Our son, a college freshman, has been home for the last three weeks, for Christmas break. He's an easygoing young man, not hard to please. And he's pretty effortlessly fallen back into the old routine. He would of course, be free, if he so wished, to do all sorts of novel and interesting things: light a dozen roman candles, do some winter camping at the Lake Michigan dunes, fry up some bok choi in a wok. Or whatever. But the fact is, like most human beings, when he comes back home, he wants to do the same things he's always done: hang out in his room, read a book or two, answer questions on the Internet forum he's in charge of, and come downstairs in the afternoons and evenings to be sociable: to play Parcheesi with his mother, and maybe a little music with his dad. This year too, pursuant to the season, he helped to decorate the tree, and accompanied us to church on Christmas Eve, where he sang with us in the choir and allowed himself to be fussed over by various members of the congregation, who were happy to see him back. Then on Christmas day itself, as well as on New Year's Eve, he was with us at his grandparents' place, which is a cheerful yellow house just down the way (a geographical circumstance we perpetually bless). In the end, of course, now that he's eighteen, our son is the one that answers for his time, and not us. And yet isn't that where the deepest honor lies, of having him with us?: the fact that he's here NOT because he feels obliged to be, but because he really wants to be here? Values our company? Freely chooses to stay with us, spend time with us, just hang out with us?
Mind you, the food at Sunnyside is part of the attraction; he admits as much himself! There's a good cafeteria at school, where it's possible to eat a reasonably wholesome diet. Still, it's not the same; how could it be? Try finding peaches at a cafeteria like the peaches we canned with him way back in August; we've been bringing them up in pints and quart jars from the basement every five or six days, to slurp ragged and sweet from a bowl. Or try finding dills as zesty as the ones we serve here; canned (again) this past summer right here at Sunnyside. Or try coming up with a pie as delicious as the blueberry one he and his mother baked two days ago, with berries that have been waiting in the freezer since August to find their way into such a pie. No, it's impossible. And not just because of the ingredients, and not just because of culinary expertise here, though these do play their part. But because here at Sunnyside, family affection, generated by memory and shared experience, is bound up in the food itself. Take that away, and the food, no matter how fine, has lost some essential savor. Affection or its absence is tasted. This we know for certain.
Affection. I find myself coming to that word again and again, as I consider the future of the planet and how, if the beauty of our planet is to be sustained, and if human life itself is to remain richly viable, that future needs to be different than the present. Affection for the earth beneath our feet. Affection for the homes we inhabit. Affection for the other creatures of the earth. Affection for our neighbors. Affection for the architectural spaces that surround us. Affection for those we mingle with in our professional lives. Affection for our food. Affection. The thing about affection is that it's particular to a place or person. It's found amply in small things and in the presence of the unique, but gets bled out of whatever comes manufactured and standard. Its absence in our lives makes us feel alienated from one another and from our surroundings, but the expectation of its presence is what attracts us to the places where we are most likely to feel it. Most especially home.
My mother's cooking was one of the best things about going back home, when, as a college student, I got that opportunity. My mother was an adventurous cook, remarkably resourceful at using up what odds and ends were available in the refrigerator or the garden. Another way of saying this is to say she was a master of improvisation, which on the up-side, meant that whenever you sat down at the dinner table, you were in for something new and interesting, though on the down side, it also meant that some of her triumphs were essentially unrepeatable, because she herself never kept track: what herbs, what spices, how long did the onions fry? etc. But nowhere else could I get that cooking. Again, not so much because of her skill, though that was part of it. And not so much because of the ingredients themselves, which were often nothing special at all. But because, especially before I was married, nowhere other than in my mother's kitchen did I have a person so connected to me, who had herself trained my taste buds, and who of course cared about what I would like, and who, out of love for me, labored to please and surprise.
I would like so much to return to my mother's kitchen! Year after year, I still grieve the loss of that possibility. Yet at the same time I'm comforted by the thought that in some ways such a return really is possible--mostly by attending to the same principles that she attended as pilot of the counter-top and captain of the knives and spatulas and spoons: Cook with a sense of place and season, and of what you have on hand and available. Cook with affection for the ingredients. Cook with an affection for whoever is going to enjoy your the work of your hands. In short, cook your way home!
