Hurry Hurry, Wait

Holidays, Happy and Otherwise

This Moment: The last day of Christmas shopping, people everywhere, in good cheer, bad cheer, and various other moods. The reason to not wear earphones everywhere is to be able to hear the unexpected, and to bask in the wonder that is humanity. For example, I overheard these two gems today.

Mom #1

Setting: The middle of a crowded Toys-R-Us, dragging a child on the verge of tears.

Quote: "I will call Santa right now on the phone and tell him not to bother!"

Mom #2

Setting: The middle of crowded toy section in K-Mart, talking to a friend.

Quote: "What? No, that's for me. I looooove erotica."

I wish I had little awards to pass out.

Year in Music

This Moment: As it is getting near the end of the year, music magazines, blogs, and radio shows are rolling out their top tens and other commentaries on music. In thinking about my music moments over the last year, one quickly came to mind as the most memorable.

For the last three summers I have been the program coordinator for a summer camp called Write on Sports. We work with middle school students on their writing by having them act as sportswriters for a few weeks. As part of this, we take them to cover a local minor league baseball game (the New Jersey Jackals). We usually end up being there on "camp day" and there are hundreds of young kids running around the stadium. The kids quickly get themselves full of sugar and are primed to get "pumped up" by the grating tunes on the PA and by the PA announcer asking us all to make some noise. This general chaos, and the fact that the games start at noon and the conditions are unbearably hot, lead me to take a break away from the action.

This past summer, I was crashing the tent area reserved for parties, when I saw a young boy in front of me, in full jock attire (baseball cap and brand name t-shirt), singing along to the chorus of the Indian version of Jai Ho (from Slumdog Millionaire) as it was being played over the PA. I thought to myself - funny that, what a world.

Let Us Pray

This Moment: I'm in Atlanta for the state of Georgia's annual Adult Literacy Conference.  The luncheon is in a large room, with seating for several hundred people.  As the food is about to be served, one of the speakers says "Let us pray."  Everybody, and I mean everybody, immediately bows their head.  Soon after, from way across the room I catch this old timer's eyes because we are the only people not praying.  We stare silently at each other for a few seconds and then each look around the room before we make eye contact again. As the prayer continues, each of us recedes into our own thoughts, waiting for things to start up again.

I have been reading about Robert Frank lately, so join me in imagining this scene as a black and white photo that didn't happen.

Smile, You Are Beautiful

This Moment: I was riding the Red Line in Boston with my sons, heading to Fenway Park, and this caught my eye. Somebody had vandalized an ad, and you can figure out what they were telling the reader, the world, or whoever, to go and do. Then at some point another person took the time to cover it with a post-it. A small gesture that made the train ride more pleasant.

A few stops later, an older woman stepped onto what was a fairly crowded train. She was slight of build, and had a gauze patch over one eye. She looked quite solemn. Almost immediately, a young guy offered to give up his seat. She declined, and then broke out into this beaming smile - seemingly a reaction to his gesture. As the train filled in with other people, I could still see her standing there, quite beautiful indeed.

Footnote: I checked out the .com address, and it seems like a mix of actual grassroots activity (women leaving anonymous, positive messages in public spaces for other women) and viral marketing (you can buy an "official" t-shirt, which seems a bit odd for something that presents itself as DIY).

Wake Up, Wake Up, You Drowsy Sleeper

This Moment: Late afternoon, mulling over fragments of last night's dream and listening to scratchy tunes from the early 20th century.

I remember a famous director (Anthony Mann, I think, but don't quote me) saying that all you need for a good movie is two or three shots that the audience finds compelling. If they remember those shots, he thought, you were successful. At the time I thought that was setting the bar pretty low, but I understand what he is saying (I think). All of the shots and images are important, but some crystalize your experience of the film.

Do we hold the same standard for our dreams? Of course the narrative and themes of dreams tend to skip around more than your average film, but how many scenes from a dream do you have to remember for it to be a noteworthy one? Two? Three?

(Note: Scroll down slightly for related video clip)

Dunbar's Number

This Moment: Organizing my vinyl after many years of neglect, I spent some time listening to songs that I have had some intensly personal connection with over the years. Not surprisingly, some still had that spark when I put them on the turntable, others did not. While working through a pile of records I had pulled out, I started to think about the nature of this process. Well past my teenage years, I still swoon and get carried away by tunes that speak to and with me. Transcendance is possible at any age, and certain songs retain or develop that power to define the moment you are experiencing. And I experience a slight feeling of loss when I recognize a song I used to have a relationship with no longer retains any special appeal.

At some point I started thinking about Dunbar's Number, which is the theoretical size (about 150 I think) of a group in which each person knows everybody that anybody else knows. It is a kind of built-in limit required by a self-contained community.

So this is the music question - Is there a natural limit to the number of songs that you can be in an active relationship with? At some point do certain older song-relationships get pushed out because you simply don't have the room, energy, or time needed to maintain those relationships while tending to newer song-relationships?

My current examples of such song-relationships -

Song I'm still madly in love with after all these years - Yes I Do (by the Psychedelic Furs)

Special new song in my life: Saints (by Army/Navy)

Old song that has lost that loving feeling: Androgynous (by the Replacements)

Will something else get pushed out when I get a new song crush? Does that happen to you?

The Philosopher's Axe, Or, I Want a Sandwich

Do you know this old philosophical quandry? You have an axe, and let's say you give it the nickname "Lucille" (just like BB King). After using it for a while, the handle breaks, so you replace it. Then the blade breaks, so you replace that, too. Now, is this still Lucille, or something else? I always thought philosophers had too much time on their hands when I heard this question.

This Moment: Standing at the deli counter today, the customer next me points and tells the clerk, in a bit of a bored voice, "I don't know - I want that kind of sandwich, but that one is cold." The clerk explains, "Yes, they're cold now, but we put them on the grill or heat them up in the microwave." The customer, clearly unhappy with the response, says condescendingly, "No - If you heat it up it won't be that kind of sandwich anymore."

Time Just Is - It Doesn't Move, Per Se

This Moment: For the last few days we have had serious thunderstorms, and in the middle of the afternoon rooms have gone from pitch black to sun drenched in a manner of minutes. This made me think about the films of Wong Kar Wai. With the help of his cinematographer, Christopher Doyle, he creates a moving wash of colors. At times the images are so sharp and focused that you have to squint. At other times the camera is so open to the richness of color in the scene that it can't scan correctly, and so it floats dreamily around. His movies have people in them, but I wasn't so interested in that right now.

Monsters Create Their Own Spaces

This moment: I'm reading the comic book Air and have been struck by the story's central conceit of symbolism as technology (and traveling through time-space via the act of interpretation). I have also been mulling over its use of blank space as a complex metaphor for the freedom and terror of creativity. That and I wanted to teach myself more stuff about how to work with iMovie...

The Lives of Crossing Guards

When I see them, I often wonder what school crossing guards did in their earlier working life and what kind of stories they could tell. For example, I think, "Is that one an author of some renown? Has that one traveled to places I'd love to go? Do they speak a language I'd love to speak?"

This moment: Today as I walked by two elderly crossing guards talking to each other I overheard one say, "I was there that night at Woody's when KY cut that boy's head."

A Moment in Louisville