Rating systems

May I stick with the ratings theme for a moment longer? Overwhelmed by the sheer volume of responses to the solicitation in my last entry (two offline comments! one of which is now posted, and one of which was quite kind, but nonetheless steadfastly refused to answer the question), I've taken your message to heart: you clearly want to hear more about numerical evaluations, the arts, and parenthood. I listen, dear readers, I really do.

So: who's heard of Roger de Piles? Glazed eyes; tired stares out the window. One student scribbles something with irrelevant vigor in a notebook. Well, de Piles was the 17th-century painter and writer who wrote the so-called Balances, an early work of art criticism in which he divides the art of painting into four areas, and then assigns important painters scores in each of those areas. Whether you agree or disagree with those scores - and part of the joy of his work is that you will disagree at times - the list is a fascinating project, and a window into late Baroque taste. Raphael and the Carracci fare very well, for instance. But Caravaggio, who receives only 6 out of 20 possible points in composition, does not. De Piles mocks Michelangelo's color by giving him a 4, where the great Florentine's use of line merits a 17. And so on.

One could do something similar, of course, for composers, or for musicians. We might try, for example, to assign points based on a composer's originality (Bartok or the serialists might fare well here), general depth of feeling (Beethoven would be the gold standard), or structure (I'll give Mozart an 18 out of 20; as de Piles wrote, no one is perfect). Or take singers: Sinatra, the consensus master of phrasing, gets a 19; Billie Holiday receives high marks for tone of voice. But don't take my word for it; after all, the fun is in devising your own system.

Which is what, in fact, a lot of us did as 13-year-old boys. Dungeons and Dragons and a hundred related knock-offs are, at their core, comparable exercises. Imagine a small group (small, since nerds are always a slightly endangered species) of teen boys, Doritos at the ready, choosing their characters: an elf; a warlock; a U.S. Marine. And then each boy starts with a certain number of points, and creates his character's profile, allotting, say, 10 to intelligence, and 4 to strength, and 19 to charisma (which is how, you can see, we lived vicariously through such games. The girlies would flock to our orc, if not to us).

So the other evening, with points and parenting on the mind, I thought I'd frame a question for L in a similar vein. I wrote down six basic personal characteristics (kindness; athleticism; beauty; self-confidence; so on...), gave her 36 points, and asked her to distribute them, up to a maximum of 10 in each category, based on her hopes for Cleo. And then I did the same.

I won't go into the results in detail, although it's true that L's Cleo would beat mine at soccer, and that mine would kindly congratulate her opponent. But it did lead to an interesting conversation. And that, really, is the point of such ratings. It doesn't necessarily matter, in the big picture, if your elf can outthink my valkyrie. And it doesn't really matter if I rank Bach's use of tone color more highly than Vivaldi's. What matters is what such rankings reveal about the rankers. When we rate people, we're really only making concrete our own values and priorities.

Overrated

There are many, many differences between Chapel Hill, where I grew up, and Baltimore, where I've lived since 2002. Basketball vs. lacrosse, BBQ vs. crabcakes - and even, one wants to add, very different feels to the local violence. For instance, I recall a police blotter account in Chapel Hill that described one man throwing an Egg McMuffin at another in a McDonald's parking lot. In Baltimore, parking lot quarrels often assume a different form: across the street from a friend's house, one man recently stabbed his colleague in the head (a phrase, by the way, that becomes more and more spooky the more you think about it). Or you might phrase it in this way: in Baltimore, there has been a series of violent and possibly race-motivated attacks on city buses, resulting in at least one case in a city bus wrapped in crime scene tape. In Chapel Hill, on the other hand, the city buses are all completely free, and serve a ridership that includes a rather high percentage of placid university-bound riders who sometimes discuss classical music on the way to work.

No, really. My dad used to ride the F bus to UNC, and several colleagues of his shared his deep interest in music. One day, as a result, a general question was posed: who is the most overrated composer in the classical canon? Various votes were cast, and eventually, if I remember the story correctly, it was Mahler who walked away with the prize.

