No app for that

There's not enough value on the web for the artist to spend much precious time there. Information is useful in context, interpreted, magnified by understanding. Wouldn't a writer be better off in a wireless cottage, sequencing ideas dug out of mad interior play?

The web stream is a dungeon ride through future world, suspended by servers and developers who offer the public a glimpse of life to come. Can the artist find sustenance, strapped into the little car, gaping at the blinking lights of silhouetted rights and wrongs? For this, one needs to do the work of genius, the dangerous non-linear delving into past shadows, present tension, future truth.

Granted, there are facts alluded to by characters of make believe. Otherwise the amorphous yearning of a poet would loll in the womb, generative and warm, unborn. But the web and the world of art are separated by vast and useless corridors of magnitude inhabited by hapless creatures of curiosity in a land of factoid feasting and unsubstantiated conjecture.

Had there been Web 2.0 in Socrates' day, the App Store would lose him in endless choice of chiclets, abandoning his voice. Internet is wide and small, infinity in thrall to scant attention span, while art is time and space and silent breath and confidence to muse them.

Slow Train Café

Muscle and Bone ventured out on slick and splattery I-480 last night with a car full of gear, heads full of lyrics and shoulders taut with wonder. As in, ‘wonder if anybody’ll show up?’

It rained non-stop from load in to load out at the Slow Train Café. Cold, splashy, puddly rain that might keep show goers home with a good book. But Oberlin is different, so it seems. Even with college on break, pain pourin’ down and a chill wind brewing, listeners braved the puddles, took their seats and tuned in.

Garrett, Slow Train’s sound guru, gave us the kind of monitor mix you might expect from an Oberlin grad who toured with a band and comes at music from a visceral perspective. ‘This is just the kind of vibe I needed to hear tonight,’ he told us. ‘It’s your stage. I’m here to make you feel comfortable and sound good.’

Grin. Forgive us for ever doubting heaven exists.

Dan and Kylie at the counter stacked our plates with lavender vanilla scones, pressing herb tea and black coffee into our respective palms. Baristas do grow on niceness trees, do they not?

The Slow Train Café was peopled with eclectic individuals. Jazz musician who’s teenager in tow has loved Dylan since third grade. Irish musician with companion who asked which Tempest tunes we plan to cover (Duquesne Whistle fyi). Linda and Larry, who listened with a kind of blessed intensity you can only do your best to deserve. A slim youth rolled a cigarette in preparation to smoke outside; song after song he sat, rapt and then clapping, never quite leaving his stool. A computer user in a corner booth slid toward the isle for great gulps of songs. The bard does break the lesser spells with magic of his own.

There was a momentary suspension of conversation, wine tasting, table bussing and phone tapping when ‘Don’t Think Twice’ commandeered the stage. Garrett nudged up the volume for the fingerpicked guitar, the Irish musician glanced furtively at the room, daring anyone to interrupt a masterpiece with mere human wants and needs, and the rain on the window danced in tandem with a long goodbye so many ache to say.

There is no proper way to say what a night like this does for the heart of an artist. But when we record these songs next week, if we manage to capture a fraction of the warmth and passion let loose in a rain soaked enclave on College Street, we’ll have an album like no other.

Empathy in concert

(Bob Dylan’s) uncanny relevance comes from reaching as deep into empathy as he can. -- Kurt Gegenhuber

From the Dylan poster on my nephew’s wall to the devoted Dylan fans at Muscle and Bone shows to the calliope of artists who perform and transform Dylan songs, it’s obvious that Dylan’s relevance metric remains high. Gegenhuber says this relevance hinges on empathy.

My latest conversation with empathy started this spring while designing anti-bullying programs for schools. Pre-schoolers just exploring friendship and older kids working out social puzzles test their capacity to occupy someone else’s point of view. If they fail the empathy test, they might fall into the bully trap where they can only find emotional highs by inflicting pain.

It’s not too farfetched to see empathy as the touchstone of a civilized world.

Even as I traveled north to carve out empathy lessons from world folk tales, I happened upon What Good Am I? on a Dylan playlist. I may as well have googled, ‘song that captures the nuance of empathy,’ so perfect is this one for teaching kids to be kids (ie. not bullies).

