Friday, May 30, 2008

It’s a Long, Long, Road from May to December

As luck would have it, I was going through a bunch of my cds the other day and I rediscovered an album I hadn’t listened to in years, “September Songs: The Music of Kurt Weill.” Weill was German and began writing music in the 1920s until his untimely death in 1950.  His influence is immense; his compositions and recordings are central to any understanding of 20th century music.  He is probably best known for the “Threepenny Opera” with the famous “Mack the Knife” song—a song that has probably been sung by everyone and their brother at some point.  Of interest here is that co-writer, Bertolt Brecht, sang the song too.  Here’s a sample:

Sounds pretty old, no?  But both men were cool beyond words, even if Brecht was a commie.  Over the years Weill’s music has inspired a legion of devotees who want to be a part of his creepy luster.  Some fifty years after Weill’s death Lou Reed took a stab at getting in on this kind of cool.  Now, Lou is just about as cool as there is too.  In the 1960s he co-founded the rock band, The Velvet Underground, and as the story goes, only a couple of thousand copies of their first album were sold, but everyone who listened to it formed their own band.  The man gives new meaning to having no vocal range, and yet conveys everything that needed to be said.  Here’s a sample of a sweet song from the Velvet Underground’s first album about Lou buying something a tiny bit illegal:

Ok, now what happens when Lou decides to cover a Kurt Weill song?  Well, I think it’s sheer bliss.  Reed’s version of “September Song” is so amazing that I hope you stop whatever you’re doing right now, turn up the radio real loud, and just listen to what happens when a song that was cutting edge in the 1930s is updated to be cutting edge today.  The singing, the guitars, the drums, couldn’t be simpler but they really hit the spot.  The song is about lust and regret, about thinking young thoughts as one gets older, about the way to hold onto a moment in time.  In other words, it’s about life.  So as summer comes to Michiana take a listen to what will become of us during these few precious days.

Broadcast by Jonathan Nashel on May 30, 2008
Arts & Entertainment • Customs & Rituals • Women & Men • Permalink • Printer Friendly

Friday, May 23, 2008

Pomp and Happenstance

This blossomy, perfumed time of year is thick with fusty ceremonies—graduations, confirmations, weddings, end-of-the-school-year events that celebrate achievements.  I’ve been thinking about those ceremonies – the glory they stand for … and the actual strangeness of what they often feel like.

I am a teacher by trade, and each spring I urge a straggle of reluctant students to go ahead and fork over the money to participate in the graduation ceremony – to mark publicly those years of hard work. Sure, you have to wear some silly get-up and listen to pompous music and hackneyed speeches that likely recycle the golden theme of commencement not as an ending, but a beginning.  Nevertheless, I want these students to pause, to celebrate their achievements. It should be a profound moment of: “Ta-da!”

So: why do such hyped ceremonies often feel like a great big nuthin’?

Thinking back to my own graduation, what struck me most was the disorienting weirdness.  I wasn’t sure just what I’d achieved, or how I’d been transformed.  I did know that moving my tassel three inches to the left didn’t shake me to my core.  The whole thing wasn’t pomp and circumstancy; it just seemed … happenstancy.

Now, maybe you’re the lucky one who beamed through your graduation, feeling it in your bones; or maybe you wept photogenically through a wedding ceremony, sensing the world about to turn on a new axis.  But for many of us, those Big Meaningful ceremonies are often hollow, estranging.  The high-pressure “what’s next?” of those transitional moments often feels more like the bottom’s just fallen out than a reason to party.

After all, when are big changes ever comfortable?  When our daughters were toddlers, I often heard parents apologize for their screaming offspring at the doors of pre-schools or gates of playgrounds, saying, “Oh, well, little Aiden (or Emma or Conner) has trouble with transitions.” No kidding? Well, who doesn’t?  Most of us prefer the familiar, when we’re in a groove, know what we’re doing, and we’re doing it well.  Most ceremonies, conversely, mark the end of the familiar, and the start of being tossed into a whole new deep end.  Yippee.

We’re no different from other animals. Think of the transition of caterpillar to butterfly, just at the graduation moment when it bursts out of its chrysalis, expecting a diploma.  It should be a glorious, celebratory moment—but if you’ve ever really watched it happen – with the butterfly dangling upside-down, unfolding stickily,—it’s a reminder of how ungainly and disorienting it really is to make big changes—far more bruises and backsliding than pomp and circumstance.

Truly, the moments in our lives that really deserve a brass band and velvet robes and a basso profundo voice saying “Something BIG has happened here!” are most often happenstance, unexpected. Maybe you’ve had the experience of reading a novel or seeing a film that shifts you, profoundly, to another axis – that peoples your interior with ideas or characters that become guides – or cautionary figures – for the rest of your life.  Or maybe you’ve had a conversation with someone that suddenly made your world slide sideways as you questioned your faith – or gained a new sense of it.  Those are moments that warrant pomp and circumstance, but they often pass quietly, despite their transformative legacy.