Which got me thinking: is there an overrated aspect to fathering an infant? Initially, one wants to say no, not at all - precisely because the bar seems to be set so low for American fathers in general. If we show some genuine interest in the child at halftime of the Ravens' first exhibition game, well, then we're doing well. But push further: in reality, there are certain stereotypes that might also be called expectations. For instance, a father is supposed to simply abhor changing diapers (a task that I'd call underrated: it can actually be really fun to clean someone up, kiss their belly, and get them back in the game). But he's supposed to enjoy, on the other hand, the act of passing out cigars to relatives in the hospital. Given that smoking in the hospital premises is now illegal and punishable by fine, you'd probably want to count that as overrated.

Are there other contenders? Ah, readers of the blog, that's where you can help. The link to the comments page is just below; why not click and add a candidate of your own?

Freak injuries

At night we place Cleo on her back, as all parents are now told to do, in the hopes of preventing the little-understood SIDS. There are no toys near her, to reduce any risk of strangulation or suffocation. The muslin cloth that lies over her tiny legs was chosen after we'd read books that advised against heavier cloths, which don't breathe, and can therefore be dangerous. And, just for good measure's sake, there's a baby monitor on a table near her, so that we can respond if anything happens.

It sounds like overkill, and yet I don't think we're at all exceptional: babies are especially prone to accidents, and these are simply standard ways of preventing harm. Still, sometimes it seems like we're spending so much time babyproofing that we forget to save ourselves. All around Cleo, the world injures itself in ridiculous ways, making a muslin sheet seem all too simple an answer.

For example: last fall, Minnesota Timberwolves center Jason Collins injured himself in a "freak golf-cart accident," rupturing his triceps tendon and thus missing training camp and the team's opening game. As embarrassing as that may have been, though, Collins' mishap is considerably more romantic than the rather serious injuries sustained by baseball players such as Sammy Sosa (who injured his back while sneezing) or Wade Boggs (also a bad back, caused by taking off cowboy boots). Glenallen Hill may win the prize for Oddest Injury to an Athlete, though; in 1990, while suffering from a nightmare about spiders, the Toronto Blue Jay crawled, while still asleep, up his apartment stairs, bloodying his knees and elbows on the carpet.

Hill, apparently, only dreamt of spiders the once, but odd injuries can result from repetition, as well. Tennis elbow is a classic example; so is carpal tunnel syndrome. And violinists know that playing for several hours daily can cause serious pain in the left elbow; in fact, that's why David Rivinus recently introduced the Pellegrina viola, designed to alleviate such pain through a novel change in the elbow's angle.

Which is what I've been experimenting with recently, as well, in a slightly different context. As Cleo's largely outgrown her interest in the stroller, we usually now walk her in a sling or Baby Bjorn. It's easier in many ways, but she's still small enough that it helps to hold a hand firmly on the outside, to support her back or belly. Walk her enough, without really thinking about it, and you've suddenly been applying a soft pressure with your right elbow for hours and hours, over the course of a week. All of which is a long way of saying that I woke up the other morning with some rather serious tendinitis. The result of a recent tennis match? No - like most new dads, I haven't exactly been prancing around the courts. Maybe it came from trowelling in the garden? No - since laying the garden in in May, we've done little but pick tomatoes, watch the squash flowers come and go, and root for the solitary pumpkin. I'm afraid there's no alternative but to say it: I hurt myself while walking my baby.

Oh, but even there I've got good company. Major leaguer Paul Shuey once fell asleep while holding his baby, and woke up with a knot in his shoulder that temporarily prevented him from playing. And Ruben Sierra once hurt himself while chasing his daughter on a mall escalator.

We try to make the world safe for our kids. But who makes it safe for us?

Haydn!

