The Heart of Rock'N Roll Is Still Beating

I'll try to keep this brief. I know most of you don't really care about this stuff.

U2.

It. Was. Awesome.

And I didn't bring my camera. Molly that I am, when Ticketmaster told me no cameras were allowed, I took them at their word. No matter that EVERY OTHER PERSON in the entire building (all 70,000 of them), except, of course, for MommyJ, Josh, or CPod, brought a camera. We had to make do with sub-par camera phones. And those pictures are not even worth putting on here. So. I have no proof. Only memories.

While U2 was fantastic, the awesomeness did not begin with them.

It began with these guys:


That's right, folks. Muse opened for U2. This was a huge bonus, since opening bands for the Atlanta concert were not announced until a few months ago -- long after we bought our tickets.

Now. The last time we saw U2, Gavin Rossdale's short-lived venture Institute opened. We were not impressed -- more like disappointed since both CPod and I had been fans of Bush for a while. Let's just say the difference between studio recording and live performance was . . . significant.

Not so with Muse. They were absolutely spot on in a live venue. Go see them! It was a fantastic performance.

Enter U2. Talk about huge. Take a look at this:

I have never seen a concert set like this before. Between bands, we watched all the tech people take their places on the set. I'm talking dozens of follow spots, camera operators, and guitar wranglers, many of them perched precariously on tiny chairs high above the audience, harnessed to the giant claw of a stage.

It was a spectacle, worthy of the price of the tickets, and impressive in it's sheer size and scope: excessive, larger than life, grandiose, self-indulgent, and absolutely one of the most fun experiences I have ever had in my life.

They played, and played, and played some more. Inexhaustible. They changed up their set list enough to keep us guessing even though we (read: CPod) are total nerds and thought we knew what would come next. We heard old stuff, and new stuff, and rare stuff (Stuck in a Moment, acoustic version, thank you very much!) and the greatest stuff. Can I say it again? It was awesome.

And I have some notes.

The Edge -- you are amazing. You are a quiet, bald Irish dude and in ordinary, every day conversation, people refer to you by the coolest nickname anyone has ever had. But man, you can play yourself some guitar. I am never disappointed by what I hear emanating from whichever of your dozens of instruments you have picked up. In fact, I have decided that you may actually be the biggest reason I love U2 so much. Some part of me responds to the iconic strains of The Edge playing his guitar, and I will never stop loving it.

Larry Mullen, Jr. -- oh, my. The arms. Drummers should NEVER wear long sleeves.

Adam Clayton -- I think they must keep you around because you're a pretty cool guy. At least, that's how you look on stage: unruffled by all those people, just playing your bass as though you're the only person in the room.

Bono -- I'll be honest: sometimes I listen to U2 in spite of you. Love the lyrics, and you're quite the showman, that's for sure. But I think the ego required to do what you do on stage must make you a pretty difficult person to live with the rest of the time. Bless your wife and family!

So, if you're jealous, and you should be, then you should watch the live video stream from the Rose Bowl concert on October 25. It will be awesome, and as Motherboard said, you can wear your pajamas. I'm all about the pajamas these days -- they're the only clothes I have left that fit me! You MUST see the set to believe it. It's amazing. Here's the preview:



I'll be watching!

One thing that makes me happy . . .

. . . is this song: U2's Stuck in a Moment. It came up on my iPod yesterday and I smiled. I still love the regular version, but there's just something about a voice and a guitar that really, really does it for me. Each time I hear it, I remember the first time I heard the acoustic version, which was as the final encore at the U2 concert I attended in Atlanta in 2005. And then I remember how CPod moved heaven and earth to find a recording of it to give me for Christmas. Every time I hear it, I have happy memories. I decided to share, so I searched for it on YouTube and found this:



Imagine my joy to discover that they have also been doing the acoustic version on this concert tour . . . and that I will, hopefully, be listening to it exactly three weeks from right now!

So just press play, and enjoy!

A Really, Really Great (True) Love Story and It Isn't Even Mine. And also some random stuff.

Last week was busy. My calendar is full in September. And October. And then I have this little thing written on November 4, and NOTHING else. 8 more weeks! I can see the light!

Okay. So last week was busy because it was a symphony week . . . rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal, concert, concert. Not terrible, but only because it only happens six times a year.

