Mountains Made Low

This is really the last place I’m going to put this—I sent it out to family and friends, posted it on Facebook, and now I’ll put it here. Then I’m done. I hope everyone has enjoyed the happiest of holiday seasons, and I extend my warmest wishes to you all for 2008!

Mike’s 2007 Christmas Letter

And that number is 261. Many of you know to what this refers. It’s progress, and if the current pace keeps up, my short-term goal (240) is about 4 months away.

I’ll admit I stole this idea, but I’m putting my own spin on it, and it—if you’ll forgive the pun—strikes a chord with me right now. Thanks to my friend, who often comments here as KAS, for the food for thought.

At the risk of sounding like a total dork: This one time, at church camp….

It was either in 1993 or 1994—my memory fails me in this minor detail, someone write it down, I forgot something. It was just a normal sort of free-form time at the church camp where I worked that summer, and one guy had his guitar out. These times were funny kinds of things; sometimes he’d just play, sometimes some of us would sing. When we sang, sometimes it was “camp” music, and sometimes it was other stuff (mostly Simon and Garfunkle actually, though never “Cecelia”—I remember a number of days spent trying to get the “Scarborough Fair/Canticle” dueling melodies, and their harmonies, figured out).

But this was not one of those days. On this particular day, this guy was playing his guitar, and he and three others of us (all guys between 16 and 19—yeah, it was church camp), started singing those church-camp songs. We were getting pretty into it, with the guitar player just changing between songs. I don’t remember which song it was, but at one point, one of the (real) adults working at camp that week came up, and cocked his head listening to us. He got a very puzzled expression on his face. He listened for a while; it’s hard to say how long, but it was probably only about 15 or 20 seconds. His look of puzzlement was replaced by one of surprise. Those of us singing just smiled, almost laughing, because we knew what he had just realized. He said it out loud anyway.

“No one’s singing the melody.”

We all nodded and went on singing the four different harmony parts we’d been singing.

I’m glad that our listener resisted the temptation to join in with the melody, because there’s something really cool about the story—and the concept that it represents to me—that would have been ruined by that sort of “fixing” of the situation.

Sometimes it’s just fun to sing harmony. Sometimes it’s fun when everyone is singing harmony. Sure, sometimes we need the melody—we need a clear direction, a clear lead, so that we can know which notes to sing, which notes will blend, and even which notes will add euphonic dissonance (when the clashes sound good—like singing the fourth in a chord when someone else is singing the fifth sometimes does). But the color and excitement in life is in the harmonies.

In the situation at camp, we had the guitar chords to follow. More than that, we all knew the melody, and knew it very well. Any of us could have sung the melody if we had wanted to. No one did—sing it or want to. It was, however, there—a real presence—inside all of our heads, shaping every note that each of us sang, every musical choice that each of four singers, singing together, made, guiding us, individually, to make music that sounded good together. In a very real sense, each of us, individually, heard that melody, and everything each of us did “fit” with that melody; the notes we then did sing, consequently, also fit together.

That puzzled look from our listener, though, says more about the depth and value of harmony than anything that we as the singers might have known or experienced. While the melody was certainly present for each singer, it took the listener a while to realize that he was not actually hearing the melody. Because of the harmonies—which if you know music at all, you know can sound really funny when sung on their own— and the blend of four distinct harmonies, the melody, that series of notes that define the song and which the singers (and in this case the listener) all knew, was there, though no one was actually singing it.

The blend of harmonies allowed the listener to experience a melody that was not “really” present at all.

It really makes me wonder, at times, if every situation in life needs a melody. If it needs someone to sing lead. I can’t be sure it does. If the melody is there, and I think—the church camp narrative notwithstanding—that I’m making a more philosophical than religious point here, does it really need to be sung? If everyone knows the melody, knows what’s happening and has a fair idea what’s coming next, why does anyone have to be “in charge”?

Sure, there will be sour notes when no one sings the melody—bad chords struck by singers who hear the melody and choose notes that exist in harmony with the melody but not with each other, but those occasions don’t happen often and are how we learn.

I guess what I’m saying is that, in just about all situations, I prefer to know the melody, but sing the harmony. To show others that what I do “fits” with the melody of the song we’re all trying to sing, but that it’s not the only possible harmony. To show others that when everyone sings harmony, in fact, the melody shines through—those listening can hear it, even if no one’s actually singing it.

And when someone is singing a melody, harmonizing can still be fun. It can be difficult, when the melody is unfamiliar or contains unexpected notes (think about when your boss or a teacher throws you a curve in the middle of a project), but the harmonies are still much more worthwhile than arguing about the melody, or refusing to sing at all.