Franz Joseph, that is. Sometimes known as the Father of the String Quartet (much as Gillaume Duchenne is sometimes considered the Father of the Application of Electricity, or Pietro Aretino is sometimes called the Father of Pornography), Haydn is perhaps the best-known 18th-century composer after a certain Wolfgang Amadeus. He's also the composer who was badly scarred by smallpox and who suffered so badly from acute nasal polyps that he couldn't fathom (according to his biographer) how it had happened that in his life he had been loved by several beautiful woman. "They couldn't have been led to love," said the very modest Haydn, "by my beauty."

So what was it about him, then, that appealed? In an effort to find out, your intrepid blogger has been playing several of Haydn's string quartets for more than a week. There are 68 of them in all - or more, if you include several generally thought to be spuriously attributed to him. And they're very well regarded; the critic Bernard Holland, in fact, claimed that Haydn was a greater master of the form than Mozart, Beethoven, or Bartok, whose quartets are widely celebrated. In fact, both Mozart and Beethoven dedicated six of their own quartets to Haydn. Not bad: it's like Augustus paying his tributes at the tomb of Alexander the great.

But, again, what appealed so much? The critic Anthony Tommasini once claimed that Haydn's quartets delight in part because of a number of unexpected turns and changes in rhythm, and several simply virtuosic passages. And, as a good Neoclassicist, Haydn's pieces are highly ordered and logical: initial themes evolve into lush patterns which are nevertheless always related to their modest beginnings.

Okay: after a dozen listenings I can see some of that. But perhaps only some. In fact, I still have real trouble seeing beyond what Tommasini referred to as "a jocular, genial surface quality to the music that is often mistaken by listeners today, and even some performers, as being all there is." That's what strikes my ears, accustomed as they are to the considerably stormier quartets of Beethoven (and the acoustic shifts of, say, Radiohead), when I listen to Haydn. Haydn's quartets recall, to me, the entirely pleasant but ultimately unremarkable experience of driving along a slightly contoured interstate with the window rolled down. Like our highways, his works are smooth, nicely built, and bright. They're even well signed: as they roll by, you don't worry about getting lost. Or, rather, when you do get lost, it's because you realize you'd simply begun to think about something else entirely. Like an interstate, the quartets are constantly becoming the mere ground for more interesting thoughts.

Doubtless, that's too harsh, and there's no real need to push the point: I envy Holland his deep pleasure. But think about the context, too. Although composers had occasionally written string quartets before Haydn, they were mostly written for mere household entertainment. He was the first, then, to elevate the form into something broadly respectable, something canonical. That in itself is worth applauding - but let's also remember Dante's observation that "Cimabue thought that he held, but now everyone cries for Giotto, obscuring Cimabue's fame." Crowds are fickle, sure. But they're also onto something: innovations are often followed by further developments. None of this diminishes the importance of the innovation, but it does change our relation to it.

Two weeks ago we cheered when Cleo, while on her tummy, held her head up off the mat at all. Today she confidently lifted it up to a 90-degree angle, looked around the room, and seemed to think little of it. Haydn has his place, but it's a place that's worth much in part because of what he made possible.

Muses, part II

Across the street lives a little girl - that's her, holding a finicky, pouty Cleo last week - who's at the age where she really enjoys greeting people. I might be working in the garden, or reading on the sun porch, or walking about the yard wondering why the Pirates traded their entire starting lineup for minor leaguers: regardless of where I am, and how many trees, walls, or meters stand between us, her voice will somehow reach me from her yard: "Hi, Kerr!"

The other day, the effect was touchingly silly. L and I were setting out on a drive, and we passed by our neighbor's back yard, with our windows down. From the other side of a solid, six-foot-tall wooden fence we could hear the call as we drove by: "Hi, Kerr!"

I've had that image in mind as I've thought about how muses and Cleos communicate. The first thing you realize, perhaps, is that it's on their terms. You might be thinking about something else entirely, or you might be (like Coleridge) enjoying a good opium-induced sleep, or you might be fiddling with the radio in your car - and then, bang, a signal comes to you, unexpected and often unsolicited.

