My father's book

Perhaps the most touching- is that the right word? Not quite: moving, or affecting might work better - piece I've heard on the radio lately was Robert Siegel's interview with a young woman who had always joked with her father about the Warren Zevon vampish romp 'Werewolves of London.' The father, who was a trucker, knew his girl didn't think much of the song, but he made a point of calling her whenever he heard it played on the radio: it thus became a means of bridging the hundreds of miles between them, and of sparking chats. It was kindling, in a sense, for conversation, a small fire around which they could huddle from time to time, to tell stories, and catch up. And then, when the daughter grew up and was about to get married, she - well, you can figure out the rest, if you click here.

Well, with a hurricane approaching, there's little distance between Cleo and me: in fact, we're cooped up at home, with both of our schools closed for the foreseeable future, and L. in San Francisco, for a public health conference (and, hopefully, for an impromptu street celebration or two after the Giants completed their very improbable sweep last night). Anyway, Cleo and I have spent the morning rather as we often did when she was 1: we make a snack; we try our hand at a puzzle we look outside at the weather; we listen to the news; we stack blocks; we make a snack. But of course she's not 1 anymore, and so the sheer range of things we can do is comparatively wide: she helps to stir the macaroni and cheese, she sketches the design for our jack-o'-lantern, she passes ten minutes with a computer mouse, pretending that it's an iron. Passing time with her is still intense - she doesn't like to be too far from me - but it's certainly interestingly varied, and often truly collaborative.

But, still, a day's a long while, and so a couple of hours ago I suggested that we try something new. Let's get under a blanket, I suggested, and read My Father's Dragon - which just happened to be one of my own father's favorite books as a child. Okay, said an amenable Cleo, who quickly set about arranging pillows for our reading nest. And then we were off to the island of Tangerina (see map, above) - and into a story that still carries for me, as well, a sense of magic and sheer immensity: it was, I think, the longest book I'd ever encountered at the time, and it's certainly longer than anything I've tried with Cleo.

She stuck with it, for the full 80-some pages. Sure, she wriggled, like any 3-year-old listener, throughout, and spent much of Chapter Seven bouncing on the side of the bed. But when I paused, at the end of one complex sentence, and asked her if she understood, she responded immediately and correctly, and when I wondered aloud, at the end of each chapter, if she wanted to keep reading, the answer was always yes. And soon little Elmer Elevator was standing face to face with the dragon.

Right now, Cleo is playing with a hot dog-shaped car that I once designed for a scouts' Pinewood Derby. A piece of my childhood is literally in her hands. Likewise, the volume of My Father's Dragon that we read is still inscribed with my own father's boyhood address. Inheritances, passed from father to child. But the child always makes the inheritance his own, or her own. Cleo just wandered over and announced that the hot dog was a weight, a barbell, and hoisted it over her head, and then asked how the car was meant to work.

And so another twenty minutes will be passed:

May this storm leave all those over whom it passes safe, sound - and, perhaps, surrounded by the sound of stories shared and tiny rolling race car tires, as well as howling winds.

Killing me (softly)

Remember when Pearl Jam - in 1995, when they had recently been assigned the heavy and fleeting title of World's Biggest Band - decided to challenge Ticketmaster? Having taken shape in a Seattle that was deeply shaped by the indie movement of the late 1980s, and recently empowered in a way that allowed them to dictate, to an extent, their own terms, the band sought to work around the giant ticketing agency's virtual monopoly, and to structure concert deals that were nominally fairer to fans and musicians alike. A noble idea, perhaps - but the ensuing self-organized and self-promoted tour soon became a fiasco, as Pearl Jam wound up playing in venues that couldn't handle their crowds and cancelling a number of dates. Soon enough, the band abandoned its crusade, and fans were left to complain, for years hence, about the harsh fees imposed by the even stronger Ticketmaster. "Ticketmaster is killing me," wrote a disgruntled music fan in 2007, and he was hardly alone in voicing a frustration that had only been redoubled or intensified by the failure of Pearl Jam's attempted rebellion.

You're killing me. It's a phrase that's apparently been circulating in the Yellowbird classroom recently, as well - complete with a whining, high-pitched melodramatic voicing. I first heard it yesterday, when Cleo and I were talking about the birthday party of a classmate. 'Well,' I said, 'her birthday was actually on Friday, but her party is on Sunday, so that more people can come.' But Cleo felt differently, insisting that the party would be on some unspecified day in the future. We'd reached an impasse - until, suddenly, she upped the ante with a practiced Dad, you're killing me.