We begin every season with a pops concert -- last year, all Cole Porter; two years ago, Gershwin; three years ago, I think it was Broadway. Fun stuff, especially if you're old enough to remember who Cole Porter was without watching De-Lovely.

This year, the program was all Irving Berlin. Generally, I don't love playing these concerts because the viola parts are, um, less than challenging, unless you're incapable of feeling off-beats. But we always have great singers, and the songs are familiar, and the audience leaves happy, so I usually come out of it with some degree of satisfaction as well. And a paycheck. Which helps.

Can I just say that I had no idea Irving Berlin wrote so much music? Seriously. We have him to thank for such perennial classics as "White Christmas" and "God Bless America". But there's so, so, so much more! I did some research and I think I have a retroactive crush on a man who died at the ripe old age of 101 -- just as I was entering puberty.

How could you not love a man who, when his sweetheart was disowned by her Catholic telegraph magnate father for marrying a Jewish immigrant upstart with no background, signed over the rights to the song he knew would be a sure hit? Because that's exactly what he did. He wrote "Always" when they fell in love. And all royalties from that song, played in a million different places a million different times, went to her as well. He made sure that even if something happened to him, or their union did not last they way they thought it would, she would not be left without means because she decided to marry him.

He wrote "Blue Skies" (smilin' at me . . . you know this one!) to celebrate the birth of their first child. Read the words. You'll love the song more now that you know why he wrote it. Same goes for "Always". I was the first to fall when CPod and I first met, but if it had been the other way around, he couldn't have missed with lyrics like those.

Irving Berlin died in 1989. He was 101. His wife died the year before. They were married for 63 years -- inseparable until the very end. That, my friends, is a love story.

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In other news, my refrigerator fried my hairdryer tonight. Lately, the water dispenser in our refrigerator keeps freezing up. And the only way to get the water moving again is to open the freezer door and heat the panel up with a hairdryer. It takes a while, so I pulled up a chair. I was talking with CPod while he leaned on the counter and then all of a sudden I was holding a blowtorch. I guess I should count my blessings. I could have been actually drying my hair when the appliance in question decided to melt down. Frizzy, curly hair I'm okay with. Fried? Not so much.

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I'm nesting. Intensely.

Right now, my living room looks like a tornado hit the little girls' section of a children's clothing store and dumped it's entire contents in front of the fireplace. I'm sorting all the clothes given to me by my sister (I mean loaned) and another friend and, of course, the things I've purchased.

I have to say, I've never before bought tights for anyone but myself. It's a brave new world, friends. A brave new world.

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Does anyone know how to get little boys to AIM? Please don't say Cheerios. You'd be surprised how my children define "edible". I think if I have to wipe a puddle of pee off of the floor or the little place on the side of the toilet where urine likes to collect ONE MORE TIME I am going to buy a really huge litter box for the back porch. Yes, CPod does the toilets. But not hourly. Maybe what I need is one of those little sign-in sheets you see in fast food restaurant bathrooms: initial here when you've inspected the toilet. Except the only initials would be mine, scrawled in ever-bolder and angrier strokes as the day wore on.

One day last week I caught ConMan "aiming" with his non-dominant right hand while holding a tootsie pop with his left. Really? I mean, get your priorities in order, son.

I think I'm going to start locking the door to my bathroom (maybe even to CPod) lest the throne in there should be defiled in the same heinous manner.

Indeed, something must remain sacred.

Hidden Potential

I have a rock. My kids call it my special rock. I found it in a river up in the mountains when we were on vacation a couple of summers ago. It doesn't look like much now, but in the water, clear, cool, and sparkling, it seemed to have a glow about it, a lovely green inner fire that compelled me to touch it, handle it, take it home with me.

I was convinced I had found a fist-sized emerald, raw and uncut, but fraught with potential -- for purity, for beauty, for a nice fat ring on my finger.

The rock sits on my kitchen windowsill where I see it every day. As I wash dishes and stare out the window, I think about that rock. My emerald. We have a little gem & mineral museum downtown. Gemstones are actually more common around here than you'd think, so it's not all that far-fetched for me to imagine great value in my find. Every time I drive past the museum, I think I should take my rock in to have it identified, once and for all.