Of course you can try to solicit the signal, or to invoke the muse, as dozens of poets have done. And you can certainly try to get Cleo to tell you what exactly she wants. But such attempts are feeble, and they're rarely rewarded. Babies communicate in their own way, at their own pace. Muses descend upon the bard's shoulder when they're good and ready.

The point? I guess it's simply this: try to be ready when the voices do arrive. Have your pen at the ready; have your car window down. The little girl across the street is only a little girl for so long: enjoy her pure joy and inclusiveness while it's so fully in the open.

Muses

Over the past week, in between the occasional nonsense syllables, the bewitching smiles, and the jarring thumb-sucking bouts that violate pretty much every basic code of decency, Cleo's been throwing out gestures that seem to be attempts to communicate something. A wrist rubbed rapidly across an eye; the tongue, extended; a little arm, swiping at the bottle with which I'm feeding her: it's increasingly clear that there's another citizen in the house, trying to convey her needs, desires and frustrations with some specificity.

We can read some of her signs, of course: the swipe, for instance, pretty clearly means that she's eaten enough. And the specific significance of most of her cries is now recognizable: a wobbling moan implies exhaustion, while a breathless cry signifies hunger. But in some cases, I still feel like I'm at sea: a translator who doesn't know a particular idiom, or a diviner who encounters an unprecedented pattern in the auspices.

Cleo shares her name with the muse of history, and muses, of course, also speak from the far side of familiarity. Poking around, I found a couple of interesting books on musical composition. Ann McCutchan's The Muse that Sings, for example, offers interviews with 25 recent composers on the compositional process. Unsurprisingly, these 20th-century artists speak less frequently of muses than, say, their Neoclassical colleagues might have, but the idea's still occasionally in play. Shulamit Ran, for instance, notes that "I think there is a muse, actually, but you have to make it come visit you - you have to find a way to invite it, and then find a way to work with it."

Well, we've had no problem getting Cleo to visit us: pretty much every day, in fact, we realize all over again that we're bound to spend every day for the next few years with this little gal. But it's in finding a way to work with her that the challenge lies. And yet, it's clear that the rewards for close attention might be considerable. In his Music and Imagination, Aaron Copland refuses to use the term muse in analyzing the creative process, but he does allow that "One half of the personality emotes and dictates while the other half listens and notates."

We're trying our best, Cleo, to listen and notate. Feel free to keep on dictating, and let's see where it leads.

Leibniz' sand

Reading Diderot's delicious Salon of 1767 this morning, I came across this:

"You've never heard the same melody sung more or less identically by two different singers. The text, the vocal line, rhythm, pitch, so many restrictive guidelines, would seem to collaborate in assuring an identical effect. But in the event things work out very differently..." And he goes on to recall the philosopher Leibniz' contention that no two grains of sand - and, by extension, no two things in the universe - are exactly alike.

Most of our days over the past two months have been pretty comparable. Wake to a squirming Cleo; feed her and play with her; take a walk; feed her and try some time under the mobile, or on her belly; naptime; another feeding; a big afternoon siesta; maybe an evening stroll around the neighborhood; and pretty soon it's nearly 8 p.m., or bedtime. With few exceptions, the days seem organized around a comparable template.

And yet, they really don't ever contain quite the same melody: despite the superficial similarities of forms, there are all sorts of little differences and evolutions. Last night, out of the blue, Cleo reeled off an uninterrupted 7 1/2-hour band of sleep. Gadzooks! And today, after several weeks of crying rather miserably when we set her on her belly, she simply raised her head and peered about her. Frustrating boundaries suddenly give way; seeming routines are suddenly banished.

"Never," wrote Diderot, "since the world has been the world, have two lovers said 'I love you' identically." Circumstance and individuality, in other words, preclude any rote repetition or sheer duplication. We loved Cleo on Friday. But we love her slightly differently (and not just in a more rested way) today - just as all parents' love for their children evolves, and waxes, and is over time burnished.