One final note: I need one more week of intense work to fully complete my new play "Myles to Go." So I ask for my readers' patience until the 14th of January, when I look forward to posting again. I'm aware that these breaks are not the conventional way to encourage reader loyalty! But I also believe that if part of the mission of 9-volt Nomad is to encourage others in the ways of simplicity and sanity, well, its writer needs to practice those arts as well! So, as we say here at 9-volt Nomad, one big thing at a time!
With affection, then, and until the 14th!
HBthing
Saturday, January 4, 2014
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Balancing Acts
My mom and dad, when they were first married, lived in a trailer home, and the place of course was small. Small enough that even though they were newlyweds, without much stuff, the living space quickly became cramped. So the two of them made up a rule: that whenever a new object came into the house, something already there of about equal size would have to come out first.
I'm not really sure how strictly my folks kept the policy, or for how long; though my guess is that, given my mother's determination in practical matters, it probably really was kept strictly at least for a time. I also think it's safe to say that, at least on some occasions, following through with the policy must been pretty painful. How to weigh one item against the next? How to say whether a new pair of shoes was more important than a couple of good books? Or a foot stool more useful than an end table? Or a Monopoly game more fun than a Mah Jong set?
And yet the point of the rule was to keep themselves sane. Without it there would have been that ever-oppressive sense of clutter, especially for my mother who stayed at home much of the day. There would have been accidents: tripping over things, running bang into things with your shins. There would have been arguments between the newlyweds about just how messy it was and who ought to clean up. So they did this work of weeding their possessions before they brought in anything new. Or at least that's how I like to imagine it. Out on the prairie outskirts of a town called Cosmos. My mom and dad bravely banishing the demon of clutter.
I think of Mom and Dad's rule fairly often. I thought of it just this morning in fact, when I went to the basement to bring up a new batch of music CD's. Yes we Sunnysiders still listen to actual recordings that can be held in the hand. It's direct. It's easy. It's the whole album. But it's also, well, much more prone to cause clutter than streaming is. And so, in order to prevent clutter, we keep most of our recordings downstairs, and what we listen to, we listen to in sets. Every couple of weeks I venture down to pull up a new set that we might enjoy listening to.
It's a fun thing to do--playing DJ for the next couple of weeks. Trying to anticipate what we might enjoy. Fitting the season of the year to the music. Fitting the music to whatever else we might be taking in as well. For instance just last month I read Styron's Sophie's Choice, which contains many references to music. I made it a project to listen to at least several of the works cited, and I found it quite meaningful.
So the choosing out and the bringing up is the fun part. But there's a hard part to the task as well: it's to go to the cupboard where the current CD's are shelved, take them (with a little sigh) down from that shelf, bring them back downstairs and THEN and only then get down to choosing out the new ones. It's an essential step of course, to bring the current set down. Without following through on it, in no time at all the whole collection would migrate up to the living space. Guaranteed.
You wouldn't think the act of bringing down the CD's should be so hard, but it is, or can be. In the first place, there are all those CD's you brought up a week or two ago, but didn't actually listen too. These CD's make you feel guilty! After all, like an inconsiderate impresario, you dangled the promise of performance in front of them, but then never followed through, and now they have to return to the frustrations of obscurity. Or maybe too, for me it's a bit like the feeling you get when you're traveling, and you pass through a town where some old friends of yours live, but you don't stop. You had planned to, but now you can't. Or just don't.
Then too, among the CD's due for return, there's always a certain number that you've enjoyed and don't want to put away, at least not just yet. Of course there's no law that says these have to be returned just now, but then too, not all of them can stay! And do you really want to be cogitating and waffling about which ones stay and which ones go? I myself have found the best strategy is to return them all--ruthlessly. "There'll be other opportunities later," I say to myself. And so far there have been.
