The beauty of the detail

Several weeks ago I led my historiography class in a discussion of the work of Giovanni Morelli, a 19th-century connoisseur of Renaissance paintings who is still reasonably well known for his idea that an artist will reveal his individual style most obviously in minor details (earlobes, say, or thumbnails) that are unlikely to be studied closely by most viewers and that have not inspired common formulas. It's a neat thought, and one that still colors some work being done today, but in reading Morelli this time around I was also struck by the value of his simple willingness to look long, and closely, at paintings. Too often, we miss the detail in the corner of the painting in our hurry to get a sense of the museum wing as a whole; we scan, instead of devoting ourselves; we save time, instead of taking time.

I don't mean to imply, though, that I'm somehow above such habits. If anything, I'm more guilty than most; en route to a story time, or pushing to grade papers during Cleo's nap, I've hardly had the time, of late, to study much of anything closely. But for that very reason, two recent experiences have stood out to me - experiences that underline the beauty of the incidental, or the value of the transient.

More matter, my readers say, with less art. Okay. Since New Year's, I've been a gym rat in the way that 40-year-old dads are gym rats: abbreviated workouts, at random times of day, in gym clothes that date from the late Nineties. But I've enjoyed it, and I've even come to enjoy the fact that the weight room's sound system is permanently tuned to a satellite radio station that only plays the Top 20, in an infinite loop that varies only slightly from week to week. As a result, I've become deeply familiar, for the first time since about 1985, with mainstream, top-of-the-charts pop. Kesha's "We Are Who We Are"? I've heard it at least a dozen times. Enrique Iglesias? You bet. The Script, Bruno Mars: they're like a Greek chorus, commenting as I struggle with the bar on the decline bench. But while some of the songs grate, and others simply fade from memory, I've been struck by the impact of a few small details. Take, for instance, Katy Perry's popular "Firework": after about 45 seconds of utterly conventional, intoned five- and six-syllable lines that bounce between two or three notes, she creates a potent briedge by singing "ignite/the light" in a rising cascade (A-flat; B-flat; C; B-flat; D-flat) that surprises in its richness, suddenly justifying the plodding opening through an uplifting contrast that's the very point, I think, of the song.

Or this. Part of Cleo's bedtime ritual, like many kids', involves sitting down with a book or two, for a goodnight read. We usually let her choose the titles, from a small pile of bedside books; for s a time, her favorite was Goodnight Moon, and lately it's been the lovely Good Night, Gorilla. No surprises here, as both are old favorites - and I don't think any parents reading this would be surprised, either, to hear me observe that it can take a little creativity to avoid getting a little tired of the same read, night after night. But that's exactly where the small details matter. Sure, I've read Goodnight Moon with Cleo many, many times. But it took me, in fact, quite a few of those reads before I noticed that the moon rises, subtly, in the sky outside the window, and that the tiny mouse scampers from place to place, as we bid goodnight to the brush, the mush, the cows and the bears. Similarly, Good Night Gorilla offers a gentle, engrossing central narrative - but it also rewards the attentive reader in its treatment of a rising balloon, in the representation of photos on a shadowed wall, and in the place of a flashlight. Even the number of neighbors in a tiny, lit window in the distance changes over the course of a story: are they watching what we're seeing, as well?

I don't know. And I don't know if such details reveal, as Morelli might suggest, the idiosyncratic habits of Clement Hurd or Peggy Rathman. Nonetheless, they serve their small purpose - to give back to those who give time - beautifully.

The choices we make

Driving on a back road in West Virginia this morning, with an oldies station on the radio, and suddenly Canned Heat's "On the Road Again" was playing on the speakers. It's not a song I know well, but the reason I do know it is meaningful, at least to me: it was one of the very few rock songs that my dad owned, when I was a kid. On the shelf under his record player, to the side of the large albums of concerti, symphonies, and airs, stood a few 45s. And one of those was Canned Heat.

But why, I wondered as I drove and listened, had he chosen that song in particular? Assuming that he had in fact bought the record, I tried to come up with possible explanations. Had the song somehow appealed to a momentarily latent Wanderlust? Did the evocation of a sitar remind him of his travels in south Asia? Did the melody just, well, you know?

