SING, PLAY, DANCE

Dear Spike:

Your Uncle Mikey arrived this week, carrying an enormous keyboard under one arm and two guitar cases in the other.

That's good news for you, because while your mother and father have a diverse array of talents, music isn't our strong suit. So when Mike takes care of you during the days when I'm called away to work, I've asked him to play music for you — and with you.

We're not the only species on this planet that makes music, but there's no other animal that has figured out how to do it with such diversity. We make music with our mouths and with our hands, with simple percussion tools and elaborate wind instruments, with wood and brass and plastic, with electricity and with digital ones and zeroes.

I once visited an Alzheimer's home where music was being used as a conduit to people whose minds had otherwise been lost to the present world. Music is good for your brain.

I once heard a muezzin call the faithful to prayer in Iraq's volatile west desert. In the city of Ramadi, where everything stopped at sunset for fear of death, his song continued on. Music is good for your soul.

And today, every time I hear you sing — your sweet little voice rising and falling, mostly in tune — I fall in love with you all over again. Music is good for your heart.

Sing, play, dance and humm. Whistle, tap, snap and clap.

Moan and chant. Scream if you must.

Make music. And don't ever stop.

Love,
dad

WONA BONA WONA

Dear Spike:

Your version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star:

"Tinkle, tinkle, lil'ar.
Wona bona wona wa,
Hupa bupa pupa high
soma dimon sky.
Tinkle, tinkle, lil'ar.
Wona bona wona wa."

I like it better that way.

Love,
dad

Dear Spike's Friends:
She's a bit camera shy, but I'll work on getting her to sing it on video.
Love,
spike's dad

LITTLE CUCKOO CLOCK

Dear Spike:

You've learned a song.

It goes: "Tick tock, tick tock, I'm a little cuckoo clock."

For now, all you know is the "tick tock" part, but it's nonetheless certifiably adorable, particularly when you rock back and forth as you sing.

Love,

dad 

 

 

KIND OF MAGIC

Dear Spike:

When you were only a few days old, I discovered that I had a special power over you. When you would scream and cry — and indeed, this was common for you — I would hold your little body close to my face and tell you, "It's all right. You're OK. I love you. I love you so much." And soon, you would be out.

Later we discovered that banjo music — Earl Scruggs, in particular — has a special effect on you. And when you were inconsolable, we'd let Earl sooth you to sleep with his Foggy Mountain Breakdown.

Lately, though, old Earl and I just haven't had what it takes. You're going through a mama's girl stage — at least, I think it's a stage — where all you want, when you're tired and crabby, is your mother.

"Mamamama Mama Mama" you cry.

I imagine this is what professional basketball players feel like when they can no longer sink a 20-foot jumpshot or what door-to-door salesmen feel like when they realize they can no longer count on always making a sale or what old politicians feel like when they realize that they're just not as good at rounding up the votes like they once were. It's tough to realize that you no longer have a special kind of magic that you once had.

At least for the moment, nothing in my bag of tricks seems to work. So all I can do, when it's my turn to put you down, is to hold you and rock you and sing to you and let you scream, scream, scream yourself to sleep.

I can't imagine it's much fun for your mother to have to sit through it, knowing that she has the magic to soothe your screams, but we both know that it's best for you, and for us, if you learn that you can't always have everything — or everyone — you want, even when you're throwing a fit to get it.

These are tough lessons, but I suppose that's life.

I hope I find the magic soon, though, for I do so hate to hear you cry.

Love,
dad

ALL THE NOTES

Dear Spike:

I was feeling a little down yesterday, for no particular reason. Sometimes we just get the blues. That's all.

I thought a bit of happy music might do the trick, so I started flipping through our compact disc folder.

Problem was, we don't seem to own any happy music. And even music I thought was happy turned out not really to be that way once I started listening. Strange how that works.

Even more depressed than when I started, I tried something else: I started whistling. And I'll admit this is a bit strange, but I started feeling better right away. And when I say right away, I mean, right away. Like, within three notes.

Compelled to explore this phenomenon, I started whistling the first few notes of every song I could think of. And as it turns out, it is completely impossible to whistle a melancholy tune. Oh, you can hit all the notes, but it just won't feel sad.

