listen, and be curious about their life, their experience; he has the gift of talking, and listening. It's one of the things I've learned from him, and a quality I hope to cultivate in myself.

Walking back home after the library and lunch, I noted that it was about time for his flight to be leaving. I thought I might catch a glimpse of his plane heading out over the lake. But the traffic patterns at O'Hare weren't in my favor. Planes were coming in from the east to land, and taking off from the west.

Then, walking down the alley towards home after a quick stop at Trader Joe's, I heard the familiar whine of what I knew was a big plane -- an A330 or A340, or a 777, or a 747. And, sure enough, I looked up, and there, already at a fairly high altitude, but unmistakable, was a big Swiss airlines Airbus A330 -- the red rudder with the white cross on the back, bound for Zurich. Though of course he couldn't see me, I paused and waved, and wished the travelers, including my father, a safe passage.

Hours later, I went on the flight tracker website and saw that his flight was just about 15 minutes away from Zurich. Silas and I watched its descent, and confirmed that it had arrived. We were in Evanston, and he in Switzerland, but it made us feel in some way that we had accompanied him on his trip.

Our world may be confusing, and disturbing. There is no shortage of cruelty and pettiness. Technology certainly cuts both ways. Reason is scarce in our public discourse. Sometimes chance or circumstance puts us in the right place at the right time, sometimes in the wrong place at the wrong time (apologies to Dr. John). But days like that remind me that the world is also lovely and mysterious in ways we can't imagine, and may not fully understand until we meet the One who made it.

Father's Day

My father and I have certainly had our disagreements, and really haven’t gotten to know each other well until late in life. He has his foibles, as we all have.

But, as he visits the U.S. on what could likely be his last trip here, I think of all I have learned from him in the past few years since we have gotten closer. For instance: the value of hard work. That nothing comes from nothing, that so many of the things we enjoy are the fruits of others’ labors. That there is beauty in this world which, even at our lowest moments, we can see, if we only look around to recognize it. Never to give up. That there is always something to learn in every situation. To be firm, and resolute, and blunt, but to always try to remember to be kind.

So those are my words to my father, Mr K F Kuner, on this Father’s Day. I love you, Papa. Now, let’s go have dinner.

Coincidence

I am an organ music aficionado. It's true. My name is David, and I am an organ music aficionado. One of my favorite pieces is the Cesar Franck Chorale No. 2 in B Minor. I love the simple theme, the way it develops over the course of 14 or so minutes into a grand wall of sound, the seemingly endless variations. I could listen to it over and over again, because to me there is always something to listen to, something new.

The one recording of this piece I own is on a CD that was recorded in the cathedral in Freiburg, Germany. I know Freiburg, because my father's family is from there, I've visited often, and I know the cathedral (the Muenster) well.

When I was in Freiburg recently, I thought it would be nice to hear this piece played in the Muenster. But, of course, that would be impossible. What are the odds this piece would be played in this space while I am here? Slim to none.

Then, on my last full day in Freiburg, still jet lagged, My father and I decided to take a nap on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in our room with the windows opening onto the Muensterplatz, the public square where the cathedral is situated. There were flower boxes in the windows of the room, and before I went to lay down I stood by the windows and noticed tiny hummingbirds fluttering around the blossoms.

Later -- it must have been about an hour or so -- my  father woke me, and told me there was music coming from the cathedral. I listened, heard the Chorale No. 2 in B Minor, got dressed, ran over there, and listened for 45 minutes to someone practice this beautiful piece in this grand space. It was like a gift, unearned, undeserved, but gratefully accepted.

There are so many ways to look at the world, and so many ways to interpret our experience in it. Some see miracles everywhere, and some are loath to see miracles anywhere.

Frederick Buechner once wrote, "I believe that people laugh at coincidence as a way of relegating it to the realm of the absurd and of therefore not having to take seriously the possibility that there is a lot more going on in our lives than we either know or care to know. Who can say what it is that's going on? But I suspect that part of it, anyway, is that every once and so often we hear a whisper from the wings that goes something like this: 'You've turned up in the right place at the right time. You're doing fine. Don't ever think that you've been forgotten.'"

