I was caused to introspect today, in part because I finished a book that I have been reading for the last week or so. I usually read just before going to sleep, but the author captured my imagination so much last night that I had to finish the book today. It was a tough read; about 300 pages after the 230 I had already put away. I am an inveterate reader; I have been since I was a child. Of the books that I have in my library, I think that it is safe to say that I have read 95% of them. There is something wonderful about watching another mind work until, of course, the story becomes so fascinating that the read becomes vicarious living, as did the final half of this book.
I write as well as read. I think that some people have concluded that I write because I love the sound of my fingers pattering away on my keyboard. Hence, both the length and the unintelligibly of my pieces. The truth is that I think that I have meaningful things to say, perhaps even unique things to say, and I wish to preserve them. I started out by producing reference books. I did many of these. After composing my 1200-page doctoral dissertation, I began a project of research that ended up as an eleven-volume glossary of J.R.R. Tolkien's invented languages. Since I could not remember for very long any one of the entries, I put each linguistic element into a computer file and eventual printed them all off. The main set of seven volumes can be found in libraries all over the world, even though there are less than 200 copies of the work. It is a wonderful thing to walk into a major library where my books are prominently displayed and recognize them for what they are.
I compilied other reference works after that, having to do with my professional pursuits. Again, there was a relatively small audience, but it tickled me every time I walked into a room where one of these rare volumes was shelved.
I have written poems and short stories, some of which have actually seen the light of day, published by people other than myself. I am grateful when editors have understood and valued my take on a notion. I have delivered papers in conferences throughout the United States, in Canada, and Great Britain, many of which have been published by appreciative audiences and societies. A Google of my full name will produced a list referencing about half of what I have done during the past fifty years. The results of this sort of search will produce a six to ten-page printout. I have thought myself fortunate to have lived in a day where I can write about blood diseases, art, music, and scriptures and have those ruminations be accessed by hundreds of people located in more than fifty nations around the world. It is easy to get just a little giddy thinking about the potential. However, my reading today snapped my emotional chain just a little.
Joseph Fort Newton, a prominent Mason, has stated,
"Time is a river and books are boats. Many volumes start down that stream, only to be wrecked and lost beyond recall in its sands. Only a few, a very few, endure the testings of time and live to bless the ages following. Tonight we are met to pay homage to the greatest of all books--the one enduring Book which has traveled down to us from the far past, freighted with the richest treasure that ever any book has brought to humanity. What a sight it is to see five hundred men gathered about an open Bible- -how typical of the spirit and genius of Masonry, its great and simple faith and its benign ministry to mankind."
I read a portion of this quote in Dan Brown's latest novel "The Lost Symbol", the book that I finished today. Dan only quoted the first three sentences in Newton's opening paragraph and was intent on making a point just a little different from that of its author. I thought that it was important that you feel the spirit of the original. I am not a Mason, but I know a great deal about its history. I have had close friends who were Masons, others who were members of the Eastern Star, DeMolay, and Job's Daughters. They invariably have been good people with high standards in their dealings with their fellow men. All of these observations about Freemasonry, however, constitute an unavoidable aside.... Pardon me for that.
After reading John Fort Newton's quote in Brown's book, I think that I had a bit of a reality check. I projected myself fifty years into the future. Which, if any, of my scribblings will remain among the children of men? Some of my works are nicely bound, but I am afraid that they will not endure the ravages of time. Time and again I have been reminded of this fact and yet I am inclined to forget it. I cannot bear the reality. In the end, the ruminations and philosophies of men, mine included, will fade on brittle paper, crumble and fall away into the elements from whence they come. Who in this world would see to the copying of anything that I have written? I have concluded that probably no one in their right mind would do so.
If my writing will not endure beyond a generation, what will be the significance of my life, the things that I have learned for myself, ideas that I wished to instill in the hearts and minds of other? I would like to believe that they are worthwhile, that I am worthwhile, that every sentient being on this planet is worthwhile. I have concluded that there is only one thing that can be done. I have shared as a parent; I have taught as a teacher. These I have done with joy; I may still do so in the venues left to me. If I have done well, something of myself has been imparted, one candle lighting another, that candle perhaps eventually igniting the wicks of hundreds of other candles. The only mortal legacy that we have to offer is a little point of light, a solitary life, one flickering flame that with a little effort can be the means of driving the darkness from this lost and fallen world.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
Where Everyone Else Has Gone Before
Saturday, Trillium and I went to see Star Trek at the dollar theater. In some respects, this was a first for me. I had seen all of the other Star Trek movies within the first or second showing of the films on the first day of their release. I am a Trekkie! So what! The fact that I did not see the movie during the first week (as did my two sons) did not particularly distress me. I thought "Good for them; good for me!"
In preparation for Saturday's jaunt, I had watched all of the Original Series (all 79 episodes)and first six of the Star Trek movies. What a waste of time! The opening scene of the movie saw to that. The dingbat Romulans and Spock obviated any advantage that I might have otherwise gained in the enjoyment of the movie. The whole Star Trek universe had its reset button pushed and everything, just about everything worth knowing about Star Trek trivia, was dumped into the trash can. Was I upset? Not at all. Now the boys at Paramount can do anything they want, assuming that anyone would be interested in a newly created worldview of the 23rd century. Most Trekkies like to argue about the sharpness of the blade of Kodos the Executioner and how many tribbles can dance on the head of a pin. All that is mercifully behind us now.
My hesitancy to going to the theater in the first place was borne out shortly after the previews began. The sound was loud, disruptive, and the dialogue was almost impossible to distinguish from any other sound effect going on. When I buy the DVD, I will sit down in the family room and suit myself as to the auditory intensity. I walked out of the theater somewhat more stunned than entertained.
Having said all of the foregoing, did I like the story? Not bad! The new actors have not yet become endearing, probably because they could all be my grandchildren. The fellow that played Doctor McCoy, Karl Urban, worked, however, even though they had him saying some really cheesy lines that only DeForest Kelley should have spoken. His personality worked, as did his mild southern accent. I was intensely amused by the series of events that supposedly gave him the nick-name "Bones".
Zachary Quinto's Spock was okay. A little too emotional, I suppose, but that was an integral part of the story. It took a long time for Leonard Nimoy to settle into the part that made him a SciFi icon. Nimoy really didn't have him down until the first movie. The charm in this piece, though probably the most disturbing, was the love interest between Spock and Uhura. That was really inexplicable, but worked nonetheless. It was certainly better than the unnerving romance between Scotty and Uhura that took place on Bill Shatner's watch in the fifth movie.
Chekov and Sulu were hard to picture, but the accents worked, sort of. Sulu's hand-to-hand combat joke worked, not once but twice. Who knew the Romulans were packing blades? Scotty was funny, but not in the James Doohan way. That was a breath of fresh air. Bruce Greenwood's Christopher Pike was the stable focus of the movie; great casting, good acting. Spock's parents didn't work for me, probably because I liked Mark Leonard so much as the quintessential Vulcan.
The Kirk persona must have been deeply troubled by his father's death at the hands of the Romulans. I had great difficulty trying to equate the two Kirk's. And I thought that the depiction of the reprogramming of the Kobayashi Maru scenario was sophomoric and not nearly as clever as it should have been. The Kirk of TOS would have been far more subtle and devious. As a treatise on a young man crawling back from a series of social and academic blunders, I thought that the story worked, but it was not James Tiberias Kirk.
