England's greatness

Sometimes a thing is most notable for what it does not feature, or include. Sherlock Holmes once solved a case by noticing that a dog had not barked at a particular moment; John Shearman once offered a novel and pleasing reading of an installation by Verrocchio by suggesting that the absence of most of the apostles implied that the Florentines who coursed through the city streets beneath the niche could think of themselves as those apostles.

Some of my spare moments of late have been occupied by a pleasant game available on IPhones, called SongPop Free. It's essentially a variant of Guess that Tune, in which players compete by trying to identify the singers or titles of five songs at a time, as quickly as possible. I can hold my own in Classic Rock or Nineties Alternative, but when it comes to Today's Hits, or Modern Rap -I haven't been allowed to unlock the more historical, or classical, categories yet - my limitations quickly surface. And so I find myself relying heavily on the processes of deduction and elimination. There are only four options for each tune. And so if a song is by a teen diva, well, I can rule out the options involving male singers. And if the snippet that I hear doesn't have any relation to the offered titles, that can prove helpful, as well. Let's go with Rihanna, or Ring the Alarm - and so on.

Cleo, apparently, plays the same game, or uses the same strategy, in perceiving the world around her. While driving home the other day, I decided to give her a little game-show format quiz, of sorts. Cleo Dahlia, I began, in my best and most syrupy Hollywood voice, welcome to the quiz game. And so we dove in: How do you get to the top of the mountain, in Cape Town? On the cable car, responded the little voice in the back. And what can you get at the top? Popsicle! Okay, then: can you name one thing that you remember about England? A pause, and then: No school!

Hmm. Well, she's right: when we were in Winchester this summer, she didn't have to go to school. Granted, L. and I were too busy enjoying the medieval cathedral, the walks along streams, and the inviting pubs to think too much about that. But, yes, come to think of it, there was no school in England.

Just one more reason to remember, fondly, what we'd already celebrated for other, more obvious reasons.

Laugh it up

You probably remember, if you've seen Milos Forman's Amadeus, Mozart's ridiculous cackle. It was a profane giggle that threw the inexplicable nature of his divine gift into higher relief, and that taunted a tortured Salieri, who saw it as something more than Mozart laughing - it was, Salieri claimed, God himself laughing at the mediocrity of his own effort. Of course, Forman was using the laugh as a narrative device (for a bright explication of how, exactly, check out Kristin Thompson's Storytelling in the New Hollywood), but it's a motif that does seem to have some historical truth to it. Even in his own day, Mozart was known for a bawdy sense of humor - and for registering his glee aloud.

But did his father laugh in a comparable way? Franz Hoffmann, in his 1873 book Mozart's Early Days, would have us think so. (And perhaps we should give his report some credence; after all, 1873 was closer to Mozart's time than to our own...). On page 6, he tries to reconstruct Leopold's happiness at learning that he was to become a father, and to have a son whom he could introduce into the world of music. "He rubbed," claims Hoffman, "his hands joyfully, he murmured unintelligible words to himself, he threw radiant glances towards the blue sky, which had become almost cloudless. Yes, he forgot himself so far that he gave way at times to a joyous laugh, a loud laugh on the open highway, such as no one had ever heard from the vice orchestra leader."

Well. We may wonder at the accuracy of such at account: the repetition of joy suggests a certain formulaic aspect to the account, and surely Hoffmann could not have known the state of the sky on a random day in 1755. And yet: boisterous laughs sometimes do pour forth, in expected ways. Matter of fact, Cleo's been developing a room-silencing laugh of her own, over the past ten days or so. And we've got proof: just have a look at the video, above.

We're not quite sure when, or why, this new laugh developed. And, to be honest, I'm also not sure how sincere, or unselfconscious, it typically is. (The example above, as you've likely gathered, is staged, but more or less acoustically typical). Sometimes, Cleo lets loose while watching Max and Ruby. But she also spent some of Monday at school asking her teachers to "talk about [my] new laugh." Having heard them remark on it, she apparently became interested in how it prompted certain reactions."

Which, presumably, may have been part of Mozart's project, as well. At least, Forman would have see it so: that is, laughter can be both naked celebration and open taunt; bald joy, and implicit provocation. We laugh with the world; we laugh at the world. And the world, in turn, stands at attention, reckoning the new sound.

Home

What is home?

The word, clearly, can be read in many ways. It can refer, rather bluntly, to a structure, an address, or a plot of land. It can mean, as well, an evocative notion: Molly Bloom's arias wafting through the air, or the palace and massive bed shared with Penelope. It can refer to absence, as well as presence - think of the muddied infantryman staring at the photograph of the young woman in the knee-length dress, and it can seem trite... until, suddenly, it seems vital.