So, maybe it was a random occurrence. Maybe it had been ordained long ago. I don't know. But what I do know is that all I could think of to say to my father when I returned from the cathedral was, "That was not an accident." I believe that as sure as I know that the sun will rise tomorrow and I will need to get up in the morning. Time alone will tell if I'm right.

It was just a Sunday in beautiful Freiburg, but certainly not a typical Sunday for me. I hope there are more to come.

Winter

Forty-two years ago or so, my mother, brother, and I came back to this house, which had been in the family for a long time, and reclaimed it. My grandfather owned it and rented it out for years to various tenants after his parents, who had been living there, died. He and my grandmother relocated to Arizona to retire.

Both had lived almost their entire lives in the Midwest, but visited Arizona once a year or so to visit my great aunt, who had bought a home there. My grandfather took to it, loved the hot weather, the eternally blue skies, the mountains. He loved that he could pick a grapefruit from the tree in the backyard and have it for breakfast. My grandmother must have had a bit too much of the Midwestern girl in her. One brutally hot day, when the irrigation flooded the backyard in Scottsdale, and dead fish were found floating in the water, she told him, “We’re moving back.” I don’t know exactly where truth ends and fiction begins in this story, but it is the stuff of family legend. And, at any rate, we did move back, and I know it wasn’t my grandfather’s idea.

When we got back to Springfield, my grandparents bought a newer house on the west side of town, and we moved back here. As much as I loved my grandparent’s house, I knew I loved it mainly because of who they were, their presence that filled it, rather than the house itself. I loved this house – the house itself – more than theirs, and so did my mom, I think. Maybe because of its age and its history, and its long connection to our family.

The history of this house is part of my history, as it is my mom’s. She remembered – she remembers – picking apples from the ancient apple tree in the back that we had to cut down when we moved in, the grape arbor that used to be there (which I found vestigial evidence of when I explored the back yard for the first time many years ago), her grandfather, a stately old German with an huge mustache who in pictures resembles Otto von Bismark, sitting in a rocking chair smoking a pipe in the living room. She remembers the time the pot of cooking applesauce exploded and left the stain on the kitchen ceiling, sitting down at the piano to play some hymns just because if you could play the piano and you loved to sing hymns that was something you did to pass the time on a Sunday afternoon, and watching out the front window to see me drive off in my great aunt’s Plymouth Sport Satellite on the day I left for my first year of college. And about a million or two other things: goodbyes, happy reunions, tears, births, deaths, everything that gives life weight and substance.

I tell her that we’ll make sure a suitcase is packed for her for our trip up to Evanston tomorrow, and she says “It reminds me of church work camp in Berlin, after the war. We could only take one  bag with us.” Tomorrow morning we’ll leave, and she won’t see this place again. I will, if only to clean out her things. But this is the real goodbye to this old house, and I know it, and she knows that I know it. In a situation like that, what do you say, and how do you say it? I truly don’t know. Tomorrow, as we drive away, I'll probably say as little as possible, and just listen.

\

The Drive Home

Somewhere in the course of, say, 40 or 50 years or so, everything gets turned around. You were dependent on your mother; now she's dependent on you. You have kids, and find yourself saying the same things to your mother that you say to your kids: Do you think that's a good decision? Have you thought this through? Who's going to pay for this?

We went to the Olive Garden for dinner tonight, because it's close, and because I know mom used to go there with her friend Marie for lunch after church on Sunday. Getting in and out of the restaurant was like one of the labors of Hercules. I was tempted to just sling her onto my back and carry her in; it would have made more sense. But she made a heroic effort, and, with the aid of a walker and my help, we finally got her situated at a table, and I finally got her out to the car after the meal was done. The food was mediocre, but the staff was attentive and helpful, so I won't be making any disparaging remarks about Olive Garden anytime soon. It was a good meal, and she enjoyed it.