But I never do it. When I can only imagine the possibilities, when its true identity is still shadowed by the mystery of conjecture, it seems more valuable to me. It might be just a rock, but as long as I don't know for sure, it might also be something extraordinary.

This got me thinking about rocks in general. Is anything just a rock? Time out for some science. I promise to go easy on you.

Rocks come in three basic types: sedimentary, metamorphic, igneous. Sedimentary rocks are formed as particles of sediment are deposited and then subjected to pressure intense enough to bring about "lithification", or rock formation. I really like that word. Sedimentary rocks have layers: think the stripes on the top of Mt. Timpanogos, the painted sandstone of Antelope Canyon, the tortured shale striations visible on the exposed rock faces of my own Appalachian mountains.

Igneous rocks are what's left over after a volcanic eruption: magma cools and solidifies, leaving us with such useful stones as obsidian, basalt, pumice, granite and tufa (out of which the ancient Etruscans carved the city of Orvieto in Italy, one of my most favorite places on the planet). Though they all vary vastly in density and mineral composition, all of these rocks have one thing in common: an explosion had to happen in order for them to happen.

Metamorphic rocks -- now these are magical. Metamorphic rocks are formed when an existing rock is changed. The metamorphosis can happen when any rock -- sedimentary, igneous, or an older metamorphic -- is subjected to extreme heat and pressure. More extreme than a volcano, which forms the igneous rocks in the first place. More extreme than years and years and years of sedimentation, which forms the sedimentary rocks. Metamorphosis gives us marble and slate, diamonds and gemstones.

We all have parts of us that have been formed by layer upon layer of sensory intake, external stimuli, and our own introspective processing of those experiences. And then we undergo something big, something explosive, something igneous, and an entirely new type of person emerges: sometimes hard and piercing, like the obsidian used anciently to make spear and arrow heads; sometimes soft and porous like the pumice we use to smooth and erode rough patches.

I'm hoping for some metamorphosis. Take my sedimentation, my sharp obsidian, my flinty shale, my pumice that won't hold water, and turn it into marble, to slate, to diamonds. To emeralds.

Rocks and stones are many in number, just like souls. But common, ordinary? Never. Not them, and not us, either.

The Nose

I cleaned my bathroom today. It was in need. I dropped my sports bra on the floor after I ran last on March 1 (I'm not kidding. It's the pregnancy, cut me some slack.) and it was still there, in the same spot, gathering dust bunnies until I picked it up and put it in the laundry today. Don't judge me. My husband does the toilets.

Anyway. As I rearranged stuff around so I could clean the counter, I noticed, for the first time in a while, my big, fat bottle of expensive perfume. And this brings me to The Nose.

After CPod graduated from . . . the long, long schooling that he attended in Memphis after graduating from BYU, we had a 6 week lag before he received his professional licensure and could do what he was trained to do. (This anonymity thing is hard sometimes!) I had a great job, and we'd been living on my earnings for a long time, so it was no biggie -- but CPod does not do bored. He cannot be idle.

So. He playied around on a few travel websites, all without my knowledge. He formulated a little secret plan, and one day made the announcement: honey, we're going to Paris! Well, flying in and out of Paris. What we did with the remaining three weeks was entirely up to us.

I was absolutely shocked. And ecstatic. But mostly shocked. I thought he was kidding, but he wasn't. What better way to burn through the last remnants of his student loan money? The surprise was an advantage -- my boss couldn't say no to three weeks of leave when CPod had already bought the non-refundable tickets and I had had no part in the planning.

We organized our trip, bought Eurail passes ahead of time, and test-filled our backpacks to make sure we weren't taking too much gear. I cut my hair super short so I wouldn't have to worry about it on the trip.

The trip was fantastic. I spent the summer after I graduated from high school travelling through Europe with an orchestra, so we went to all the places I could see again and again and again . . . the Louvre & Orsay museums in Paris, Santa Croce in Florence, the Jungfrau and Trummelbach Falls (I will write about this place again, I promise) in Switzerland. We ate fantastic food (after black truffles, how could anyone ever be the same again?), and explored amazing places. We slept on the train, and we slept in a 700 year old hotel in Venice. In Florence, we had gelato 14 times in 3 days. We made a big loop through France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany and it was all fantastic. All of it.

