Lark or Nightingale? (Who Cares?)

As I get older, I become more aware of a feeling of alienation. The paradigms that were once familiar seem to disintegrate. The things that would have been "outrageous" become "no big deal." I suppose this is natural, to some extent, but I can't help feeling that people of my generation have seen quicker and more extreme shifts in mores, morals and societal concept than many others in human history.

So it goes, I suppose.

Still, sometimes it's hard to adopt an "it is what it is" attitude -- especially when I think a change I see is insane. Or potentially harmful.

My son, who is thirteen, just related a story to me about what he had heard about a friend's behavior at a "sleepover." It was nothing outrageous. Just a slightly gross practical joke; the boy had put his socked foot into the mouth of a sleeping friend. The sleeping friend, I learned, however, was a girl.

Parents are allowing their daughters, at the age of thirteen, to "sleep over" at the homes of boys of the same age. Absolutely absurd, in my opinion. If you disagree with me, you really might as well not say anything, because my belief is unwavering on this one: it is foolish and irresponsible to allow teenaged kids of the opposite sex to spend unsupervised time together overnight.

An exasperated Facebook friend, when I posted about this, suggested that this is all a byproduct of the "new genderless society." What a sad idea. But she has a point. The lines between the sexes are becoming more and more...dotted.

I do find it interesting that young people, in recent times, seem to play in groups of both sexes. I never played with girls when I was a kid. My sons have two very nice girls that they play with. In the high school in which I teach, there are groups of good friends composed of girls and boys and their friendships often seem very sweet. I have to wonder, though, if the lack of conceptual separation is such a good thing.

I like the way I saw girls as I was growing up. They seemed mysterious to me; a better class of people, in some ways. They walked in a glow of bright colors and enchanting scents and they shared secret jokes that just were not for boys to hear. They were poetry and we were prose. They were melody and we were rhythm. My mother taught me the usual things: respect, honor and all that. My dad exemplified how to be a gentleman (talk about your anachronistic ideas...).

What I like, sadly, isn't that important, in the grand scheme. But, in a recent conversation with a friend of a younger generation, she mentioned that she was always the "friend" of a boy who would say: "I wish I could find a girlfriend like you." And she would think (if she was interested in the boy): "So...what about me?" Alas...

...the friendly familiarity they shared had erased (or somehow disqualified) the romantic dynamic.

When young ladies spend the night with young men, the dynamics become, at least, the dimming of the sparkle of mystery, or, at worst -- and most potentially costly -- the passions of proximity. True, Romeo and Juliet do not exactly serve as models of self-control and rationality, but what poetry would the Bard have conceived about two teenagers who hook up at a sleepover?  With their parents snoring away upstairs?

ROMEO: "Lark or nightingale? What difference doth it make? Thy parents will cook us breakfast or a midnight snack."

Quite a bit more prosaic. I don't want my son's lives to be prosaic.

Is It Still Okay to Prefer?

Is saying what you prefer the same as saying that the things you don't prefer are wrong? I never thought so, but everyone else seems to think so.

Saying what you prefer is not necessarily a value judgment. We live, however, in a world that is just waiting to judge and that immediately dismiss anyone with an opinion that does not fit the groupthink positions that it attempts to force everyone into. The result is that people don't say what they think -- or even what they prefer for fear of a figurative mob lynching.

For instance, I do not prefer women who are "tough" in the traditionally masculine sense. I prefer more traditionally feminine women. There are some who would love to label me a sexist for this and there are others who would try to gently explain to me that I just don't really understand how I am contributing to a social structure that is designed to keep women subordinate. While I appreciate their attempts at educating the ignorant, white, middle-aged male that I am, I respectfully submit that they should pack up their radio talk-show acquired bag of sociological observations and beat it.

As a heterosexual man, I find no attraction to, say a Ronda Rousey. She is a beautiful woman, but I do not prefer women who beat up people. This ability she has is, athletically, impressive, but it is not a quality I prefer in a woman. Her profession and hearing her talk about beating up her opponents are enough to destroy any chance of my having been attracted to her. (Like she cares.)

