‘Well, it looks like The Queen will be getting a cousin.’ Thus spoke Doc Boner with a studied casualness that barely contained the pride beneath (‘I’ve got big balls’) toward the end of the meal the darling and I shared with him and his missus, Fire Hair Rayna. ’Course, we were sworn to secrecy given that it had only been a few hours since she’d pissed on the stick or whatever it is they do these days to reveal the miracle. (In our day, we had to wait for the dead rabbit.) It became public with the first picture of who may be–according to divine providence–our next grandchild: the white lima bean of an ultrasound video clip, ‘See? There’s the heart beating.’ So we enter another Advent season of preparation and hope and fear and trembling and prayers that go way beyond words into the deepest recesses of our own spirits; into the abode of the generations. This time Advent lasts until the end of May.
Good thing the kid has a decent job. Nice, too, that he mostly enjoys it.
Too bad it isn’t in his studied and trained and accomplished calling, but there y’go: the career of a musician even in the best of economic times is a scrambling crap-shoot, and in today’s times the dice are loaded against you. Momma Deb can’t find a teaching position because the schools are cutting back–if you’re not already there, you ain’t gettin’ in. Same’s true for a bass boner all over the country; and especially here in Houston, not exactly known as the music capitol of the world: nobody needs ‘em.
However, they do need computer geeks, so that’s what he’s doing, something like cyber communications systems and networks and other hidden stuff that make the world go ’round, as it were. Workin’ his plan, as he told me: ’I always figured that computers would be my backup if I couldn’t do music the way I wanted to. And after twelve years of moving around the country you get tired of the scrambling. I want a settled life, too.’ Okay, then. You got it now, son. Li’l Bone is even already now settling you down. It’s an ontological shift in your life, y’know: once you are one you can never not be a parent again. Welcome to the land of terrors beyond imagination, the price of love, where personal aspirations are balanced on the new scale of Li’l Bone’s well being. It’s cross bearin’ time.
The contemplatives call it a ‘liminal moment’–that threshold you cross going from a familiar room with lights on to the darkness of the next strange room you’re entering, as Dylan has it: ”you know there is something happening here, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?’
Doc Boner and I mulled the shift from the doctoral heights of professional/academia musicianship to the everyday realm of computers; from the arcades of the university to the cubicles of the office building; from Carnegie Hall to dad’s den, occasionally weekly trying to fit the bone into ‘church-folk ‘guitar strummers, as well as teaching himself electric bass; both music style and bass are unfamiliar to him, and when you throw in a vocal part it’s a system overloaded whine, ‘dude, I only ever had to pay attention to one thing at a time on bass bone.’ Makes me pathetically proud to musically better him in this, ‘yep. a hundred grand in school loans and you can’t even read words, notes, and chords at the same time?’
His objection, however, was fairly taken–stepping into a new realm altogether, actually having to think about where the notes are on the instrument as contrasted with the visual/aural/muscle memory borne of a bazillion hours of practice and playing–the note and/or chord being sounded without much thinking about it, your chops doing their thing on their own, as it were; you are one with the music, grasshopper. But nirvana ain’t reached in an hour; there is the awful beginning: wrong notes, ugly sounds, spastic rhythms, cramping (and rebellious) muscles, and hours of tedious repetition. So I said, ‘Hey, let’s do this up half a step,’ went to strummin’ and singin’ and watchin’ him stumble and sweat and frown in panicked concentration, and I giggled to myself in that pathetic pride of the old man not yet outdone by the egghead.
And then it’s his turn to take his horn on ‘just a closer walk with thee’ and I strummed and listened as he danced around the melody with lovely phrases from nowhere and it was of course no longer a matter of pride but of beauty and gratitude and wonder. He got into a musical dialogue with my flat-pickin’ buddy from the old days who’d joined us and I could hardly believe what I was hearing. I could have strummed all night.
(I have, incidentally, solved the issue of holding a flat pick between fingers with no sense of touch by grinding the point off a plastic thumb pick, sliding it around my thumb, and jamming the flat-pick between them. It ain’t exactly the finesse of Segovia, but it gets the job done. At least the pick doesn’t suddenly fly out of my hand. I still, however, have a problem with the floppy finger.)
While all this nirvana was going on The Queen came toddling into the den hauling her pint-size padded chair, set it in front of us, and sat down and folded her hands primly on her lap with full-faced attention to the magic, and now we were doing a concert for a 19-month-old.
And the generations become the audiences of our lives.
Larry