We have little handmade pottery salt & pepper shakers and a handpainted refrigerator magnet from Orvieto. We have a couple of small watercolors from some artist in Montmartre. We have a mechanically perfect hand-carved peppermill from Germany, and Christmas ornaments from Katya Wohlfahrt's in Rothenburg. CPod saved all his souvenir money so he could buy tools and Jack Wolfskin gear in Germany. And I spent most of mine in Sephora.

Have you been to Sephora? I don't mean the one in your mall, the one that smells like a flower shop on steroids. I mean a huge Sephora. A Sephora with a Nose. At the flagship Sephora on the Champs Elyssees in Paris, the first thing you see when you walk in the door is a small kiosk: nothing fancy, just a wooden circle filled with plain labelled brown bottles and a little man with a really big nose.

The Nose's job is to divine your scent: you tell him what you like, and he finds the fragrance for you. But it's more like magic. All of the bottles look the same, and they are arranged by major ingredient: citrus, floral, marine, musk . . . you get the picture. I thought I might like citrus, knew I didn't want musk, and that was all I said. He looked me over, and said, "Marine." He waved a few little wands under my nose, and voila! "L'Eau d'Issey, by Issey Miyake" was his proclamation, and darned if he wasn't right.

By the way, who is this Issey Miyake character? And where can I get whatever that is you're waving in front of my face, because I have GOT to get me some of that. It's divine: light, airy, clean, cool, and plus, when someone asks me about my perfume, if I say it fast enough, they have no idea what I'm saying. Because if you know me in real life, you are not allowed to share my signature scent.

So there's my memory. I have a newer, bigger bottle of Issey Miyake now. I don't wear it often enough. But every time I put it on, three wonderful weeks of my life flash before my eyes.

The Daffodil Path

When I was born, my parents brought me home to a big, old farmhouse surrounded by a forest of huge oak trees. There was a meadow a short distance from the house that, in the spring, became a carpeted path of yellow blooms -- daffodils, the vestige of generations past, who had done what they could to beautify their little corner of the world.

Another piece of history, and I'll try not to lose you here: daffodils, the most common name for any and all varietals of the Narcissus family, are not native, in any form, to North America. Varieties still grow wild in the Ukraine, and in Wales; they have always been common in East Asia; and the ones most familiar to us are native to Spain and Portugal. The Dutch began cultivating the bulbs they gathered in their travels all over the world, and daffodils were among the first.

Last month, we took a little weekend trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee with some friends of ours. We had a great time with all of our little children (all total, 5 of them, under 6 years old) doing touristy things, swimming in the indoor pool, and playing together. But for me, the highlight of the trip was our foray into the wilderness. The weather was dreary, so our wanderings only went so far as the paved roads would take us, but in the Smokies, you don't have to go far to feel really remote.

I noticed, even out in the woods, there are daffodils all over the place. But they're not native. So I looked a little closer, and if I was lucky, I would spy the crumbled remains of a centuries-old homestead. The people were long gone, the house had fallen down, and even the old stone chimney had tumbled to the ground, but the daffodils remained. Because that's the other thing about daffodils. They will outlast us.


When I was studying European history in preparation for my first "grand tour" of Europe, I found myself feeling envious of all those old places: palaces and cathedrals, monasteries and libraries, towns, even roads, that were older than anything we would ever find in our young nation.

Was I ever wrong. What about places like these? I would say they're even older than the Magna Carta, the paper it was written on, and the building good old King John's uppity barons were in when they proposed it.



And then there are the "newer" places you can find here in the mountains:





Thankfully, a few homesteads like this one have been preserved. But when you walk through, you can feel the pioneer spirit of the people that built it all. You can see the marks in the hand-hewn logs and feel the fatigue of spent muscles as each was carefully shaped to form the ever-important shelters for people and livestock. You can hear the rushing water in the background, hike to the cornfields, follow the low walls of moss-covered river-rock used to mark property boundaries, smell the sweetness of the pure mountain air, and understand why they arrived at this place, and then decided to stay.

I've been thinking a lot lately about my legacy. Even if it's just daffodils, I hope I leave something behind that brings a little joy, a little hope, a little brightness to someone's life. It's a question, I think, we all need to ask ourselves. What will you leave behind?

Watch out, Boy Bands! InkMama's Boys are in the house!