Here's the moral, or as preachers used to say, the application: We human beings display instincts for both novelty and continuity, and both instincts have their useful places in our lives. But these instincts also, often enough, conflict with one another. And part of living wisely and simply has to do with learning to allow the conflict between the old and the new to play out with some regularity, and then take care of it, re-balancing the equation. It's really best not to put that task of rebalancing off; otherwise, our lives can get pretty seriously cluttered up and complicated.
All this is just as true in the dimension of time, as it is in the dimension of space. Let's remember this! Schedules can get as cluttered as any room. So before we take up some new task, however novel and fun, or useful to the world, or genuinely altruistic, we ought to consider (first!) the need to make the space for it--by giving something that's already in the schedule up. There's only so much time in a day, and we want to use that (limited) gift of time intelligently, meaningfully, joyfully; nor do we want to suffer mission creep, which has such a way of overwhelming us with responsibility and stress. After all, it doesn't really matter if the tasks we do, in themselves, are dear to our hearts, if in sum they only make us miserable!
I offer this up as a meditation for the New Year. As something to think about as we all move forward across that arbitrary yet meaningful border in time. It's a good time to think about how to do better. How to impose some sanity in our lives. How to love what we do. How to enjoy ourselves. How to nurture our relationships. How to taste some sweet aspect of the elemental even within this brew of complexity that's modern life.
Happy New Year to all my readers! I enjoy writing for you! Your visits to this space are such an honor.
HB
Until Saturday the 4th!
I'm not really sure how strictly my folks kept the policy, or for how long; though my guess is that, given my mother's determination in practical matters, it probably really was kept strictly at least for a time. I also think it's safe to say that, at least on some occasions, following through with the policy must been pretty painful. How to weigh one item against the next? How to say whether a new pair of shoes was more important than a couple of good books? Or a foot stool more useful than an end table? Or a Monopoly game more fun than a Mah Jong set?
And yet the point of the rule was to keep themselves sane. Without it there would have been that ever-oppressive sense of clutter, especially for my mother who stayed at home much of the day. There would have been accidents: tripping over things, running bang into things with your shins. There would have been arguments between the newlyweds about just how messy it was and who ought to clean up. So they did this work of weeding their possessions before they brought in anything new. Or at least that's how I like to imagine it. Out on the prairie outskirts of a town called Cosmos. My mom and dad bravely banishing the demon of clutter.
I think of Mom and Dad's rule fairly often. I thought of it just this morning in fact, when I went to the basement to bring up a new batch of music CD's. Yes we Sunnysiders still listen to actual recordings that can be held in the hand. It's direct. It's easy. It's the whole album. But it's also, well, much more prone to cause clutter than streaming is. And so, in order to prevent clutter, we keep most of our recordings downstairs, and what we listen to, we listen to in sets. Every couple of weeks I venture down to pull up a new set that we might enjoy listening to.
It's a fun thing to do--playing DJ for the next couple of weeks. Trying to anticipate what we might enjoy. Fitting the season of the year to the music. Fitting the music to whatever else we might be taking in as well. For instance just last month I read Styron's Sophie's Choice, which contains many references to music. I made it a project to listen to at least several of the works cited, and I found it quite meaningful.
So the choosing out and the bringing up is the fun part. But there's a hard part to the task as well: it's to go to the cupboard where the current CD's are shelved, take them (with a little sigh) down from that shelf, bring them back downstairs and THEN and only then get down to choosing out the new ones. It's an essential step of course, to bring the current set down. Without following through on it, in no time at all the whole collection would migrate up to the living space. Guaranteed.
You wouldn't think the act of bringing down the CD's should be so hard, but it is, or can be. In the first place, there are all those CD's you brought up a week or two ago, but didn't actually listen too. These CD's make you feel guilty! After all, like an inconsiderate impresario, you dangled the promise of performance in front of them, but then never followed through, and now they have to return to the frustrations of obscurity. Or maybe too, for me it's a bit like the feeling you get when you're traveling, and you pass through a town where some old friends of yours live, but you don't stop. You had planned to, but now you can't. Or just don't.