Go ahead and try it.

Mozart's Requiem? Bethoven's Fifth? Morrissey's Bona Drag album? The collective works of Sinead O'Connor? When you whistle, it all sounds like part of a Sesame Street soundtrack.

This revelation alone was enough to make me feel better. And I know it's probably not going to help you out the first time you have your heart broken or when a good friend moves away.

But maybe when you're feeling a bit blue... well... give a little whistle.

Love,
dad

ALL SACRILEGE ASIDE

More important than the Iowa caucuses. More historic than the New Hampshire primaries. More democratic than Super-Duper Tuesday. It's Spike Poll 3! Make your vote count! (It's just off to the right hand side there... a little down... a little further... there, you found it!)



Dear Spike:

I don’t know where I was when I first heard Desmond Tutu speak. I can’t tell you when I first heard U2’s Bono sing. And I’m not sure when my long and tortured relationship with St. Augustine began.

But I can still remember the very first time I heard a Weird Al Yankovic song.

I was in the third grade. My class was out in the playground, standing around the outside line of the dodgeball circle. Mrs. Tillman was leading an aerobics class. She had a big black boombox, in which was playing a mixed tape of Weird Al songs.

I’d never laughed so hard in my entire life.

Granted, I was only 9 years old, but still.

Sometimes you chose your personal prophets. Sometimes they choose you.

I know, it’s all kind of blasphemous, right? I mean over here, behind Door No. 1, we’ve got the archbishop emeritus of Cape Town, who helped end apartheid in South Africa, won the Nobel Prize, and whose ticket for heaven is rumored to read: “Section 1, Row 1, Seat 1.”

And then over here, behind Door No. 2, we’ve got the guy who sang “Dare to be Stupid.”

To wit:
“Put down your chainsaw and listen to me,
It's time for us to join in the fight,
It's time to let your babies grow up to be cowboys,
It's time to let the bedbugs bite.”

But all sacrilege aside, I’d be really thrilled if someday...

... you know, before you fall in love with some talentless bunch of boy band eunuchs, and beg, beg, beggggg me to buy you a $150 ticket to go watch the corporately contrived group of hacks lip sync in front of 25,000 other preteen girls, all screaming at octaves and decibels that even Dick Cheney would concede violate the Geneva Conventions ban on torture...

... your first concert was a Weird Al concert.

And maybe your first date could be your dad.

And maybe we could sing along to “Yoda,” and dance along with “Fat” and laugh as the rail-thin, accordion playing singing comedian from Lynwood, Calif. belts out his version of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody — polka style.

There will be plenty of time, later on, for us to discuss the lessons of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation commission and to debate whether Augustine’s just war theory is adaptable for modern humanists and to argue over who your generation’s Bono is, the way my father and I once pondered who my generation’s John Lennon would be.

And yes, I expect we’ll have some of those conversations.

But sometimes it’s simply best to...

“Settle down, raise a family, join the PTA,
Buy some sensible shoes and a Chevrolet,
And party 'til you're broke and they drive you away,
It's OK — you can dare to be stupid.”

Love,
dad

TEN SECONDS — TOPS

Dear Spike:

I sang to you. I rocked you. I walked you around the house. I offered you a bottle. I checked your diaper.

I even offered to buy you a mocking bird, a diamond ring and then, since I don’t know the rest of the words to the song, I ad lib'd...

“Daddy’s gonna buy you some turpentine...”
“Daddy’s gonna buy you a hog-nosed skunk...”
“Daddy’s gonna buy you a taco cart...”
“Daddy’s gonna buy you a ramapithicus....”
“Daddy’s gonna blow his head off...”

Nothing worked. The 9 o’clock freak out stretched to 10. Then to 10:30. My ears were ringing. My head hurt.

Then I remembered that I’d seen an Earl Skruggs CD in the player in the kitchen. Could Skruggs (the author of the Beverly Hillbillies theme song, among other works of bluegrass banjo brilliance) calm you down?

I pressed play.

One note. Then two. Then a flurry of sixteenths. I could hear Skrugg’s fingers flying over the banjo strings.

And just like that, you were out. Ten seconds — tops.

I don’t really understand your hypnotic connection to banjo music. And I don’t want to.

