Garbage In; Garbage Out

It's rare, but things can be simple. Like, some kids grew up on lyrics like Neil Peart's words to the song "Grand Designs":

A to B --
Different degrees...
 So much style without substance
So much stuff without style
It's hard to recognize the real thing
It comes along once in a while
Like a rare and precious metal
Beneath a ton of rock
It takes some time and trouble
To separate from the stock
You sometimes have to listen to
A lot of useless talk
Shapes and forms
Against the norms -- 

....So much poison in power
The principles get left out
So much mind on the matter
The spirit gets forgotten about
Like a righteous inspiration
Overlooked in haste
Like a teardrop in the ocean
A diamond in the waste
Some world-views are spacious --
And some are merely spaced
Against the run of the mill
Static as it seems
We break the surface tension
With our wild kinetic dreams
Curves and lines --
Of grand designs... 

Other kids grow up with lyrics like those of today's country hits, like these, from Jason Aldean's in-depth philosophical treatise on Friday night throw-downs,"Light's Come On":

You’re a crack-of-dawn, Monday-morning (coffee strong)
Poured everything you got into a paycheck Friday night
You’re a plow with stroke diesel, backhoe-riding king of beers, 18-wheeler
(Driving, living life in between the lines)
Of clocking in and quitting time…
But then the six-string circus comes to town
We hang them speakers over the crowd
When the lights come on, everybody’s screaming
Lighters in the sky, yeah, everybody’s singing
Every word to every song to a girl to take it home tonight
When the lights come on, everybody’s feeling
A hallelujah high from the floor to the ceiling
Yeah, the drink that we’re drinking, the smoke that we’re smoking
The party we throw, it’s going all night long

I'll let you work out what the results are/could be. If you listen/listened to lyrics like the first example, you should be fine. If the second, feel free to email me for a handy list of interpretive guidelines.

"Surrender, surrender but don't give yourself away."

When a pop/rock song is good, a pop/rock song is good. For me, the band Cheap Trick has a few of the best pop/rock tunes of all time. But, it's pop/rock. It ain't no musical revelation. Still, the other day...

[insert wiggly sit-com memory transition]

...I was driving, trying to figure out why in the name of Zeus's elbow I had just sat through an entire Judas Priest song (conclusion: same thing that drives us to "rubberneck" at car accidents) when the "Surrender" by Cheap Trick came on. I have always liked that song, so I cranked it.

Am I Smart Enough to Teach Fifth Grade?

Yesterday, I taught a class of fifth-graders. It was the only time in my teaching career that I felt even a little nervous. It was my son's Language Arts class. He's been dying for me to come in -- some of the other dads had. One was a cop; the other was a fireman. I think my son wanted to show the other kids that his dad was as cool as the other dads, which, clearly, he most certainly is not. How do you compete with firemen and policemen?

Still, I do have the being-in-a-rock-band thing going for me, so I slipped that in. They were impressed.

A fifth grade class of the past. 

Anyway, I did a mixed kind of career-day/creative writing lesson with them. I started by telling them I was going to read their minds. I asked them to think really hard about what they want to be when they grow up. They squinted; they rubbed their own temples; they held their breath. I acted like I was trying to read their minds. We all giggled a little.

After a while, I said: "Okay, here it is..." I pushed a button on a PowerPoint and a phrase emerged: "A Happy Person!"

They all laughed. They knew I was right, but I was still wrong. They had all thought of careers. We talked about a question: Why is it that when people ask us what we want to be when we grow up, we spit out a job?

The Price of Difference

Ever since my boys were born, I have been trying to piece together an accurate picture of what I was like when I was a child. I'm not sure how well I am doing, but I know that some of my success as a dad depends on figuring it out.

In my memory, there doesn't remain a lot of negative stuff. I got teased a little, but that doesn't feel like a big section of the tapestry of my life. I spent a lot of time by myself, but I enjoyed it -- still do. I went through spells of jealousy that I wasn't one of the most popular kids, but, still, I had friends. When I look back, I can see occasions when the door to superficial popularity was opened for me; timidity, not superior logic, saved me from stepping through.

I was a good athlete, but never one of the best -- I was always a "starter" but never really a standout on the field; I got to be either the hero or the goat on several occasions. 

On Valentine's day, in grade school, I got quite a few less Valentines than a lot of the kids (this is before teachers started "protecting" our kids by requiring each student to provide Valentines for everyone), but by high school, I found I got along well with most "groups" of kids. People seemed to like me because I never drew lines around them, especially not boundary lines. I found high school generally insulting and constantly boring (except for English class, where I was allowed to generate my own ideas) and I never wanted to be there after the afternoon bell or after practice was over. I wasn't one of those kids who went to games I wasn't playing in or to any nighttime functions that I could avoid. 

