Mellow yellow

I may have mentioned this at some point - after 480 posts, you do run the risk of becoming occasionally repetitive - but I've always been struck by the haphazardly unsystematic way in which most of us learn about music. You're 15, and you turn on the radio, and maybe you happen to hear Merle Haggard, for the first time in your life. Perhaps your college roommate is a fan of Brazilian music. And at a yard sale you come across a suite of recordings by Keith Jarrett. Or perhaps you're four, and your dad is driving you to soccer practice, and the Saturday morning DJ decides to play Donovan's 1966 hit single Mellow Yellow.

It's hardly a logical, organized education - but at least there's a constant sense of unexpected discovery. And perhaps I shouldn't really be so surprised, after all: for while I work to craft classes that develop in a clear and almost organic manner, much of life is a crash course, built more around random encounters than around syllabi.

A few weeks ago, for instance, Cleo and I sat down with the Bible, looking for some good stories. We read about David, fighting Goliath. And then we turned to the story of Moses - and I suddenly learned that his wife was named Tzippora. I'd wondered about that name for more than a year, since teaching a student with the same name; she had told me that it means bird, but hadn't added that it had a Biblical prominence. All of a sudden, that snapped into focus - and so, when I saw her walking at graduation a few days ago, I mentioned the Mosaic association to a colleague. "Yeah," he duly added, "it's an early ancestor of Deborah."

Is it, now? And where was he, years ago, when I first met her? But that's how we learn, I guess: in jots and drabs, in drips and drops - and rarely without a larger pattern. And yet, somehow it all coheres, in time. Tonight, as Cleo was getting ready for bed, I heard her singing, "They call me Mellow Yellow."

We don't control the pace, or the rhythm, in which we learn. Electrical banana may - or may not - be bound to be the very next phase. But eventually the world becomes a part of us, and we a part of the world.