When I ask Cleo if she wants to go home, the answer is usually (but not quite always) yes. But one of the activities I associate most strongly with returning home is, oddly, checking the mail; looking for evidence, that is, of contacts with the outside world, from which I just returned.

And strange, too, is the fact that one of the most moving celebrations of my home city of 10 years - of Baltimore, that is - is a song by a punk band whose members are not even, technically, from Baltimore. (They're from Towson, a suburb to the north). But, still: home's appeal can sneak up on you: especially, I gather, when you're thousands of miles abroad, playing at music festivals in Northern Europe. So, to that end, I offer All Time Low's 'For Baltimore,' an appealing conflation of love, longing, and appreciation of home. Just click here to watch one version of the 3-minute music video (you can skip the ad a few seconds in).

Two Thanksgiving performances

Tomorrow's one of our favorite holidays, and we plan to spend it, in part, eating Turkey alongside MICA's international students, watching RGIII post 7-yard dashes against the Cowboys, and splashing about in an indoor pool. For now, though, we're looking forward to the day-before-Thanksgiving Bolton Hill Nursery pageant. The bread pudding is coming together, and there's a rumor that the Bluebirds will be dressed as carrots, and our own Yellowbird as a leaf. Even a trip to Whole Foods, bursting at the seams with turkeys and cranberries, conspires to put one in a holiday frame of mind.

Here at halfstep, though, we like to give as well as to receive - and so we spent a few minutes casting about for some Thanksgiving-themed music. It turns out, though, that it's rather slim pickings: Handel may have Christmas covered, and Bach took care of Easter - but Commissioner Sir Dean Goffin's 'Symphony of Thanksgiving,' which might seem to be relevant here, is actually an abstract meditation on God's grace by a New Zealand-based member of the Salvation Army. Not entirely beside the point, I guess, but its bright opening fanfare hardly recalls, to this listener, late New England autumns, or fallen maple leaves.

And so we've crafted our own brief message, working in house with our own team of crack screenwriters and actors to produce and pass on a 5-second holiday greeting. Enjoy - and enjoy the coming day, as well.

The bridge, whereabouts of

"Has anyone seen the bridge?" In 1973, near the end of a track called 'The Crunge,' Led Zeppelin's front man Robert Plant wailed the question, seemingly feeling his way towards a musical resolution in a manner that evoked the dramatic habits of another great band leader, James Brown. Brown had often pretended, while onstage during performances, to be looking for a new rhythm, or idea, or musical possibility; on 'The Crunge,' Plant suggested that even composed, recorded music could involve a similar process of seeking.

The phrase soon acquired a life of its own, becoming a sort of touchstone in the work of later rock bands. A 1986 Camper van Beethoven track called 'Joe Stalin's Cadillac,' for instance, features a drawled intonation of the same phrase, and in 1996 The Dave Matthews Band was struck by the general similarity between a transitional piece they'd composed for live performances and Zeppelin's earlier effort. Soon enough, the band was calling their piece 'Anyone Seen the Bridge?' in a manner that invoked both its function as a connector and their place in the larger history of rock music. Brown, Plant, Matthews: the three singers offer, in their shared quest for a transition, a common bridge across the last half century of American popular music.

But if pop tunes can seem to need bridges, so too can blogs. Over the past few weeks, I've left a number of narratives unfinished. Balls in the air, threads hanging: the result, you can choose your metaphor, but to me it feels as though I've mapped portions of a territory without necessary linking the charted zones. So: on this quiet Tuesday afternoon, with L. and Cleo back in B'more after a long weekend trip to see the grandparents in N.C., let's get up to speed:

1. Cleo was a fox, a red fox, for Halloween. She wore her outfit during her school's Halloween parade, which went swimmingly, and she then wore it as darkness descended on the city, trick-or-treating among the stately stone houses of Bolton Hill and gently illuminated windows of our own neighborhood.

2. Cleo's anger at me - but is that even the right word? I mean her frustration with my refusal to let her watch Dumbo while we hosted a guest - soon dissipated. Said guest, in fact, brought a lovely set of African-themed dominoes that captivated Cleo, and we then spent much of the next day at Storyville and Barnes and Noble, where she played like an absolute angel.

3. And Hurricane Sandy was relatively gentle to our old pink house. Water seeped in through the seams of our roof, and the drywall ceiling in one room will need to be replaced. All things considered, though, we were lucky: after I explained to Cleo why I was setting buckets out to catch the invasive water, she went back to playing, and then, when L. returned home from out west, dutifully told her that 'we have an old house and so water came in.'

