Maternally Challenged

Random Thoughts from a Jetlagged Brain

Just got back from a five-day trip to The Hague (on a magazine assignment, yes I know, it was hardship duty) and I am here to report a few observations:

1. Dutch TV is every bit as inane as American TV. A big part of the reason is that much of it IS American TV. For the rest, I will name only two shows I happened to encounter while channel surfing: "Beauty and the Nerd" (title in English, show in Dutch, do not ask me why) and "Dancing Queen," a "Dancing With the Stars" knock-off (or inspiration, who knows) set to (steady yourselves) the music of ABBA. And only ABBA.

This is my idea of hell.

2. Of all the contributions America has made to the world, pop music may be second only to the Bill of Rights. I say this after five days of listening to Europop in various elevators. Their idea of pop music is a female voice crooning into a microphone some phrase ("I gave you my love" comes in mind) over and over and over and OVER, against a background of synthesized music made by machines that I do not think were even programmed by human beings. Same phrase. Again and again. The next song involves another phrase, set against a slightly differenet synthesized sound. Only heroin addicts would enjoy this stuff.

I have gotten old and crotchety, and I have been irritated lately at the style of many modern American singers, who either do aerobics while lip synching (if they cannot carry a tune) or, if they do have a voice, slide up and down the melodic scale as if it were a greased pole, searching for a note to  land on. But I take it all back. That is ever so much better than robo-music. One more day of listening to Europop and I would have had to stick my head in an oven, if I could have found one. Ovens, it seems, are not standard equipment in Dutch kitchens. Yeah, I know. WEIRD. But they have their reasons.

3. The Dutch have bathroom plumbing DOWN.  My  shower consisted of a knob on the left, which controlled flow, and a knob on the right, which was marked with Celsius degrees markings, so I could program exactly how hot I wanted it. Simple. Elegant. Only took me two days to figure out.

4. These little Euro cars--Tuk-Tuks, they are called in Holland--are so cute that I wanted to steal one and stick it in my suitcase. It almost would have fit. It makes SO much sense for short trips, schlepping kids, grocery store, etc. that I want to drive my minivan off a cliff. This is the future, people. When it comes to cars, Americans are stone stupid.

Thank You, Mr. Shaw

Last year, my husband gave me an Ipod, and it's changed my life. If you are a mom, listening to music is one of those pleasures that goes away with motherhood--like Sunday morning sleep-ins, or leisurely caffe lattes. You play music in the car and the kids hate your choice, so Elmo it is. At home, there's always stuff to do, and the background noise is incredible. Listening to music--really listening--used to require sitting still with a CD player and headphones, and it required peace and quiet. I had the CD and the headphones, but the sitting still part....rarely happened. Then I got the Ipod, and I discovered I tunes, and the pleasures of downloading, and the fact that one can fold laundry and load the dishwasher and do all kinds of things while in a musical world of your own. I began to listen to pieces I hadn't really listened to in years. And this is where Robert Shaw comes in.

Robert Shaw, in case you don't know him--and any serious classical music enthusiast will--was the pre-eminent choral music conductor of our time. I might never have heard of him, either, except that I was lucky enough to be born in the suburbs of Atlanta at a time when he was the conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. I went to public school in Fulton County, which at the time was no great exemplar of academic achievement--but it did have a terrific county-wide music program, led by a man whose name I recall as Eugene Robinson, and Mr. Robinson (who was extremely handsome and thus the object of many schoolgirl crushes) had an in with Robert Shaw. As a consequence, there were those of us with decent voices who participated in a lot of choral activities down at Symphony Hall under the direction of Robert Shaw. It was, I now realize, a most singular piece of extraordinary good fortune.

I don't remember all the things we did with Mr. Shaw (he was always "Mr. Shaw," and we were scared to death of him) but I do recall the Beethoven Bicentennial, which would have been in 1970, where we sang, among other things, "Christ on the Mount of Olives" and the "Kyrie" from his Mass in C Major. There were other concerts, including a Christmas concert from some year that escapes me, at which we sang the "Hallelujah Chorus" (of course), "The Shepherd's Farewell" from Hector Berlioz's "L'Enfance Du Christ" and "Dona Nobis Pacem" (Give Us Peace) from Bach's Mass in B Minor. (I mention these in detail in case anybody wants to download; they're all contained on Shaw's Choral Masterpieces album.)

