Good music...

The Princess and I did what we usually do; had dinner and listened to music (she's as much of a music nut as I am) and then played cards and continued listening to music. She's a big, big fan of Pinback and The White Stripes, among others. She prefers "rocken roll", but will tolerate my bouts with classical jazz (Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk, Dexter Gordon, Charlie Parker, Horace Silver, Art Blakey, etc). She has a soft spot for a bit of classical, preferring Tchaikovsky (just like me). Mostly I just plug the iPod in to the stereo and we just listen to it do its magical shuffling. It's such a joy to me to watch her suddenly break into a wiggle because she can not ignore a rhythm. To quote a song from years ago, "the rhythm is the master and I'm just a slave to the rhythm". If there is any one thing I hope that the two of us can share, I hope that music will always be it (though she is becoming quite the writer already at 6 years old).

My favorite memory of her and music is from when she was less than two years old and I was a full-time stay home dad (I stayed home when she was 1 until she was 2). We were driving to the YMCA and the then-new White Stripes song Seven Nation Army came on the radio. That really great bass line was playing and I happened to look in the rear view mirror in time to see her bobbing her head in perfect sync with the beat. I asked her, with a half giggle, "you rocking out baby?" In her tiny voice, without missing a beat (or the rhythm) she said, "yeah daddy, I'm rocking out!" She still calls that song her "rocken roll" song. Smiling at the memory of it now...

Anyway, one of my all-time favorite Elvis Costello songs played while we were in the midst of a heated round of Go Fish. Deep Dark Truthful Mirror, from the Spike album. She didn't understand the lyrics, obviously, as she just smiled while I sang (poorly) along. She said that it made her feel happy- bless her heart.

Just for your clarification, here are the lyrics;

One day you're going to have to face
A deep dark truthful mirror
And it's going to tell you things that I still love you too much to say
The sky was just a purple bruise, the ground was iron
And you fell all around the town until you looked the same
Chorus:
The same eyes, the same lips, the same lie from
your tongue trips
Deep dark, deep dark truthful mirror
Deep dark, deep dark truthful mirror
Now the flagstone streets where the newspaper shouts ring to the boots of roustabouts
But you're never in any doubt, there's something happening somewhere
You chase down the road 'til your fingers bleed
On a fiberglass tumbleweed
You can blow around the town, but it all shuts down the same
Chorus
So you bay for the boy in the tiger-skin trunks
They set him up, set him up on the stool
He falls down, falls down like a drunk
And you drink 'til you drool
And it's his story you'll flatter
You'll stretch him out like a saint
But the canvas that he splattered will be the
picture that you never paint
Chorus
A stripping puppet on a liquid stick gets into it pretty thick
A butterfly drinks a turtle's tears, but how do you know he really needs it?
'Cos a butterfly feeds on a dead monkey's hand,
Jesus wept he felt abandoned
You're spellbound baby there's no doubting that
Did you ever see a stare like a Persian cat?

Not exactly cheery, but still an awesome song. "One day you're going to have to face a deep dark truthful mirror and it's going to tell you things that I still love you too much to say"... one of the very best lines of lyric ever penned!

Hope you all spend your weekends "rocken out"!

Tim