Then too, among the CD's due for return, there's always a certain number that you've enjoyed and don't want to put away, at least not just yet. Of course there's no law that says these have to be returned just now, but then too, not all of them can stay! And do you really want to be cogitating and waffling about which ones stay and which ones go? I myself have found the best strategy is to return them all--ruthlessly. "There'll be other opportunities later," I say to myself. And so far there have been.
Here's the moral, or as preachers used to say, the application: We human beings display instincts for both novelty and continuity, and both instincts have their useful places in our lives. But these instincts also, often enough, conflict with one another. And part of living wisely and simply has to do with learning to allow the conflict between the old and the new to play out with some regularity, and then take care of it, re-balancing the equation. It's really best not to put that task of rebalancing off; otherwise, our lives can get pretty seriously cluttered up and complicated.
All this is just as true in the dimension of time, as it is in the dimension of space. Let's remember this! Schedules can get as cluttered as any room. So before we take up some new task, however novel and fun, or useful to the world, or genuinely altruistic, we ought to consider (first!) the need to make the space for it--by giving something that's already in the schedule up. There's only so much time in a day, and we want to use that (limited) gift of time intelligently, meaningfully, joyfully; nor do we want to suffer mission creep, which has such a way of overwhelming us with responsibility and stress. After all, it doesn't really matter if the tasks we do, in themselves, are dear to our hearts, if in sum they only make us miserable!
I offer this up as a meditation for the New Year. As something to think about as we all move forward across that arbitrary yet meaningful border in time. It's a good time to think about how to do better. How to impose some sanity in our lives. How to love what we do. How to enjoy ourselves. How to nurture our relationships. How to taste some sweet aspect of the elemental even within this brew of complexity that's modern life.
Happy New Year to all my readers! I enjoy writing for you! Your visits to this space are such an honor.
HB
Until Saturday the 4th!
Saturday, December 28, 2013
Love in the Here and Now
Every year around Christmas, I like to get out James Joyce's story The Dead, and re-read it. The tale is set on a snowy night in Ireland, and much of it takes place during a Christmas dinner/dance, which of course is why it feels so appropriate for this time of year, and for a holiday tradition. So it's just a custom of mine. One I especially relish. It's such a beautiful, powerful story. About married love. About first love. About what true love really is. Not, of course that the story has any final answers for us! Only that it explores the questions in a most beautiful and compelling way.
I hope that it's apparent in these posts on 9-volt nomad, that I'm a big fan of married love. I'm a fan of of love in general, and generally find there's not enough of it around, but I also think that married love needs more of a booster club these days than most people recognize. I know that may sound silly and bourgeois to some, and for some it may even seem distasteful. We're so much in the habit of wanting to believe that any lifestyle choice is equal to every other, that we're afraid to cheer for any given script. And especially any supposedly boring, traditional script.
I really do think that more people ought to get married than seem to want to get married these days. Partly because again, I think love in general ought to be more highly rated than it is, but also because I think that getting married is just a good way to get yourself to grow up and be adult; to learn that you're not the center of the universe, and that sacrifice is a part of life, and that it really is a meaningful act--to regularly put another human being's interests before your own. And to work out compromises. And to listen to advice. And to have someone who knows you deeply, always available for counsel. And to be able to serve your partner as counsel too.
Of course I'm not claiming that there aren't other ways of learning how to become an adult. But getting married and staying married is a time-tested and very effective path. Surely it's one of the most effective ways devised. Plus, at least if you're willing to work at it, being married is a good way to stay happy. You have company. You have a means of facing up to hardship. It's my conviction in fact that, as circumstances in general over the next couple of decades become more and more difficult (as they will), the economic and psychological advantages to marriage will become more and more obvious and compelling. It's paradoxical that so many these days say they want a career first, and then they'll think about love. But why not the other way around? Especially if two are usually more effective at providing economic security than one? And again, especially when the future looks more and more difficult?
Of course there are downsides to being married. One of the hardest parts has to be this: facing up to the certainty of death, and more specifically, facing up to the fact that--since the two of you are unlikely to die at the same time--one of you is going to have to do without the other for a time. Maybe for years and years. This is a really hard thing to think about. In fact it's so hard to think about that I find very little actually written about it. Very few poems or songs for instance that contemplate it directly, I mean ahead of the fact. Yes there are umpteen laments. But what about proleptic laments? Laments ahead of the fact?