Happily, mother nature decided to wrap herself up in a big, beautiful, billowy, blanket of blowing whiteness. I love snow. I live for snow days. I love that we own our own business, so CPod could take a snow day with us. I love having an excuse to throw the agenda out the window and just play for a day. I love my conductor for canceling our rehearsal this evening. (Not that I would have gone, but at least now I don't feel guilty . . . and since we're making it up with a shorter one, I'll still get paid.) I love hot chocolate. I love having another adult around to witness the insanity that is our house every single waking moment of every single day. I also love having another adult around to help clean up the mess that happens when all we do is play.

The snow started for us while we were still at church. Our crazy, must-have-lived-up-north-at-some-point bishop did not send all of us alarmist, weather-novice southerners home right away (even those of use who have lived out west still get excited when the snow begins to fall). (Maybe he should have . . . we have mountains here! One retired couple in our ward took 5 hours to get home, including a foray into a snowy ditch at the bottom of their non-flat neighborhood.)

We lost power twice on Sunday. This precipitated many happy circumstances, the least of which was not bedtime as soon as it got dark -- which equals early at our house. In fact, the power came back on about 5 minutes after we tucked all three boys into their sleeping bags (like camping, right?) but CPod and I still sat on the couch reading with flashlights so they would go to sleep without knowing, yes, they actually could watch a show before bedtime if they so desired.

So, before I explain the other best parts, guess what this is:


Guesses, anyone? Here's the same picture with two minor lighting changes:


All three boys got headlamps for Christmas, so we all donned them and wandered around our house in the half-light of a closing, cloudy day. CPod got out his JetBoil and cooked us up some Mountain House grub. I have never seen my kids eat like they did when we fed them camping food. They very nearly licked their plates. Even I, food snob extraordinaire, enjoyed it enough to actually consider eating it under circumstances other than, A. actual camping, B. power outage with no access to the grill since it's covered by a snow drift, or C. the apocalypse. A good time was definitely had by all.

Which brings me to the title and purpose of this post. I've decided to market my children as a boy band. There's another trio out there of cute-ish brothers, and I am 100% certain my boys have more talent than that Disney-ified, can't do it without a back-up band even though they pretend to play their own instruments, family of hotties. So, without further ado, I present for your viewing and listening pleasure, InkMama's Boys in their worldwide internet debut. Please don't call them Milli Vanilli. At least not until they're old enough to read. Then, I'll begin insisting they do their own stuff. For now, it's The Killers.

Please forward all press kit requests or gig inquiries to my e-mail. It's on my sidebar. I know they'd be perfect for whatever event you have in mind. I mean, where else have you seen moves like these?

Tuesday Afternoon Matinee

We really enjoy movies in our family. Before G-Dog and ConMan were born, CPod worked extra Saturdays and saved the cash so that we could afford to install a projector and 108" screen in our basement. We figured once the twins arrived, we might not ever leave the house again, so why not splurge on what could be our only source of entertainment in the future?

Now, we only rarely go out to the movies. When we have a babysitter, we'd rather go someplace we can have an actual conversation. We love to eat good food, and movie theater popcorn, while good, does not quite meet my ridiculously high food-snob standards. (I am absolutely not being sarcastic here. Seriously.)

There's also something to be said for a film operator who is willing to pause the movie for you if you have to use the bathroom. Let's be honest. I leave the bathroom door open and keep watching the movie while I pee. Can you do that at your neighborhood stadium seating multiplex? I think not.

I won't even go into other things you're allowed to do in our theater.

As our children have grown, they have come to enjoy the wonders of the projector as well. Except for the time we rented Charlotte's Web. The first time that 18 inch spider appeared on the screen, my little boys couldn't climb over their daddy and up the stairs fast enough. We only made it 10 minutes in before they'd had enough.

They were much younger then, so today, I decided to try again. We put MayDay down for a nap, and then, upstairs on the normal sized television set we have in our living room, I turned on Charlotte's Web.