Such questions, ultimately, can't ever be finally answered, without asking the subject. But, in a sense, they also answer themselves: who knows, ultimately, why we favor one song over another? Sure, the psychoanalysts will offer one reason, and the evolutionary psychologists another. To you, it might have been a matter of taste; to another, perhaps it was chance, or the result of a subtle advertising cue. But as each of us makes our case for a particular explanation, look at what we're really doing: we're only repeating, in a way, the same sort of unglossable choice that my dad once made. You choose a Jungian approach. He chose Canned Heat.

And Cleo? Yesterday afternoon, Cleo and I spent about 20 minutes just sitting, alone, in the car, having what might almost be called a conversation. The highlights were several, and simple. She can now reach, on her own, the overhead light. She can also turn the car on, due to the Toyota's large button-fired ignition. She's also on the verge of counting: at one point, she pointed to our car, said car, pointed to a second, nearby vehicle, said car again - and then pointed quickly to both, and said two. But my favorite moment was when I explained to her that the next morning we'd be going to a restaurant for breakfast. I told her who would be there, and what sort of a place it would be. And then I asked her what she might order. Her answer? Butter.

The choices we make define us, in part. But so, too, do the various ways in which we interpret those choices. Canned Heat, butter; an acceptance of eccentricity, elaborate theories. And there the record stood, to the side of the symphonies, the concerti, the airs.

Steam

So: once, in 1993, I found myself on a train from Bucharest to Timisoara. I believe I read a bit; I looked out the window and watched a man drive a horse-drawn cart; I chatted with a university student who knew some English. And I remember that, all the while, a looped soundtrack played over and over on the train's feeble speakers: there were, I think, a few Romanian pop songs, and then, rather ominously, there was Soul Asylum's Runaway Train. Yeah, sure, it's a fine song, and was a real hit at the time. But, really, who wants to hear about heading the "wrong way on a one way track" six times, in a two-hour train trip?

Well, that's right: a toddler might. After all, Cleo's been on her Old MacDonald jag for six months, and is still going strong: you can't ride in the car without hearing the familiar request. Put her in that Romanian train compartment, and she'd probably delight in the sheer repetitiveness of the aural atmosphere. But I think she'd also enjoy it for a second reason: the girl, frankly, is deeply into trains.

She still has trouble with the word, but she can evoke a train's sound quite convincingly: shoo-shoo-shoo, goes Cleo, when her picture books feature images of trains. So I thought I'd give her the full dose this week. After all, there aren't any American cities more closely bound to the history of the train than Baltimore, and unexpectedly balmy February skies only encouraged a trip or two on the rails.

With beautiful blue skies above us, then, we drove down to Bolton Hill yesterday, and bought a round-trip ticket on the light rail. I've taken Cleo on it a couple of times, but we'd never ridden downtown, let alone at rush hour, and it was a joy to watch her watch the city, alive, around her. Down at the harbor, we walked over to the local Barnes and Noble, which has - God knows who negotiated this contract - the standard 5-by-3 foot Thomas the Tank Engine tabletop model in a corner of their kids' section. Cleo sent locomotives hurtling down steep inclines at frightening velocities with a cool, clinical reserve, and then contemplated a tiny stoplight that was set up for imaginary car traffic. And then, temporarily sated, she fell asleep on my back on the return walk to the light rail.

But we weren't done. At home, I opened the laptop and showed her a couple of videos of classic steam engines, including this handsome entry on a recently restored Nevada locomotive. More, said Cleo. So today, figuring that a train in the hand is worth two in cyberspace, we headed down to the B&O Railroad Museum. Soon enough, we were standing before Peter Cooper's remarkable Tom Thumb. And trying out the bunks in a mid-century caboose. And tugging at the controls of a huge black freight engine, emulating the very gestures we'd seen in the video a day before.

Okay, so maybe Cleo got a wee bit scared in the lolling 25-cent toy train. And, true, there may have been a couple of minor skirmishes over laptop keys, as we tried to watch the video. All in all, though, I think you can put us both down as train fans - even if (or perhaps because) we never did hear Soul Asylum in the process.

Butterfly

In the heyday of Italian opera, in the late 1800s, February was the season of premieres. See the crowd of men in overcoats and top hats, the horses stamping before carriages in the cool Milan mist; hear the brush of satin on silk in the lobby of La Scala. It's February, 1893, and Puccini's Manon Lescaut is about to premiere. Or it's February, 1896, and the curtain is about to rise on La boheme. Finish that glass of cognac, friend; the gas lamps are afire, and the glass doors glow with reflections, and the members of the orchestra are tuning their instruments.