All of which is to say, here's one such poem, on that theme, which I intend to use in my next play, and which I think is appropriate to this blog, because part of what 9-volt is about is the art of doing without, and the need to contemplate doing without, and finding that state of being in which transcendence is possible.
I'm sorry the music for the song is not available yet. The tune is set. It's simply not recorded. But when the soundtrack does become available (and it will be lovely I promise) I'll certainly let you all know. Then you'll be able to read the words married to their tune.
Here, Now
(A song from the play "Myles to Go")
I had a dream, what can it mean?
You were transformed into an angel:
Wings bright and strong, but somehow wrong;
They're far too heavy for your shoulders.
Glimpsed from below, a shooting star
Tumbles through the heavens.
Two feathers fall, and then that's all;
Waking up, I reach for you.
Some say that death, one final breath,
Could disestablish our communion.
It's just not true, a clearer view
Says grief's an art that takes its time.
Would Keats have dared to write an ode
Requiring such revision?
All we've arranged is sure to change,
Whether death takes me or you.
But who goes first, and who's immersed
In melancholy of division,
Oh let that be love's mystery
That's to be answered in its time!
No earnest heart would make its love
Contingent on the future;
Love gives its all, come flight or fall,
Hazarding the here and now.
HB
Until Tuesday the 31st!
I hope that it's apparent in these posts on 9-volt nomad, that I'm a big fan of married love. I'm a fan of of love in general, and generally find there's not enough of it around, but I also think that married love needs more of a booster club these days than most people recognize. I know that may sound silly and bourgeois to some, and for some it may even seem distasteful. We're so much in the habit of wanting to believe that any lifestyle choice is equal to every other, that we're afraid to cheer for any given script. And especially any supposedly boring, traditional script.
I really do think that more people ought to get married than seem to want to get married these days. Partly because again, I think love in general ought to be more highly rated than it is, but also because I think that getting married is just a good way to get yourself to grow up and be adult; to learn that you're not the center of the universe, and that sacrifice is a part of life, and that it really is a meaningful act--to regularly put another human being's interests before your own. And to work out compromises. And to listen to advice. And to have someone who knows you deeply, always available for counsel. And to be able to serve your partner as counsel too.
Of course I'm not claiming that there aren't other ways of learning how to become an adult. But getting married and staying married is a time-tested and very effective path. Surely it's one of the most effective ways devised. Plus, at least if you're willing to work at it, being married is a good way to stay happy. You have company. You have a means of facing up to hardship. It's my conviction in fact that, as circumstances in general over the next couple of decades become more and more difficult (as they will), the economic and psychological advantages to marriage will become more and more obvious and compelling. It's paradoxical that so many these days say they want a career first, and then they'll think about love. But why not the other way around? Especially if two are usually more effective at providing economic security than one? And again, especially when the future looks more and more difficult?
Of course there are downsides to being married. One of the hardest parts has to be this: facing up to the certainty of death, and more specifically, facing up to the fact that--since the two of you are unlikely to die at the same time--one of you is going to have to do without the other for a time. Maybe for years and years. This is a really hard thing to think about. In fact it's so hard to think about that I find very little actually written about it. Very few poems or songs for instance that contemplate it directly, I mean ahead of the fact. Yes there are umpteen laments. But what about proleptic laments? Laments ahead of the fact?
All of which is to say, here's one such poem, on that theme, which I intend to use in my next play, and which I think is appropriate to this blog, because part of what 9-volt is about is the art of doing without, and the need to contemplate doing without, and finding that state of being in which transcendence is possible.
I'm sorry the music for the song is not available yet. The tune is set. It's simply not recorded. But when the soundtrack does become available (and it will be lovely I promise) I'll certainly let you all know. Then you'll be able to read the words married to their tune.
Here, Now
(A song from the play "Myles to Go")
I had a dream, what can it mean?