Back at the nursing home, I sat on her bed and she in her wheelchair, and we talked. She grabbed my hand and sat there stroking it for a minute, as I talked about nothing, then she said, "I just want, at the end of my life, to be able to ...". It trailed off into nothing, and I sat there in silence, thinking, should I ask what she wants to do at the end of her life? But I know what she wants to do. She wants to hug her grandchildren. She wants to laugh a little, and be happy. She wants to sit on her couch and hear the familiar sound of the neighbor in his backyard next door, sawing wood and pounding nails, working on his latest project on a dull winter afternoon. She wants to go to church and sit through the sermon just to hear Rudy play the Bach postlude on the organ. And, after church, she wants to go to Steak 'N' Shake and have a milkshake. She wants some assurance that she hasn't been cut off, that she isn't adrift, as the end of her life draws closer.

I left soon after dropping her off, because I didn't know what more to say, and I needed a drink, and a cigarette, and I needed to be alone. It's not the most honorable thing in the world, but there it is. On the way out, I heard one woman in a wheelchair saying to another, "So nobody comes and visits you?" And even though I know myself, and I know my mom, and I know how much we care about each other, it was a tough drive home.

Peace at the Last

Just back from that crazy little fraternity of human suffering, the Emergency Room. The place where the middle-aged man with his ailing mother, the pretty young athletic-looking woman who seems always to be weeping when you glance at her (what is she crying about?), and the man who arrives in a wheelchair with a Black and Decker space heater box on his lap (why does he have it?) all have parity. I would have no patience in this situation, but the nurses and doctors we talked to were all polite, professional, helpful, and even, I would say, caring. Yes, it took seven hours to accomplish what probably could have been done in one, but I can't complain too much about that. What you want in this situation is the feeling that someone knows what they're doing and cares at least a little bit about what you're going through, and we got that.

Meanwhile, I'm back at my mom's house, and my mom is at Memorial Hospital getting a tube stuck up her nose. Far up her nose. I tried to warn her somewhat that this was going to happen, but then I thought I ought not to make too much of it. I had to separate my own feelings about how uncomfortable the procedure sounded from what she needed to hear at that time, which was reassurance: I'm here, I'll be back in the morning, we're all thinking of you. I didn't know what to say when I left beyond "I love you," and then I thought she might like to say a prayer. We said the old, familiar words, "O Lord, support us all the day long, until the shadows lengthen ..." Etc. etc. What a comfort there is in language that is strong, that somehow cuts to the heart of the matter. Its power always surprises me. I was glad I suggested it.

Now there is a thunderstorm brewing. Thunderstorms always seem bigger here, more threatening. I'm going onto the back porch to listen to it and watch it. Sleep well, everyone. O Lord, support us all the day long, until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy word is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then in thy mercy grant us a safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last.

The Road Ahead

One morning not long ago I unexpectedly ran into my 12-year-old daughter Violet. I had taken the day off and was heading to the coffee shop to do some work prior to a doctor’s appointment. She was walking to school, shuffling along unhurriedly, trying to untangle the knotted cords of her earphones as she went.

Meetings like this are still novel because they’re infrequent. I run into friends, acquaintances, and former co-workers every now and then, but I don't often have chance meetings with my daughter. She’s still slowly, in small, incremental steps, emerging from the time of life when everything is planned for you by someone else, when parents are responsible for deciding what you do, when you do it, and who you do it with. The thought of her gradually reaching greater and greater degrees of independence is liberating, in one way. But it takes some getting used to.

When I saw Violet, I walked across the street to say hello. She smiled and said, in a singsong voice, “Hello, Daddy. Fancy meeting you here!” I smiled back at that; she has a winning way with me sometimes, this girl. We talked for a minute and I told her not to be late to school. She assured me she wouldn't,  though my fatherly angst – I am a very good worrier – told me to keep our conversation short, so that she could make it to school at her casual pace before the bell.

It’s a cliché, of course, but what parent hasn’t experienced it – the feeling that your children's future is unwritten, that they're on their way somewhere, and that, ultimately, they're getting there on their own? I felt it that morning when, after our little exchange, I caught a glimpse of Violet still fussing with the cords of her earphones just before she turned a corner towards school and disappeared into her day, and I into mine.