Casting Zoe Saldana as Nyota Uhura was a stroke of pure genius and was completely in keeping with the casting of female actresses throughout the Original Series. She had Nichelle Nichols' edge as well and her persona would have persuaded any red-blooded American boy in the 23rd century to study linguistics.
Will the boys at Paramount come up with another movie? Could be, but I hope that the characters settle down a little.
In preparation for Saturday's jaunt, I had watched all of the Original Series (all 79 episodes)and first six of the Star Trek movies. What a waste of time! The opening scene of the movie saw to that. The dingbat Romulans and Spock obviated any advantage that I might have otherwise gained in the enjoyment of the movie. The whole Star Trek universe had its reset button pushed and everything, just about everything worth knowing about Star Trek trivia, was dumped into the trash can. Was I upset? Not at all. Now the boys at Paramount can do anything they want, assuming that anyone would be interested in a newly created worldview of the 23rd century. Most Trekkies like to argue about the sharpness of the blade of Kodos the Executioner and how many tribbles can dance on the head of a pin. All that is mercifully behind us now.
My hesitancy to going to the theater in the first place was borne out shortly after the previews began. The sound was loud, disruptive, and the dialogue was almost impossible to distinguish from any other sound effect going on. When I buy the DVD, I will sit down in the family room and suit myself as to the auditory intensity. I walked out of the theater somewhat more stunned than entertained.
Having said all of the foregoing, did I like the story? Not bad! The new actors have not yet become endearing, probably because they could all be my grandchildren. The fellow that played Doctor McCoy, Karl Urban, worked, however, even though they had him saying some really cheesy lines that only DeForest Kelley should have spoken. His personality worked, as did his mild southern accent. I was intensely amused by the series of events that supposedly gave him the nick-name "Bones".
Zachary Quinto's Spock was okay. A little too emotional, I suppose, but that was an integral part of the story. It took a long time for Leonard Nimoy to settle into the part that made him a SciFi icon. Nimoy really didn't have him down until the first movie. The charm in this piece, though probably the most disturbing, was the love interest between Spock and Uhura. That was really inexplicable, but worked nonetheless. It was certainly better than the unnerving romance between Scotty and Uhura that took place on Bill Shatner's watch in the fifth movie.
Chekov and Sulu were hard to picture, but the accents worked, sort of. Sulu's hand-to-hand combat joke worked, not once but twice. Who knew the Romulans were packing blades? Scotty was funny, but not in the James Doohan way. That was a breath of fresh air. Bruce Greenwood's Christopher Pike was the stable focus of the movie; great casting, good acting. Spock's parents didn't work for me, probably because I liked Mark Leonard so much as the quintessential Vulcan.
The Kirk persona must have been deeply troubled by his father's death at the hands of the Romulans. I had great difficulty trying to equate the two Kirk's. And I thought that the depiction of the reprogramming of the Kobayashi Maru scenario was sophomoric and not nearly as clever as it should have been. The Kirk of TOS would have been far more subtle and devious. As a treatise on a young man crawling back from a series of social and academic blunders, I thought that the story worked, but it was not James Tiberias Kirk.
Casting Zoe Saldana as Nyota Uhura was a stroke of pure genius and was completely in keeping with the casting of female actresses throughout the Original Series. She had Nichelle Nichols' edge as well and her persona would have persuaded any red-blooded American boy in the 23rd century to study linguistics.
Will the boys at Paramount come up with another movie? Could be, but I hope that the characters settle down a little.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Precious
I have been a fan of Alexander McCall Smith for a good many years. Like many readers, I was introduced to his prose through “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency”, but I have since consumed much of his other publications as well. The Botswana series is consistently delightful. The characters are endearing, filled with genuine sentiments, simple in an exalted way. I thought that the other series would bring as much pleasure as the first. In some respects that has been true.
The protagonist of “The Sunday Philosophy Club”, Isabel Dolhousie, is not nearly as charming as Precious Ramotswe, not nearly as innocent, nor is she filled with the same sort of joi d’vivre. She is, however, a moral philosopher and therefore the narrative of each novel is filled with an exploration of moral dilemmas, usually on an extremely personal level. I am afraid that some of Isabel’s moral choices disturb me, but I suppose that was McCall Smith’s intent. The application of moral values is far more difficult a process than the mere discussion of them. A discussion frequently becomes heated; the application frequently is humbling.
The “44 Scotland Street” series is considerably less-high flown than “The Sunday Philosophy Club”. The female protagonist is considerably younger than those in the first two series, a young woman still pursuing her education at the University of Edinburgh. The delight in this series revolves around the eccentricities of the other characters in the story. The twenty-year-old Pat MccGregor seems to be the only normal person in her world. Everyone else is wonderfully odd. I suspect that every personality quirk that Smith has ever encountered in his life is finding voice in this series. None of the characters are depraved, but all of them have some sort of bizarre trait or weakness that speaks to some aspect of the human condition. The reader never feels sorry for any of them, but rejoices in having come to know them.
The fourth series, “The 2 ½ Pillars of Wisdom” is comprised of three volumes: “Portuguese Irregular Verbs”, “The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs”, and “At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances”. The titles reveal something of the spirit of the books. Of all of the writings of Alexander McCall Smith, I found these to be the most appealing to me. In the first place, the protagonist, Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, is a linguist whose moderate claim to fame has been his 1200 page work on Iberian philology. He has not received the accolades that he thought that he deserved for his masterpiece and therefore engages in somewhat paranoid thought and activity. Inasmuch as my own particular claim to fame also involved a 1200 page masterpiece, a three volume work on J.R.R. Tolkien’s creative linguistics, Professor von Igelfeld’s circumstances resonate within me. Igelfeld is clearly demented and borders on insanity, yet he has his moments of insight. I rather suspect that the protagonist’s personality is a concatenation of every academic that Alexander McCall Smith every met, including, no doubt, much of his own personal experience as a university faculty member. The three books are a monument to the frustration and dangers of living in the “ivory towers” of academe.
All of this came to mind this past week as I watched the opening episodes of “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” that has been airing on HBO during the year. The BBC had brought the series to life, with Jill Scott portraying Precious Ramotswe. I had not realized how invested I had become in the world that Alexander McCall Smith created in his series set in Botswana. The BBC did the only reasonable thing by filming the entire series in southern Africa. Smith’s vivid description of the land and the people prepared me for the production. I have to confess that I had not been watching the first episode fifteen minutes before three little tears had appeared at the corners of my eyes. In many respects I felt at home. Part of the feeling came from several years of reading the books, remembering the undeniable love that Precious had for her homeland, a pure and natural patriotism that did not involve politics. It was her connection with the land and all living things upon it that delighted her. The other sensations for me had to do with two separate occasions in my own life when I lived in areas that were visually similar.
As a little boy, I spent my summers in Imperial Valley with my grandparents. My Grandfather Gaskill was a rural mail carrier in Calipatria, California. Throughout the 1950s I spent hours with him driving about the surrounding farms on dusty roads delivering mail in his old right-hand drive Studebaker. Some of the living conditions of the Mexican farm laborers were not much better than those just outside of Gaborone, Botswana. Notwithstanding their visual poverty, the men were universally friendly to my grandfather, delighting in the mail that he brought to them from their families far away. The spirit of that time and place was duplicated in the filming of Smith’s stories. I suddenly found that I had come to love Botswana as I loved my own grandfather. It was a surprising connection.