You were transformed into an angel:
Wings bright and strong, but somehow wrong;
They're far too heavy for your shoulders.
Glimpsed from below, a shooting star
Tumbles through the heavens.
Two feathers fall, and then that's all;
Waking up, I reach for you.
Some say that death, one final breath,
Could disestablish our communion.
It's just not true, a clearer view
Says grief's an art that takes its time.
Would Keats have dared to write an ode
Requiring such revision?
All we've arranged is sure to change,
Whether death takes me or you.
But who goes first, and who's immersed
In melancholy of division,
Oh let that be love's mystery
That's to be answered in its time!
No earnest heart would make its love
Contingent on the future;
Love gives its all, come flight or fall,
Hazarding the here and now.
HB
Until Tuesday the 31st!
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Why We Might Not Need a Bedtime Story App
Of course I'm aware that there are smart phone apps these days for everything under the sun. I'm also aware that I wouldn't like most of them, and would consider a large portion of them dispensable and maybe even hostile to the project of genuine human flourishing. Still, when I heard about the bedtime-story app (this particular one is in the planning stages) it threw me for bit of a loop, and I want to set down a few words about it, to show why it marks a sort of limit for me. It may be that I'm over-reacting. It may also be that it's almost quaint of me, to be remarking on something that's so obviously a sign of the times. But here goes anyway.
To wit, the app would involve this: a collection of stories read by some pleasant-voiced expressive elder, to be punched up for the kid at bed-time (or I suppose whenever) and maybe spiffed up on the screen with the homey picture of a fireplace crackling and acoustically heck maybe with the sound of some crickets doing their summertime chirpy thing. "Snuggle down junior! I'm a bit busy for this kind of thing, so, hope the phone will do. Oh, and while you're at it, after you're done listening, could you tuck yourself in, too?"
Of course, it's true that recordings of good voices reading good stories have been around for a long time, and that listening to a fine book read beautifully is one of the great pleasures in life. The thing that I resist here is the invasion of the recorded and the technologized into the act of nurturing. Story-time for children (especially bedtime story-time) is about intimacy and imagination, reassurance and preparation, settling in and looking forward to rest. It's about recollection of the day's activities. It's about wishes and prayers and hopes. It's about the human body's warmth. It's about song and more songs. It's about voices tuned soft and low. And actually, as I recall, at least when my father was in charge of bedtime, it involved a fair bit of roughhousing and wrestling too!
In short, bedtime's pretty much about humanity. So taking the humanity out of bedtime, and asking what might be wrong with that, is well, like taking the three bears out of the Story of the Three Bears. Um, there's no bear there.
Now I'm sure that the potential creators of this app would never claim it's about replacing the parent at bedtime. "Hey, it's just an option, and isn't it better than watching TV?" Here's the thing though. That's what they all say; they always say it's not about replacement. And hey give them credit that's what they usually sincerely mean. But then somewhere, sometime, exactly the thing they didn't mean is exactly the thing that happens. So let it be said loud and clear from this little soapbox at 9-volt Nomad. At long last, let's stop giving people a chance to be lazy and half-hearted about living their lives and about raising their kids. At long last, let's learn some discipline so that, when and where our complex machines start acting as emotional wedges, separating human from human, we see that and set them aside.
There's a wonderful book by the historian and singer-songwriter Tom Roznowski about Terra Haute, Indiana, in which he points out that around 1920 (just before radio really started to get big) in every middle class household a piano, yes a piano, was just standard equipment, and if you didn't have one, why you were probably considering getting one. And folks really knew how to play. Whole families entertained themselves for hours every week, just listening to each other play or singing along. Sure, there were professionals who knew how to play better than the average Jack or Jill or Uncle Lou or Aunt Betty. Still, that wasn't the same thing, was it? It's clear from Rosnowski's writing that he doesn't consider the changes that came over the culture after that time (in terms of our ability to entertain ourselves) as an improvement.
So, when the original production site of our entertainment becomes someplace other than home, what do we lose? Or when the ones who produce our entertainment are not in any way known to us personally, what do we lose? Or when our family members are no longer the ones we lean on for entertainment, what do we lose?
