Concert

L. and I don't yet have the local babysitters on speed dial - frankly, the few quiet hours between Cleo's bed time and our own weary laying down are often so pleasantly simple that we don't even think of trying to Go Out. But when I recently won a pair of tickets to yesterday's Peabody Institute concert from WBJC, it was too much to resist. Get out your best blouse, wife: we're hitting the town.

For at least a couple of hours, in any event. After getting a sitter set up in the living room, we drove downtown, and were slightly stunned to see people out and about, as though they thought that it was totally normal to eat at a restaurant, or to emerge from the house after 7 p.m. I felt slightly like a World War II-era G.I. must have felt, when he returned from the Pacific to his Akron family home: Yes, I vaguely remember such a life, but it seems so far away now.

But that doesn't mean that we'd forgotten how to enjoy it! Jackets off, programs in hand, and now the perfomers ambled onto the stage: four piece by Francis Poulenc, a French composer who moved for a time in the same circles as Erik Satie and Jean Cocteau. I'd never heard of him, but who cares? The pianist played with grace, we both had a crush on the bassoon, and the oboe, as it sparkled, looked like a jeweled find in King Tut's tomb. And the second movement of each of the first two pieces was lovely: a quiet duet between restrained voices.

There were four pieces, in all, but I'm afraid that I can't report on the second two: like schoolkids giddy with the advent of spring, we made a break for the doors at Intermission -oh, but don't be too angry, WBJC, for we really did appreciate the tickets! - and each ordered a drink at a local restaurant. A cider and a beer: nothing exotic, but made the more delicious by the knowledge that Cleo was asleep six miles to the north, and that it was not, after all, impossible to combine this world and that. Did Cleo know that her parents had closed their eyes and thought, for a few moments, of nothing but music? No - and neither did the bassoonist know that occasionally two of his listeners were momentarily distracted by thoughts of Cleo, back home. But even if the two spheres were thus distinct, they made for a happy combination last night.

Advice, for G.

Just got a note from an old, dear high school friend who's expecting his first child, a daughter, in late November - and who said that he's thus been reading this blog of late. Yikes! I already feel, in my day-to-day fathering, as though I'm navigating without a very reliable compass; trying to find useful, applicable hints in this blog would consequently be something like trying to learn a measure of European grace by watching old Ernest P. Worrell commercials. Really, folks: you're better off flipping coins and following the I Ching than using this blog as a model of any sort.

But, with that disclaimer in place, it's still tempting to try to provide. I mean, with four and a half months' experience, shouldn't I be able to offer some sort of Top Ten list of recommendations for expectant fathers? Or, given that pretty much every expectation gets rescaled with an infant in the house, at least a Top Three, or Four? I mean, if Jim Cramer can make millions as a financial advisor, what's stopping me from offering a few recommendations regarding fatherhood?

So here ya go, G. Not exactly the wisdom of ages, but with best wishes nonetheless:

1. Honor thy wife. Regardless of what you've done, and of how tired you may be, she's done more, and she's more tired. So take the baby for that long morning walk so that she can sleep in; splurge on that Red Door gift certificate; put the game on the radio and wash those breast pump parts. Fatherhood's a great role, but you're a supporting actor, in certain basic ways, for the first few months. She gets the star treatment for a reason.

2. Read; listen; learn. Mahler wrote, in a letter offering advice to a younger composer named Max Marschalk, "We must for the time being keep to the good old principles." Sure, sure: but just don't let that baby sleep on its stomach. And on, and on: conventional wisdom and recent research are two vast bodies of water that meet and form a complicated tide. Get your hands on more than a few books, with different viewpoints, and be prepared to be flexible. Like this blog, no single book, no single toymaker, and no single grandparent has all the answers. But if taken as a whole, they form a remarkably rich field of wisdom and possibility.

3. Bend with the knees, not with the back.

4. Onesies that snap along the inseam, instead of going over the head will save you time and tears.

And that, my friend, is that. Short, and sweet - and yet probably already too long. Reagan once said, famously, that "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" Only slightly less frightening, I suppose, is the wide-eyed new father who offers advice on parenting. But, still: may your last few weeks as a couple be good ones, and may you find your own voice and instincts as a father. I'm sure you will.

