Put a pencil to my temple, connect it to the syllabus...

The other day I confessed to a colleague that I've been blasting the Hamilton soundtrack in my car all summer (even the parts that leave me helpless) and I'm working nonstop to squeeze the play into my American Lit Survey class next spring, but he got a sour look on his face and said, "I understand that Hamilton is very"--sniff--"popular," in the same tone in which you might say "I understand that bubonic plague is very"--sniff--"uncomfortable" or "I understand that genocide is very"--sniff--"messy."

So okay, it's not every day that I include popular music in a literature class; in fact, last spring's experiment with Nobel-Prize-winning poet Bob Dylan may have been the first time. Students enjoyed that exercise even if I found it less than enlightening, but then I'm not a Dylan fan. Hamilton, though, is a different story--when I find another fan, I just can't shut up about it. You should hear me babbling with my daughter, the music theory expert: I go on and on about narrative structure and how certain phrases gain depth and richness as they recur in different contexts, while she talks about musical structure and how the rhythm reinforces important ideas. I will never be satisfied until some part of Hamilton gets dropped in a forgotten spot on the syllabus.

A few weeks ago I was talking to an English major who's due to take my American Lit Survey next spring and when I mentioned that I'm trying to find a place for Hamilton, her face lit up. When students get that excited about an assignment--well, I want to be in the room where it happens. Fortunately, Hamilton will fit right in with the reading list.

For years my theme for the class has been “Discovering America All Over Again,” which is what American writers were doing after the gaping wound called the Civil War. We look at each new literary movement as an opportunity for authors to explore and expand upon what it means to be an American, watching as the canon opens ever wider to embrace different kinds of voices, a theme that will easily embrace the young, scrappy, and hungry immigrants who get the job done in Hamilton. If I have one chance to capitalize on the popularity of the show, I’m not throwing away my shot.

But how do I include it on the syllabus? I doubt that we'll have access to a filmed version of the play before next spring, and only a few scenes are available online. On the other hand, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s performance of the opening number at the White House Poetry Jam would follow nicely after the Beat poetry section of the syllabus, with its emphasis on poetry as performance. Here’s a thought: assign that early version of the work alongside a video of the finished piece and talk about the fluid connections among poetry, music, storytelling, and drama as an interactive process instead of a set of static categories. Showtime!

The assignment would be popular with students, who don’t often apply the p-word to other authors on the syllabus--Henry James, for instance, or even Toni Morrison. (“Why does the story have to be so long? Why can’t she just tell us what she means?”) Students sometimes say these authors are intense or they’re insane, but that's just because they've never seen a rap battle between Henry James and Toni Morrison about the nature of American literature. If there’s a reason Hamilton’s in line when so many other authors decline in popularity, that would be nothing to (wait for it!) sniff at.

So there it is: a task, a goal, a purpose, a vague idea that needs to be developed into a workable plan. There’s a million things I haven’t done—but just you wait! I’m teaching Alexander Hamilton.

Sometimes you just have to drop back and punt

I was having trouble getting my honors students to discuss Cold Mountain--or even open the book in class--so I stopped what I was doing and made them read. 

Out loud. To each other.

"Pick a passage you consider particularly beautiful," I told them, and they all got really quiet and started thumbing through their books. It took a while before a student got brave enough to break the ice and start reading, but soon the room was humming with Charles Frazier's golden prose.

When they were done, I directed them to the scene in the "naught and grief" chapter where Stobrod and Pangle play fiddle and banjo for the brutal Teague and his henchmen, performing for their lives so passionately that they inspire one of the henchmen to call out, "Good God, these is holy men. Their mind turns on matters kept secret from the likes of you and me." But this plea for the sacredness of beauty falls on deaf ears as Teague gives his men the order to shoot the players in cold blood.

I let that sink in a minute, and then I asked, "What is beauty for?"

We chewed on that question a bit and then moved on to others: Why can't Teague allow music to survive within his private war? What is the function of music, art, and literature in times of suffering? Is it morally questionable to create beauty out of violence and suffering?  Why are we reading a novel about the Civil War when we could get the information more efficiently from a documentary or a history text?

"Because education isn't just about conveying information" is the correct answer. It took a little while, but we got there. I may not have converted the skeptics in the group, the ones who wonder how fiction could have any bearing on their all-important career paths, but at least for a few moments I made them roll some beautiful sentences around in their mouths and think about the power of literature to connect us to "matters kept secret from the likes of you and me."

The duty of creativity

If you're a creative person, says composer Abbie Betinis, "It's not just a nice thing to be--it's your job, and the world needs it."