This is the relevance of Dylan’s work: it illuminates our capacity for human empathy. His characters say things like, ‘You’re right from your side, I’m right from mine,’ and ‘I know you’re sorry, I’m sorry too.’ He conjures up sympathetic outliers (Your daddy he's an outlaw and a wanderer by trade) and understudies (The vagabond who’s rapping at your door is standing in the clothes that you once wore). Songs like Hollis Brown and Queen Jane Approximately empathize with their namesakes from start to finish.

Dylan songs team with riotously unorthodox role models with enormous hearts. He lets us experience strangers without judgement, within a frame of tolerance. He eloquently demonstrates how art in the hands of a master fuels our empathy, perhaps our most elegant human instinct.

Painting by Manoel Lopes Rodrigues

A father’s optimism

I just spent a week with elders down near Asheville, North Carolina. Here on my own back porch again, the tree house that folds out into green leaves and bird song, I’m impressed by how this place restores my artist heart.

Travel is healthy no matter the destination (now there’s a bold assertion) and this trip woke me up. The drive down was only the beginning, listening to Ric Elias describe in his TED Talk what went through his mind as he braced for impact when his flight crash-landed on the Hudson River in New York 2009.

“I regretted time I wasted on things that did not matter with people that matter.”

Thanks to Captain Sully, Elias got a second chance to reset priorities.

Further on down I-77, a longevity expert talking TED said we get happier as we age, mainly because we finally grasp our mortality. Considering our limited time left, we tend to focus on the positive. Professor Laura Carstensen had solid studies to back this up.

My anecdotal findings at Carolina Village shows residents focused on TV, old favorites like Mash and Matlock shuffled with ads for drugs with endless side effects, foods with soaring calorie counts, politicians with impossible promises. Clearly, odds are stacked against the positive here.

Village elders are fascinated with and put out by the interminable gestation (January ’13 is the due date) of their new dining room, the construction of which requires long detours by walker, cane and motorized scooter to get to the quite serviceable make-shift eating area. I once took my lap top to a sunny corner lounge around lunch time, planning to get some work done to the hum of washer and dryer. Plop. Plop. I look up from my little hexagonal table with plastic begonia centerpiece to see elderly chap and swooning madam on adjacent sofas, she with a basket of tupperwared pasta salad and soup de jour for a future meal, he with a kind smile, both with labored breath and tales of woe regarding their daily trek for nourishment. ‘Do you feel stronger since you’ve been walking more?’ I ask, full of hope. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ she replies.

Still no sign of the positivity Professor Carstensen’s research had promised.

Conversation at the Village covers the practical (does your detergent give lots of suds? - look at mine - no suds!), the historical (I used to build houses with your father) and the wistful (I lost my wife 2 years ago; I’m ready to follow her). Intricate webs of inquiry suss out health issues, lunch dates, card games, great grandchild wonderfulness and the Cary Grant/ Deborah Kerr movie on Tuesday night with free popcorn optional, hankies a must. But the content, I finally figured out, is less important than the simple, infinitely positive act of connecting.

I’m not ready to slow down and smell the sclerosis (sorry), but the elders have given me what a flock of birds and a steely nerved pilot gave Ric Elias - a glimpse of my options from here on out. Elias ends his talk by saying, ‘The only goal I have in life is being a good dad.’ And what about me and my number one goal? Be a good artist? Yep, that’ll positively do.

Painting by Carl Gussow

My Queen Jane

What you say to your audience between songs is an art in itself. Walter and I don’t want to break the spell of Dylan’s lyrics with stray patter in our Muscle and Bone shows. So this story, though umbilically melded to Queen Jane Approximately for me, is better essay than segue.

My mother the painter, Jane Weber, raised her children to recognize beauty, to seek it out. What a gift she gave us. In the summer before she died, as my father cared for her in sickness and faith, I’d check in by phone between visits. One evening I ducked out of the café where the songwriters were gathered and called the folks. Once we’d covered the physical discomforts Mom was dealing with, I told them about the small corner of Ohio City spread out before me. White lights on tree branches, muted conversation of people gathered around tables under the street lamps, music wafting over it all. When I stopped talking I heard Mom’s frail voice say, ‘Thank you for telling us what you see.’