Well. My first reaction was simple, unalloyed surprise - how did my little daughter come to be able to recall, so skillfully, the pained, self-sacrificing tone of a Jewish comedian working the Borscht belt? And I laughed out loud. Which meant, in turn, that Cleo decided to repeat the phrase, whenever appropriate - and, too, at a number of times that weren't appropriate. Our walk home, in short, became a series of repeated variations on the theme. You're killing me, Dad. And, by the fifth or sixth variation, I found myself tiring of it. Partly, that is, because I wanted some fresh material, and partly because Cleo didn't really seem to have a sense of why the phrase might be funny - or of why it might not be funny, in certain contexts. Interestingly, she's been fascinated by death of late: she shocked her teachers this week by announcing that when her favorite singer, Lisa, dies, she will become, in turn, Lisa singer, and she was deeply interested in the mock tombstones that we saw decorating suburban yards on a Halloweenish walk around Rodgers Forge yesterday. Dead people can be placed underground? She puzzled over that for a while, before telling me, yesterday evening, that Lisa singer might have a house underground at some point, when she's dead.

And so I stopped walking, and asked Cleo if I could talk to her for a minute. I tried, in a stereotypically Serious Dad manner, to explain that kill is a heavy word, and that literally killing someone is a terrible act, with real consequences. Sure, Cleo, you've stumbled upon a funny phrase. But do realize, please, that it is not always appropriate. And, anyway: you're a big girl. There's no need to whine, even if you do do it in an entertainingly hyperbolic way. She took that in. She tested out her phrase a few more times, to see how it felt now. And then, when I asked her if she'd say it once more, so I could make a short video, she altered it, as you see above.

In the heat of their battle with Ticketmaster, Pearl Jam recorded a plaintive, grinding song called 'This is Not For You.' Sometimes read as a jeremiad involving their recently developed celebrity - an articulation of their resentment, in other words, at the demands placed on their time by their hue new body of fans - it has also been read as a summary of Generation X's willful, slothful unwillingness to work for The Man, or to give into the system. It seems most appropriate, though, to read it as a document born of their wars with Ticketmaster - a battle cry, that is, in a battle that they soon lost.

Challenging the powers that be is often, of course, laudable. Seizing creative control of one's appearances, as a musician, or resorting to comedic exaggeration, as a 3-year-old, can be deeply inspiring. But those acts of rebellion sometimes encounter considerable resistance; indeed, they may never unfold as simply, perhaps, or as beautifully and cleanly as the rebel might wish.

Playing ball

This gives way to that; one moment melts into another; plans evolve; patterns and melodies emerge.

Yesterday, for rather mundane and complicated reasons, I spent the five o'clock hour as an impromptu babysitter, watching both Cleo and a Yellowbird classmate named Jasper in a playground, until Jasper's mom was able to leave work and join us. It was hardly a chore, though; rather, I fully enjoyed watching the kids develop idea after idea, nudging them only occasionally to show a little care on the balance beam, or the playground tower. And so a session on the swings gave way to an imaginary rocket ship liftoff, which in turn melted into a game of tag, and then - due to the chance find of a ball at the bottom of a grassy slope - into the fort-da variant you see above. At one point, a third child joined in for a bit, and the two boys alternated catching and returning; soon after, Cleo and Jasper were taking their shoes off, claiming that they were about to enter an apartment.

I felt, all at the same time, like a proud and happy father, like an anthropologist who has stumbled on a remarkable culture, and like a privileged witness to a fluid and improvisatory musical performance. I felt, in other words, a bit like Michael Bakan, who once wrote, in his book Music of Death and New Creation: Experiences in the World of Balinese Gamela Belenganjur, of an organic session of music that seemed to evolve out of and blur into everyday life: "As the ensemble grew larger, some of the musicians began picking up instrument and playing, while others continued socializing casually. There were some who managed to converse, smoke, and warm up on their instruments all at the same time, which I found impressive. What playing there was seemed random and haphazard."

There was no smoking on our playground - even this babysitter has some rules! - but I think it's fair to say that there was a random, haphazard aspect to the late afternoon play: an aspect which I found, like Bakan, in a different context, impressive.

