Yadda Doodle Dandy

Misty morning. Lots of crows about. High in the tallest pine trees. Cawing to each other as if no one could hear. Whatta I know? I just finished watching a series of five videos of a discussion by pundits about what makes us human.

http://vimeo.com/4533831

There were a bunch of experts including several Nobel Prize winners sitting in a semi-circle on a stage somewhere. The affair was hosted by Charlie Rose. He saw to it that everybody on the panel got a chance to talk. I guess that's why it took five videos to get it all in.

There is something very amazing that goes on when I watch these sort of videos involving the same group of pundits. Several, at least, of the people on this discussion panel also have done their own TEDtalk. They seem pretty clique-ish. A closed system that generates inertia.

What amazes me is how as a modeler/actor/imitator I get to watch these pundits very closely. Again and again if I want to. If my genetic need to imitate is still going pretty much full blast even though I'm four score and ten now, is how different my life might have been if I could have had these digital representations to compare my behavior to when I was a kid.

I don't necessarily watch these people to witness how skillfully they manipulate their own system of expertise, but why would I not? I ain't dead yet. I might yet be able to model some remote behaviorism that I could use as a last-ditch appeal on the gurney in some imaginary emergency room.

I saw my oldest daughter from my first marriage sitting on that stage as one of the women pundits. I saw the intelligence in both their faces in the split screen of my mind. Suddenly, I felt deeply ashamed I didn't give that child my enduring support. She's as naturally smart as any of those wise guys, and I failed her by my cruel selfishness and adamant refusal to be responsible for my own mistakes with her mother.

I blame my autism for the quantum leaps of assumptions I have acted like were so, that were simply not based in ordinary reality. I write "my autism" as if what I claim as my own is somehow different than any other autism, and it is, and paradoxically, it ain't.

I get obsessed with shape-shifting. The expression "shape-shifting" probably arrived in my lexicon via reading science-fiction. I wasn't an avid fan of science fiction, but I read what sot itself sort of forcefully before me. Like when some acquaintance might shove an Asimov book in my hand and command me to "READ IT!"

Learning how to act like I'm easy to influence has been a powerful challenge all of my life. I don't have to pretend to be an easy target for somebody practicing duplicity at my expense. Just like that kid Mikey in the TV ad, I'll eat anything. I don't think I'm alone in this quasi-innocent gullibility either.

That attitude is very important when it comes to my obsession with shape-shifting. I don't appear to have as much trouble reaching for the next appropriate shape with which to address the status quo, but letting go of a shape that has been outrageously successful in carrying the day just recently. A meme that's well within reach of the consciousness I'm plying the specious present with currently.

One of the ways/rituals I've developed over the last couple of decades has to do with deep-belly breathing. This is a basic rudiment in my meditation practice. Breath control is something that has always been a part of my subjective curriculum. You know, the one I'm academic advisor to myself about? It's about how deep-belly breathing esoterically goes even deeper than the lower-belly to the root of all good and evil. A presence can be established there, that if I'm practicing regular I can reach for it in one breath. That's real handy to know, but it's even more subtle to gnow.

It's also been a part of my formal education because my major in college was Speech and Drama. That was the name of the Department I reached for certification from. Even before I withdrew for the fifth or sixth time it had been elevated from being merely a Department, but to a School of Speech and Drama.

Breathing was a big part of the private voice lessons I wasted the teacher's time with, and with all the choirs and glee clubs I let waste my time with, and yet, they all let me come and go as I pleased because I was so eager to learn something I knew deep inside I never would.

I've written plenty about how the mistakened way I learned to visualize the vocal cords that allowed me to speak and sing earlier in life, and the fact that my private voice teacher (also my academic advisor at the Community College, who retired from the Met) didn't recognize and correct my idea of what the vocal cords looked like. He was very concerned, but never got it or straightened out my error.

I had to wait a couple of years to see a plastic model of the vocal cords (aka vocal folds) in one of my speech classes to "get the picture." It took a plastic teaching model of the entire throat area that physically broke down to separate parts for me to figure it out for myself that my lifelong mental image of how I produced sound was less than useful.

After I finally realized what my problem was I remembered many of the lessons he tried to teach me. I began to practice some of the warm-up exercises I'd only had mediocre success with during the face-to-face lessons. They exercises worked just fine after I quit visualizing my vocal cords like they were a complex multiplicity of pan pipes. I actually could have been a contendah. What a drag, man. Too little, too late.

I guess it's because it's too late that I really enjoy singing now. I down-loaded the lyrics of some old songs that I've always wanted to learn the words to, and since I know all the tunes from memory I practice singing them in consideration of my voice lessons most every day. Four songs and all of their verses. Just for the hell of it. Why would I not? It pleases me, and enhances my overblown ego to imagine myself soloing in Carnegie Hall to the deafening roar of "BRAVO!" "Encore... Encore...", yadda, yadda, yadda.