First of all, it was my intention to turn on the movie and then go be productive doing other things, like folding laundry or cleaning the bathrooms or cooking dinner for the missionaries. But I was totally sucked in. You see, Charlotte's Web is one of the first books I remember reading. I remember finishing my work quickly in Ms. O'Neill's first grade class so I could get out my book and read. I remember figuring out ways to stay up late so I could read into the night. (I devised all kinds of methods later in life . . . that's a post all its own.) I remember crying when Charlotte died. (Sorry if you haven't read it. But what rock have you been hiding under?) And mostly I remember loving every word.

I sat on the couch snuggled up with my twins for the entire 100 minutes, surreptitiously wiping away my tears, and I loved every minute of it. I loved Julia Roberts' intelligent voice for Charlotte. I loved Oprah Winfrey's mama goose voice. I even loved gross and slimey Steve Buscemi as Templeton the rat. And my boys loved it, too.

But we didn't love it until about 10 minutes in. And it's all G-Dog's fault. Here's how it went:

(Opening credits roll, narrator begins to tell story of the young girl who did something extraordinary . . .)

G-Dog: Mommy, who is that girl?
Mommy: She's Fern.
G: Is that her room?
M: Yes.
G: Why is it raining?
M: Sometimes it does that.
G: Why is she getting up in the middle of the night?
M: I don't know.
G: Where is she going?
M: I don't know.
G: Why is the light on in the barn?
M: I don't know.
G: Who is that man?
M: I don't know.
G: How many baby piggies are there?
M: I don't know.
G: Is that her dad?
M: Yes.
G: What is he going to do to that pig?
M: I don't know. (I really did know, but I didn't have the heart to tell him he was going to kill the runt. Turns out I needn't have been so discreet.)
G: Is he going to kill that baby piggie?
M: Just watch!
G: Why does that girl want the piggie?
M: She didn't want him to get hurt.
G: Why does her daddy need the piggies?
M: He sells them for money.

(30 seconds later)

G: Why is she taking the piggie to school?
M: She wants to make sure he gets taken care of.
G: Why did she get in trouble?
M: Because she shouldn't have taken the pig to school.
G: How many animals are in the barn?
M: I don't know.
G: Is the piggie going to scare that rat?
M: I don't know.
G: Is the rat the bad guy?
M: No. His name is Templeton.
G: Is the mommy pig turned into money?
M: No, she's in another barn and she'll have more babies later.
G: Did the other baby piggies get turned into money?
M: They were sold.
G: Did the mommy piggy get turned into food?
M: No.
G: Is Wilbur the good guy?
M: Yes. Just watch the movie, G-Dog! If you would stop talking long enough to listen to the dialogue, you would learn the answers to most of your questions!

He never stops. Well, almost never. He did finally become absorbed enough in the story to stop his mental bleed-out.

Exhausted, I tell you. I am exhausted!

Epiphany

I spent my seventeenth summer playing viola at a world-renowned music festival. Each day was filled with practices and performances, theory lessons and master classes, orchestras, opera pits, string quartets, private practices and sectionals.

I toted my viola and a foldable wire music stand all through the mountains for group rehearsals, and, when it came time to practice on my own, in search of a vacant tin-roofed cabin so I could add my strains of Bloch and Schubert to the symphony of sound carried on the breeze. The hills rang from Reveille to Taps, and the almost daily thunderstorms did little to dampen the song.

That summer I dyed my hair a rich, dark auburn (because I could), I ate only carrots and peanut butter (because they were the only edible things at the dining hall), and I had a crush on Glen Cortese (look him up . . . and don't hold the beard against me).

It's not what you think. It was totally unrequited and I was okay with that -- in fact, I would have been surprised if he had known my full name. You see, Dr. Cortese was my conductor. I arrived at rehearsals early just for the chance to say hello before we began to play. I listened intently to every word he said and gleaned every possible scrap of musical wisdom from his erudite musings about form. I nodded in agreement to every suggestion of dynamic change and nearly applauded his brilliant analysis of the composer's intent. I worked hard to hold onto first chair not only so I could lead my section, but so I could stay near Dr. Cortese.

And this is why I was so absolutely mortified the first time we read through Dvorak's Symphony No. 7 in d Minor. I had always loved Dvorak -- he was sassy, and he wrote fantastic viola parts -- and the first two movements were great fun to play -- but the third movement, the Scherzo, hit me with something I had never before felt.