Carentan O Carentan

Carentan, 1944 (Photo: US Army)

“To remember a battle in which he has taken part,” wrote Louis Simpson, the American poet and World War II veteran who died last September, “a man must make himself innocent again — innocent of newspapers, books and movies. He must remember his actual life, the life of the body. Everything else is journalism.”

Simpson served in the 101st US Airborne Division of the US Army from 1943 to 1945, and experienced firsthand some of the most brutal battles of the war, including, after the invasion of France by allied forces on D-Day, the bloody battle for a small town called Carentan.

Some have described Simpson's poem describing that battle, Carentan O Carentan, as "cynical"; if so, Simpson, having endured the trials of battle and seen his compatriots fall around him, certainly earned the right to express such cynicism. But to me, Carentan is Simpson recalling something quite different, something Simpson himself pointed to above: remembrance of "his actual life, the life of the body."

It is impossible for me to read Carentan O Carentan without thinking of those men who have placed themselves in the service of their country and endured things that I will never have to endure; who walked down a sunny lane in Normandy one summer day as their enemies "aimed between the belt and boot and let the barrel climb." If we do not have to experience what these men experienced, surely it's our duty, at the very least, to listen to them, and to always remember that our freedoms are inseparable from their sacrifices. All else, as Simpson might put it, is journalism.

Buyer's remorse? Not quite. But a little bit.

The young man at the Enterprise Rent-A-Car desk did his job well last week, and sold me on an upgrade. He dangled satellite radio in front of my nose, and I bit. Was it worth it? Some thoughts:

- Brewer and Shipley? Never thought I'd hear them again.

- There's a reason some of those "Deep Tracks" are forgotten. Yeah, there's the initial rush of excitement when "The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys" comes on, and you say to yourself, "wow, they're playing that?!" Alas, it's fleeting. Turns out, maybe they don't play it often because it's so goddamn boring. 

- Poco? Wow, never thought I'd hear them again.

- I really dislike The Doors. Jim Morrison was insufferable. You want to hear "the scream of the butterfly," pal? I'll make it easy for you. 

- Oddly, Robin Trower lives on Sirius XM. There's no reason I, who loved English prog-rock in the 70s, wasn't a Robin Trower fan. He has pretty much everything I wanted. And the guitar sound on a lot of the songs is pretty badass. But it just didn't happen. 

- There was at least one good song on that West, Bruce, and Laing LP I bought as a cutout at Woolworth's in the 70's. I just didn't hear it, or didn't pay attention to it, until a few days ago. 

- Hearing Family's "It's Only A Movie" while driving through central Illinois is definitely novel, but not much more than that. 

- When "Whipping Post" comes on, you turn up the radio, despite the protests from the kids in the back seat. It's like you can't help it.

On balance, it was a worthwhile experiment. But, next time, I'll save my money.

A happy birthday

Twelve years ago yesterday, Violet made her way into the world. I'm supposed to say I remember it like it was yesterday, but, though 12 years isn't much in the grand scheme of things, in many ways it feels like it happened so long ago.

The details have become fuzzy over time. One thing I do remember is that she was a nine-to-five baby; I took Jenny to the hospital around nine in the morning, and Violet was born fiveish in the evening. At the time, I wondered if this was a sign that my daughter would grow up to a model of punctuality and orderliness. She has yet to manifest those qualities, but, of course, there's still a lot of growing up to be done.

Now that she's on the cusp of becoming a young woman, old mannerisms, old ways of saying things, old types of behavior -- some endearing, some vexing -- have fallen away, and new ones seem to come up, then die away, every week. She's in a constant state of becoming. She asserts her independence in new ways, and just when I think she's pulled away from me for good, she surprises me by some gesture that indicates she still needs and wants the comfort of my presence. In the midst of all this change, I'm grateful that we've always been close, and I hope and pray that, as the years roll on, that doesn't change.