I don’t think my heart had ever broken quite that way before.

Mom’s world, and in many ways Dad’s too, had shrunk so small by then. Yet she had one more gift to give me as I stood among the vibrant, throbbing world she only knew through stories. In a time when I felt helpless to comfort her, Mom told me how; just tell her my stories.

Whenever we sing Queen Jane Approximately, I’m reporting my surroundings to her still. Look, Mom, do you see the listeners basking in this warm music? Do you feel their joy, their memories, their dreams? Do you hear the lyrics made of words you loved so much, and the clapping, like roof tiles under an all night rain?

For a short while, in the refrain, she is there when I call, ‘Won’t you come see me, Queen Jane?’

Photo of Janie Weber

Stone capped hillock

When I was raising kids, the lovelies, I had very little time to write songs, play guitar, send little postcards and play out. But I did both, kids and art, because of my inner drive. I’ll never know whether my children or I or both would be better off now had I never followed that drive. These compulsions don’t ask our approval and I, for one, seldom question their motives. But I’m doing it now.

Why, subconscious self, do you want to perform Bob Dylan songs? What do you plan to accomplish? What will satisfy you? When will you fold up shop?

Answer. You, dear writer, are an intellectual. I am a romantic. You seek facts, and assurances. I just want to make love. You count the beans while I am hanging out the billowed sheets of our sacred tryst on a stone capped hillock swept by the wind.

Underestimate me at your peril. Live in your tedious world if you will, but leave me out of it for I no more need your tireless second guessing than a hound needs a leash. I go to the wild unlikely because I have one thing everyone wants and only some find.

Freedom. From penny pinchers and dime storers, text messengers and mall reverers, head rovers and left overs. You, my perpetual judge and questioner, have no real jurisdiction over me. I muse, you refuse, and still I dream of musing.

Some would say I muse my way out of all the traps you lay for me, questioning my motives with your sane stare. Thinking you rule me with your quaint defunding of my grand assumptions, these - that beauty calls our divinity out of caves, that repetition in the artist’s hand yields truth, that you don’t need your mind’s permission to befriend me.

I’m here, with constancy. I’m here, with hungry contentment. I’m here, with pleasure in your awkwardness for I know, you came this far to ask me, and I know, you’ll stay.

Painting by Amadeo Modigliani, Porträt der Madame Reynouard

Bob Dylan - beloved monarch

‘In recent memory the round table had seated such royalty as Bob Dylan, Bob Neuwirth, Nico, Tim Buckley, Janis Joplin, Viva, and the Velvet underground.'
-- Patti Smith, Just Kids

His subjects rise en masse, wave wildly, dance and cheer as he steps onto the raised platform. His voice is punctuated by thunderous applause; feet pound the metal bleachers in rumbling salute to the master of word and sound. Four gray-coat minions accompany his majesty with gleaming axes and clanging cymbals. The peons on the ground who dare shoot pictures of their lord are sternly warned by muscled guards who sweep the crowd with furrowed brows.

Ten bucks a pop for the foaming brew of the realm is extracted from giddy peasants who’ve paid dearly to stream through the gates, to glimpse the benevolent one, to bear him witness. He is a tireless ruler, criss crossing the land on fleets of diesel stallions to give the people fond and earnest hope they will pass on to children and children’s children.

This is not the has-no-clothes nobility of folktale legend. Our poet monarch is resplendent in fertile wings; each word spilled through electric air undergirds the faithful in glories of their past, stories of their future.

He can do no wrong because they have crowned him with their merciful devotion. Each a lover, each a ruler, each exalted in this rarified dominion of art.

Photo of Bob Dylan Bologna Nov 05 concert by Gabriele

On not drinking the Kool Aid

We’d booked ourselves into a cheap hotel after a lavish country club wedding reception. Our newish honda stood out in a lot full of dented cars, rusted vans, worn trucks and trailers. From a crowded parking space near the inn’s rear door, we skittered inside, avoiding the gaze of two young guys in a parked car as we clasped our possessions to our bosoms. Three doors down the unwashed hallway stood our smoke-free, well-kept room for the night, and we were grateful.