On the whole, I have no real attachment to my high school years, though I am happy to have learned that a few of my classmates, with whom I have recently reconnected, have become extraordinary adults.

Past moments of happiness remain vivid to me. They usually involve solitude and a pair of stereo headphones; or a book; or a blank sheet of paper; or an impossibly silent pine forest at dawn. But they also include summer nights of deep conversation with good friends and the friendships that can only come from making music with others.

That Rush/Genesis Place

Greetings! I come from the Yes/Genesis place!

This has been with me for years, so I might as well work it out. 

Years ago, I was working with a good friend on his film (to which I wrote the score). We were talking about spotting some music and, for some reason, he mentioned, with a hint of ribbing, that he didn't "come from that Yes/Genesis place."

At the time, the comment sort of whisked past me. I wasn't offended, even though I do, in fact, come from that place. I was more intrigued by the statement than anything. This friend is someone I hold in the highest esteem as a thinker and as a writer/director, so, at intervals, over the years, I have been slowly, incrementally, working out that statement.

The Way-Forward Machine

By combining a lot of clock-springs, some cogs and some torn-up poems with a quirky melange of sprockets, love letters, campfire scents, tunes played on bells and crumpled appointment notes and by mounting these things on a metallic scaffold dotted with some shiny buttons and containing a screen that constantly prints and deletes an impressive series of deucedly latinate words, I have created a machine for entering the future. The problem is that this it is a subjective and preferential machine.

See, it only takes the young on journeys and, then, only to their dream careers. What it does is it drops teenagers smack into the middle of their projected desires. It allows them to experience said desire for one month. Thus, they can spend that month as a rock star; as a research scientist; as a novelist, as a doctor; as a priest; as a dancer; as a professional skate-boarder; as a housewife; as a wealthy writer of sonnets; as a tribal chief; a reporter or a linguist . . . anything they can conjure -- any career they wish.

For one month, they can see what it is going to be like.

Fire Bundles

When are we grown-ups ever going to learn? We fret and fret over the things we put before our kids -- what we're doing right and what we're doing wrong -- and we toss and turn, worrying if we're crushing their creativity and initiative; whether the modern world is stealing their hearts away . . .

Of course, when I say "we" I mean "me" -- and maybe you, too?

But this morning, a misty Sunday with the absent sun returning for the first time in days to light up the droplets into diamonds on the grass, the smell of autumn earth as pleasant to me as the scent of a cake in the oven, I heard my smallest boy explaining something to his mother.

He was playing a "Toy Story" game on his fancy-schmancy portable gaming unit, and he was saying, "Mom -- I'm pretending this is "Silly Sheepies" (a show my sons put on with their stuffed animals during their weekend "sleep-overs" together in one of their beds) and they are trying to put Sheepie in the sheep-pound but Sean is trying to rescue them and  . . ."

Little Shadowboxers

My mother always was very much against guns. As a kid, I never had a toy gun, outside of the occasional water pistol. Mind you, I really wanted to have toy guns and I would greedily claim any available weapon at friends' houses before playing "war" or any other violence-based games. At home, though, I was, as they say on the mean streets, without a "piece."

At my wife's house, in her childhood, things were a little different. Toy guns were allowed, as were BB guns in the later years. Legend has it that there was a rifle incident in the back yard of their suburban home that left a tree somewhat worse for wear. Karen grew up with two brothers, both of whom own hunting guns and bows to this day. For the record, neither of them has ever killed a man. (Nor has my wife, to the best of my knowledge.) Both of them are throrougly nice guys and one of them is one hell of a dancer. (Just thought I'd mention that, in light of the wedding I attended last night.)

Whossat?

Thomas Eakins. "The Baby At Play"

The other day, my mother mentioned the first thing I ever said. It was a question: "Whossat?" This was, of course, the closest I could get to "Who's that?"

According to all the stories, I said it every single time I saw someone enter the room, pass the window or drive by in the street. This went on for quite some time. It occurred to me that my first "word" pretty summed up what I would be all about for the rest of my life. It foretold who I was going to be: someone who is preoccupied with figuring out who the people around me are, really -- what makes them do the things they do and feel the things they feel; what moves them; what scares them; what deludes them; what drives them to walk, act, think and dream in certain particular ways.