Where's it all headed? I don't exactly know (who does?) But I do know that the girl who was born twelve years ago yesterday is one of the most interesting people I've met: bright, imaginative, good-natured, and full of infinite promise. So, wherever she's headed, I intend to tag along to find out. Happy birthday, Violet. Let's be companions on this journey, as much as we can.

A house in summer

Forty or so years ago, my mother, brother and I spent our first night in the house in Douglas Avenue in Springfield. It was summer, and hot, like it is today, the kind of hot that makes you break into a sweat the moment you open the door in the morning and the first breath of air wafts over you; Midwest in the summer hot. We had moved from Arizona, and a different kind of hot. The day we arrived, there was no electricity and no furniture. We slept on lawn furniture in the living room waiting for the morning, when the movers would come and someone would connect the utilities.

The windows were open, exposing me to a world of sounds that I, who had never been in the Midwest, found very odd: the humming of crickets and the myriad of crawling creatures that populate a Midwest night. It felt like sleeping under mosquito netting in a tent in the middle of the jungle. Outside, things were growing with abandon. We had come, it seemed to me, from the desert to live in some wild, untended garden.

Another sound I wasn't used to was the sound of trains. At that time, freight trains traveled along two corridors through downtown Springfield, so there was a fair amount of traffic. The low, mournful whine was unsettling. It seemed not only unfamiliar, but a bit sinister. On that first night, when I slept fitfully because of the heat and the strange, new surroundings, the moan of the freights took on a new dimension. I had dreams that people were speaking to me, asking me why I had come to this new house. I woke with a start to hear a freight train rumbling and sounding its horn a mile away. I had translated the foreign sound of the trains into voices in my dreams. I remember getting up the next day being glad that our electricity would be turned on and we would have air conditioning that night, so we wouldn't have to sleep with the windows open and hear the trains.

It's funny to think about that night now, as I sit listening to a train in the distance on a swampy night in Springfield. The sound has retained its strangeness and mystery, but has lost its foreboding. In fact, I think a lot about those trains, particularly when I'm here. I usually hope that I'm not just hearing some short haul train shuttling cars between local freight yards. I'd rather it's a freight bound for Omaha, or Memphis, or New Orleans that will be traveling through many different localities all night long, interrupting the sleep of people like me. Or maybe the Texas Eagle is hours late out of Chicago and is just coming through, the sleepers, lounge car, and coaches full of revelers glad to be on a journey, and full of a thousand stories, a thousand secrets. They are travelers, and so am I. I can't help but hope that we will all arrive safely home.

Percy, Kierkegaard, Crawfish and Beer

In Walker Percy's The Moviegoer there's an epigram from the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard: ". . . the specific character of despair is precisely this: it is unaware of being despair."

Yes, I know: What, exactly, does that mean? I'm still not sure. But years later, Percy, in an interview, elaborated on the subject:

Interviewer: You've lived a fairly privileged life. Why such despair? 

Percy: Who says I despair? That is to say, I would reverse Kierkegaard's aphorism that the worst despair is that despair which is unconscious of itself as despair, and instead say that the best despair and the beginning of hope is to be conscious of despair in the very air we breathe, and to look around for something better. I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?

No sir, it doesn't sound like it.

Maurice Sendak, 1928-2012

When I heard that Maurice Sendak died, I was taken back to the rickety old apartment on Main Street in Evanston where we lived for twelve years and our children spent the first years of their lives. It could have been any time between the year 2000, when Violet was born, and, say, 2007, when Silas and Hazel got tired of having me read to them. It was just before bedtime, or late at night, when the books came out, maybe as a matter of nightly routine, or maybe in a last-ditch effort to lull a child to sleep who had been up far too long.

I remember a rocking chair, a long day that needed to draw to a close, a drowsy child on my lap, a fervent prayer that she, or he, would go to sleep soon, and a book. That book may have been Where the Wild Things Are, or Outside Over There, or one of the Little Bear books, or a number of other Sendak offerings. (Of course, there were other books, but these, at one point at least, were regulars). I had my favorites, as did my children, but I liked them all. They carried the distinctive mark of a gifted illustrator, and, in the first two cases, a storyteller, who wanted a child to enter fully into his world, and who gave the feeling that he wanted the child to understand something about the storyteller as well.

