Man or (woman or) machine

Didja see the article in the Times, about a week ago, about the pop singer named Rhye? About that sultry contralto croon, which reminded many of Sade? About Rhye's place on a list of young chanteuses who are transforming pop music? About the fact that, um, Rhye is actually a male vocalist?

Well, that last revelation may have taken many observers by surprise - but not, we want to say, those of us at Halfstep. Of course, that's largely due to the fact that we'd never even heard of Rhye before reading the article. But, in retrospect, it's also fair to say that we're currently pretty comfortable with a bit of gender-bending here and there. Having a 3-year-old will do that to you. In  fact, it was just on Friday that we were chatting with the parents of a boy in Cleo's class; they told us that they'd recently been at a dress-up party where a helpful staff member had pointed asked their boy if he wanted, perhaps, a Spiderman shirt, or one with the characters from Cars. 'Do you have Snow White?' he responded. And, by the same logic, Cleo opts, occasionally, to play the prince in our homespun fairy tales. Or, more frequently, she eschews gender role altogether: recently, one of her favorite exercises has involved walking slightly stiffly around the room, intoning 'I am a robot' in a surprisingly convincing mechanical timbre.

Having a robot in the house reminds us, in turn, that many pop singers now rely on auto tune, which perfects their pitch while also lending a certain mechanical, automated quality to the sung lyrics. We know, of course, that there are purists who decry such a crutch. But don't count us among them. After all, if men can sing like women, why shouldn't women sing like robots?

And sometimes

Daughter and melody converge, in an original, improvised composition.

I see you

So as I write this I'm in New Haven, about 266 miles from Cleo - and even further if you measure in terms of nostalgia, for I've spent the last five and half hours wandering through spaces and walking streets that I got to know long before I met L., or even imagined having a tiny little daughter. Fatherhood? Please: in 1997, I was trying to figure out Foucault; in 1999, I was the guy in the middle of the coffeehouse, pecking out paragraphs on Franciscan art.

But, then again, even if I've enjoyed this temporary jaunt down memory lane - and I have, I have: from the Dura frescoes in the Yale art gallery to the wonderful incidental conversation with a housemate of nearly two decades ago - it's also true that I don't feel very far at all from Cleo. After all, when I started chatting with the folks seated next to me at Bar's lunch counter, it was only a matter of time before I was talking about my 3-year-old. Their son goes to Skidmore, my child's a Yellowbird - but the point is that we were summoning our children, even in their absence. As I did, as well, when I shared a photo of her over dinner on Thursday, and when I described her to a curious colleague over a midtown breakfast on Friday. Wherever I happen to be, she keeps popping up - much as when, as in the photo above, we play hide-and-seek near Baltimore's old Mount Royal Station.

And just now I put my Willoughby's coffee down for a minute, and look out at the Elm City and the piles of snow that still evoke last week's storm - and I hear, on the radio, Katy Perry's 'Firework.' Well. I came to know that song in the Johns Hopkins gym, but it was also one of the first current pop songs that we shared with Cleo. And so the anthem pulls me back to her, even as I sit in a coffeehouse that I first occupied years ago, before Cleo was even a possibility.

Playing with such beauty

Now that she's 3 and a half, Cleo can - and I don't think I'm simply playing the proud parent here - do a number of things rather well. She can say the word invisible without a hitch; she can read several words (and, on, and forare right in her wheelhouse), and she can tell you that one plus two equals three. She can confidently execute an arabesque or kneel and kick with both legs, like a donkey; she can tell you that Cape Town is in South Africa. She can tie, as you see above, a rather thorny knot. And, if you're inclined to trust her, she can see in the dark even better than a cat or dog. 3-year-olds, it turns out, are pretty remarkable.

But, happily, she can't quit do everything quite perfectly, quite yet. She still grows frustrated, to the point of tears, in trying to stuff cards into envelopes, and we regularly find ample splotches of yogurt on her blouses. Stretches of Finding Nemo - the references, for instance, to a 12-step program for sharks attempting to quite eating fish - remain incomprehensible to her, and she still requests help in pulling tights onto her little legs.

Why, though, do I say happily? Well, for a couple of reasons. The first is the simpler: her occasional blunders seem to help in teaching her humility. None of us, of course, can do everything that we wish we could; learning that, as a kid, helps to offset some of the wild confidence of the 3-year-old. Cleo's often emphatic that she can run faster than me, and that she is as tall as L.; that's fine, but it's even more palatable when she adds, in her matter-of-fact tone, that she won't be able to swim, or take ballet lessons, until she's 4. Or drive until you're 16, I think, but the point's the same: you're growing older, but it's a lengthy process, and you never do learn to do quite everything.