Dancing and wine and decibels set for the young can fray the nerves of the most stalwart elders, which I’ve become unbeknownst to my eternal child. My rest was fitful, raked by random voices, sputtering mufflers and hyperbolic TV audio.

A dawn walk took us behind the strip of cordoned-off restaurant shells and abandoned stores along crumbling sidewalks, unmowed grass, dilapidated trucks and small houses individually built before the tract housing boom, or maybe in spite of it. The neighborhood said there was no time or money or inclination to paint or repair or weed anything. The birds sang, the flowers bloomed, the people rested as we walked back to indulge in bagels and muffins included in the price of a room.

There was no point pretending the lobby’s restroom was clean enough to use. Without pause I backed out, intending to visit the one in our room before breakfast. But just outside the vending machine cubicle stood my husband Tom, talking with two strangers, an African American, call him Buck, and Indian-American, call him Dev. It went something like this:

Buck: I worked 25 years for a gas company and have skills in 40 areas there. Last year I broke my hand on the job (holding up a gloved, crippled hand) and they fired me. I said I’d do anything, but they just said, ‘Bye bye, have a good life.’

Dev: The workers are loyal to the companies, but the companies aren’t loyal to us.

Tom: These are the corporations getting tax breaks so they’ll create jobs.

Buck: Not for me. I’m 55 with one hand I can’t use. They got rid of me so they could hire two 20s... Only in America.

Dev: Companies take advantage of workers because of the economy.

Buck: Right - they know they’ve got lines of people who’ll work for low wages.

Dev: The government bails out Goldman Sachs and the CEOs get big bonuses. It’s not right.

Tom: The stimulus is supposed to trickle down, but where are the jobs?

Buck: Obama did it wrong. He shouldn’t have given all that money to the big companies.

Dev: Help people pay off their mortgages, give us jobs. We’ll get the economy going.

The focus turned to our multiple wars, suitcases of cash disappearing in Afghanistan, new bombings in Libya - gushes of money exiting U.S. coffers, with Buck’s ‘Only in America’ punctuating the proceedings.

The impromptu think tank dispersed down scuffed hallways. I said to Tom, ‘that conversation redeemed this whole experience - we never would have heard that at the Hilton.’

When politicians say with certainty that whatever they’re selling is ‘what the American people want,’ I want to know if they’ve stopped by Days Inn Columbus North lately. Informed and realistic citizens dwell there. They don’t buy the rhetoric, they recognize lies and fools and charlatans and they do know what they want.

Who are these Real Americans we hear so much about? You tell me.

Whisky echo bravo echo romeo

That’s me. My name, spelled out by the reservations clerk over the phone last week.

It could also be the Julie Roberts character line in Larry Crowne. Campus lush to Juliette luscious in two easy hours of movie magic.

Or, make it a writing challenge: use whisky-echo-bravo-echo-romeo in a song set in Dodge City 1848, sans cliché. Good luck.

I just got home from a short stay with kin who live in a seniors village. I’m glad for them for whom the stress of accomplishment has subsided. I’m saddened by the sure knowledge that we the boomer-gen will likely one day frame our wanderings in borders of sore knees, stiff backs and way too many keepsakes.

But consider 60 year old Diana Nyad, about to swim 60 consecutive hours in shark and jelly fish infested waters from Cuba to Florida. She has a different take on aging: “I want the candle to burn bright. We have changed a lot. Our parents’ generation, at 60, they considered that old age. I’m in the middle of middle age.” 

So what does whisky echo bravo echo romeo DO with her next few decades of relative freedom? From pain. From caution. From softly shrinking sidelines?

Well, there is this Muscle and Bone project. Walter and I sing songs of Dylan, voice of our generation and poster-bard for neither shy nor retiring. Our repertoire is a font of youth in a pond of plenty. Fond regards. Faithful friends. Eternal re-awakenings.

