Normalcy never struck me as an especially desirable state for a human being, within a certain range of tolerance. The "normal" of standard decorum -- excrete in the allotted area, speak at an appropriate volume for your environment, wear pants to work, take turns speaking when engaged in conversation, etc. -- makes sense and provides a reasonable framework for productive discourse. But the "normal" of social interaction with one's peers, taking the foundational stuff as a given, is another thing entirely. That "normal" feels biased towards a relatively narrow range of interests and behaviors, none of which appear to offer any unique merit apart from their popularity. The former gives us rules for the mechanics of conversation, the latter for the content. I happen to think the mechanics are fine and the content basically sucks.
So I don't offer the assessment of my daughters' standing in this respect with woe or despair. More like amusement at best, and pride at worst.
We recently enjoyed a hurricane-filled weekend with my parents, elder brother, and his family. He observed during the visit that while his son sings occasionally throughout the day, my girls seem to sing pretty much continuously between the two of them.
And well they should: their parents both sing pretty seriously for pleasure and to a lesser degree work. Both work on so-called classical singing on a regular basis. Their mother sings kiddie tunes at various pre-school events. Their father sings damn near constantly, while working at the computer, driving to the grocery store, walking through the grocery store, cooking dinner, taking a shower, or excreting in the allotted area. For these girls, singing is normal.
Lots of parents, and lots of children, sing. The near ubiquity of it in our home, and the primary stylistic focus, are probably outside the norm, but gently so. A little eccentric, perhaps, but an eccentricity that people can appreciate.
Eccentricity: when we listen to "Music Together" albums in the car, my daughters' parents frequently improvise harmonies. Not all that unusual. Except that daddy improvises chromatic counterpoint, or turns every harmony into a seventh, ninth, or sharp eleventh.
Eccentricity: the father's endless singing often eschews identifiable "songs", instead playing out a part in some new piece in his head that will never be written down, never heard by anyone else. It might be the Coltranesque improvisatory horn line, the jazz/funk bass line to the latest James Brown noncreation, or a chant melody on nonsense syllables sounding two parts DuFay and one part Hindustani raga.
(The mother's loving acceptance of the father's oddities in this respect teach us the meaning of grace.)
For my daughters, singing is a constant companion, rather than a mere activity. You don't fit it into your schedule like gymnastics classes and play dates; you carry it with you everywhere you go. Sometimes you go to the grocery store.
Young children naturally emulate the adults around them, before learning the hipness of rejection. The ways in which the described parental behaviors manifest in the children are easy to see. But the degree to which this shifts the girls' sense of normalcy is only recently coming out.
The two year-old now sings around the house with a frequency rivaling that of the almost-five year-old. While she colors, looks at books, etc. The almost-five year-old breaks into song in the aisles of the grocery store, mid-conversation, after dinner at Stone Heath Pizza, whenever and wherever. She looks you in the eye, as if she regards this as a standard part of discourse.
Additionally, after asking her mother about her parents' disdain for Ariel's singing in "The Little Mermaid," and their appreciation of Aurora's singing in "Sleeping Beauty", the almost-five year-old will consciously shift between her regular voice and an affected nasal style. We didn't tell her that one is better than the other, and she continues to enjoy stuff that we pretty much despise. As she should. She simply integrated the information into her awareness and takes note of the different approaches as she hears them.
Every little kid has his or her developmental points of interest. I don't pretend that the girls' behavior is in some way exceptional (in the overloaded sense of exceptional that conflates "highly unusual" with "excellent"). Nor do I maintain lofty aspirations for them or a desire to push them towards a living in music. The degree to which music matters to me, and the place it occupies in my interior life, falls outside the range of normal. My only hope for the kids in this regard is that they might have something occupying a similar position in their lives. It gives tremendous satisfaction to see that they already do. We didn't need to teach them or give lessons. We needed only to let them see us being our own weird selves.
Published with Blogger-droid v1.7.4
