Birthdays and holidays

Today's Haydn's 278th birthday, and it turned out that as Cleo and I scattered playing cards and rolled on the big red rug this evening, WBJC was playing the composer's Ninth Symphony. So ordered, so clear - and, in that sense, so optimistically modernist. Such art seems so faithfully organized around that beautiful - and, we now know, potentially tragic - notion that simple logic and order, applied rigorously, can create beauty and improve lives. The very notion, in other words, that was being turned on its head by the Romantics by the time Haydn died in 1809, that was jeeringly mocked by Postmodern architects in the 1970s, and that was being rendered more or less irrelevant by a Cleo tonight, as she plodded smilingly through an utter chaos of toys.

You can play the classical music as loudly, and as often, as you like; having a baby in the house upsets order and creates unforeseen pressures. Cheerios on the floor; extension cords that are suddenly delectable appetizers. The bright cry of a suddenly awake daughter in the quiet still of 4:57 a.m. No, there's nothing exceptional in this, but L. and I are learning an ancient lesson: babies may thrive on routine, but they themselves are wild variables. Which is why, from time to time, we've been reaching out and asking for help, in various directions. Calls to friends, on rainy days, have led to companionship and adult conversation that can make all the difference during an 8-hour stint with Cleo. And a cleaning service, yesterday, was a real treat: suddenly our floors are bright and clean, and remarkably free of hurled breakfast cereal. She can crawl freely once more in the living room, without her marine gear or shinguards on.

But what's really been remarkable is that, really, we haven't even had to make the first move very often. As they say, it takes a village to raise a child; what I hadn't realized is that the village often volunteers to do so, in lovely ways. Or not just the village: the city, in this case, and several family friends and grandparents up and down the coast. Here's what I mean: I mean our nanny, knitting a blanket for Cleo. I mean our neighbor, strolling over to us today as we enjoyed the sun on a blanket, and offering Cleo an unbelievably soft stuffed chick, complete with egg. But that's hardly all. Then, too, there was a touching handmade activity book that arrived in the mail from a friend in Indialantic, Florida. And then the doorbell rang again: it's the UPS man, with Easter baskets from both grandparents. So suddenly Cleo is happily awash in pastels and symbols of spring.

Haydn, more than two centuries ago, left a legacy of light, and clarity, and measure. Cleo, still tiny but nearing her tenth monthday, leaves instead a wake of skewed angles and drool-dewed board books. But both birthday and monthday fall, this year, in the same week as Easter, and Easter, we all know, means rebirth and renewal. So I turned the Haydn up, letting him speak once more, and built a fresh tower of blocks, only to see it knocked down again.

When it rains, she pours

Certainly there are days when, as a blogger, you simply don't find the time for a post. And then there are days when you might have time, but the well of ideas simply feels dry. Finally, there are also days when the sheer marvellousness of what you've already encountered that same day on the Internet dwarfs anything that you might feel able put up by your lonesome.

And today, friends, is the third kind of day. In a brief but wonderful half hour of browsing, I ran into a story regarding research into portion sizes in historical images of the Last Supper, Kevin Hartnett's meditations on how his life might have been different had he not recently read War and Peace and breaking reports regarding the use of RNC donors' funds to pay for an expensive evening at a bondage club in L.A. Such variety, such scope! It's enough to make even the most confident blogger pause, and wonder if s/he really has anything much to offer. And I am not, as you've likely realized by now, the most confident blogger.

But I am confident, at least, that grandmothers like pictures of granddaughters being cute. And so here's a brief video of Cleo learning to pour. (Two minutes later, she learned to pour onto the floor):

Talent

Are you a cute young thing who's been easily winning ribbons in county beauty pageants, but just can't take your game to the next level? Always getting beaten, at the very end of a grueling day, by some natural blonde who began harp lessons at the age of 2? An ability to hold that high tremolo all that's keeping you from really big things?

If so, Bill Wolfe wants to help. Specializing in custom arrangements and voice training for serious beauty pageant contestants, Wolfe's worked with eight - count 'em, eight - Miss Americas. He's got a website that's both elegant and hard-hitting, and he's ready to help you with the difficult process of choosing your song.