Many years later, I spent two years or so among the people of southern Mexico, living with them, teaching them. At that time, the country was deeply divided between the very wealthy and the extremely poor. A middle class was beginning to appear in those days, but the vast majority of the people were living in conditions not much different from those portrayed of Botswana. Notwithstanding the great deprivation in material goods, the Mexican people were loving and kind, full of hope and pure desire, not unlike that which the BBC managed to capture on film in their series. The Mexican people were deeply patriotic for much of the same reasons given for Precious Ramotswe’s patriotism. They loved the land and all things that dwelt upon it. I came to feel the same way.
I will watch the rest of the first season during the weeks to come. I am hopeful that my mind and my heart will continue to be as engaged as they were in the beginning. It is a precious thing to be enabled, to find commonality with places and people a half a world away. Great writers bring people together.
The protagonist of “The Sunday Philosophy Club”, Isabel Dolhousie, is not nearly as charming as Precious Ramotswe, not nearly as innocent, nor is she filled with the same sort of joi d’vivre. She is, however, a moral philosopher and therefore the narrative of each novel is filled with an exploration of moral dilemmas, usually on an extremely personal level. I am afraid that some of Isabel’s moral choices disturb me, but I suppose that was McCall Smith’s intent. The application of moral values is far more difficult a process than the mere discussion of them. A discussion frequently becomes heated; the application frequently is humbling.
The “44 Scotland Street” series is considerably less-high flown than “The Sunday Philosophy Club”. The female protagonist is considerably younger than those in the first two series, a young woman still pursuing her education at the University of Edinburgh. The delight in this series revolves around the eccentricities of the other characters in the story. The twenty-year-old Pat MccGregor seems to be the only normal person in her world. Everyone else is wonderfully odd. I suspect that every personality quirk that Smith has ever encountered in his life is finding voice in this series. None of the characters are depraved, but all of them have some sort of bizarre trait or weakness that speaks to some aspect of the human condition. The reader never feels sorry for any of them, but rejoices in having come to know them.
The fourth series, “The 2 ½ Pillars of Wisdom” is comprised of three volumes: “Portuguese Irregular Verbs”, “The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs”, and “At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances”. The titles reveal something of the spirit of the books. Of all of the writings of Alexander McCall Smith, I found these to be the most appealing to me. In the first place, the protagonist, Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, is a linguist whose moderate claim to fame has been his 1200 page work on Iberian philology. He has not received the accolades that he thought that he deserved for his masterpiece and therefore engages in somewhat paranoid thought and activity. Inasmuch as my own particular claim to fame also involved a 1200 page masterpiece, a three volume work on J.R.R. Tolkien’s creative linguistics, Professor von Igelfeld’s circumstances resonate within me. Igelfeld is clearly demented and borders on insanity, yet he has his moments of insight. I rather suspect that the protagonist’s personality is a concatenation of every academic that Alexander McCall Smith every met, including, no doubt, much of his own personal experience as a university faculty member. The three books are a monument to the frustration and dangers of living in the “ivory towers” of academe.
All of this came to mind this past week as I watched the opening episodes of “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” that has been airing on HBO during the year. The BBC had brought the series to life, with Jill Scott portraying Precious Ramotswe. I had not realized how invested I had become in the world that Alexander McCall Smith created in his series set in Botswana. The BBC did the only reasonable thing by filming the entire series in southern Africa. Smith’s vivid description of the land and the people prepared me for the production. I have to confess that I had not been watching the first episode fifteen minutes before three little tears had appeared at the corners of my eyes. In many respects I felt at home. Part of the feeling came from several years of reading the books, remembering the undeniable love that Precious had for her homeland, a pure and natural patriotism that did not involve politics. It was her connection with the land and all living things upon it that delighted her. The other sensations for me had to do with two separate occasions in my own life when I lived in areas that were visually similar.
As a little boy, I spent my summers in Imperial Valley with my grandparents. My Grandfather Gaskill was a rural mail carrier in Calipatria, California. Throughout the 1950s I spent hours with him driving about the surrounding farms on dusty roads delivering mail in his old right-hand drive Studebaker. Some of the living conditions of the Mexican farm laborers were not much better than those just outside of Gaborone, Botswana. Notwithstanding their visual poverty, the men were universally friendly to my grandfather, delighting in the mail that he brought to them from their families far away. The spirit of that time and place was duplicated in the filming of Smith’s stories. I suddenly found that I had come to love Botswana as I loved my own grandfather. It was a surprising connection.
Many years later, I spent two years or so among the people of southern Mexico, living with them, teaching them. At that time, the country was deeply divided between the very wealthy and the extremely poor. A middle class was beginning to appear in those days, but the vast majority of the people were living in conditions not much different from those portrayed of Botswana. Notwithstanding the great deprivation in material goods, the Mexican people were loving and kind, full of hope and pure desire, not unlike that which the BBC managed to capture on film in their series. The Mexican people were deeply patriotic for much of the same reasons given for Precious Ramotswe’s patriotism. They loved the land and all things that dwelt upon it. I came to feel the same way.
I will watch the rest of the first season during the weeks to come. I am hopeful that my mind and my heart will continue to be as engaged as they were in the beginning. It is a precious thing to be enabled, to find commonality with places and people a half a world away. Great writers bring people together.
Monday, August 24, 2009
The Three Muses
Trillium and I had the opportunity to be in the company of one of the icons of the College of Humanities last Thursday. Richard G. Ellsworth served in the English Department while I was working on my Bachelors and Masters degrees at Brigham Young University. After completing the purpose for the which we spent an hour and a half with him, our conversation turned to another of the faculty members with whom I had had a close working relationship. I was saddened to hear that he had died a year ago, that I had been unaware of his funeral. I would have liked to have attended. For the last few days I have given thought to the great teachers in my life, those who had shaped my own teaching style. Three immediately came to mind.
Dean Bruington taught music in Chino, California, first in the whole city school system and then later only at the High School. I took my first lessons in the clarinet from Mr. Bruington during the fourth grade at Richard Gird Elementary School. I have no idea how long it took me to get passed the rather odious sounds that a neophyte woodwind player makes on his way to limited proficiency. The extraordinary thing of it was that Mr. Bruington tolerated all of it, from all of us, for the next three years. I am certain that we had concerts, perhaps the parents came to them, perhaps the students at the school came. I remember none of it. I suppose that neither the parents nor the students really wanted to either. No doubt hope sprang eternal and they all anticipated that by the time we all went to the Junior High School, more than passing progress would have been made.
I remember that there was a music room for the band and orchestra at the Junior High, which was a tremendous improvement over the cafeteria at the elementary school. Whereas in the cafeteria we sounded like we were playing in a cavern, in the band room we were able to focus every musical error right into our own ears. Junior High was a desperate time for teenagers passing through the early stages of puberty and the music was not helping a lot. At the High School, the music facilities were housed in their own building very far away from the rest of the academic buildings and twice as far from the sports complex. It was a new campus and the Board of Education had anticipated the arrival of all those they had heard in the cafeteria during the previous five years.