The scene makes a certain heartwarming sense to me, because February, it seems, can be a cruel month. Recently, we've been surrounded by news of uncles dying, of computers rendered useless in puddles of water, of dogs lost, and vast ice storms. Cleo's cough drags on; a branch that fell on a neighbor's car now lies in a small, chainsawed pile. Some form of relief, however small, seems due.

And so today, as Cleo worked industriously on her lunch (and L. caught up with girlfriends in Atlanta) I put on my CD of Madame Butterfly. We'd listened to fragments before, but today I managed to read the brief synopsis of the opera, in Milton Cross' Complete Stories of the Great Operas, as the closing scenes of Act 1 swirled about us, in our dining room. Pinkerton, the suave and coolly pragmatic American lieutenant temporarily in Japan, coos to Butterfly, the beautiful local woman he's chosen as his wife - until, at least, he returns to America in a few months. The new bride changes out of her wedding dress, and into something more comfortable; Pinkerton is both amused by his new situation - a husband, for the first, but not the last, time - and sincerely overwhelmed by her grace. He thinks of her as a squirrel, delicate and precise in her motions; he calls her child; he compares her to a lily.

Throughout, I thought of the child next to me: so close, as well, and, too, so distant. Cleo picked at a cereal bar, and tried to stand backwards in her chair. I listened to the music; she asked for water. And, as I retrieved her water bottle, I heard the lines that resonated most fully to me, for reasons distinctly (but perhaps not entirely) separate from those intended by Puccini:

Ma intanto finor non m'hai detto,

ancor non m'hai detto che m'ami.

But you will, I hope, you will. And I, unlike Pinkerton, will not have left your side when you do.

Control, and illusions of control

So on Sunday L. generously sprang me free for a couple of hours, letting me out at The Charles Theater so that I could see Sofia Coppola's Somewhere. Generally, we've been really selective in our movie choices over the past year: if you only have a few bullets in your barrel, you'd better take good aim. But, in this case, I wasn't especially concerned with the movie being a great one. Rather, I just wanted to hear the character played by Stephen Dorff utter his daughter's name: Cleo. And, even though I'd known it was coming, I have to say that hearing that name, in the dark theater - in the film's first line, no less - gave me a degree of pure warmth that not even a careless reviewer who somehow veered, in print, between Cleo and Chloe could later mar.

Above all, though, the film got me thinking about degrees of control. Coppola's story centers on a pampered film star who lives the dream of an adolescent boy - girls, pools, fast cars - but whose days seem almost entirely structured by random external events or the occasional intrusions of others. His agent calls; his daughter is dropped off at his door; his roommate has a party. While Johnny Marco is clearly a bigscreen idol, and can theoretically choose from a pile of scripts, he seems for all intents and purposes to have abandoned any control over the direction of his life - a point that he finally acknowledges, towards the film's end.

Could we learn something from that? On some level, the idea that we only imagine a control over our lives appeals to me. As I left the theater, I wondered how to make it north to Charles Village, on a quiet Sunday. Walk? Taxi? As I mulled it over, a city bus, its destination sign reading Out of Service, pulled up; the driver beckoned me on board, and we rolled north. Was the trip really mine to devise, or was it simply the result of a combination of factors? Or think, in the same vein, of Cleo, on a daily basis. Like most toddlers, she's increasingly interested in exerting some control over her surroundings: she's constantly telling us to remove our coats, or to get her some milk, or to help her upstairs. But these are, from our perspective, small things; as I get her milk, I'm often wondering if I could take her to the mall for an hour or two. Cleo may feel, as she's given her milk, that she's in control, but in fact she's surrounded by the results of decisions that are not hers.

And so on. I think of Sal Paradise and Dean, mad for the jazzmen of San Francisco, goggle-eyed at the improvisatory skills of horn men - but also involved in that very improvisation, as their shouts of encouragement only provoke an even longer flight up the scale. Who's in control, and who obeys circumstance? Does the crowd watching the bullfight merely observe an unfolding drama? Or is the toreador also beholden, as most connoisseurs insist, to the limits of the crowd's apparent patience, and to the hoots and hollers that fill the arena?

Do we watch, day in and day out, Cleo? Or does she watch us?