Now, I know ceremonies are – well, just ceremonial.  They stand for something else, and so the going-through-the-motions is a public way of signaling a more private transition.  The turning of the tassel doesn’t transform a person, any more than a marriage ceremony makes a couple more of a couple.  My partner and I just observed a substantial anniversary, and we refer to the date, quite irreverently, as our “bananaversary,” as a reminder that what marks our connection is not commemorating a ceremony, but the small, happenstance revelations we’ve had that change our orientation to the world.

When you see graduates or freshly marrieds in the coming weeks, then, rather than clapping them on the shoulder with a hearty “Congratulations – and, what’s next?” the best response might be a more tender check-in – a “So – how are you doing?” knowing they might be stumbling, struggling to find fresh footing.  The real moments of celebration – quieter, but more profound—are likely still to come.

Broadcast by April Lidinsky on May 23, 2008
Community • Customs & Rituals • Education • Family & Friends • Permalink • Printer Friendly

Friday, May 16, 2008

A Kid and a Rock

This story is about a kid and a rock.  The kid was about six years old, one of the strays wandering up and down the porches of my inner city street.  His name was DeVonte and he lived with his siblings in the drab rental next door with a disinterested woman he said was his mom.  Devonte’s upper lip seemed always smeared with snot.  Last November he showed up on my porch with the usual stained t-shirt and bare feet but this time the snot was thick and green with a rattling cough.  I marched him back over to his house and banged on the door.  A slack-faced woman shuffled up behind the plastic but all I’m seeing is her stained t-shirt and the green snot on her upper lip.  “He’s cold,” I say.  She jerks him inside screaming “What the f*** did I tell you about goin’ outside now git your motherf***’in a** upstairs!” That was the kid.

The rock was a concrete footing from an old clothesline post I’d dug out.  Not the usual cement plug but a monstrous thing that had heaved up out of the ground on a chain behind my car.  It was as big as poverty, ugly as racism, and way too big to move.  The guy must have had extra concrete lying around that day.  I studied it, got my 8 pound sledge and gave a mighty swing.  A tiny chip just clicked off the side of the house.

Then a little voice behind me said, “Whatcha’ doin?” It was the kid, looking through my gate.  “Nothing,” I said.  “I help?” the kid said, already inside.  He picked up the sledge and nearly fell over backwards.  I came back with a hammer, “What dat?” he said.  “A hammer,” I said.  He lifted it with both hands, and dropped it on the rock.  Clink.  OK, I give up.  But he picked it up again.  Clink.  And again.  By dusk, he had a little handful of concrete chips.

Next evening I came home and there’s the kid, squatting on the rock and whacking it with the hammer.  A speck flew up and hit him right in the eye.  He rubbed it and I got out the safety glasses.  “Wear these,” I said.  He put them on and grinned, just as that woman’s voice came shrieking from next door.  “Devonte!  Get the f*** back over here before I kick your motherf***’in a**!” “Are you okay over there?” I said.  He just handed me the hammer and shuffled off.

But every night I come home, the kid is hammering on the rock.  He’s like a little John Henry.  Small stones dislodged and fell to the dirt but then larger ones emerged, and eventually the worst one of all: a granite field stone the size of a pumpkin embedded in there till the end of the world.  “This is hard,” he said.  “Yeah, it is,” I said, watching the woman glare at me from hell.

I left town for vacation.  Two weeks.  I was carrying an armload of sleeping bags back around the house when I stopped.  The concrete monster was gone.  Just a circle of rock dust in its place, littered with stones and in the center, the big granite pumpkin.  I smiled.  He did it.  Dang.  I’m going to go hug that kid.  Buy them both a pizza or something.

I went over but the door was open and the house was vacant.  Just a filthy mattress, Burger King trash, and a big flatscreen rental TV.  They’d disappeared.  Off the grid of the school corporation, child protective services, church youth groups.

I think about that kid every time I see the big pumpkin-sized granite stone now sitting in the center of my garden.  I don’t know if he’s ok.  But I know one thing.  I’d hate to be whatever big thing gets in his way.  Because that kid’s got a hammer swingin’ in his heart that would make Sonny Liston run and hide.

Broadcast by Jeff Nixa on May 16, 2008
Community • Home & Garden • Work • Permalink • Printer Friendly
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A random selection from more than 300 Michiana Chronicles -- refresh the browser to see another set:

Joe Chaney -- Jump Ball at the Hoosier Primary / More essays by Joe

Louise Collins -- More essays by Louise

April Lidinsky -- Pomp and Happenstance / More essays by April

Jonathan Nashel -- It’s a Long, Long, Road from May to December / More essays by Jonathan

Jeff Nixa -- A Kid and a Rock / More essays by Jeff

Ken Smith -- More essays by Ken

Jeanette Saddler Taylor -- True to Type / More essays by Jeanette