Mr. Bruington, however, had confidence in us. We were a small school, with a marching band of about seventy or so, an orchestra of about sixty, and a swing band of about twenty-five. I played either clarinet or tenor saxophone in the three main venues. In the concert band (which was what the marching band was called when it wasn’t moving), I sat in the first chair of the front row just to the left hand of Mr. Bruington while he conducted us. I have to say that while I was a pretty good clarinetist, good tone and control, I was not particularly gifted in the ability to sight read. I would go home with new music and try to figure out what was going on with the notes on the page and usually failed miserably. On those days when we were to practice the piece for the first time, I would sit in my chair, scrunched down a bit, and would fake my part for a while as the rest of the band blithely went their own way. Eventually, I would hear that which I should be doing and then I usually could play it perfectly. I played clarinet by ear. Mr. Bruington tolerated that for about five weeks in my first semester as a Freshman. I remember vividly the day my formula for faking my way through rehearsal came to an end. The band was at full throttle, I was whimpering my way through the fingering of the new piece, when suddenly Dean Bruington stopped everyone with a wave of his baton. He looked down from the podium and said, “Zaphod, I can’t hear you. I can hear every other person in this room, even ones that I really would rather not hear, and yet though you are seated just two feet from my ears, there doesn’t appear to be anything happen with that instrument of yours.”
The eyes of the other sixty-nine members of the band were focused on me. I explained that I had spent hours practicing, trying to figure out what I should be playing, but had not been able to work it out.
“So you thought that by not playing that you would somehow be contributing to the success of the band.”
I said that must be it. Fourteen year olds will agree to just about anything when everyone in the room is looking at them. Then Dean Bruington said something to me that went down into my heart like fire.
“Zaphod, listen to me well. If you play so that I can’t hear you, I can’t help you get any better. Play your mistakes loud, own up to them, and then I can help you get it right.” The next three years were glorious.
When I came home from Mexico and began my schooling at Brigham Young, the first religion class that I took was from a fellow named Ivan J. Barrett. My practice in all of my classes was to sit in the front row of the classroom slightly to the left of the podium, a hangover, I suppose, from my days as a clarinetist. Ivan was the most dynamic teacher I had ever met. He was constantly in motion, stalking the front section of the room like a tiger in a cage. He had a habit of demonstrating aspects of the lesson with his person. If the subject of the day’s lesson involved a prophet standing on the wall of a city and condemning the inhabitants thereof, he would jump up on the top of the table where his notes were and begin shouting at us, pointing his finger at us one by one, as he called us all to repentance. I vaguely remember him throwing something at someone at the back of the room who had fallen asleep, but that may have been in my health class where the teacher was far less dynamic.
Ivan J. Barrett was a short fellow with the body structure of Lou Costello, but with none of Lou’s self-depreciating shyness. Frequently, as he was marching up and down next to the front row, he would propound a stimulating question or make a stunning declaration of some kind about the passage of scripture that we were reviewing and then point to one of the students in the third or fourth row and say, “What do you think about that, Brother Jones? Hmmm?” For the first few weeks there was generally a marked silence in the room, everyone holding their breath to see if Steven Jones could come up with an answer that would satisfy Brother Barrett. Someone trapped beneath that penetrating glance of Ivan’s eye generally reacted as if they were an insect that had just been mounted in a collection. The front row seemed to be exempt… for a while. I remember that on many an occasion after the first month, Ivan Barrett would pause directly in front of my chair and skewer someone a few rows back, point his finger, ask his question, wait for the response, and then when everyone was preparing to relax he would drop his eyes to mine and bellow, “Oh? Interesting! What do you think of Brother Shepherd’s answer, Brother Beeblebrox?” And then he would grill me for three or four minutes about my opinion, with a bit of whimsy playing on his lips and a sparkle in his eyes. I never fell asleep in his class even though it was just after lunch and there was no air conditioning in the room.
In my own teaching, I picked up not a few of Ivan’s mannerisms, the misdirected glance being one of my favorites. I brought into my pedagogical style a lot of his flamboyance and I think that my students rather enjoyed it, for the most part. I remember once, though, that someone in one of the groups I had been teaching came up to me afterwards and said with a bit of a huff in her voice, “You sounded just like a Baptist preacher!” I had not been trying to be just like a Baptist preacher; I had known a lot of Baptist preachers growing up and none of them had ever inspired me to teach like they did. I guess that I was the next best thing; I was a Barrettist preacher. I think that Ivan would have just laughed out loud at the suggestion that he taught like a Baptist minister.
When I began my Masters program in the English Department at Brigham Young University, I was given John Edward McKendrick as my Chairman. I think that I took every subject that he ever taught at the University. I met with him frequently in his office as I was approaching my defense and the completion of the rest of the requirements for the degree. There were three things that were particularly unnerving about Jack McKendrick’s office. First, there was hardly any room to negotiate pedestrian travel in his office. Almost all of the floor, the entire desk and all furniture, save for two chairs, were always filled with piles of papers, books, and other detritus so that the visit was always accompanied by an impending doom, a potential flood of printed works, an ineluctable wave of wood pulp. Richard Ellsworth said that he himself was afraid to go in there without some sort of flotation device. The second point of intimidation was that on the back of the office door there was mounted a full-sized color photograph of Bela Lugosi dressed as Dracula with a caption that said, “I vant to bite yourrr neck!!!!” I seldom looked at that door while visiting with Jack, but the terror was almost as bad facing in the opposite direction.
Professor McKendrick did have one piece of furniture that was entirely unencumbered with student papers or books. He had a low stand, within arm’s reach, upon which was a Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (Unabridged). As we would talk about my various projects, from time to time he would hold up his hand and say, “Just a moment, Mr. Beeblebrox, I want to check something.” He would then mutter something in relation to a word that I had just used in the conversation and open “The Dictionary”, run his finger down a couple of columns until he had found what he was looking for. “Hmmmm!” he would say with his back to me, “It seems that you have escaped this time!” Then he would turn back to me with exactly that same expression that I knew was on the picture behind me. The first couple of times this happened to me, I was almost beside myself with fear. After a couple of weeks of this, however, I was so depleted in adrenaline that when he did it to me again, I just started to giggle, and then to laugh right out loud. He laughed right along with me and for the first time I knew that Jack McKendrick was on my side and that he did not want me to fear the system that I had become a part of. He frequently caught me on my use of words, but, as it had been with Dean Bruington, I never made the same mistake twice.
All three of my great mentors have passed away: first, Dean Bruington many years ago, then Ivan Barrett on the 16th of August 1999, and finally Jack McKendrick a year ago, almost to the day. I miss them and grieve a little because I did not know when they passed out of this life. I think that I would have liked to have said goodbye before they were put underground. Some of what they were, however, lives on in me when I have occasion to teach. I hope that there are some of my students who may remember some of my borrowed mannerisms, and be inclined to implement and perpetuate the same, not for my sake, but for the sake of students everywhere.