Notice that I have not once said that it's not okay for her to fight or for women to act any way they see fit. While I don't have a right to condemn or stop their behavior, I have every right not to prefer it.

There are lot of other preferences I have that would serve to illustrate my point, but the one above popped into my head after having seen a video of Rousey talking trash about an opponent in between montages of her posing in bikini.

And, you know what? I think, even in the traditional sense, that women are and always have been every bit as "tough" as men. That doesn't mean we all have to be "tough" in the same way. I prefer for men and women to be different -- equal but different. This is not the same as asserting that the world is getting it wrong; just that it is getting it the way I don't like it to be.

Three Days With Milton and Henry

On long car rides, my sons will typically ask to play their music on the stereo. I like that, because it kind of leans against the old cliche of the kid slipping away from his outer world into the insulation of ear buds or headphones. And for me, as a dad, sharing music is every bit as important as sharing meals as as family. (My older son's epiphany on one car ride: "Dude! Music sounds so much better on speakers...)

Framed in a picture, it is still pretty Renaissancy.
King Henry VIII getting the party started
with Queen Catherine of Aragon

On the way home, yesterday, from a three-day family jaunt into Pennsylvania, I stopped for gas on a rustic state road in Manheim. As we headed off toward the PA Turnpike, my younger son -- he's eleven -- asked to put his music on. He'd selected a film score play list of the masterful John Williams and of the less-masterful-but-still-pretty-good Harold Shore. I was pleased. both with my son's taste and with the "score" to our scenic car ride.

[Speaking of my son's taste in music, which is not typical for an eleven-year-old, he once got angry when Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" came on in the car. What angered him was Gilmour's solo: "Why do they have to ruin everything with the sound of some fake instrument that's all loud and obnoxious." I believe he may have been channeling my dear-departed father, and I was both pleased and displeased (I love Gilmour's playing) -- but more the former than the latter. The boy loves orchestral music!]

My younger son cheering on a battle
in his newly-acquired medieval hood. 

As the sun started to set, we traveled, heading home through the rolling green hills of what is a truly beautiful state. When the Shire theme in the Lord of the Rings soundtrack played, my older son pointed out that "they could have filmed The Lord of the Rings here -- the Shire parts." He was right. It was a beautiful setting and I was more than happy to drive along the the orchestral strains of Harry Potter and LotR and to think back over the previous three days...

Day one was the "PA Renaissance Faire," which I now go to just for the boys, who enjoy it, especially my older son who is now amassing quite a collection of historic weaponry. (A few years go, we bought him a handmade Welsh longbow -- he and I like to do target archery together -- and this year, he became the proud owner of a working, handmade crossbow.)

The Renaissance Faire has fallen far. Very far. In fact, if not for the boys, I would never go again. When I went twenty years ago, it was very much an escape -- it felt like a journey back to Renaissance England. I was never a dresser-upper or very much of the Dungeons and Dragons set -- though, to be honest, I have played -- but I remember the quiet historicity of the place. I remember the gravel "streets" of the town (now asphalt) and the actors who'd wander and engage the visitors (the actors have since become performers) and I remember the efforts to keep the place an experiment in Renaissance re-creation. Dollars were called "pounds" (though I don't think they were using pounds sterling in the Renaissance...) and turkey legs were called "mutton legs" and they were one of the few things available to eat. Every vendor did a decent British accent (in fairness, most of them sounded like poor Scottish brogues, but that was okay -- they were really trying) and the expectations on the employees were high. In fact, one day, I saw a girl I had been in a band with in one of the stage shows. She saw me and directed me to meet her behind the stage area. This was because she wanted to talk to me without an accent and she would have gotten in trouble if she'd been seen. Even the guys who directed the car-parking wore costume and did accents back then. There was no amplification and no recorded music played anywhere. If you had to use a credit card to buy something big, the characters referred to it as "Master Card or Lady Visa."

My favorite: "Wildcat,"against the green of Pennsylvania. 

