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.

The Hobbit and the Fruit Bowl

Peter Jackson, director of The Lord of the Rings movies, is not one to let the grass grow under his technological feet. (Hair on top, I'm not sure about.) We already know this, based on the extraordinarily impressive effects in his trilogy. But now, it seems, he has screened parts of the upcoming movie The Hobbit at 48 frames-per-second, twice the speed of the traditional 24 frames-per-second and the reactions were mixed. It seems some people thought the movie just looked too real.

Isn't that interesting? What is even more interesting is that we seem to be sort of alluding to an old debate about art. Is this the new objection to "representational art"? Is Jackson giving us echoes of the perfectly and photographically-rendered bowl of fruit? (As you probably know, many fine artists think photographic-looking art is not art -- that the art comes out of the interpretation of the image. For one example, you might think of the impressionists.) We'll have to see.

The Smiling Assault

I think that I have mentioned before how much I hate formality – dressing up, sitting up straight, etc. But that doesn’t change the fact that it occurred to me, the other day, that a renewal of good, old-fashioned formality might just be the thing that can save our world from the groupthink, individual-suffocating vortex it is swirling down into.

We need to function in groups, right? It is, at times, essential for survival. So, we move into cities; we make organizations; we form “teams” and “think-tanks” and “committees” and “task-forces” for stuff.  We can all see the usefulness of working in a group. If we don’t see it, we at least have to admit that we are generally forced to, regardless of our perspectives.

The problem begins when individuals of the group begin to melt into each other. I think formality might be at least part of the remedy for this.

My wife, Karen, is a nurse. I used to joke about the fact that she referred to the doctors she worked with by their first names.  I used to ask her, “What happened to ‘yes, doctor; right away, doctor’” – the good old days when nurses called doctors “doctor” and the doctors called nurses “nurse”?

As a guy who is still a little uncomfortable with being called “Mr. Matarazzo,” even though I hear it a thousand times a day, my immediate reaction to informality between doctors and nurses  is: Good. Cut out the bull – we’re all equal. Formality, schmormality.

Playing Jesus

When I was a boy, I would watch Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth around Easter -- back when they would show it on one of the networks as a "miniseries." Back when we still knew the fun of waiting for something to come on TV -- the joy of anticipating something we couldn't instantly access online. (And while we're at it, get off my lawn, you kids!)

Over the Easter break from school, my wife and I sat down to start Jesus of Nazareth on video (alas) with our sons. We are watching it in about hour-long sections. They're enthralled. The philosophical questions are flying. Woe to my sons' theology teachers, that's all I can say.

For me, watching this film is another of those time-warps. In the first place, I had a really cool experience with the music, this time. As a kid and as a "wannabe" composer, I was always enthralled by Maurice Jarre's score -- especially Christ's theme. If you are interested, this is it:

River and Pond

We accept stuff all the time; we just sit back and take a "that's the way it is" attitude.

Gradgrind and Bounderby

I hate that. I also hate the fact that in order to break away from that "that's the way it is" situation, we wind up having to be less like salmon swimming upstream than like goldfish trying to swim up into a full-blasting fire hose.

But "that's the way it is" doesn't mean "the way it is" is okay. It might be insurmountable, but that doesn't make it right.

For instance, we all have to work. "That's the way it is." We all get subjected to grueling days of hard work and job-related stress. Lunch just ain't free. That's all there is to it.

But there is something really wrong about this.

Last night, my eight-year-old son was having a hard time with his allergies. He's got them pretty bad. He was coughing and sneezing in bed. He also doesn't like when his brother, in the bunk below him, falls asleep first. It makes him feel lonely . . .