Control

One of the odder, and perhaps even paradoxical, realizations of becoming a seasoned parent is that the more one understands about raising a child, the more one begins to cede control over that child. Sure, there are a few moments shortly after birth in which, still stunned, we hand our infant over to the hospital staff for measurements and immediate care. But the two or three months after that are characterized largely by a relatively complete parental control: we hold our baby, we decide where to walk her, what to tell her, when to feed her, and so on.

And then, inevitably, that control erodes. When she's old enough for the Baby Bjorn, you walk to the Whole Foods, and as you walk Cleo by the bananas you realize that the speakers are playing a Police song that's about a teacher romancing a student. Outside, you show Cleo the branches of a bush - only to realize that she's now also old enough to grab the leaves, or berries, and shove them into her tiny maw. At night, you lay her in her crib, and then realize that she's speaking to herself, in wonderful nonsense syllables, for minutes on end.

The world is hers, as well as yours, in other words. And just as you can't control with very much specificity the contours of the aural landscape through which we move - the sharp, abrupt honks of aggrieved commuters in cars; the glorious honks of overhead geese commuting to Georgia - you can't pretend to control with any fullness this baby who's becoming a child. You may want to read a book, but she may want to sit and drool. Somewhere a sound engineer programs tracks for Whole Foods locations across the country. You may choose to enter a particular location, and you may choose to raise a child, but such choices ultimately only represent gradual surrenders to the tacit will of others.

Processes

Most of you gracious readers know that I teach for a living, and some of you know that as a teacher I tend towards the hamhandedly over-organized. Detailed handouts, verbose syllabi, mental outlines: I'm what the kids call anal, and while it's clear that some of them do enjoy the sense of structure I bring to class, it's also clear to me that I need to try to remain open to the possible appeal of good old-fashioned spontaneity.

Which is why I especially enjoy, as one of the great gifts of my job, the occasional tips, hints, and recommendations offered by students. A website address (as in the comment to one of my posts), an artist's name, an album worth listening to: students periodically lay their gifts on an instructor's doorstep in beautiful, unexpected ways.

This week, it was an upperclassman - one of our sharpest and more thoughtful majors - darkening the door of my office shortly before our Art Criticism class, and passing me a bowed copy of Morton Feldman's collected writings. The evening's class was dedicated to the writings of the New York School, and Feldman - not a name I knew - was a composer and music critic who was in close with O'Hara and other Cedar Tavern regulars. "I thought you might like this," said the student, and wandered off.

Oh, but I do. In a 1966 essay, Feldman wrote of "Boulez, who once said in an essay that he is not interested in how a piece sounds, only in how it is made... The preoccupation with making something, with systems and construction, seems to be a characteristic of music today. It has become, in many cases, the actual subject of musical composition." Such an assertion is not completely new to me: I know something of Cage, and Schoenberg, and a few other process-oriented composers. But the conciseness of Feldman's formulation is appealing, and I've spent odd moments over the past couple days mulling over it.

And, because I've also spent much of those two days toting an infant girl from place to place, I've wondered how it might apply to a philosophy of parenting, as well. We're so often consumed with thoughts of outcomes in raising children. Can they sit? walk? how fast is their fastball? how high their PSAT scores? But what if we shifted the subject of such conversations entirely to process? The questions would obviously shift substantially. How is Cleo learning these days (textures, tastes)? What does she seem to like (chewing on items while lying on her belly), and what does she no longer like (being held on her back, facing me)?

Thus a modest thesis: I teach with ends in mind, but providence regularly offers reminders, both in and out of the classroom, of the beauty of process.

And a corresponding resolution: to apply the same attention, at least sporadically, to the raising of a baby.

Orchestra at large

This past weekend happened to include my 39th born day, and so we set out, the car packed like a camel prepared for the Silk Road, on our first real family vacation. Cape May! The very name sounds like a siren's song, and its position on the map - on the very southeastern tip of New Jersey, a land's end, a hanging chad - suggested exoticism and remoteness. Or, at least, remoteness by our current standards: while it's true that a friend was flying to Tajikistan on the same day, and that another will be leaving for Addis Ababa on Friday, three hours still seems, to these new parents, like an Epic Journey.