This is all out ye olde window, now. Only the performers are in costume and hamburgers and fries, as well as cheap plastic weapons abound. None of the vendors even try anymore. Sure, the shows are fun to watch and the jousts are just as cool (despite the recorded strains of the Skyrim music having replaced three trumpets and a tympani player) but it is no longer an escape. It's a theme park. I'm glad the boys like it, but I wish they could have seen it in ye olden days. (Though, if you go, do go see the bowyer and her partner. They are one of the last bastions of historicity in the joint.)

After a long day, it was a sunset ride into the delightful town of Hershey for a stay in the sprawling Hershey Lodge and for a few days in the amusement park. We all like roller coasters; what can I say? (Here's my roller coaster/life theory from before, if you're interested. I still feel the same.)

The smoke stacks of the old Hershey
factory with the excellent wooden coaster
"Thunder and Lightning" in the foreground.

The town of Hershey was the classic factory town, built for and around the workers; even the amusement park, itself, was originally created by Milton S. Hershey as a recreation place for the workers. Now, it is simply an amusement park near the Hershey factory and it's not the factory town it used to be, but it is still a nice place to visit. The park is beautiful, unlike ones nearer to us, in New Jersey, like Six Flags "Great Adventure" park. Hershey park has plenty of trees and shade and it has a feel of being "settled in" and welcoming, unlike Great Adventure, that seems to have slapped up some rides for the sake of rides. Maybe it's the history aspect, but Hershey feels like a place to be, not a place to visit. The visitors at Hershey are also generally more civilized than at other places, too, but some make you wonder...

Farenheit, which I rode twenty
minutes after eating eggs Benedict
-- with nary a retch. Now who's a man? 

...like the kids -- aged around, maybe 10-15 -- who were yelling "Oh my f#($*%& God" at the top of their lungs while waiting for a ride to start and who, as we left the ride, were "skating" with their sneakers on the wet pavement, bumping past people and walking over to the duck food dispensers and violently yanking on the mechanisms like...well, like animals. Like untamed animals.

I have tried, over the past years, not to be too critical of kids who are rambunctious. I believe bad kids can grow up to be good people and I even believe my kids may be too well behaved; that we have been a bit too strict with regulating their public behavior. I openly admit that. But to raise children who behave with absolutely no comportment or sense of propriety or regard for those around them is just wrong; in fact, it is socially irresponsible. Well, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't hoping one of the sneaker-skating brats would have hit a dry patch on the pavement and taken a header onto his teeth, so I won't say that...

Then, we went up into the "Kissing Tower" -- a revolving circular cabin that rises up to some three-hundred feet to give passengers a good view of the surrounding area and, along with the ride, you get a recorded lesson about the history of the town. It would have been interesting, if I could have heard it over the incessant, self-centered babbling of the people around me. (I am sorry for being perhaps a bit curmudgeonly, but...people used to listen to stuff like that when I was a kid and it kills me when people talk over it. )

Other than that, though, the people at the park were so much better than the Jersey crowd.

Driving home, though, through the twilight and to the backdrop of the lazy summer strings of Shore's beautiful Shire theme, I felt the peace that comes with having gone and seen and having spent each day's energy in pursuit of nothing but entertainment. Three days of that is plenty, though, but it was all worth it if only for the rare fun and comfort of nights in a hotel room with the entire family, the grownups reading  by the overhead bed lights and the youngins lying in their beds either reading or softly giggling and whispering over the beeps and blips of their handheld games.

[By the way -- I learned, on a placard in the park, that, in one work week, today, the Pennsylvania Turnpike sees more traffic than is did during the entire year of 1941. Crazy.]

PA sunset on Route 322. 

From Leaning Bricks to Flying Buttresses

I will start with this statement: Technical complexity or even technical facility are not necessarily the measuring sticks for artistic quality. Simple art can be beautiful; a technically limited artist can do a good thing.

Cathedral builder. 

Usually, though, great art is both complex and technically sound.