Dean Bruington taught music in Chino, California, first in the whole city school system and then later only at the High School. I took my first lessons in the clarinet from Mr. Bruington during the fourth grade at Richard Gird Elementary School. I have no idea how long it took me to get passed the rather odious sounds that a neophyte woodwind player makes on his way to limited proficiency. The extraordinary thing of it was that Mr. Bruington tolerated all of it, from all of us, for the next three years. I am certain that we had concerts, perhaps the parents came to them, perhaps the students at the school came. I remember none of it. I suppose that neither the parents nor the students really wanted to either. No doubt hope sprang eternal and they all anticipated that by the time we all went to the Junior High School, more than passing progress would have been made.
I remember that there was a music room for the band and orchestra at the Junior High, which was a tremendous improvement over the cafeteria at the elementary school. Whereas in the cafeteria we sounded like we were playing in a cavern, in the band room we were able to focus every musical error right into our own ears. Junior High was a desperate time for teenagers passing through the early stages of puberty and the music was not helping a lot. At the High School, the music facilities were housed in their own building very far away from the rest of the academic buildings and twice as far from the sports complex. It was a new campus and the Board of Education had anticipated the arrival of all those they had heard in the cafeteria during the previous five years.
Mr. Bruington, however, had confidence in us. We were a small school, with a marching band of about seventy or so, an orchestra of about sixty, and a swing band of about twenty-five. I played either clarinet or tenor saxophone in the three main venues. In the concert band (which was what the marching band was called when it wasn’t moving), I sat in the first chair of the front row just to the left hand of Mr. Bruington while he conducted us. I have to say that while I was a pretty good clarinetist, good tone and control, I was not particularly gifted in the ability to sight read. I would go home with new music and try to figure out what was going on with the notes on the page and usually failed miserably. On those days when we were to practice the piece for the first time, I would sit in my chair, scrunched down a bit, and would fake my part for a while as the rest of the band blithely went their own way. Eventually, I would hear that which I should be doing and then I usually could play it perfectly. I played clarinet by ear. Mr. Bruington tolerated that for about five weeks in my first semester as a Freshman. I remember vividly the day my formula for faking my way through rehearsal came to an end. The band was at full throttle, I was whimpering my way through the fingering of the new piece, when suddenly Dean Bruington stopped everyone with a wave of his baton. He looked down from the podium and said, “Zaphod, I can’t hear you. I can hear every other person in this room, even ones that I really would rather not hear, and yet though you are seated just two feet from my ears, there doesn’t appear to be anything happen with that instrument of yours.”
The eyes of the other sixty-nine members of the band were focused on me. I explained that I had spent hours practicing, trying to figure out what I should be playing, but had not been able to work it out.
“So you thought that by not playing that you would somehow be contributing to the success of the band.”
I said that must be it. Fourteen year olds will agree to just about anything when everyone in the room is looking at them. Then Dean Bruington said something to me that went down into my heart like fire.
“Zaphod, listen to me well. If you play so that I can’t hear you, I can’t help you get any better. Play your mistakes loud, own up to them, and then I can help you get it right.” The next three years were glorious.
When I came home from Mexico and began my schooling at Brigham Young, the first religion class that I took was from a fellow named Ivan J. Barrett. My practice in all of my classes was to sit in the front row of the classroom slightly to the left of the podium, a hangover, I suppose, from my days as a clarinetist. Ivan was the most dynamic teacher I had ever met. He was constantly in motion, stalking the front section of the room like a tiger in a cage. He had a habit of demonstrating aspects of the lesson with his person. If the subject of the day’s lesson involved a prophet standing on the wall of a city and condemning the inhabitants thereof, he would jump up on the top of the table where his notes were and begin shouting at us, pointing his finger at us one by one, as he called us all to repentance. I vaguely remember him throwing something at someone at the back of the room who had fallen asleep, but that may have been in my health class where the teacher was far less dynamic.
Ivan J. Barrett was a short fellow with the body structure of Lou Costello, but with none of Lou’s self-depreciating shyness. Frequently, as he was marching up and down next to the front row, he would propound a stimulating question or make a stunning declaration of some kind about the passage of scripture that we were reviewing and then point to one of the students in the third or fourth row and say, “What do you think about that, Brother Jones? Hmmm?” For the first few weeks there was generally a marked silence in the room, everyone holding their breath to see if Steven Jones could come up with an answer that would satisfy Brother Barrett. Someone trapped beneath that penetrating glance of Ivan’s eye generally reacted as if they were an insect that had just been mounted in a collection. The front row seemed to be exempt… for a while. I remember that on many an occasion after the first month, Ivan Barrett would pause directly in front of my chair and skewer someone a few rows back, point his finger, ask his question, wait for the response, and then when everyone was preparing to relax he would drop his eyes to mine and bellow, “Oh? Interesting! What do you think of Brother Shepherd’s answer, Brother Beeblebrox?” And then he would grill me for three or four minutes about my opinion, with a bit of whimsy playing on his lips and a sparkle in his eyes. I never fell asleep in his class even though it was just after lunch and there was no air conditioning in the room.
In my own teaching, I picked up not a few of Ivan’s mannerisms, the misdirected glance being one of my favorites. I brought into my pedagogical style a lot of his flamboyance and I think that my students rather enjoyed it, for the most part. I remember once, though, that someone in one of the groups I had been teaching came up to me afterwards and said with a bit of a huff in her voice, “You sounded just like a Baptist preacher!” I had not been trying to be just like a Baptist preacher; I had known a lot of Baptist preachers growing up and none of them had ever inspired me to teach like they did. I guess that I was the next best thing; I was a Barrettist preacher. I think that Ivan would have just laughed out loud at the suggestion that he taught like a Baptist minister.
When I began my Masters program in the English Department at Brigham Young University, I was given John Edward McKendrick as my Chairman. I think that I took every subject that he ever taught at the University. I met with him frequently in his office as I was approaching my defense and the completion of the rest of the requirements for the degree. There were three things that were particularly unnerving about Jack McKendrick’s office. First, there was hardly any room to negotiate pedestrian travel in his office. Almost all of the floor, the entire desk and all furniture, save for two chairs, were always filled with piles of papers, books, and other detritus so that the visit was always accompanied by an impending doom, a potential flood of printed works, an ineluctable wave of wood pulp. Richard Ellsworth said that he himself was afraid to go in there without some sort of flotation device. The second point of intimidation was that on the back of the office door there was mounted a full-sized color photograph of Bela Lugosi dressed as Dracula with a caption that said, “I vant to bite yourrr neck!!!!” I seldom looked at that door while visiting with Jack, but the terror was almost as bad facing in the opposite direction.
Professor McKendrick did have one piece of furniture that was entirely unencumbered with student papers or books. He had a low stand, within arm’s reach, upon which was a Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (Unabridged). As we would talk about my various projects, from time to time he would hold up his hand and say, “Just a moment, Mr. Beeblebrox, I want to check something.” He would then mutter something in relation to a word that I had just used in the conversation and open “The Dictionary”, run his finger down a couple of columns until he had found what he was looking for. “Hmmmm!” he would say with his back to me, “It seems that you have escaped this time!” Then he would turn back to me with exactly that same expression that I knew was on the picture behind me. The first couple of times this happened to me, I was almost beside myself with fear. After a couple of weeks of this, however, I was so depleted in adrenaline that when he did it to me again, I just started to giggle, and then to laugh right out loud. He laughed right along with me and for the first time I knew that Jack McKendrick was on my side and that he did not want me to fear the system that I had become a part of. He frequently caught me on my use of words, but, as it had been with Dean Bruington, I never made the same mistake twice.