But then there's this, too. After seeing the gifted violinist Jascha Heifitz, George Bernard Shaw sat down to write a deeply appreciative, and apparently concerned, note. Here it is:

My dear Mr. Heifitz,
My wife and I were overwhelmed by your concert. If you continue to play with such beauty, you will certainly die young. No one can play with such perfection without provoking the jealousy of the gods. I earnestly implore you to play something badly every night before going to bed...

Occasionally, as Cleo readies for bed in the evenings, I think of Shaw's missive, and of his message. It's a great thing to be confident; it's wonderful, too, to play beautifully. But there's no need for perfection. Indeed, our sometime stumbles may be a sort of redemption in their own right: a beautiful proof of our humanness.

Fan mail

During a stop at Barnes and Noble this afternoon, I happened to pick up Paul Grushkin's The Very Best Dead Letters, a sleek and appealing collection of hundreds of the most striking envelopes sent, over the years, to the Grateful Dead. That may sound like a relatively small artistic niche, but given that the Dead pioneered a mail order ticket purchasing system decades ago, Grushkin actually enjoyed an embarrassing richness of choice: indeed, more than 15,000 of the letters are stored in an archive at UC Santa Cruz. And given, moreover, that the band's legions of fans tended towards the colorfully creative, many of them are deeply enjoyable: the book, in fact, is a parade of intricate (and often psychedelic) renderings of bears, skulls, and buses. It's the visual record, you might say, of a proud and enthusiastic but hardly exclusive club.

Few bands manage their own ticket business these days, and few have developed an iconography as rich as that of the Dead. But that doesn't mean that they don't still rake in the interesting envelope, from time to time. As Exhibit A, I'll offer the manila sample, above. In love, still, with Milkshake (though her fervor has cooled into a solid, comfortable commitment), and now in love as well with the expressive possibilities of Valentine's Day and written English, Cleo boldly announced the contents of an envelope sent to Lisa, the lead singer of the local kids' band. We enjoyed helping her spell the words; I assume Lisa will smile when she sees it. And I hope that perhaps you'll enjoy it, too.

Official timeout

Sometimes, perhaps, being a thoughtful dad doesn't have to imply active, hands-on fatherhood. Playing a rubber match of Candy Land is certainly one way of parenting (and a vitally important one, of late); so, too, is sleepily wandering downstairs with your surreally alert daughter at 6:01, to warm up the morning milk. But we're fathers, as well, when we read about other parenting choices, or ask around for appropriate movies. Or, as on Thursday night, when I drove up to Towson to watch Elena Delle Donne, the pre-season All-American and current national player of the week, lead Delaware against the local Tigers.

Delle Donne's fun to watch: she's a point guard in a center's body, and her combination of athletic grace, court intelligence, and simple professionalism appealed to me when I first saw her last year, in a postseason game to which I brought Cleo. Shooting 92% from the line is no small thing, either. But there's something else, something bigger, here at work - and it's something that appeals to the father, rather than the sports fan, in me. Her older sister, named Lizzie, has cerebral palsy, and is both blind and deaf. Their bond, apparently, is quite strong; in fact, when Delle Donne left her native Delaware to play hoops at UConn, she soon found herself feeling too far from her sister. And transferred, shortly thereafter, to Delaware, to become an unlikely star on an unheralded program. That program now boasts a top 20 team, due almost entirely to Delle Done's efforts. But, perhaps even more importantly, she's consistently present in her sister's, and her parents', life again.

While I watched her team glide to an easy victory over Towson, Cleo was at home, reading books with L. and then falling asleep. But my brief absence only fostered a further conviction that presence, that closeness, is worth something. Sure, we dads may not always be at home, among the toys or bedside. But that doesn't mean that we're not learning something, nonetheless, about our daughters and our roles.

On fire

So, um, no: Cleo didn't watch all of the Ravens' entertaining win last night. In fact, she spent most of the first half in my lap reading picture books, a quiet pole in a circus tent of a Super Bowl party at which the shrieks of about 15 small children more or less completely drowned out the play-by-play. And she was just going to bed when Jacoby Jones took the opening kick of the second half to the house. But she did see some of the halftime show, even as she also devoted most of her attention to a game of Cariboo, with L. And, when she did happen to look up, she saw - well, she saw what you see, above. A guitar, of course, with flames kicking out of both ends, as Beyonce cavorted nearby.

What does a 3-year-old make of such a spectacle? What can any of us make of such a scene? As I've noted before, Cleo - and most of the Yellowbirds - are fans of Alicia Keys' recent hit 'Girl on Fire, with its bold, anthemic claim that 'This girl is on fi-i-re.' And so it made a certain beautiful sense when Cleo paused, and then suggested that the song unfolding on the screen could be called 'This Guitar is on Fire." In fact, given that Keys had already sung the national anthem before the game, it was about as tight a cultural reference as one could make. Keys, Beyonce, and sparking instrument, all wrapped up into one acorn, courtesy of your neighborhood 3-year-old.