Spell check all of the above and you get Weber and Campbell hitting the trail. Two bravos, amigo, and no regrets.


Painting Maria Catharina Wiik, Out into the World

Homestead Dylan

Dylan’s songs let us in. They are his butler, impeccably dressed, astute, well versed in the bard’s wishes. Oddly, this butler lets anyone enter who rings the bell.

Please come in. Wipe your feet if you don’t mind; you may leave your coat and hat on the hook, madame, for you have no need of them here. We have a hearth, you understand. Do sit down. Oh, no, the master is not presently meeting with visitors, not personally, that is. But he wishes your comfort - yes, do have a look around. No, we ask that you not finger the tapestry for it is quite rare. Yes, this is the library. Kindly read anything you find here. The words, sir, inside the books. The bindings will only get you so far.

No, there is no television. The newspaper is just there, under the bird’s droppings. You would like to sketch the bird? By all means; your request is not uncommon. Yes, it is a rather splendid creature, I have to agree. Yes, yes, steel blue eyes to be sure. I, too, find them quite watchful. My but yes, he does sing, quite frequently. I have to say I like the sound of it, though I've been told it's an acquired taste.

The view? Most assuredly, it is among the bard's favorites. True again, the valley below is both deep and wide. I’m afraid I can’t tell you why the table stands empty by the edge of the sea.

Ah, good question, where are all the other visitors? The estate is vast, you see. As each of you ends up staying a long old time, we can’t have you stumbling all over each other, now can we? But you will most likely find and become quite fond of a guest or two. It happens that way. Dear madame, I do realize you wish to meet my employer, face to face. But you see, this is precisely why he employs me. To invite you in, make your stay enjoyable and answer your questions. I assure you I can answer all relevant questions about this place without troubling master for an interview. He’s a busy man and even you would be an interruption. Think of it, the time it would take from his work were he obliged to chat with each person who walks through the door.

What? Oh, very fine observation, sir. Why let you in if you aren’t allowed to get any closer than our feathered friend here and the weavings and this card game and the words, all these lovely words? I’ll tell you what, sit awhile, take your time. Chances are good you’ll figure things out for yourself.

Go ahead. You deal.

Image Rama Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 France

Summer time

Worn wood bleachers, shade and sun.
Camp kids, kickball, home run.
One girl slides in the dust and jumps up
announcing through gap tooth grin,
It didn't hurt. I'm OK!
Annie Oakley squint, outlaw braids
are OK too.
They dance, with her, back into the game.



Painting by Sophie Gengembre Anderson, Take the Fair Face of Woman, and Gently Suspending, With Butterflies, Flowers, and Jewels Attending, Thus Your Fairy is Made of Most Beautiful Things

Thoughts on a pretty day

It's a pretty day. Sun dry and not hot either. After swim workout, Micky decided, 'we should all go have a picnic lunch.' After which we all sped off to our non-picnic obligations.

I just got back from Europe. My sister, Pam, thought it would be great to spread the riches of those weeks over a year instead of spending our 'wow' time all in a heap.

Pam's idea and Mickey's echo the opportunities I squandered to sit and chat with my dear mother. When she lived, kids and work and musical ambitions vied for my attention. Kind of like a Europe trip - so much to absorb at once.

What if the universe conspired to let me spread that family richness out a bit. Pick up the phone on this pretty day and say, 'Hey, Mom, I've got some pretzels and rhubarb here - what've you got on hand? Want to go have a picnic?' I can picture myself tucking her into a folding chair and laying out the tablecloth.

With the question remaining, if I could do that today, would I? Or would I opt for the non-picnic obligations once again? For there will always be non-picnic options.

I did sit down to write this, in my tree house, with the birds and the breeze at my back. Maybe it's a start.

Photo credit Postdlf Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

Enigmatic Dylan

"Creativity is neither a rational deductive process nor the irrational wandering of the undisciplined mind but the emergence of beauty as mysterious as the blossoming of a field of daisies out of the dark Earth."
Thomas Berry, The Great Work

As I study lyrics of Bob Dylan, I often wonder how he experiences beauty’s mysterious emergence. I’d like to know how it feels to write a song like Blind Willie McTell or All Along the Watchtower. Is he proud, humble, satisfied? Does he wonder where it comes from, or does he know full well? Is he exhausted, as the woman birthing? Exuberant as a young pup?