But it went well. The hotel was lovely and the town truly quaint, with tree-lined streets and a bevy of 19th-century Victorian homes. Louie's Pizzeria kicked out a delicious pie for us, and the box in which we took it home exhorted us to "Love America": advice that really wasn't hard to take as we strolled about, taking in the sights. Thanks to Cleo, we were up for a lovely sunrise on Sunday, and for flapjacks at Uncle Bill's at 7 -see above - and the weather was fantastic, making walks on the beach seem, well, beachy.

Even the familiar pleasure of the sand meeting the sea, though, is now different. The relatively narrow strand suddenly looked infinite and Saharan: an immense plain across which the stroller cannot be rolled, and in which Cleo seems subsumed. But if the beach's vastness was novel to me, think about the sight to a four-month-old who's been a landlubber for her whole life. The incredibly distant horizon line; the feel of sand; the visual rhythm of waves: what to make of such a spectacle? Cleo responded by lying on her back, smiling broadly, and stuffing three fingers in her mouth.

On some level, though, she must have been struck too by the sound of the sea. We could hear it through one of the partly opened windows in our hotel room, and it's such a basic pleasure. I suppose that it may not have been entirely unfamiliar: isn't the rush of the mother's blood in the womb somehow sealike, too? But novel nonetheless. As were the sounds of shod hooves on the streets outside, as horse-drawn carriages led tourists about the town. As L. noted, Cleo must be used by now to the sounds of sirens at night: what to make of this clipped rhythm, though?

Ah, she'll make whatever she wants to out of it. For now, it's enough to think that the world is an orchestra, and that each section begins to play at a different moment. First are parents' voices, and then the incidental sounds of home; soon the whisper of trees, and the quiet purr of the car. Strings, and then reeds, and then brass. Crash of breaking waves; clop of horses' hooves. Each month sees the composition grow more complex.

Not quite unlike a language

In paragraph 528 of his Philosophical Investigations - a wonderfully intricate tome of brief thought experiments that represents one of the major reasons I've been such a poor poster this week - Wittgenstein notes that “It would be possible to imagine people who had something not quite unlike a language: a play of sounds, without vocabulary or grammar.”

Well, indeed it would. In fact, one doesn't really have to do much imagining. Hang out with Cleo for an hour these days, and you'll get a pretty wide range of grammarless sounds: hasty, put-upon breaths; feline squeals; almost erotic moans; scratchy exhalations like the roar of a tiny dragon. And, moreover, they don't generally seem random; instead, they recur, and often seem knit to their context. A long, warbling wail suggests exhaustion, while a a rich, M-my sound can signify pleasure. Not quite, in other words, unlike a language.

But Wittgenstein is not quite done. In the next paragraph, he wonders, “But what would the meaning of the sounds be in such a case?” And then responds, in a different voice: "What is it in music?” What, indeed? Like music, the sounds of a four-month-old are abstract and seemingly not quite linguistic - and yet they're also structured, and sometimes deeply powerful.

Stolen moments

There's a furtive aspect to being a new parent: furtive in that each free moment now acquires a special significance. Awake before the baby? Finish grading those papers early? It's like coming upon a silver dollar, on the sidewalk: you look around, sheepishly, and then pick it up, full of ideas about what to do with it.

Five months ago, of course, I spent those free moments in ways that now seem ridiculous. A monograph on the deciphering of Mayan glyphs seemed like a reasonable investment of time. An episode of Head of the Class might occupy a free half hour. And then there was online Scrabble, as well.

But now we're lean, and efficient; we have lists of tasks, and goals, and aspirations, and when an unplanned, uncommitted moment happens along, it's almost already accounted for. The check's already spent, even before it's cashed.

Which is why last evening was so pleasant. My folks were in town, and they watched over a sleeping Cleo in the evening, as L. and I slipped out for dinner at Ethel and Ramone's. And soon we were sitting in the early autumn evening, gumbo before us, three years of marriage behind us, and, perhaps most amazing of all, two hours, unaccounted for, in front of us.

And how did we spend it? Oh, the manner wasn't exceptional; it was the simple chance to do so as we chose that seemed remarkable.