All three of my great mentors have passed away: first, Dean Bruington many years ago, then Ivan Barrett on the 16th of August 1999, and finally Jack McKendrick a year ago, almost to the day. I miss them and grieve a little because I did not know when they passed out of this life. I think that I would have liked to have said goodbye before they were put underground. Some of what they were, however, lives on in me when I have occasion to teach. I hope that there are some of my students who may remember some of my borrowed mannerisms, and be inclined to implement and perpetuate the same, not for my sake, but for the sake of students everywhere.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Titipu and the Devil
Last Friday Trillium and I left Orem for parts northern, specifically the lovely little valley of Logan, Utah. We have visited a couple of times before, usually in connection with some sort of activity that happened to be scheduled there. Several generations back, however, portions of my family used to spend vast amounts of time there, primarily because that is where they had their homes. Portions of the valley are named after the portions of my family who themselves were blessed with the nominative gift. These are beautiful little communities; clean, well-kept, and apparently filled with cheerful, well-adjusted, human beings. One wonders why other portions of my family moved elsewhere.
Our jaunt to Logan was part of the weekend celebration of Trillium's birthday, a chance to get away from the "everyday" into the "once-in-a-while". We stayed in Providence, which was not named after my family, in a bed and breakfast called the "Providence Inn". Everything happened just as the proprietors said it would during the two days we were there, so I am somewhat encouraged about future forays. There is no reason for me to reveal the number of birthdays Trillium has experienced; she would rather not be reminded. In fact, after today's celebration she said to me, "We need not do this again". She meant, I assume, the lighting of the candle and the singing of the hymn, and not the trip to Logan.
Trillium has always loved opera. Early in our marriage, I discovered that buying LPs of works by Belleni and Verdi for her brought about extraordinary expressions of gratitude. "La Traviatta" is one of her favorites. With all of this in mind, in an attempt to do something wonderful, I made arrangements for us to attend the Utah Festival of Opera that has been held in Logan for these past 17 years. Several operas are performed during the months of July and August. During this season, the Company put on "Camelot", "Carmen", "Cavalleria Rusticana", "Pagliacci", and "The Mikado". I chose to take my wife to this last, to the penultimate performance.
"The Mikado" was the ninth collaboration of Arthur Sullivan and W.S. Gilbert of a total of fourteen. It opened on the 14th of March 1885 at the Savoy Theatre in London. It ran for 672 performances, the second longest run for a musical production up until that time. By the end of 1885 there were over 150 companies performing "The Mikado" all over Europe and America. The opera has enjoyed immense continuing popularity during the past 125 years. Of all of the songs performed in the production, three have reached iconic status: "Willow, tit-willow" sung by the tailor Koko; "Behold, the Lord High Executioner", sung by Koko and the men in the chorus; and "Three little maids from school are we", sung by Yum-yum, Peep-bo, Pitti-sing, and the girls in the company. The latter is certainly familiar to any who have seen the film "Chariots of Fire". The story line is delightful, hardly a moment passes in the work that does not advance the whole theme.
UFO's production was magnificent, from the orchestra to the company of players. The role of Koko was played by Michael Ballam; Yum-yum by his daughter Vanessa. Much could be said of each of the other performers, but suffice it to say that none of the ensemble, from the leads to the chorus, was unequally yoked. There was a perfection to what they did Friday night which is seldom found in more accessible productions. What was clear was that all of players were enjoying themselves immensely, rejoicing in their performance and relishing every moment of the two and a half hours we were all together. I do not know for certain, but were I to guess, the unity of the cast and the joie d'vivre which they exuded, derived primarily from the presence of Ballam himself.
Michael was the founder of the Utah Festival of Opera and remains the Director. His vision helped produce the Ellen Eccles Theater where most of the UFO performances are staged. There is no finer venue anywhere; not the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, not the Pantages Theater, not the Shubert Theater, magnificent arenas all, where Trillium and I saw the likes of the "Phantom of the Opera", "Les Miserables", and "The Secret Garden". I estimated that there were about 1500 in the audience Friday night, all with a wonderful view of the stage and without any hindrance of the music or dialog.
The theater was built in 1923 and served the community for decades as the Capitol Theater. It was completely remodeled in 1993 and opened as the Ellen Eccles Theater. The stage is 70 feet wide, 36 feet deep, and 65 feet high, allowing for magnificent and imaginative staging. The sound system in conjunction with the natural acoustics of the building is without parallel. It is also called the Cache Valley Center for the Arts. All of these things combined with the energy of the company to make our evening at the opera a memorable one.
Another word about Michael Ballam. For those of us who belong to The Tribe, his face is as familiar to us as any in the world. In conjunction with his familiarity in general, I would like to relate a little anecdote. Years ago, I attended a conference of religious educators held at Brigham Young University. The topic that year was the New Testament. During the opening session, all of the attendees were seated in the Marriott Center anticipating a stimulating introduction to the week's activities. For some reason, I was seated on the floor of the MAC about ten feet from the grand piano. At a certain point in the program, bearded fellow sat down at the piano and was introduced as Michael Ballam. At that time I had no idea who Michael Ballam was, and inasmuch as he was bearded I could not readily see his facial features, even though I could easily see him. But when he spoke........!!!!! a thrill went through my whole system because I knew exactly who he was and why I knew the voice so well. He then sang "O Divine Redeemer". I do not know how many people were in the building, but it was nearly full. There was no noise of any kind while Michael sang. It was as if the entire world, every aspect of it, physical and spiritual, had stopped to witness the premiere symbolic testimony as to the mercy and compassion of the Lord Jesus Christ. When Michael finished, the silence continued for what seemed to me to be a very long time. It was as if we had all been given a few moments to digest what we had just witnessed. Michael withdrew and the conference continued. I remember nothing else of that six-day conference.
So now I sit here at my computer at least 25 years later, making connections with a man whose hand I have never shaken, but who has affected my life profoundly. I hope to have the opportunity to meet him some day. Maybe Trillium and I will go back to the 2010 season. Maybe we will go to the Cafe des Artistes after the show and wade through the hundreds of people there just to look him in the eye, to see up close that wonderful twinkle that is certain to be there.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Ghosts in the Music
I had another dream last night. Trillium and I went off to the upper mid-west to visit people that I had known almost fifty years ago. We stayed in a home where we were most welcome and as the morning passed there were more and more people who were directly related to the people I had known. They were cordial and seemed to know how I fit into their relatives’ lives. My friends were not there, however; I guess that they had all passed away. The next generation of family members was grateful for the role that I had played in their ancestors’ lives, but they were subdued. I was not uncomfortable; I simply was no longer an active part of what once was. I was like a ghost, even though I was still alive.