I remembered these things, of course, but I had filed them away in the back of my mind until one day recently I decided to find them on I tunes and download them. I was walking across the parking lot to Sears, as a matter of fact, when I plugged into my Ipod and the first bars of "Christ on the Mount of Olives" came in. I still remembered most of the alto part. But what struck me then was the memory of my mother sitting in the audience (my sister wasn't interested, and my dad stayed home with her). For the first time, I thought about what it would have been like to be her at that moment, and to hear that amazing music, and to see her daughter up there on the stage helping make it. I could put myself in her place, and if it had been me, watching one of my own daughters, I think my heart would have burst. Maybe hers did.

The gift Mr. Shaw gave me was not just the gift of music, which would have been rich enough; it was the gift of a kind of spiritual insight which it took years--decades--to ripen in me. Now I am 51, and I suffer from depression, and in recent months it's been particularly bad (with brief episodes of lucidity). But the consolation of music is not just a phrase; it's real. It is balm to my soul; it is water on arid soil. Mr. Shaw did not condescend to us; the works that he chose for us to sing appear on some of his best-known recordings, sung by  some of the best voices ever assembled in one place. They are also, many of them, about pain that is impossible to put into words: the longing for peace, the longing for transcendence. Ecstasy. In a dark time, these are pieces of light.

Robert Shaw died in 1999, and just before his death he led a performance of Beethoven's 9th Sympthony at the Kennedy Center in Washington that is legendary for its brilliance. Grown men wept. I was living in Washington then and I had a chance to go, but I let life get in the way, a three-year-old underfoot, the tickets were expensive, and I thought: next time. There would be no next time. I wouldn't have been able to get close enough to say thank you anyway, so this will have to do. Thank you, Mr. Shaw. Thank you.

The Old Fogey is Me

December 1, 2006

Matthew D. Serra, CEO
Foot Locker, Inc.
112 West 34th St.
New York, NY 10120

Mr. Serra,

I was a customer in your Lady Foot Locker store in Westfield Shopping Mall in Annapolis, Maryland two nights ago. While I was waiting for the manager to get some shoes for me to try on, I couldn’t help but hear the store’s soundtrack. This is what I heard, in part:

I told her to drive over in your new whip
Bring some friends you cool with
Imma bring da cool whip
Then I want you to strip
See you is my new chick
So we get our grind on
She be grabbin, callin me Biggie like Shine home …

Fullfilling our every temptation slow jamming having deep sex
You ready for the world girl
Come on over make me touch you all over your body baby don't say no to me
An every moment you controllin' me I'm lovin the way you be holding me when I be
listening to Jodeci
And when I come over and bend your ass You be bumpin Teddy Pendergrass
I'da hit it from the back to the melody to roll it slow
Now I gotta go up in it fast, but imma finish last
(Slow Jamz Lyrics, by Twista)

There’s more, but I think you get the idea. I am no prude, nor am I ignorant of music history; I know Ray Charles used to get banned from the radio for his “dirty” lyrics. But there is a difference between risqué and explicit, sexy and vulgar, suggestive and pornographic.  This couldn’t have been more explicit than if it had been a sound track giving detailed instructions on how to change a tire, and frankly I found it about as sexy as automotive repair. I said to the manager, “I couldn’t bring my 10-year-old in here. This is unreal.” She said the soundtrack was a mix chosen by higher-ups, and that she had no control over it.

Well, somebody is in control of it, and since you’re the guy at the top that would be you. Perhaps teenage boys love this kind of music, and perhaps they are an important part of your clientele—but they can pipe this garbage into their heads with their Ipods on their own time. I cannot imagine that anybody else wants to listen to it. 

The track prior to the one I quoted—and this is the reason I started paying close attention to the soundtrack in the first place--was all about somebody being in prison, and moaning “they won’t let me out.” I have no idea if you are white or black, Mr. Serra, but if this is your way of catering to a black clientele, it’s insulting. I happen to be an authentic Southern Redneck, but if somebody told me Rednecks spent all their time screwing or getting locked up, I’d be pretty offended. The fact that this music is popular with many young black people is testimony only to their tragic lack of self respect. But that’s their problem; I don’t see why you should enable it or cater to it.

Isn’t there a better way of  making money? Like, maybe, just selling quality merchandise?

Sincerely,

Tracy Thompson