I’m not sure why I’m so interested in these things. The artist who insisted, ‘I am my words” seemed to say my curiosity is irrelevant, that I know enough by inhabiting the words for the space of a song.

Maybe I just want a peek from the mountain top without the bothersome climbing. But that’s the mystery, isn’t it? How one soul accomplishes brilliance while another cannot, will not, dare not - we know not why. Hard work enters in but never explains genius.

I’m as close to Dylan’s psyche as he or I want me to be. In his songs he’s created a vessel by which I may be intimate, from a distance, with greatness. In some ways, he and every prodigal son pays the price of fame and fortune. Neither one comes cheap. In the summit’s glare, he forgoes the snug anonymity most of us forget to cherish.

But I still wonder - what is it like to spawn a field of daisies from your own dark Earth?

Photo Böhringer Friedrich, Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license

Goddesses of Pan

Julie’s mother Glenna, my mom Jane,
tucked into folds of heaven, released from pain,
the paradise we dream for them
both weightless and respectful of their souls,
those independent motherly conditions
of perpetual forgiveness in the face of kids
who disappoint but never disapprove
of how their mothers stubbornly refuse
impressions of perfection in the fabric of the heart,
where only art, the gentle creature, intervenes
to stitch the seams
and stir the soup
and scrub the knees
of turtle seeking denizens of glee.
You, and me.

How could we but see them where they stand,
now goddesses of Pan, sticky yeast and cinnamon
adorning every crevice
of their clever, kneading hands?

Susan Weber

Painting William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Soul Carried to Heaven

Bob Dylan: Ageless sage

A little kid at my school assembly grinned up at me after the show. ‘You remind me of somebody I know!’ he chirped. ‘Who?’ asked I. ‘My Gramma!’

It wasn’t the first time my internal chronometer got a jolt of sudden aging. My dad’s friend told me one day I looked more and more like Frieda, my paternal grandmother he’d known as a child.

All this grandma talk can get a girl cranky in the bones.

Music, as usual, to the rescue. Fan of anything Bob Dylan (Verlaine, Rimbaud, Steinbeck...), I ran across this Guthrie quote:

I just reared back and soaked in every note and every word of their singing. It was so clear and honest sounding, no Hollywood put-on, no fake wiggling. It was better to me than the loud squalling and bawling you’ve got to do to make yourself heard in the old mobbed saloons. And, instead of getting you all riled up mentally, morally and sexually - no, it done something a lot better, something that’s harder to do, something you need ten times more. It cleared your head up, that’s what it done, caused you to fall back and let your draggy bones rest and your muscles go limber like a cat’s.
Woody Guthrie, Bound for Glory

I'm a whole lot better off than the dust bowl refugees Woody put his mind to. I've got work, respect, food and home for which so many yearned (and still yearn). It’s the ode to musical truth I can relate to best in his words.

The Grammys’ red carpet is a gawker’s paradise of swank primp and tasteless swagger. You can almost see the cogs reel behind the brittle eyes: ‘To be heard I must be herded.’ The term ‘cattle call’ does come to mind.

I didn’t see Dylan on this year's carpet squares, but he of silk shirt and suave shoes dignified the Grammy stage when he broke out with Maggie’s Farm, backed by a dozen prize contenders and his own jokerman shadow dance. True to Woody, Dylan eschewed the fake wiggling and got down to it, the point of it all, the crux of art, the pith of poetry. The good bard applauded his humanity and ours with his ageless delight in the moment’s rich élan.

Now, with an artist like that at work to clear my mind, how can I stop singing?

This just in: As I looked up a clip of Dylan’s Grammy performance, I felt tingles up and down watching Mumford & Sons, the next generation of artists in the Guthrie-Dylan tradition.

Photo njnnetwork, Bob Dylan at the 2011 Grammys

Humane strokes

What do a Chicago dog school, a Pakistani murder and a Tiger Mom have in common, and why do I write this out in cursive?