I respect Maurice Sendak because, like the best authors, he followed E. B. White's advice never to talk down to children. In his books there is wild fantasy, and whimsy, and humor, but also fear, uncertainty, and conflict. Children know all these things from real life, and Sendak knew that, in order engage children, you had to produce stories that, though fantastic, told the truth, that had that element of comfort and risk, of going somewhere far away, having an adventure, and then coming home. The best possible tribute I can pay to him is to say that, as I read those stories over and over again to the point of memorizing them while sitting in that rocking chair, I often enjoyed the journey as much as my children did.

A colleague of mine wrote, "Thanks for the wild adventures, Mr. Sendak. May you now find peace at the end of your own." I could not have put it better.

My father's world

Freiburg, 2010

My father likes talking about his past. He tends to tell me the same things over and over again, but I see him infrequently enough that the stories don't have a chance to get old. Plus, I've always been interested in hearing about his past, and particularly about his childhood growing up in Germany before, during, and after the second World War. It reminds me that history is personal. Decisions that drive the world in one direction or another may be made in the meeting rooms of heads of state, but we all have a history. It's the drama of our own lives, the thousands of triumphs, tragedies, joys, and sorrows we've all experienced. In my father's case, his own childhood just happened to coincide with a pivotal time in the world.

A frequent topic of his reminiscences is his mother, my Oma, a strong, indomitable, but loving and gracious woman who lived in Germany all her life and endured not one, but two world wars. Her husband-to-be went off to war, and returned without his legs, having lost them at Verdun. She married him. She saw the gradual falling apart of her country once again during World War II, but kept her family together, as battered as it was, and remembered that dreadful and chaotic era to me only with the words, "that was the worst time." She had about her an air of dogged perseverance, tenaciousness, that I will always remember and admire, a quality that stayed with her throughout her life, even when times got better for her and her country. 

Oma taught my father to fend for himself, probably because she knew, from experience, that there would be times when there would be no one else you could depend on. If something broke, you didn't throw it away, you fixed it. If your socks got ripped, you darned them. Who else would do it for you? She taught him to sew, and he has been grateful for it all his life. And, to this day, if my father gets a rip in his socks, he doesn't throw them out and go get another pair. He takes out a needle and thread, and carefully sews them up. And, when he's done, he says, out loud, to no one -- but, of course, to someone -- "thank you, mama."

I've always liked this story because it makes me think about the many ways people from our past continue to be present in our lives, even when they've traveled on to other things. It comes to mind when I think about what I'm giving to my own children, and especially now, as my father sits in a hospital in Germany, recovering from an ailment that was nearly fatal. It looks like he's marshaled all the reserves of his legendary stubbornness and will live to fight another day. Whatever problems I've had in the past with my father, I'm glad for that. Get well, Papa. There are still socks to be mended.

Writing for children

E.B. White, on not writing down to children:

Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down. Children are demanding. They are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth. They accept, almost without question, anything you present them with, as long as it is presented honestly, fearlessly, and clearly. I handed them, against the advice of experts, a mouse-boy, and they accepted it without a quiver. In Charlotte’s Web, I gave them a literate spider, and they took that.

Some writers for children deliberately avoid using words they think a child doesn’t know. This emasculates the prose and, I suspect, bores the reader. Children are game for anything. I throw them hard words, and they backhand them over the net. They love words that give them a hard time, provided they are in a context that absorbs their attention. I’m lucky again: my own vocabulary is small, compared to most writers, and I tend to use the short words. So it’s no problem for me to write for children. We have a lot in common.

Zoot Sims in Sweden

In 1984, someone invited Zoot Sims, the great tenor saxophonist, to Sweden, and filmed him. They brought him together with one of his old compatriots, the bassist Red Mitchell, and the Swedish guitarist, Rune Gustafsson. They met in a what looks more like a living room than a studio, talked over old times, and played music.