Nanci Griffith wrote a song years ago called “Ghost in the Music”. It’s a great title but the lyrics don’t live up to its promise. The reason that the title came to my mind in conjunction with my dream is almost obvious. There are songs that I have long since identified with certain individuals. I sing those songs partly because I have always liked the music and the sentiments, and partly because I have always liked the people I associated with them. Thus, Cat Stevens’ “I Wish I Wish” is inseparably connect to Jon Woodhead; I cannot think of the one without thinking of the other. The works of Maurice Ravel are inseparably connected to RaNae Merril; I cannot do anything about that. The performances of Johnny Murad and the Harmonicats are so engrained in my childhood that I cannot hear anything by them without immediately thinking of my own mother and father sitting in the front room of the Mariner’s Cabin in Carbon Canyon where I grew up. There are nine songs now that are inseparably connected with the Forest for the Trees, my two daughters and son-in-law with whom I have learned to sings those songs in a unique way. The odd thing about these associations that I have made is that they are “ghosts in the music”, save perhaps for the F2T2 songs. The people that I connected with the songs and the reasons that I did so have long since lost their life. The songs may not have changed, but my friends have and many are self-conscious about the fact.
Each of my children has songs associated with them, usually songs that I sang for them when they were young children. I have written songs for each of them at some point as they were growing up. As I look back on the music and lyrics I am not impressed; I don’t think that I was a very good songwriter; my children have become better than the songs were. In these cases, I am the “ghost in the music”; the person I was when I sat down to compose what I thought was something wonderful for my little children. I am fretful today that I wasn’t better at my craft at a time when I was trying to put into words and music how I actually felt. A hint, a “ghost”, is all that is there; the substance is gone. It makes me feel a little melancholy.
I have written pieces for Trillium over the years for much of the same reasons that I wrote songs for our children. I wanted to preserve something of our life together in music and lyrics. I have invariably liked the most recent song better than all the rest that I had written before. Thus, “A Cloud of Angels” is currently the piece that causes my emotions to come to the surface almost immediately. The guitar work is the best that I have ever composed; the words still deeply moving to my soul.
Several years ago, I was given the opportunity to make a presentation at a large conference on the effects of poetry, how sounds and words work together to touch the hearts and minds of others. I chose six bits of poetry. I read the Chaucer’s “Prologue to the Canterbury Tales” in Middle English to help the people in the room realize how beautiful poetry can be even when one is not even consciously aware of what is being said. I next read the first ten quatrains of the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge to demonstrate how powerful language can become when it is purposefully structured. I followed up with Emily Dickinson’s “To Make a Prairie” which is the quintessence of brevity, worth repeating here:
I resorted next to “The Tuft of Flowers” by Robert Frost, perhaps the greatest American poet to have ever lived. I cannot read this piece aloud without losing control of my voice at some point. Dickenson’s poem is whimsical; Frost’s is profoundly reflective of the human condition. I ended my portion of the presentation by singing Trillium's “A Cloud of Angels”. This was several years ago, the song freshly written; the power of the music, the lyrics, and the singer all very much alive; there were no ghosts. I am afraid that the audience was defenseless before me at that time. I had prepared them academically and emotionally to be connected with me at the very moment that I wished to share something profoundly intimate, something otherwise inexpressible.
Seven years have passed since I wrote “A Cloud of Angels”. It is probably about time to compose another piece for my wife. I hope that I am not over the hill (or under the hill for that matter), compositionally speaking.
Dreams are like ghosts coming to visit the place where they once lived. No matter how hard one tries, one can only just barely be there. There is no substance, only memory. Perhaps in the resurrection there is hope.
Nanci Griffith wrote a song years ago called “Ghost in the Music”. It’s a great title but the lyrics don’t live up to its promise. The reason that the title came to my mind in conjunction with my dream is almost obvious. There are songs that I have long since identified with certain individuals. I sing those songs partly because I have always liked the music and the sentiments, and partly because I have always liked the people I associated with them. Thus, Cat Stevens’ “I Wish I Wish” is inseparably connect to Jon Woodhead; I cannot think of the one without thinking of the other. The works of Maurice Ravel are inseparably connected to RaNae Merril; I cannot do anything about that. The performances of Johnny Murad and the Harmonicats are so engrained in my childhood that I cannot hear anything by them without immediately thinking of my own mother and father sitting in the front room of the Mariner’s Cabin in Carbon Canyon where I grew up. There are nine songs now that are inseparably connected with the Forest for the Trees, my two daughters and son-in-law with whom I have learned to sings those songs in a unique way. The odd thing about these associations that I have made is that they are “ghosts in the music”, save perhaps for the F2T2 songs. The people that I connected with the songs and the reasons that I did so have long since lost their life. The songs may not have changed, but my friends have and many are self-conscious about the fact.
Each of my children has songs associated with them, usually songs that I sang for them when they were young children. I have written songs for each of them at some point as they were growing up. As I look back on the music and lyrics I am not impressed; I don’t think that I was a very good songwriter; my children have become better than the songs were. In these cases, I am the “ghost in the music”; the person I was when I sat down to compose what I thought was something wonderful for my little children. I am fretful today that I wasn’t better at my craft at a time when I was trying to put into words and music how I actually felt. A hint, a “ghost”, is all that is there; the substance is gone. It makes me feel a little melancholy.
I have written pieces for Trillium over the years for much of the same reasons that I wrote songs for our children. I wanted to preserve something of our life together in music and lyrics. I have invariably liked the most recent song better than all the rest that I had written before. Thus, “A Cloud of Angels” is currently the piece that causes my emotions to come to the surface almost immediately. The guitar work is the best that I have ever composed; the words still deeply moving to my soul.
Several years ago, I was given the opportunity to make a presentation at a large conference on the effects of poetry, how sounds and words work together to touch the hearts and minds of others. I chose six bits of poetry. I read the Chaucer’s “Prologue to the Canterbury Tales” in Middle English to help the people in the room realize how beautiful poetry can be even when one is not even consciously aware of what is being said. I next read the first ten quatrains of the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge to demonstrate how powerful language can become when it is purposefully structured. I followed up with Emily Dickinson’s “To Make a Prairie” which is the quintessence of brevity, worth repeating here:
To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee.
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.
One clover, and a bee.
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.
I resorted next to “The Tuft of Flowers” by Robert Frost, perhaps the greatest American poet to have ever lived. I cannot read this piece aloud without losing control of my voice at some point. Dickenson’s poem is whimsical; Frost’s is profoundly reflective of the human condition. I ended my portion of the presentation by singing Trillium's “A Cloud of Angels”. This was several years ago, the song freshly written; the power of the music, the lyrics, and the singer all very much alive; there were no ghosts. I am afraid that the audience was defenseless before me at that time. I had prepared them academically and emotionally to be connected with me at the very moment that I wished to share something profoundly intimate, something otherwise inexpressible.
Seven years have passed since I wrote “A Cloud of Angels”. It is probably about time to compose another piece for my wife. I hope that I am not over the hill (or under the hill for that matter), compositionally speaking.
Dreams are like ghosts coming to visit the place where they once lived. No matter how hard one tries, one can only just barely be there. There is no substance, only memory. Perhaps in the resurrection there is hope.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
If Trees Ring in the Forest and No One is There to Record Them, is There Still Music?
The title to this entry is so precious, so radically funny, that I am quite certain that no one will get it until the end. The word play is outrageous, the puns are painful, and, on the whole, the sentiment is an inside joke of enormous proportions. I will end up killing a dozen birds with one stone.