What the world needs is more Abbie Betinis. 
 
Earlier this week, the young composer appeared with our college's concert choir to discuss the works they were performing and the creative process that led her to compose those works. She pinpointed nine essential characteristics for pursuing the creative life: duty, necessity, persistence, lateral thinking, brain rest, vulnerability, optimism, a sense of play, and daring. Persistence, she said, "helps make the ground fertile for creativity," while optimism provides a way in to the creative world when we tell ourselves "No matter what happens, I'm gonna do it!"

The young composer's love for the canon form was on beautiful display in "Lumen" and "Be Like the Bird" (click here for a sample) as she explained how the canon form allows her to put "the extemporaneousness of play into a fixed form." The canon's spare lines provide harmonic support for each other as they go along, spreading from a simple point to spread out into rich textures that build and grow; in this, she said, canons are like people:  "We all get to support each other--we get to be the harmony for someone else's melody." 

What a gift! But the gift goes on only if others take up Abbie Betinis's challenge to embrace with daring a creative life.   
 

Music that mends the cracks

When composer Jake Runestad addressed an audience of mostly students last night, the first thing he pointed out was that he is not dead. The word composer, he said, might evoke in their minds an image of some long-dead European dude with wild hair and an unpronounceable name, but no: if Runestad is any indication, today's composers wear hip suits and use mousse and emphasize the joy of playing with music.

Runestad's talk, punctuated by glorious performances of some of his works by our college's concert choir, provided abundant evidence that the liberal arts continue to feed spirits even in our hectic information age. His creative process requires mastery of the technological tools that put notes on the page, but those notes spring from long stretches of time devoted to studying and internalizing texts. Most of the works performed last night were settings of poetic works by poets as different as Paul Laurence Dunbar and Wendell Berry--a setting of "The Peace of Wild Things" that made me want to lie down and die right now so the choir can sing it at my funeral.

Runestad draws on works of both established and lesser-known authors; "Dreams of the Fallen," his new work for orchestra, piano, and choir, sets to music poetry by Iraq war veteran Brian Turner. By far my favorite, though, is "We Can Mend the Sky," a choral work based on poetry written by young Somali immigrants to the U.S. (Click here to listen.) The piece opens on a dramatic note, with drums and shifting rhythms creating tension, but it then moves toward a solo expressing deep yearning for peace before developing into a rousing chorus proclaiming "If we come together, we can mend a crack in the sky" performed so joyfully that it made me believe.  

The students, of course, had the most fun singing Runestad's popular "Nyon Nyon," a work composed entirely of gibberish and allowing accomplished singers to break out their amusing mouth-noises. Runestad explained that he wrote that piece as a college student because he just wanted to play around with words and sounds and music. His playfulness, of course, is grounded in a deep understanding of how music works, a willingness to delve into texts until they become a part of his psyche, and an ability to employ technological tools to disseminate the results.

I hope my students heard that message, and I hope they will pursue that highly informed and creative play. But more than that, I hope they will listen to the music and know that the arts are not any more dead than is Jake Runestad.   

Where the music never ends

My soul starved for beauty after a week crammed full of cranky classes and mindless meetings, so I lugged myself, body and soul, to the college choir concert Friday night. About halfway through the choir sang a soothing lullaby that drained the anguish and tension from my being and lulled me into serenity--but then, as the final note dissipated into nothing and the director began to lower his arms, some dimwit's cellphone rang.

And it wasn't a quiet ring, either, but a shattering jangle of obnoxious inanity.

I saw the choir director's neck tense up and knew what he was thinking: Ruined! All that beauty drowned out, overshadowed, deleted, stomped into the mud, ruined ruined ruined!

And to tell the truth, I would have been angry too. Everyone had been asked to turn off their phones, but all it takes is one scofflaw to ruin it for everyone. That's why we can't have nice things!

But you know, it wasn't really ruined. Over time I'll forget about the ringing cell phone, but I won't forget the music that transported me beyond the clanging inanities of life into a realm of pure serenity.

It's still out there, that music, still singing through the wind, and it's still in here sweeping out my soul. Hush! Be still! Maybe you can hear it too.
 

What's opera, doc?

Spending an afternoon at the opera today made me realize that I'm really not doing too badly for a savage raised by wolves.

My people are not opera people. Well, my daughter is an opera person and she's working really hard to help me appreciate good music, but I grew up in a household that tended more toward Johnny Cash than Placido Domingo. I still recall the time a high-school classmate corrected my pronunciation of "Placido Domingo." How was I supposed to know it's not supposed to rhyme with "placebo"?