4. The image above? Cleo, flying a kite in Meadowwood Park, on a windy fall day: her suggestion, my joy.

Four bridges, built in a matter of minutes. Hope they help to connect the islands of a blog that too often and too easily, perhaps, forgets to provide narrative closure. But that will, in the next day or two, attract its 10,000th visitor - for which I thank all of you.

Alienation and community

You probably know the story already - or, as it turns out, the stories. Let's start with the earlier: in July of 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, Bob Dylan performed three songs using an electric guitar - and, in the process, angered a number of folk purists who saw the instrument as anathema. Pete Seeger allegedly tried to cut the power off, and the folk singer Oscar Brand observed, subsequently, that to many lovers of folk music "the electric guitar represented capitalism." Dylan had crossed a line, and the situation grew rowdy, with some in the crowd booing loudly.

Yesterday, as Cleo and I drove from her nursery to pick up L. after work, the conversation suddenly grew similarly heavy, and ominous. Cleo suggested that she could watch Dumbo when we got home, but I, since we were expecting a dinner guest, told her that she would have to wait until a polite time. Cleo dissented, and whined a little bit; I suggested that she try not to whine. And then she released this electric zinger: "I don't like you," she said, calmly. And then repeated it.

Honestly, I didn't know what to say. I felt momentarily paralyzed, completely deflated. Had she really said that? Could she really feel that way? She's at the age where she enjoys trying out phrasings, to see if they might bring a response, and I wondered if this was thus mere provocation. Perhaps. But in the moment it also felt as though she were entirely, coldly sincere.

But of course no story ends as simply as its telling might suggest. As Benjamin Filene notes, in Romancing the Folk:Public Memory & American Roots Music, part of the reason that Dylan's electric guitar angered Seeger so viscerally was that it violated Seeger's basic philosophy of performance: that a concert, that is, can offer an opportunity to build community. Seeger wanted his crowds to sing along with him - a possibility that was more or less precluded by Dylan's grinding, shrieking guitar. "Dylan's song set at Newport," Filene says, "was a performance done perhaps to his audience, but he had little interest in allowing it to be done by them."

Or, at least, he didn't for a few moments. There are, in fact, alternative accounts of what, exactly, happened in Newport in 1965. Ryder Windham, for example, points out that "some insiders maintain that the booing was not prompted by... Dylan's guitar, but in response to the festival's inferior sound system and the fact that Dylan, like every other performer, to three songs." That would make some sense, too, given that members of the audience then demanded an encore: a demand honored by Dylan, who later returned to the stage and played two songs, by himself - on an acoustic guitar.

So where is the truth? There were boos; Cleo was unhappy with me. But any rupture in community was, in both cases, soon restored; distances were bridged; amends made. This morning, Cleo woke up shortly after 6, and within a few minutes she was enthusiastically showing me how she can dive, and insisting that next summer I play in the pool with her.

Sure thing, Cleo. And I'll be sure to turn the electricity off before we dive in.

Dress rehearsal

Today's photo day at Bolton Hill Nursery, and  so I spent a few enjoyable minutes last evening pretending to be the photographer as Cleo hammed it up. Last year, the guy who shot the Bluebirds was a real pro; aware that some of the 2-year-olds might find the process daunting, he kept up a friendly patter of comments, and regularly placed a stuffed animal on his head, allowing it to slip off in an apparently unplanned way that drew a number of giggles.

Why practice for such a thing? Why, indeed - especially when rehearsals can be more upsetting than the actual thing? In Stanislavski on Opera, for instance, you can read the harrowing story of a 1926 rehearsal for The Tsar's Bride, during which "a large chunk of plaster fell from the ceiling over the orchestra, followed by a cloud of dust." The members of the orchestra scrambled, he says, under the stage, and the cast ran offstage. Stanislavski covered his head with his hands, and slowly retreated, as sawdust fell on the footlights. "To top it all," remembered one individual, "we now saw a pair of legs encased in boots dangling from the gaping black hole overhead." Soon enough, though, things stabilized. Cool heads took over, and within a few minutes a ladder was erected - and a fireman, who had been inspecting the upper zones of the building, rescued from his precarious place above the stage.

Happily, our rehearsal went rather more smoothly. No sawdust, no unexpected crashes. And, as you can see above, some truly warm smiles. But of course the rehearsal is rarely exactly like the performance itself. And so we'll see, at 10 a.m. today, if the slipping stuffed animal can retain its lively appeal for a second year.