The simple answer is that we lose the opportunity to show love and to deepen our relationships. Consider first the 1920 parlor sing-along, in which family members made music communally, joining voice to voice, and telling stories and jokes between numbers. The scene isn't perfect of course. The singing is hardly professional. Disagreements break out. Maybe someone has a little too much to drink along with the songs, and ends up saying something a little too lusty to his sister-in-law. But look the scene is human. It's memorable. It's full of life and scenery. It's vivid and rich with experience and relationship.
Now compare that with typical household today, where every member has his or her own separate device in hand as a means to pass the time, and one is playing video games, another is watching a movie, another is taking in some music, another is texting a friend. Maybe these people are all physically in the same room, but are they sharing anything? Are they showing love to one another? Are they doing anything that might deserve to be written down? That might be the stuff of a story someday at a funeral or a wedding or over a glass of beer? No, everyone is in an isolated space of consciousness. A cubicle. A cell. And there is no flow between one cell and the next. How can love build from this? What sense of shared experience can be made here? What common social identity?
There's so much more to say about all this, that I have to trust to time, repetition and the ability to return to a theme which is so richly the gift of blogging, to supply me with opportunity to express what I find so wrong and dangerous about this invasion of devices into our communal lives, and with the professionalization of all our entertainment. But before I leave it for now, there's just a bit more to say.
We don't have to banish technology from our lives to be human; absolutely not. We do have to take real care though, that we do not let it intimidate us into believing:
1. That it can substitute for other people in our lives.
2. That it can serve as a substitute for us, in the lives of others.
In my opinion the best place to start practicing a skepticism of the machine, is in the area of entertainment. Never ever stop believing in your ability, dear reader, to enchant and entertain, no matter how modest you consider your abilities at the task. In the first place there are so many ways to entertain one another that involve no special skills. When we have no skills at the piano or at the bridge table, there's banter and there's craziness, and there's just plain pleasant conversation. Then too, particularly if it's family that's involved in the entertainment, there's just the simple joy of seeing those who look like you and sound like you (or who have just been given to you by circumstance and love!) doing the work of making you happy. No stranger-performer is ever going to have that power over us. And we can count on that same power when we ourselves are the ones telling the joke or telling the story or singing the song or throwing the monopoly dice in that weird spinny way we do.
Which--to bring this full circle--is why parents should never let themselves feel self-conscious about reading aloud to their children (many do!). Perfection in performance is never the goal. Sharing a story is. You're just born to be your childrens' storytellers, and your children recognize in your very face and voice, your right to enchant them.
Long live the bedtime story, voiced by the ones we know and love!
HB
Until Saturday the 28th!
To wit, the app would involve this: a collection of stories read by some pleasant-voiced expressive elder, to be punched up for the kid at bed-time (or I suppose whenever) and maybe spiffed up on the screen with the homey picture of a fireplace crackling and acoustically heck maybe with the sound of some crickets doing their summertime chirpy thing. "Snuggle down junior! I'm a bit busy for this kind of thing, so, hope the phone will do. Oh, and while you're at it, after you're done listening, could you tuck yourself in, too?"
Of course, it's true that recordings of good voices reading good stories have been around for a long time, and that listening to a fine book read beautifully is one of the great pleasures in life. The thing that I resist here is the invasion of the recorded and the technologized into the act of nurturing. Story-time for children (especially bedtime story-time) is about intimacy and imagination, reassurance and preparation, settling in and looking forward to rest. It's about recollection of the day's activities. It's about wishes and prayers and hopes. It's about the human body's warmth. It's about song and more songs. It's about voices tuned soft and low. And actually, as I recall, at least when my father was in charge of bedtime, it involved a fair bit of roughhousing and wrestling too!
In short, bedtime's pretty much about humanity. So taking the humanity out of bedtime, and asking what might be wrong with that, is well, like taking the three bears out of the Story of the Three Bears. Um, there's no bear there.