The cursive is to stimulate my brain around the other three. According to experts, when I use longhand, my brain’s neural pathways can be “stimulated, changed and reorganized, even to the point of developing new brain cells.” (American Association of Handwriting Analysts) It has to do with contraction (the downstroke), release (the up) and the neural plasticity they foster.

A boy who’d brutally killed his underperforming fight dogs was recruited by a Chicago dog school funded by the Michael Vick case. There he learned to groom, feed, discipline and provide vaccinations for his pet pit bull, no longer a fighting tool.

A seventeen year old Pakistani defied her family’s plans for her marriage; her father and uncle applied electricity to change her mind and killed her, calling it a matter of family pride.

The thirteen year old daughter of Amy Chua, today’s Chinese-American lightening rod for world-wide parents and pundits, humbled her tiger mom by insisting on a degree of self-determination, whereby Amy Chua encountered the limits of her good intentions.

Control and freedom, contraction and release, are inextricably bound like downstrokes and upstrokes on a handwriting sample. Animals and children need guidance and teaching, boundaries and rules, standards of conduct; but caregivers need elastic brains that understand the difference between obedience and oppression.

Hearing of tortured dogs and a murdered daughter has me questioning the culture norms of the dog fighter and the Pakistani family. How did the line between decent and heinous behavior get drawn so far from basic humane instinct? What would it have taken for the Pakistani father and uncle to have questioned the pride and tradition that struck down their own and their own kin’s freedom to live in love? How did the Chicago boy change his mind about dog fighting?

Seemingly on the opposite extreme, the tiger mom prods her daughters to fight for the freedom to perform magnificently. “Chinese parents understand that nothing is fun until you’re good at it,” writes Amy Chua. Culture norms at work again, downstroke, upstroke, downstroke, up...

As certainly as there are merits to hard work, there is a plastic, elastic, expansive perspective that honors inner space for contemplation and self-knowing. “You are magnificent even if you never play your violin at Carnegie Hall,” goes the mantra. Goofing off is fun too, says the mellow parent.

If journalism is the art of putting moral dilemmas in bold relief by means of effective storytelling, certain practitioners have mastered the art. As consumer of this content, I have a choice to tune in as fleeting voyeur with a hard wince, or to engage my brain with the deeply human questions these stories raise. How do we sink to depravity? How do we rise to greatness? What is the measure of our success and who is the arbiter of our happiness?

Ponder onward, my human kin, in preservation of our signature virtue. Downstroke, upstroke, downstroke, up...

Photo Sannse, Staffordshire Bull Terrier, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

Capacitance

My dear father knows a great deal about frugality, magnanimity, cheese and bees. He can distinguish himself in a card game, tossing out helpful tips and random quips, all the while creaming his opponents. He’s aggregated funny and wise, humble and proud, stoic and wry into his crossword puzzler’s brain over ninety plus fruitful years.

But there’s one thing he’s wrong about, and I’m about to tell you why. One Sunday morning of my impressionable youth, Dad pointed out that a pair of hymn singers into microphones had little to write home about because their sets of pipes were enhanced by technology. I, the wee girl, proceeded to disrespect my natural singing voice for just about the rest of my life.

Enter the iPhone.

Today, after Walter and I recorded ‘All Along the Watchtower’ on his phone, I slid the file into GarageBand, juiced up the reverb and listened, dumbfounded by the transformation.

You’d think by now my long hours in the studio belaboring sound waves would have cured me of the misapprehension that only a naturally voluminous voice is worth its salt. But alas, until today, I felt like impostor mom raising fertility drug quintuplets on borrowed pampers.

Nevermore. A quiet shred of evidence enters my tender mind, a whispered brushstroke signifying truth. Philosphers challenging the sea, actors strutting the Globe, sopranos warbling to the rafters, Streisand any day of the week - those are another species entirely from the studio rat, the circus mime, the no-name dame who shares her glory with programmers, engineers and the miracle knobs they twirl and tweak.