Now that I have said that, I have to voice my frustration as a guy who has spent his life in pursuit of musical excellence: being a musician in a world of non-musicians can be incredibly frustrating. The reason for this is that the average person understands so little about music; music is a mystery to most in a way that visual art, literature, theater and even dance are not. The average person understands the core of what is happening with these arts. Music is more ethereal.

A good comparison, in terms of my incredulity about the music that impresses the non-musician, would be this:

It's like being an architect who knows how to design cathedrals who sees a group gathered around a man. The  crowd is agape with appreciation; they titter about how great the man's architectural sense is; how innovative his work is; how great his accomplishment is. When the architect gets close enough, he looks at the man's work and sees that the fellow has taken two bricks and leaned one against the other. The architect knows this is nothing, but the crowd does not; they are amazed and mystified.

Of course, this would never happen, because people understand enough about architecture -- they, after all, live in buildings -- to see that leaning one brick on another is no big deal. People do not, however, generally understand enough about music to make this distinction. (If you can't tell me the notes in a C Major chord, you can't even lean two bricks together.)

Brick leaner. 

This is not to say that I haven't enjoyed the aesthetic of a brick leaning upon a brick. I often like music that is simple. Again, complexity is not the only measure of artistic worth. But it is frustrating to think so much about craft and to learn so much over a lifetime just to see work with less dedication and/or craft get equal or greater recognition than more adept work.

I know many feel that no one has the right to say what is great and what is bad when it comes to art. We all just like what we like. Okay. I can't stop anyone from liking something, no matter how aenemic I might think it is. The problem is, though, that I know if people understood even a little about music they would probably quickly change their opinions.

Imagine you finished running a marathon and everyone ignored you in favor of a perfectly healthy guy who walked across the room to toss his soda cup into the trash. I've  already gone through hundreds of pairs of running shoes, so...

Taken: Sublime Simplicity

Last night, as a result of my older son's beseeching, we re-watched the movie Taken, with Liam Neeson.

Only limited spoilers coming, so don't worry. You know from previews that Neeson's character is a retired special agent and his daughter is taken by sex traffickers while she is on holiday in Paris. Neeson (now famously), tells one of the abductors, over the cell phone:

"I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career -- skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you; I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you; I will find you, and I will kill you."

It occurred to me, last night, how good it is to watch a film whose morality is so black and white and whose protagonist is so perfect at what he does. When he delivered those lines last night, I found myself welling up. 

If you do it the right way, it is hard to be a "real man." Being a real man is defined many different ways and, as you might expect, my definition contains a lot more than being able to go around -- as an Amish woman in Witness describes it to Harrison Ford's character --"whacking people," but that definition of mine does contain toughness. But, to be able to have full and unfaltering confidence in your ability to "whack people" who try to hurt your child...? That's just sublime. 

Sure -- to be that guy is a fantasy. It's a movie after all...but, what a fantasy. It's a Rocky thing: an ideal of traditional manhood stripped to the primal. All dads want to protect their families from harm. The difference between all dads and Neeson's character is that all dads have doubts and weaknesses. It's nice to wade in the pool of total confidence, if only for two hours.

It's also nice to watch a film in which the character is not conflicted or morally questionable. Again, it is an escape from reality; real people are morally conflicted and questionable at times and my fiction writing teachers spent years reminding me not to write characters who are all good. I suppose, also, it can be argued that anyone who kills as many people as Neeson does in that film can't be all good, but, when he steals cars or kills people, it is in order to stop his daughter from being sold into forced prostitution. That's a pretty good argument for "crossing the line," if you ask me. 

When I watch Indiana Jones shoot a guy who is showing off by flipping around a sword he intends to kill him with, I think, Hmm. That was questionable, if very darkly comical. When I see Liam Neeson electrocute a guy who abducted, drugged and sold his teenaged daughter, I smile the smile of the guiltless and I sleep just fine.  

Taken is a heck of a dad-catharsis. We need stuff like that from time to time. Not everything  can be Pride and Prejudice, nor should it.