Now I'm sure that the potential creators of this app would never claim it's about replacing the parent at bedtime. "Hey, it's just an option, and isn't it better than watching TV?" Here's the thing though. That's what they all say; they always say it's not about replacement. And hey give them credit that's what they usually sincerely mean. But then somewhere, sometime, exactly the thing they didn't mean is exactly the thing that happens. So let it be said loud and clear from this little soapbox at 9-volt Nomad. At long last, let's stop giving people a chance to be lazy and half-hearted about living their lives and about raising their kids. At long last, let's learn some discipline so that, when and where our complex machines start acting as emotional wedges, separating human from human, we see that and set them aside.
There's a wonderful book by the historian and singer-songwriter Tom Roznowski about Terra Haute, Indiana, in which he points out that around 1920 (just before radio really started to get big) in every middle class household a piano, yes a piano, was just standard equipment, and if you didn't have one, why you were probably considering getting one. And folks really knew how to play. Whole families entertained themselves for hours every week, just listening to each other play or singing along. Sure, there were professionals who knew how to play better than the average Jack or Jill or Uncle Lou or Aunt Betty. Still, that wasn't the same thing, was it? It's clear from Rosnowski's writing that he doesn't consider the changes that came over the culture after that time (in terms of our ability to entertain ourselves) as an improvement.
So, when the original production site of our entertainment becomes someplace other than home, what do we lose? Or when the ones who produce our entertainment are not in any way known to us personally, what do we lose? Or when our family members are no longer the ones we lean on for entertainment, what do we lose?
The simple answer is that we lose the opportunity to show love and to deepen our relationships. Consider first the 1920 parlor sing-along, in which family members made music communally, joining voice to voice, and telling stories and jokes between numbers. The scene isn't perfect of course. The singing is hardly professional. Disagreements break out. Maybe someone has a little too much to drink along with the songs, and ends up saying something a little too lusty to his sister-in-law. But look the scene is human. It's memorable. It's full of life and scenery. It's vivid and rich with experience and relationship.
Now compare that with typical household today, where every member has his or her own separate device in hand as a means to pass the time, and one is playing video games, another is watching a movie, another is taking in some music, another is texting a friend. Maybe these people are all physically in the same room, but are they sharing anything? Are they showing love to one another? Are they doing anything that might deserve to be written down? That might be the stuff of a story someday at a funeral or a wedding or over a glass of beer? No, everyone is in an isolated space of consciousness. A cubicle. A cell. And there is no flow between one cell and the next. How can love build from this? What sense of shared experience can be made here? What common social identity?
There's so much more to say about all this, that I have to trust to time, repetition and the ability to return to a theme which is so richly the gift of blogging, to supply me with opportunity to express what I find so wrong and dangerous about this invasion of devices into our communal lives, and with the professionalization of all our entertainment. But before I leave it for now, there's just a bit more to say.
We don't have to banish technology from our lives to be human; absolutely not. We do have to take real care though, that we do not let it intimidate us into believing:
1. That it can substitute for other people in our lives.
2. That it can serve as a substitute for us, in the lives of others.
In my opinion the best place to start practicing a skepticism of the machine, is in the area of entertainment. Never ever stop believing in your ability, dear reader, to enchant and entertain, no matter how modest you consider your abilities at the task. In the first place there are so many ways to entertain one another that involve no special skills. When we have no skills at the piano or at the bridge table, there's banter and there's craziness, and there's just plain pleasant conversation. Then too, particularly if it's family that's involved in the entertainment, there's just the simple joy of seeing those who look like you and sound like you (or who have just been given to you by circumstance and love!) doing the work of making you happy. No stranger-performer is ever going to have that power over us. And we can count on that same power when we ourselves are the ones telling the joke or telling the story or singing the song or throwing the monopoly dice in that weird spinny way we do.
Which--to bring this full circle--is why parents should never let themselves feel self-conscious about reading aloud to their children (many do!). Perfection in performance is never the goal. Sharing a story is. You're just born to be your childrens' storytellers, and your children recognize in your very face and voice, your right to enchant them.
Long live the bedtime story, voiced by the ones we know and love!
HB
Until Saturday the 28th!
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