My musical experiences thus far had been varied, and I certainly had pieces I loved that evoked intense emotional responses. This piece was different. It filled me up from the heart out and before we were 20 measures in, I was openly weeping -- nose running, eyes tearing, chest heaving, desperately trying not to audibly sob during the quiet parts. It was cathartic -- and still is, every time I listen to it. I don't know if Dr. Cortese even noticed -- then, I prayed he hadn't -- but it didn't matter. My crush on my conductor faded, but the song I discovered under his tutelage became the background music of my life.

Fastforward 15 years. A friend asks to borrow my recording of the Dvorak 8, which is on the same CD as the 7th. On the way to a rehearsal where she will also be I slip the disk into the player in the car and listen. It's so familiar, so lovely, so much still my favorite -- and then the Scherzo. Still, tears sting my eyes as the lush melodies wash over me. I feel like someone has unexpectedly dumped out my bucket of soul and I struggle to clean up the spill. My throat tightens, and I wonder -- why this piece? I listen over and over and over, and then I see -- it is me.

The first time you hear it, it's lovely, but something harsh and contrary bubbles under the surface, struggling to be heard over the mainstream melody above. It changes rapidly back and forth between duple and triple time, an internal battle so at odds that at times they are expressed simultaneously and you can't figure out which one is winning. It is a study in contrasts: the Slovak peasant melodies over skillfully composed counters; the serene calm of wind solos and the intense bombast of the brass choir; the gritty low open strings hit so hard you can hear the sticks, then exultant soaring upper registers that are so pure they seem to resonate with the very elements.

The more you listen and discover the depth and complication of the melody and counterpoint, the more unsettling it becomes. Dark but still playful, turbulent, complicated, disarmingly brash, sometimes too harsh for the average listener, thoroughly and engagingly composed, but unsettling -- this is the Scherzo.

This is me. We are alike: simple folk songs layered over complicated rhythms, struggling within to balance a complex structure. More than we were before being refined at the hands of a skilled creator and master. Straining upwards, ever upwards, to find that perfect resonant place where everything works in perfect harmony. Rough edges waiting -- wanting -- to be polished.

Polish me.

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(I wrote this last year as a response to a writing prompt: if you were a piece of music, what would you be? It has been nagging at the edges of my consciousness ever since and I can't usually get rid of the nagging until I finish a piece. After some fine tuning and tweaking, this is the reincarnation. You're all going to think I'm loony after you read it, but so be it. Criticism is not just welcome on this post . . . it's encouraged. After all, I'm here, to a degree, to become better at my craft.)

And I'll put the same question to you, dear readers: if you were a piece of music, what would you be?

Holding up the ceiling

A poem by Michael Blumenthal (1949 -):

A Marriage
For Margie Smigel and Jon Dopkeen

You are holding up a ceiling
with both arms. It is very heavy,
but you must hold it up, or else
it will fall down on you. Your arms
are tired, terribly tired,
and, as the day goes on, it feels
as if either your arms or the ceiling
will soon collapse.

But then,
unexpectedly,
something wonderful happens:
Someone,
a man or a woman,
walks into the room
and holds their arms up
to the ceiling beside you.

So you finally get
to take down your arms.
You feel the relief of respite,
the blood flowing back
to your fingers and arms.
And when your partner's arms tire,
you hold up your own
to relieve him again.

And it can go on like this
for many years
without the house falling.

This is one of my favorites. It expresses, more clearly than I ever could, the partnership that must exist for a family to make it through all the different parts of a collective life. Lately, CPod has been holding up more than his share of the ceiling. He has not complained even once about his additional dish duties and single-parent bedtimes, nor has grumbled about his lack of clean underwear or home-cooked meals. He's amazing and wonderful and I'd better stop or everyone reading this will begin to wonder if I'm trying my hand at irony. But he's not the only one that deserves a big thank you.

This week, my poor sister-in-law, who will hereafter be referred to as Deshee since that's what MayDay calls her, spent half of her Christmas vacation in the company of my children. She was an indispensible part of our family this week, and I am so happy to call her my sister. My children love her and I fear if we were to have her around more often, they might just kick me out for good!

My mom also took her turns holding up the ceiling over the past two weeks. It's great to have her around because the transition from me to her is nearly seamless since she is merely an older, wiser, more fun and slightly more excitable version of me. Here is why my kids love her so much:


You've been grouchoed!