I’ve gotten very behind on my pop culture. But I did spend some time catching up last night. I finally watched Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, because my DVD arrived yesterday. I didn’t go to the theatre to see it this summer. I’m a terrible, terrible pop culture guru.

It was okay. Actually, it was a good movie. I just didn’t like what it did to the book. The simplification of the scenes in and around the Department of Mysteries, I could handle; I even sort of expected them. And I even sort of liked the way they put Dumbledore’s Army on film. And you’ve gotta love the way in which (in both book and movie) we start seeing Ginny and Neville kick ass in OotP.

On to what I didn’t like: Umbridge. There was not the contrast in her character that the book presents. The sickly sweet surface personality was there, but not enough. And what underlies that personality was portrayed in the film more as evil than as rule-mongering. I’ve always believed that Umbridge is not a bad person—as Sirius says in the movie, “the world isn’t divided into good people and Death Eaters.” Also, I didn’t like that they left out most of the McGonagall/Umbridge interactions.

Cho. I really dislike that they made Cho the one who ratted out the DA—veritas serum or not. The made her the bad guy, and then tried to salvage her…. It just didn’t work for me. But who has time, in a movie, to go into all the other reasons Harry and Cho broke up? Quick fix. No problem.

Luna. I was talking about the books and movies with a student the other day, and he said something along the lines of, “Luna Lovegood is hot.” Now that I’ve seen the movie, I’ve got to admit that they cast a quite pretty young woman as Luna. Which I don’t necessarily like. Not that my mind’s-eye Luna wasn’t pretty, but more that this character—missing shoes and all—was just too put-together. And, while she played the wandering mind pretty well, the movie’s Luna was just not, well, weird enough for me, notwithstanding Hermione’s faux pas.

But there was one pleasant surprise. I really didn’t expect to like Natalia Tena as Tonks. But I really did. So, if I’ve said anything to you about this particular casting choice in the past, I take it back.

I also discovered this morning that I’m a whole issue behind on my Buffy Season Eight comic. Issue 9 came out on 12/5, and I hadn’t preordered it. So I’ve ordered it now and preordered the January ish, too. I’m liking it. It would never have worked on TV, but as a comic, it’s very good.

That’s all from pop cult land for now….

Here’s another funny thing about the end-o-semester surveys from my students. Not only do individuals give answers that are inconsistent within their own answer set, but when you start looking across students, they give answers that are contradictory. One says that my worst feature as a teacher was that I took the whole class period. One said that the best feature of the class (I think) was that it never took the whole time. I mean, the questions about the assignments (what to include, what not to include), you expect some variation: that’s just straight up “what did you like?” But these are factual contradictions. What’s more, neither of them is completely accurate—I don’t use the whole class period all the time, but I use all of it most of the time, and most of it all of the time. It reminds me a bit of a response I got on these things a couple of years ago: “Class never lasted more than five minutes,” or something equally absurd.

Now, though, it’s just funny.

Where do they come up with this crap?

It’s the time of the season…not for loving, but for coming up with excuses to wriggle off the pointy stick that many professors’ attendance policies can become (like mine in my first-year courses). I try to be fair. I follow the stated policy having to do with “college representation.” I even give an extreme benefit of the doubt when it comes to events that couldn’t be scheduled other than during my class (like doctor’s appointments, court appearances, and the like).

But now, this. Any wonder why I haven’t taken a doctor’s note as an excuse for a single absence in a long time? I mean, you get to miss a week’s worth of class without any penalty in my courses. I can’t imagine anyone being sick more than 3 days in a semester, unless they’re really sick, missing several days in a whack. I know that I only missed one day for sick this past semester.

But for those who do accept doctors’ notes, be aware of this: http://www.thefakedoctorsnote.com/. Yep, you read that right. And, yep, it ain’t the only one out there.

Sheesh!

That’s right, kids, mark your calendars for May 30th. Carrie Bradshaw and company (Sex and the City) will be making their big-screen debut.

The trailer I’ve seen (embedded below) seems to imply a Carrie’s-wedding theme for the film. But that’s only an implication…and you’ve got to ask whether or not Carrie would marry Mr. Big, or, as we learned in the final ep of the series, “John.”

But the whole cast is in place—the girls: Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker—the pride of Nelsonville, Ohio), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), Charlotte (Kristin Davis), and Samantha (Kim Cattrall); their guys: Big (Chris Noth), Steve (David Eigenberg), Harry (Evan Handler), and Smith (Jason Lewis); and their gays: Stanford (Willie Garson) and Anthony (Mario Cantone). Also reappearing from the series is Magda (Lynn Cohen), Miranda and Steve’s maid/nanny. New additions include an assistant for Carrie (Jennifer Hudson of Dreamgirls) and NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg as himself.

I’m not 100% sure how this will move over to the big screen, but you can bet I’m gonna find out!