I've seen some Gilbert and Sullivan but never a real opera all the way through, so when some colleagues formed a carpool to travel an hour north and watch a performance of the Metropolitan Opera's Rigoletto simulcast live in tiny, provincial Zanesville, Ohio, I decided to give it a try. My daughter met me at the theater where we settled into our comfy seats for a high-def, high-class, high-culture experience.

It was pretty good, I think. I'm not really qualified to judge, but if good opera involves colorful costumes, dramatic sets, remarkable voices, and compelling music, then this was good. I would have been lost without the subtitles and I'm annoyed that the Duke got away scot-free at the end, but the time whizzed by quickly and I kept wanting to clap. (But what's the point? The performers are in New York. They can't tell whether we're clapping, stomping, or throwing popcorn at the screen.)

At the end I appreciated one unheralded advantage of having been raised by wolves far from the realm of opera: no one will ever ask me to sing a demanding song in Italian in front of a live audience while lying on my back in the trunk of a car. So there's that. If there's an opera award for Best Performance by a Soon-to-be-Corpse Stuffed in the Trunk of a Classic Car, Diana Damrau ought to get it. 

Just don't ask me to pronounce her name.

Attack of the lounge lizards!

I don't know which is more fun: hearing John Williams's Symphonic Marches performed or reading my daughter's analysis of John Williams's music. Doing both in the same evening is just double the fun.


"Fantasy and Humor in Music" was the theme of the college's fall band concert last night, and I don't recall the last time I laughed so much at serious music. Well, mostly serious. I've never seen a band perform the gargle quite so effectively, and the duck calls were, um, memorable.


Gargling, duck calls, gun shots, falling drums, and other odd sounds appeared in Grand Serenade for an Awful Lot of Winds and Percussion by P.D.Q. Bach. The director said the gargling bit was especially difficult to practice because students kept getting the giggles and spitting water all over the band room.


Also on the program were some circus marches by Karl L. King, Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, the Mars movement from Gustav Holst's The Planets, and Gandalf by Johan de Meij, all performed beautifully. The climax, though, was simply unforgettable: Godzilla Eats Las Vegas by Eric Whitacre.

There were graphics--and oh, what graphics: Godzilla stomping Frank Sinatra. Godzilla stomping Wayne Newton. Godzilla dancing a tango with the sphinx. A horde of Elvises (Elvii!) attacking Godzilla.

And then there was the music. My my my what music. Who knew Godzilla was such a lounge lizard?

What a treat to go straight from hearing terrific music to reading about it. My daughter is working on  her M.A. in music theory and asked for my feedback on some papers, and I have to say that while I don't understand much about music theory or music history or, frankly, music, the papers were a ton of fun to read. I learned why John Williams isn't your ordinary movie music hack, and I always enjoy seeing what terrific writers my kids are.

I know my kids have occasionally heard statements like, "Of course you're a good writer! Your mom is an English teacher!"--as if they would let me write their papers for them. The fact is that I didn't teach them to write, and I've never made a habit of proofreading their papers. I rarely even see a sample of my son's writing, but when I do, I'm impressed. He can write! And so can his sister! Really well!

And that's something to sing about--if only I could carry a tune.

Prankster portfolio

Mystery solved: 16-year-old Nicholas Harrington claims that he and some friends hauled a grand piano to a sandbar in Biscayne Bay in an attempt to create "art for a portfolio in a future college application" (read it here). So young Nicholas could be coming soon to a campus near you!

Which makes me wonder about all those urban legends of undergrads putting cows in the bell tower and Volkswagens on the roof: maybe they weren't pranksters at all. Maybe they were making art.

Water music

The Miami Herald reports that a grand piano has appeared on a sand bar in Biscayne Bay, "at the highest point of the sandbar so that it's not underwater during high tide" (read it and see photos here). Officials have no plans to move the piano "unless it becomes a danger to wildlife or boaters," but how could a little water music hurt anyone? The article tells us that "seagulls can be seen landing on the instrument," but it doesn't reveal what melodies they might be tapping out on the keys. Perhaps seagulls can develop advanced musical skills if offered the opportunity. If you were a seagull, what song would you play?

Ode to ukeleles

Terrific article in the New York Times about the Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain (read it here). The thought of a group of tuxedo-clad Brits playing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on ukeleles is funny enough, but here is my favorite part:

But the high point may have been when the band invited members of the audience to bring their own ukuleles and join in a group rendition of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” part of their aim to spread the joy of ukuleles among the populace. There were more than 1,000 audience ukuleles, by an official count, and even the obviously unschooled joined in by swaying and waving their ukuleles in the air, like blissed-out teenagers wielding lighters at a rock concert.