Now, I've never done too well in such competitions, for a variety of reasons (for one thing, the bikini top just never sits right; for another, the interview questions don't ever seem to focus on the 1987-8 NHL campaign). And, even if I was a competitor with a chance, I'm not sure I'd need Wolfe's assistance: without a moment's hesitation, I'd go with a certain big-haired ballad (indeed, I already have, at bars in Alexandria and New Haven).

Still, I'm intrigued by the fifth paragraph, on his website, of the section entitled "If you are a vocalist looking for the right song." Wolfe acknowledges that the process of choosing a song is sometimes easy, and sometimes hard - but is always followed by real work. And he gives us a sense of what that work involves: "We will take the song apart vocally, working every aspect of pitch, phrasing, style, musicality, and any re-writes that would enhance the presentation."

What's the appeal of that sentence? It's partly, from my perspective, the promise of doing hard work together. He's like a sensitive, artsy Vince Lombardi; I'd follow him, just like the gals from Oklahoma, anywhere. It's also the idea, I suppose, of enhancing my presentation. On any given day, as I wander into the classroom, I've got a few orange Rice Beef Pilaf stains on my pants, and a web of cat hairs on my jacket. I could use a re-write.

But most of all, it's the idea of taking something apart, to make it better. We do this all the time, without thinking; we open our cell phone's face, and blow out the dust, or we - of late, at least - deconstruct a valved milk bottle, in order to wash the parts separately, before reassembling. The process has been on my mind, though, because it's one of Cleo's current hobbies. If there's a purse nearby, or a kitchen cabinet, you can more or less rest assured that it'll be emptied in a matter of minutes, its contents scattered.

Does it make the kitchen neater? Not in the short term, as Cleo crawls off to undo some other neatly arranged item. Does it enhance our presentation? Not if you're one of the adults who's skidded, unawares, over one of the randomly distributed items. And it probably doesn't augment her chances at being Miss America, either.

And yet, as Bill Wolfe understands, it's real work. It's the work of learning; it's the work of living.

Eine kleine Stadtmusik

On Saturday we spent the last day of our spring break trip in smalltown West Virginia - or, to be really accurate, in the piney regions between the small towns of West Virginia. East of Augusta, west of Cacapon Bridge: that was us simply driving, and looking at cabins, and coming across (a local confirmed it) a bobcat on a backroad.

The sounds, for most of the morning, were wonderful: dense birdsong; soft breezes; the distant hiss of a pickup's tires on a state highway. We stood above a small river that wound through a meadow, and I can still hear the quiet, insistent pull of the water on its banks.

Then, in the afternoon, east, and east some more, and finally back home, to Baltimore City, after 8 days away. And soon an entire palette of urban noises began to assert themselves. A squadron of sirens, racing towards some distant fire. The hum of traffic, to our east and south. An angered honk, from time to time.

Is home so different, so distant, from the woods? It seemed so, as I stood in the dusk, unloading the car. But then a small grace: two geese, honking, flew overhead, above our small river valley, towards their home somewhere in the north. And for at least a moment it seemed that we, and that Cleo, could belong to two worlds at once: that world in which we have to explain that sirens can tell of help on its way as well as of pain, and that world in which songbirds call to birds, both in romance and in warning.

Spring break

Roughly 790 years ago, the Mongols rode roughshod over most of Central Asia, toppling a series of local petty chiefdoms and finally sacking the powerful city of Baghdad in 1258. They rolled the Abbasid caliph up in a carpet and trampled him to death (supposedly so that his blood wouldn't be on their hands), and installed themselves as rulers: as il-Khans, or descendants of the Great Khan.

Just last week, they continued their conquest, taking my week by storm as I tried to familiarize myself with Ulugh Beg, with the surviving leaves of the Great Mongol Shahnama, and with the artistic patronage of Shahrukh, and Baysunghur. I was, simply put, routed. And thus, friends, the abrupt lack of posts. When you're struggling with Mongols, your blog often suffers.

But, as Diderot wrote long ago, “it’s for my friends as well as myself that I read, reflect, write, meditate, listen, look, and feel; in their absence, my devotion relates everything to them.” So worry not, distant reader: it's never personal. I'd write every day, if I could.

Because, goodness knows, a certain 9-month-old keeps providing quality material. Ever since celebrating her ninth monthday in style (with a great package from Grandma, and a lovely new blanket croched by her nanny), she's been scooting about with elan. Yesterday she climbed her first stair, and she's mastered the often-overlooked art of call-and-response raspberries. In short, she's a lot of fun.