All I want to do right now is find Earl Skruggs and kiss him full on his salty old country lips.

Love,
dad

A BANJO GIRL

Dear Spike:

Your mother stopped going to her weekly banjo practices when she was eight months pregnant. Lately, I’ve been trying to get her to pick it up again. She keeps saying she will — some time later.

But after what happened Saturday evening, I’m pretty sure she’ll be playing again very soon.

You were crying. She was rocking you. I was fiddling with a music sampling program on my computer, trying to find a tune for a video, when I came across a few short banjo riffs.

And just like that, you were silent.

We weren’t sure at first. It might have been a simple coincidence. So I turned the music off.

And you started to cry.

And I turned the music on.

And you were quiet again.

The only plausable explanation, of course, is that you could remember the sounds of the banjo from when you were inside your mother’s womb. And that brings me great joy, because if you can remember music from before you were born, it makes it easier for me to believe that the things we do together now — walking through the park, singing, rocking and reading — might just stick to your psyche in the years to come.

Who knew you’d be a banjo girl?

Love,
dad

TEACUPS IN WONDERLAND

Dear Spike:

We had you to sleep at seven minutes before midnight this evening. Your mother rocked you in her arms as I strummed softly on my guitar and sang to you.

I sang to you your lullaby...

Dream of castles,
in a land,
far beyond what we understand.
Dream a dream for me...

And then made up a few more...

Take Mia to her bedroom.
Take Mia to her crib.
Just rock her and love her and lay her down.
Do it quiet — don’t make a sound...

But it wasn’t until I sang to you a song I wrote for your mother...

I will take you to England,
To Spain and to France.
I will give you the moon,
And there we can dance.
You’re all I want.
But all you want is Disneyland.
Pirates of the Caribbean.
Big Thunder and Space Mountains.
The Matterhorn if it’s open.
Mr. Toad and Peter Pan.
Teacups in Wonderland.
All you want is Disneyland.
All you want is Disneyland...

... that you fell asleep.

Funny, that song puts your mother to sleep as well. I think her subconscious mind just can't resist the urge to take a dreamy stroll through the Magical Kingdom.

And so, I suppose, you are your mother’s child. And that is a very good thing — for I love her so very much.

And I love you. So very much.

Sleep well, little one. Dream a dream for me.

Love,
dad

WHO YOU ARE

Dear Spike:

It’s late at night — early in the morning, actually — and I’m waiting for a call from your Uncle Michael, who is due in on the train at any moment. We’ll spend the next few days in a friend’s cabin in the mountains, strumming away at our guitars, writing songs and trying hard not to fight over lyrics and chords.

I haven’t always had the best relationship with my little brother. I accept blame for that. Four years his senior, I should have been looking out for him when we were growing up. But often I was the one he needed to look out for.

The tough brotherly love I dished out, from time to time, was compounded over the years by the fact that Michael and I are little alike. And so, by the time I enlisted in the Navy after high school, I think he was ready to see me go.

I don’t think my mother was ever all that close to her siblings, either. And last year, when she lost the second of her two brothers to a rather awful form of cancer, I could feel how much it pained her to know that she’d never been able to reclaim those relationships – and now never would.

So last fall Michael and I took a road trip down the California coastline — strumming away at our guitars, writing songs and trying hard (though ultimately unsuccessfully) not to fight over lyrics and chords. The result of that trip was a six song album of music that I'm rather proud of (although now, when I listen to it, I realize I should always allow your uncle – credited in at least one Sacramento band’s latest album as “Mike Megavoice” — to sing by his lonesome.)

You’re very likely to have a sibling. And I am hoping you become close with your cousins as well (again, lamentably, something I wasn’t able to achieve as well I would wish.)

There are six billion people on this planet. Only a small handful share any significant amount of the DNA that makes you who you are. Learn from them. Spend time with them. And though it may sometimes be hard, love them.

Life is fleeting. The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes called it, “nasty, brutish and short.”

But with respect to Mr. Hobbes, it can also be beautiful, fulfilling, exhilarating and joyful.

The difference, I think, has much to do with those with whom you choose to travel. And the relationships you keep with those, like your family, that life chooses for you.

Love,
dad