We need a ukelele orchestra! And I know just the person to start one. Trivia quiz: which MC faculty member is a closeted ukelele aficionado? (Hint: not me.)

A man hears what he wants to hear

I seem to have fallen into a time warp: this morning on the way to work I kept hearing Don MacLean singing "American Pie" in my head for no clear reason, and then in class one of my students turned in a paper that contained an oblique reference to "The Boxer," and since then I haven't been able to dislodge Simon and Garfunkle from my brain.

I seem to have squandered my resistance: will someone please tell me how to say bye-bye to "American Pie"? I am leaving, I am leaving but the the fighter still remains.

The birds & the boys

I was washing dishes last night when I looked out the window and saw a red-bellied woodpecker pecking on my picnic table. It's an old picnic table and I'm not too concerned about damage, but I have to wonder what joy a woodpecker can get out of pecking on furniture. Perhaps the woodpecker sees my picnic table as a buffet of juicy little bugs, which is bad news either for the bird or for the table. Perhaps the bird is trying to hollow out a nest in the leg of the picnic table--a foolhardy pursuit--or perhaps the bird is drumming to attract a mate.

The woodpecker won't explain its motives any more than my 17-year-old son will explain why he regularly drums on furniture. It started when he was about six years old and started using his chopsticks to drum on the dinner table. "We have a percussionist in the family!" I said, but he contradicted me. "I'm not a percussionist," he said. "I'm a drummer."

Millions of paradiddles later, he admits to being a percussionist but he still drums on everything: sofas, chairs, steering wheels, shoes, dinner plates, picnic tables. I doubt that my son is looking for bugs or building a nest--and if he's drumming to attract a mate, I hope he plans to continue drumming for a few more years. But his motives may be more elemental than that: perhaps he drums because that's what drummers do, just as woodpeckers peck because that's what woodpeckers do.

I can live with that. I'm not so sure about the picnic table.

Musical minivan

It's not every day that choirs of angels accompany me on my commute, but I certainly enjoy it when it happens. My daughter's college choir performed locally as part of their spring break concert tour, and we hosted some of the choir members at our house last night. This morning I squeezed six girls and their luggage into my minivan and drove them back to town, a 20-minute trip enlivened by their singing. Even at 7:30 a.m., they sang like angels. Wish I could carry them with me everywhere I go.

Last night's concert was also wonderful, and afterward a little old lady I've never seen before came up and thanked me. Me? What'd I do? "Thanks for sharing your daughter with us." That's about the sweetest thing anyone's ever said to me.

Now I have something to say to those other moms whose daughters sang me to school this morning: Thanks for sharing your daughter with me. They can sing in my car anytime.

Rural rap

This morning my American Lit Survey class looked at Sara Orne Jewett's "A White Heron" and Hamlin Garland's "Under the Lion's Paw," and one of the students suggested that these stories are like two different types of country music: one peppy and perhaps a bit sappy and the other more of a working man's blues. (Which reminds me of the very silly riddle: what happens when you play country music backward? You get your dog back, you get your truck back, you get your wife back...)

My student may be right, but here's my question: why country music? Why don't we have rap music related to rural life? "Under the Lion's Paw" has all the ingredients for a great rap--oppressive landlords, marauding grasshoppers, hopeless homeless people, and the threat of random violence, albeit with a pitchfork--and a "White Heron" rap could go all Freudian about boys 'n' guns, complete with a metaphoric rape of innocence. That's a rap I'd listen to, but who will write it?

Talking drums

My son's hands when they play the drums look fluid and relaxed, as if they're only accidentally involved in the percussive process. The sticks hit the drums crisply, intensely, with incredible precision, but his hands could be waving away a pesky fly.

If you want to see intensity, you have to look at his face: he grimaces, glares, twists and untwists his facial muscles as if they were physically attached to the dancing drumsticks. Most of the time it's an impassive face--unless he's laughing. He laughs often, but his face rarely reveals any other emotion. We all recall the time four years ago when we were driving to the airport for a long-awaited trip and the boy turned to me and said, in a totally deadpan tone, "Mom, it may not be easy to tell, but I'm really excited about this trip." He was right on both counts: he was really excited, but he hadn't taken the trouble to inform his face.

How can a face that is motionless most of the time become so mobile when he plays the drums? The hands look like innocent bystanders, but the face is intensely present, intimately connected to the sounds being beaten from the drums.

And what do those sounds say? His face won't tell--and his hands don't know.

