One of the first pieces of classical music to grab me by the ears and absolutely force me to love a piece of music with no words was Ravel’s Bolero.
Miss Malek played it on a phonograph for us in the basement of the Rowan Schoolhouse when I was in 3rd grade back in the fall of 1965. Shortly after that, my father bought a record of it for our record player at home. I must have listened to it a hundred times before 4th grade. It was the first piece of music I learned to listen to with pictures creating themselves in my mind. Here’s the basic picture in fact;
Yes, it suggests to me that life is a long plodding march toward inevitable battle, a battle that one day will end in defeat and death. No one lives forever and no song continues without end. But there is beauty, pageantry, and color to be felt and filled with along the way. And the march is not without purpose. What music we will create along the way! It is glorious to be alive and provide the drumbeat for the march of the creations of your soul, your children and the words you come to live by. I do not intend to retreat to the castle as many would do. I will not cower as I await the conclusion. I will march to meet it in a glorious crescendo. And that, dear reader, is what Maurice Ravel’s Bolero is about, as far as I am concerned.
But Bob Keeshan, though a TV personality, was much more of a teacher than anything else. His show went on air before I was born, and I don’t remember a moment in my childhood that he wasn’t a part of it. He was like Mr. Rogers, but came into our lives even before Fred Rogers appeared on the scene. I watched the show in the mornings before school started, at a time when I walked all the way across our little Iowa farm town to get to school. He taught me important early lessons in life that were just as impactful as the math and language and social skills I was getting later in the day. Of course, I had to leave home for school before the show ended at 8:00 a,m. But just like school, watching and participating in any part of it was capable of teaching you something good.
Ginger Ale
Long about the middle of October every year I have to partake of the miracle that is Ginger Ale during pollen season. And believe me, in Texas, pollen season lasts until the parched grass and dry air sets in again during the droughts of middle July through September. Sometimes in a wet year (which used to be rarer than now) the tree pollen, mold spores, mountain cedar, and ragweed fill the air year around. Ginger in any form is a god-sent cure-all for ailments of the lungs, ears, nose, and throat. It reduces inflammation, dilutes mucus, and helps you restore the breath of life. I have developed a real taste for ginger products of all sorts as a result of the medicinal boost it gives me every year. It explains my addiction to gingerbread. Also why I often put ginger root in a pot on the stove filled with boiling water and then inhale the fumes. I love Ginger Ale because it makes me feel good.
Simon’s Cat on YouTube is another kind of Ginger Ale for me. Admittedly it is a mental sort of medicine, not a drink or a cookie or a steam inhaler. But watching those simple black and white cartoon antics that are so realistically catlike makes me laugh and increases serotonin in the brain, and it provides a very real depression medicine.
Now, I know full well that I am connecting two very unlike things and calling them both Ginger Ale on the mere passing similarity of the medicinal benefits. But life is far more metaphorical than it is literal. And that is why I continue to maintain that poets live better lives than the rest of us even if they die young for love of beauty. And it is better to be a cartoon cat than a literal king.
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