A song that touches your inner ear, rushes through your veins, roars out your soul and changes how you are because a microphone stands open to the singer's breath, this is a force of nature nurtured by the congregate contagion of civilization.

Photo Ben Köhler, Patti Smith performing in Finland, 2007 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

I can't compete with Santa

The challenge and lament of kindergarten teachers the week before Christmas strikes a winsome chord in me as I wind down from a spate of arts residencies in far flung public schools. Ponder days disappeared from my date book mid Fall. Early excursions o’er gray interstates to small Ohio towns took my imagination elsewhere.

As small fingers smush graham crackers and gum drops onto frosting spackled milk cartons on the last day of school before that jolly benevolence and his friendly team of mammals drop in, I’m home at last, watching snow fall on black branches, without a thought to the snarled traffic at 55th and Woodland.

I heard this week, while driving, an interview with Alan Menken. He writes soundtracks for movies like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin. Asked if it delights him to have his creations glued, like gumdrops on butter icing, to popular consciousness, how could he answer but yes?

That some of my songs are now ear candy for select grade schoolers in the midwest delights me too. Scale that up by a factor of millions and I might have an inkling of fame’s delight. Is delight scalable, I wonder, or does fame bring a sack of antidotes to the progeny of joy?

This morning I putter in the kitchen, Bob Dylan’s Every Grain of Sand flooding my ear canals. How many songwriters stand in awe at the fact that a young man from nowhere (pardon me, Hibbingers) rose to fame and fortune on a sleigh named song? Access to stunning women, valiant musicians, world travel and the never-ending press parade - all are his because of words he conjured up to sing us.

Dylan’s fame became more than celebrity - neigh cult yet short of worship. The volume of his resplendent work, dependable as Old Saint Nick, assures us of his mystical existence. We don’t quite care if the cherry nose is from too much sherry or too long stints in the barren winds of inspiration. We love him, our fond jester. This clause is non-compete.

Except for the miracle workers who teach our kids to love school, competing with Santa is moot. His job, disguised as Dylan or parents or other consummate sages, is to twinkle and bestow. Ours is to anticipate, provide ballast in our reverence, and to glory in the magnitude of good.

Photo Norbert Aepli, Santa Clause on skies in Adelboden, Switzerland, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license

Short takes

I’m at Target with Tom in search of Merona boxers, Andrew’s brand. A shopper scrutinizing Fruit of the Loom points us to the next isle and joins us as we ponder. Her son is keen on Meronas too. Here we crouch and murmur, two grown women, conversational in the nostalgia of picking out underwear for our grown sons.

What size, really? Medium looks too small, doesn’t it? She says her son’s an athlete - something rigorous like curling. Andrew rides a bike all over Toronto, I tell her. Trim waistlines. Mediums then.
Knit or woven? The knits are softer, Tom interjects. But which ones? Something fun - the green flamingos? Andrew likes green. Or maybe the understated black with thin gray stripes.

As we hand mediums back and forth, the other mom reminds me of a happily married Liz Lemon, eloquent and droll, easy to like. I want her to take the last of the wide green and navy stripes in her son’s size. ‘Naw, go ahead, I’m not attached to them,’ she grins. Tom and I proceed to check out as she squints at the penguin print.

Here I am two days later, folding clothes and wondering what that was. Pawed through racks at Target felt like the backyard fence, the coffee klatsch, the hair salon. What is it about women that has us relaxing into the company of strangers?

As I set down the laundry, a frail finger cut rips wide open on the basket of socks and undies. Were my Target compatriot at hand, I’d show her the welling blood. Attuned to small time adventure, she’d warmly fuss as mothers do.  Not that men do not, or cannot do the same. Women are just more practiced. As the men catch up, we are all the wiser.

Painting by Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, The Marquise de Pezay (or Pezé), and the Marquise de Rougé with Her Sons Alexis and Adrien

Godiva

About to descend to the kitchen world

I remember slipping into another state of grace,
words kept in a tiny tin of alabaster sheaths
held by invisible selves, mustachioed and grave,
who steady their taut arms against willow bark
to snip the bronze tips of Madame Godiva's mane.

John Collier painting of Lady Godiva