Noteworthy

Here is what sometimes happens in a house full of eclectic talents: the young man is playing Latin riffs on the conga while his sister, just home from college, plays some Andrew Lloyd Webber selections on the piano--and meanwhile upstairs the college girl's boyfriend practices Christmas carols on the accordion for tomorrow's service, occasionally accompanied by the old guy on the harmonica.

And what am I doing while all this music swirls around me? Tap-tap-tapping on the computer keyboard, of course. In a house full of eclectic talents, this just happens to be mine.

Ammo a la mode

A big stack of Christmas music CDs sit next to the CD player upstairs, but they are not merely music. They are ammunition.

Suppose the young man is having trouble motivating himself to get out of bed in the morning, a not uncommon occurrence. Crank up Christmas with the Chipmunks to full blast and before you know it, the young man is stomping into the kitchen to turn it off. It's more fun, though, to annoy the resident bread-baker when he's up to his elbows in bread dough: just put that new Aaron Neville CD on and wait for the falsetto spots. The breadman cringes every time, but he can't adjust those little buttons with bread dough all over his hands.

When it comes to Christmas music, we all love it--most of it--but we also know how to take advantage of each other's dislikes. Right now, for instance, the men are playing a CD that offers them ample opportunities to poke fun at me. Why? Because no matter how many times I'm reminded of the name of the group, I can't remember it, and I always end up calling them something totally inappropriate like "Subterranean Railway." (It's Trans-Siberian Orchestra, but I can say that with assurance only because I just hollered up the stairs to pry that piece of information out of my son, who is seeking revenge for all those times he's been awakened by The Chipmunks.) If you ask me again in an hour, I'll wrinkle my brow and say something like "Not Mannheim Steamroller."

I have the same problem remembering the French phrase used to describe a road that ends in a circular turnaround; I have to run through a whole litany of phrases and then half the time I still can't come up with the right one: coup d'etat, tete a tete, rue morgue, vache du plage, higgledy-piggledy, Perth Amboy...it's useless. I'll remember it an hour from now when I no longer care.

But how can I concentrate on such a minor matter when lovely Christmas music is playing and my taste buds are being treated to warm apple crisp served with vanilla ice cream? I know the word for that: a la mode. Why worry about ammo when we can enjoy apple crisp a la mode?

How many roads?

Last week Jan Freeman tracked down the origin of a particularly egregious bowdlerization of a Bob Dylan song; you can read about it here.

Now, everybody, sing it with me! "How many roads must an individual walk down before you can call them an adult...."

Been there, done that, bought the soundtrack

Today a student in my film class commented on how fantastic life would be if we all had our own soundtracks: everywhere we would go, music would follow, and not just any music but music to express the appropriate mood. Yes, I said, but unless we were all equipped with mute buttons, public gatherings would be cacophanous, with dissonant snippets of music constantly competing for attention.

But wait! This already happens every day--with cell phones! The ringtone is the equivalent of a personal soundtrack expressing information about our lives, our values, and how we feel about the people who call us. I'm waiting for the day when someone makes a movie in which the entire soundtrack consists of little unrelated snippets of music bursting out incongruously--but wait! It's already been done! It's called Moulin Rouge!

Rats. All the great ideas are already taken.

Something's coming

Anyone who spends any time attending high school marching band competitions quickly becomes aware of the West Side Story Rule: at every competition at least one band will feature music from West Side Story. I've been a loyal band parent for seven years now and I have seen many bands take a stab at the music, with results ranging from outrageous to charming to spectacular. Now I love West Side Story; before I was 12 years old I knew all the words to all the songs and I can still sing most of them, albeit off-key--but that doesn't necessarily mean I want to hear a marching band play the music every Saturday from now until November.

It started yesterday at the first competition of the season when a band opened its show with "Something's Coming," long a fixture in the Unsingable Song Hall of Fame--and if its odd intervals and unsettling rhythms make it virtually unsingable, I don't know why anyone would try to march to it. Nevertheless those band members in bulky polyester uniforms with bits of braid and plumed hats obediently charged about the field playing tubas and clarinets and bass drums to "Something's Coming," and then they went on from there. Instead of focusing on songs of conflict, this band selected the more tender love songs from West Side Story; they get points for originality, but I'm not sure how a band is supposed to march to the delicate "I Feel Pretty" without looking like a troupe of dancing hippos.

This band performs in many of the same competitions as my son's band, so I expect to see their show several more times before November--and at some larger competitions, there may be even more bands playing music from West Side Story. After November, I don't care how many bands decide to play music from West Side Story because this season marks the end of my career as a Band Parent. The air is hummin' and something great is comin'--but meanwhile, I've got one more season of West Side Story.