At first blush, there is the obvious nod at the old philosophical conundrum: “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound?” The whole of the argument regarding the answer to this question has to do with definitions. Believe it or not, grown adults have spent vast amounts of time and resources attempting to answer the question. Is “sound” something that can only exist when there are humans about, or animals, or other sentient beings? Is there a difference between “sound” and “noise”? Whole nations and kingdoms have risen and fallen while attempting to resolve the issue. What if the sentient being is deaf? What if he “feels” the vibrations with his feet? Is that still “sound”, even though he did not hear it with his auditory nerves? What if, instead of a tree, the thing making the “sound” was a dog whistle? You would not hear the pitch, but the dog would. Was there a “sound”?
Now we find ourselves at an international crossroads. The inhabitants of the British Isles would be inclined, at this point, to say, “This is the stupidest thing I have ever been forced to contemplate!” and they would walk off and never give the chestnut another thought. If they were from Wales or Cornwall and you raised the question again, they would hit you with a cudgel. It is hard to say what a Canadian would do. An American, at this juncture, would immediately want to turn to the dictionary to resolve the problem. As it turns out, the definition of the word “sound” in Webster’s New International Dictionary stipulates that in order for there to be a “sound” an auditory processing organ has to be involved. With that definition in hand, I would ask the philosopher five more questions: “What if, instead of a human being, there were an operating tape recorder in the forest when the tree fell? Would there be no sound at all at that moment, if there were no one to hear it at the time? Would there be a retroactive “sound” if someone chose to listen to the tape? And what if no one ever listened to the tape? Would that mean that there is no sound on the tape? At this point, your brain should be responding to this issue the same way that Tim Burton’s Martians responded to the music of Slim Whitman.
Tree rings are fascinating. Trillium and I went to Fisherman’s Wharf for our fortieth wedding anniversary. We rode over and back on Amtrak (Trillium’s little gift to me) and we did anything and everything that Trillium wanted to do while we were in San Francisco (my little gift to her). We drove up to Muir Woods in Marin County for one of our day hikes. Some of the Sequoias are more than 250 feet high. The redwoods in Cathedral Grove are more than 1200 years old. The park has a cross-section of a giant redwood, showing the tree rings for many hundreds of years, labeled with various historical events. One wonders if that particular tree heard any of the goings on that have been since pinned to its innards. Each ring represents a year and it is possible, with an extremely good magnifying glass, to determine the particular ring that represents the year that you were born. If a ring is thick, the rainfall and weather were favorable for tree growth that year. If a ring is thin, then the circumstances were less favorable. The ring for year of my birth is notable for the tremendous stresses that the environment suffered, particularly toward the middle of July and even more pronounced the closer the tree grew to Pomona, California.
At first blush, there is the obvious nod at the old philosophical conundrum: “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound?” The whole of the argument regarding the answer to this question has to do with definitions. Believe it or not, grown adults have spent vast amounts of time and resources attempting to answer the question. Is “sound” something that can only exist when there are humans about, or animals, or other sentient beings? Is there a difference between “sound” and “noise”? Whole nations and kingdoms have risen and fallen while attempting to resolve the issue. What if the sentient being is deaf? What if he “feels” the vibrations with his feet? Is that still “sound”, even though he did not hear it with his auditory nerves? What if, instead of a tree, the thing making the “sound” was a dog whistle? You would not hear the pitch, but the dog would. Was there a “sound”?
Now we find ourselves at an international crossroads. The inhabitants of the British Isles would be inclined, at this point, to say, “This is the stupidest thing I have ever been forced to contemplate!” and they would walk off and never give the chestnut another thought. If they were from Wales or Cornwall and you raised the question again, they would hit you with a cudgel. It is hard to say what a Canadian would do. An American, at this juncture, would immediately want to turn to the dictionary to resolve the problem. As it turns out, the definition of the word “sound” in Webster’s New International Dictionary stipulates that in order for there to be a “sound” an auditory processing organ has to be involved. With that definition in hand, I would ask the philosopher five more questions: “What if, instead of a human being, there were an operating tape recorder in the forest when the tree fell? Would there be no sound at all at that moment, if there were no one to hear it at the time? Would there be a retroactive “sound” if someone chose to listen to the tape? And what if no one ever listened to the tape? Would that mean that there is no sound on the tape? At this point, your brain should be responding to this issue the same way that Tim Burton’s Martians responded to the music of Slim Whitman.
Tree rings are fascinating. Trillium and I went to Fisherman’s Wharf for our fortieth wedding anniversary. We rode over and back on Amtrak (Trillium’s little gift to me) and we did anything and everything that Trillium wanted to do while we were in San Francisco (my little gift to her). We drove up to Muir Woods in Marin County for one of our day hikes. Some of the Sequoias are more than 250 feet high. The redwoods in Cathedral Grove are more than 1200 years old. The park has a cross-section of a giant redwood, showing the tree rings for many hundreds of years, labeled with various historical events. One wonders if that particular tree heard any of the goings on that have been since pinned to its innards. Each ring represents a year and it is possible, with an extremely good magnifying glass, to determine the particular ring that represents the year that you were born. If a ring is thick, the rainfall and weather were favorable for tree growth that year. If a ring is thin, then the circumstances were less favorable. The ring for year of my birth is notable for the tremendous stresses that the environment suffered, particularly toward the middle of July and even more pronounced the closer the tree grew to Pomona, California.
On the night of October 7th, 2007, eight months after we walked by the thing, a 180-foot tall redwood, seven feet in diameter, fell during the night. I assume that someone noted the descent, since they sent me a bill. I wrote back that I hadn’t heard a thing so it must not have happened.
Yesterday was the anniversary of the birth of two of my daughters, Jen and Shy. They were born twelve years apart and they have the rings to prove it. Trillium and I went over to Shy’s house in the afternoon to take a card to her and to wish her plenty of subterranean water supplies and root nutrients. In the evening we went to Jen’s house for chocolate cake and Oreos. The cake was three years old. I counted the rings. They are both doing pretty well, considering how old they are.
How much do I have to say about The Forest for the Trees before the joke finally dawns? We have chosen our music for our next performance. We will begin with Cat Steven’s “Trouble”, followed by “The River is Wide”. The middle will be graced with Shy and Not-Quite-So-Shy singing “Gulf Coast Highway”. Jen and I will render “Long Black Rifle” in order to give the audience time to realize that hardly anything more exiting is going to transpire during our set. We will finish with our best piece, “Bright Eyes”. If no one comes to the party, will there be “Still Music”?
Yesterday was the anniversary of the birth of two of my daughters, Jen and Shy. They were born twelve years apart and they have the rings to prove it. Trillium and I went over to Shy’s house in the afternoon to take a card to her and to wish her plenty of subterranean water supplies and root nutrients. In the evening we went to Jen’s house for chocolate cake and Oreos. The cake was three years old. I counted the rings. They are both doing pretty well, considering how old they are.
How much do I have to say about The Forest for the Trees before the joke finally dawns? We have chosen our music for our next performance. We will begin with Cat Steven’s “Trouble”, followed by “The River is Wide”. The middle will be graced with Shy and Not-Quite-So-Shy singing “Gulf Coast Highway”. Jen and I will render “Long Black Rifle” in order to give the audience time to realize that hardly anything more exiting is going to transpire during our set. We will finish with our best piece, “Bright Eyes”. If no one comes to the party, will there be “Still Music”?
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