A few months after this was filmed, Zoot was dead from cancer. Whatever the ills he was suffering at this time so close to his death, here his playing is gorgeous, relaxed and beautiful. I would like to have been party to the entire conversation between him and Red Mitchell as well. The night when Zoot fell off the stage at the Onyx Club while playing Brew Moore's horn ... that's the kind of night I want to hear more about, mostly because I wish I had been there myself, but I was born too late, and in the wrong place.

At one point Zoot says, dragging on a cigarette, "Y'know, music keeps people sane, I think." I can't argue. When he said this I thought of the number of times that music -- making music, or simply listening to it -- has helped keep me on something close to an even keel when it could easily have been otherwise had there been no one to sing with, no records to listen to.

Zoot Sims' own music has played a small but meaningful part in my life, as has the music of Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Duke Ellington ... so many others. I wonder if they know that now. I hope so.

What's Opera, Doc?

Nearly every Saturday morning of my childhood, from about age seven or eight on, I watched the Bugs Bunny-Roadrunner show. It was the best time of the weekend, I think, sitting on the couch eating cereal in front of the TV. You didn't know what the weekend held, but you didn't have to think about it too much. You had everything you wanted right there.

One of the many cartoons I watched, and loved, time and again, was this. Elmer Fudd sings Wagner. I knew it was from an opera, but I didn't really understand what opera was, and didn't care to learn much more. But the melody stuck with me, for some reason, and hearing Elmer sing "Bwoom Hilda, be my wove!" was funny. I was aware, dimly, that I was watching a parody of something that was meant to be tragic; "What did you expect in an opera, a happy ending?" Bugs says at the end.

Then, not long ago, I watched this. I had not even heard the prelude to Wagner's great opera in its entirety before. And, strangely, even as my appreciation for this music has unfolded as I never expected it to, the old Bugs Bunny cartoon seems funnier, better, more spot-on than ever, mostly because it seems to understand so well the greatness of the thing it is parodying.

Sometimes great art and popular culture collide, and both win. Take fifteen minutes and watch this. Beauty, sublimity, grandeur. Stunning. You won't be sorry, doc.

The Great Gatsby

Our writing instructor tells us that it's valuable, when you encounter a piece of prose that you find to be especially beautiful or memorable, just to write it down, longhand, in a notebook. The idea is that by writing it down you're being forced to pay attention to it; to think about why you find it beautiful or memorable. You're studying and thinking about the construction of the sentences, the choice of words, the ideas that are being expressed and how they're being expressed, and you're (hopefully) learning from your observations. I haven't been following his advice as often as I should, but when I have I've found it to be a productive exercise.

So, here's a passage, lovely and elegiac, one that I've read time and again and wrote down the other day, from The Great Gatsby. The best thing I can say about it is that every time I walk through the great waiting room at Union Station in Chicago -- a place I've walked through with many different people in many different circumstances over the course of 30 plus years -- I think of it, and Gatsby, and Nick Carraway, and the myriad of comings and goings, the innumerable greetings and goodbyes, that have happened there over time. Not bad.

One of my most vivid memories is of coming back West from prep school and later from college at Christmas time. Those who went farther than Chicago would gather in the old dim Union Station at six o'clock of a December evening, with a few Chicago friends, already caught up into their own holiday gayeties, to bid them a hasty good-by. I remember the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss This-or-that's and the chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances, and the matchings of invitations: "Are you going to the Ordways'? the Herseys'? the Schultzes'?" and the long green tickets clasped tight in our gloved hands. And last the murky yellow cars of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul railroad looking cheerful as Christmas itself on the tracks beside the gate.

When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. We drew in deep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules, unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour, before we melted indistinguishably into it again.

That's my Middle West--not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns, but the thrilling returning trains of my youth, and the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow. I am part of that, a little solemn with the feel of those long winters, a little complacent from growing up in the Carraway house in a city where dwellings are still called through decades by a family's name. I see now that this has been a story of the West, after all--Tom and Gatsby, Daisy and Jordan and I, were all Westerners, and perhaps we possessed some deficiency in common which made us subtly unadaptable to Eastern life.