Get out of the van

I spent most of my free moments last week glued to the pages of Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life, a wonderful history of indie bands in the 1980s: published in 2001 and recommended to me at a dinner party, the book focuses on 11 influential bands, from Black Flag to Fugazi, who attracted a following even as they worked outside the network of established studios and labels. Disgusting stories about entire tours conducted out of a single van?  Tales of utter, rampant violence that spills from stage to club floor and then back again? Yes, and yes. But it's also a book that offers a number of thoughts about the sheer potential of music as a form of expression and a tool of dissent, and as I've toted it around with me I've been surprised at how many people recognize the cover and smile fondly as they mention that they, too, enjoyed it.

My favorite anecdote in the book, I think, involves the Replacements, a Minnesota band that had become rather widely known in alternative communities by 1984 and was thus able to embark on an ambitious tour that took them all the way out to the west coast. But this was pre-Internet, and the band did much of its own organizing, and so choosing venues was often characterized by sheer guesswork and open reliance on word of mouth. Moreover, the punk community in many cities was so small that there was no established club, or center. "When we played Seattle," Bill Sullivan (a member of the band's crew) later remembered, "there was the Central Tavern, a blues bar. There were VFW's, Mexican restaurants, - we played a Mexican restaurant in Indianapolis - we played clothing stores." And then there was Davis, California, where the band had been booked to play a place called 617 Anderson - which turned out to be a private residence, on Anderson St. No matter: the band set up in the living room, which was covered from floor to ceiling in plastic; a keg in the kitchen functioned as the bar. And, recalls Sullivan, "it was a pretty fun gig, actually."

That spirit - of DIY, of devil-may-care open-mindedness - appeals; it points, I think, to a humble embrace of possibility. And it reminds me of one of the wonderful things about spending time with a three-year-old. Sure, we occasionally take Cleo to some rarefied sites - the Cape Town cable car; Winchester Cathedral; the Detroit Institute of Arts - and we try, generally, to keep our act together. But, inevitably, there are less impressive moments, or breakdowns in the day's play: a few weeks ago, Port Discovery was closed for renovation; this past Saturday, Cleo and I were boxed in by the Baltimore Marathon. But, still: when plans go awry, Cleo typically looks around, and immediately begins to use what's at hand. As the runners streamed by, she found a grated fence, and began to perform improvisational gymnastics in the morning sun. And when Port Discovery's doors were locked, her eyes locked, in turn, on a nearby fountain, whose contours she traced with her tiny hand. It was, in the end, a pretty fun gig.

As are all things, I suppose, if one approaches them as if one's climbing out of a van, and into a world full of fresh possibility.

That conversation

Perhaps we all imitate our teachers - in manners both obvious and oblique. As an art history professor, I still hand out outlines of the day's lecture, complete with the basic details of every image to be shown, just as my professors at Williams College distributed monuments lists in darkened classrooms in the late 1980s. In doing so, though, I'm only repeating the tendencies of Bela Bartok's students, who were often profoundly influenced by their teacher's approach; as David Yeoman has noted, in fact, some of them later confessed to inadvertently imitating the playing style that he employed in lessons in their own later performances. Heck, even Kobe Bryant sometimes summons his inner Zen master, as he draws on the lessons he learned from Phil Jackson. 'When the student is ready,' holds the proverb, 'the teacher will appear.' But the teacher often appears, as well, in the subsequent behaviors, gestures, and words of the student.

And that's happening among the Yellowbirds right now. It's not uncommon to find one of Cleo's classmates reassuringly parting his arms, hands down, and telling his parents, 'Don't freak out' - which is one of the many endearing habits of one of their classroom teachers. Given the amount of time she spends with our children, it's hardly surprising to discern her influence in them. But I still had to laugh out loud today when, after Cleo and I spent a few seconds bickering over the correct term for pinwheel (Cleo calls them spinwheels, which is cool with me, but she unfairly chides me each time I use the supposedly incorrect form pinwheel), Cleo suddenly announced, "I am not having this conversation."

I wasn't even sure, to be honest, where that phrase came from. L. doesn't say it, I don't think, and I've never heard any of Cleo's teachers employ it. So, after I stopped laughing, I asked my little girl. 'Um, Cleo, who says that? Where did you learn that sentence?' Oh, she said, and quickly named two of her classmates. They say it all the time, she added.