Which is nice news, because we took our most ambitious family drive thus far this past weekend. Driving at night isn't much of a problem, as Cleo's happy to snooze in her womblike carseat, but driving by day - well, it can crimp a young girl's style. And so we covered what we could, before she made it clear that a prolonged squirm - at a gas station; at a breakfast joint that felt like it was pulled from a Cormac McCarthy novel - was in order. Even so, there were a few moments where we simply had to ask her to be patient for 10 or 15 minutes.

Patience, of course, is not a baby's forte, even if you try to prompt it with a new set of rattles and mini tambourines. But in this case, as we rolled up to our destination, we were helped out by an unexpected source: a local radio station that seemed to base its playlist more or less entirely on L.'s tastes as a younger woman. Jessie's Girl? Check. Late-1980s Prince? Sure thing. And so, as I drove, she sat in back and sang to Cleo, who watched, and listened... and then fell asleep, making the last leg of a long trip as easy as pie.

All happy families, it turns out, are thus not the same. Some, at least, find their musical ideals writ large on the airwaves as they roll along with a weary baby snoring gently, head tilted.

Innovators

Just off the top of my head, and limiting myself to examples from classic rock (still, sadly, my most cultivated musical garden), I can think of several significant ways in which musicians took conventional instruments or technologies, and used them in a radical way to produce effects that were novel, and intriguing.

I'm thinking of Tony Iommi, for instance, depressing the strings of his guitar just before they reach the tuning pegs, in order to generate an unprecedentedly deep tremolo on Iron Man. Or a young Eddie Van Halen, wondering what might happen if he tapped on the strings, instead of picking them, while also fingering them. (Click here for his middle-aged take on the technique). Or Eric Clapton turning up his amplifier so loud, while recording Layla with Derek and the Dominoes, that his guitar bled into the band's other mikes, resulting in a eerily drenched and suffused sound on the final recording. In each case, an apparent misuse of equipment, at least according to common notions, resulted in a new possibility.

Which is more or less what babies are doing, much of the time. In chewing on extension cords, or uprooting trash cans, or rubbing their food on the knees of their outfits, they violate many of our most basic conventions and expectations. It can be upsetting, to be sure, and I think every parent must feel a more or less constant instinct to right objects, to clean clothes, and to teach manners. But, before we get too worked up, or hopeless, perhaps it can help to think of babies not simply as uncouth agents of chaos, but also as small pioneers, or experimenters. I haven't yet taken to gnawing on plastic blocks, as Cleo does. But she's already helped me, in 9 months, see the world as a more dynamic place, full of possibilities far beyond those rendered familiar through practice. And while her efforts don't always end in results as lovely as Layla, they do thus often have an appeal all their own.

In concert

I think it's fair to say that much of my interaction with Cleo, over her first nine months, has been relatively unidirectional. By that, I mean that we rarely seem to be thinking the same thing, or interacting in true concert. Instead, we seem to act at angles to each other: I point to a bird, as we walk, and see her head turn in the opposite direction, towards a car. Or I begin reading, aloud, one of her board books, only to watch her take an extreme interest in turning the pages, quite rapidly, in reverse.

Over the last few weeks, though, the moments in which we're clearly acting together, towards some shared end, have grown much more common. I hold out the spoon, loaded with pureed peach, and she opens wide, and leans forward. Or I set up a tower of blocks, and watch as she intently crawls towards it, and demolishes it: a tiny, endearing Godzilla. Or, most magically, a good three minutes of pitch-and-catch, baby-style, yesterday. Here's a brief stretch of it:

Sure, she's still got a ways to go before she's Jake Peavy. But, heck, it's still pretty early in the spring; that arm will come around. And yet, even if she never does produce a 97-mph heater, I can't express how touched I was by the simple game, whose basic premise she seemed to grasp.

Think of a band whose recordings sell well. Obviously, their recorded music may touch their fans in powerful ways. And, certainly, the band must notice and appreciate the distant interest of the fans. But, through recording, such interest moves unidirectionally: band and fans never interact. It's only in concert, when the band's live on stage, that there's a real conversation, or exchange of energy in real time, between the two.

As silly as it sounds, I felt as we tossed the fluffy ball back and forth that we were now in concert.