We learn from our teachers. But our teachers, it seems, are many, and everywhere.

Back-seat criticism

Awesome moment in the car today, on the way to work - but it'll take a little setting up. So: flash back to the summer of 2011, when we were in Cape Town, and Cleo's daily DVD of choice was a collection of video shorts of Maurice Sendak stories. One of Cleo's favorites was 'In the Night Kitchen,' in which a boy named Mickey tumbled mysteriously from his bed into a rollicking world of mustached cooks, who seemed intent on baking him. As they did their thing, mixing, and stirring, and dancing, what seemed to be a lively klezmer band - Sendak was the son of Polish Jews - played a bouncy tune in the background, and I can still recall the off-kilter melody of the horns and the rhythm of the guitar strings behind the slow gestures of the ample, animated chefs.

Okay, then. Today, as we headed out the door,I decided to play something new for Cleo. So, girl: would you like to hear some Ornette Coleman, or some Django Reinhardt? Django, she decided, after a prolonged negotiation in which I promised to follow two of his songs with three by Milkshake. And, bless her heart, she listened, as the first track, Nuages, played in our little car. And then, at the first intersection, as the Eastern European-inflected swing floated about us, she excitedly announced, 'It's like Mickey in the Night Kitchen!'

Well, now that you mention it, yes. Yes, indeed. But don't simply take my word for it; listen, instead, to National Geographic's musical historians, who point out in a readable entry on Roma music that "it became commonplace [in early modernism] to see Gypsy and Jewish klezmer musicians playing together" - and that "in artists like Peret or even the late genius Django Reinhardt you can hear the long road the Gypsies have travelled across the years."

Reinhardt, Mickey, and the Romas, all bound by a common musical DNA, in a way that's even audible to a 3-year-old. Or, at least, to a 3-year-old who happily follows up her observation regarding similarity with the immodest claim that "I've got good ears!"

Protein shake

Remember when Bruce Springsteen, who had been known primarily for his incandescent concerts and for songs that positioned him as a poet on the margins of a disappointing post-industrial America, reinvented himself as a beefcake, during the Reagan years? Wearing tight tee-shirts ad sporting guns, he carried his guitar like a small tool, and posed against massive flags: a musical Rambo, of sorts. Or, as Fred Pfeil has written, "a swaggering, solidly muscled working-class rocker." And the image, of course, both suited, and influenced our opinion of, his music. 'Born in the U.S.A.' was often discussed in physical terms, and the critic and music historian Rob Kirkpatrick once argued that 'Brothers Under the Bridge' is "a strong-muscled anthem." In the mid-1980s, as Detroit was being overrun by terrifyingly efficient Japanese micro-cars and we still worried, in television dramas, about the possibility of Soviet nuclear attacks, it was good to feel strong, and Springsteen rode that wave.

But I'm here to tell you that it's still good to be strong. At least, according to Cleo, who dropped milk, eggs, and tofu into her age-appropriate shopping cart at Whole Foods, and then, amazed that she could still push the groaning vehicle, paused to flex (above), and ask, rhetorically, "Isn't I strong?"

Yes, you are, girl. And always getting stronger.

Coming of age

"My music," Stravinsky supposedly said, "is best understood by children and animals." As one ages, then, does one somehow understand it less - less fully, or less instinctively? Perhaps: but here at Half Step, we've been fascinated in recent days to see Cleo moving into a fuller and more instinctive pace when it comes to language. Spend a day with her, and you're bound to hear at least a few chestnuts that don't quite feel, well, childlike. Such as:

Yesterday, as she and I drove to Harford Road for a big breakfast at Clementine's, she asked, from the back seat, "What day is today?" Reasonable question, I thought, and answered in turn: "Today is Sunday." And then she, from the back: "The week just goes on and on."

Well, yes, it does - but that phrasing felt more like the output of a weary teen, or an overwhelmed office worker, than the thoughts of an energetic 3-year-old. I was even more surprised, though, when we got in the car and began to drive home after spending some time on a playground just south of Clementine's. We drove slowly over a large speed bump, rocking the car, and Cleo suddenly said, "I was like, 'What was going on?'"

You were like? You're paraphrasing your own reaction? Aren't you, um, 3?

Yes, Daddy. But I'm also one of the few people (along with, say, dogs) who can best understand the music of Stravinsky. Unlike you.