Memoir (Puppy)

Some of Salvy's first toys were: Chicken-Man, Fishy, and the Kong ball. Chicken-Man, a rubber pirate-chicken, very quickly lost his head and his leg. He had an eye patch. Who thought of this? Fishy was a squeaky fish; the Kong ball squeaked, as well, and it was wrapped in a blue cloth with long, flowing tails. Pets have play needs that differ from an adult human's play needs. A dog wants texture; he wants his chicken to have weird, tumor-like growths under the furry surface; these growths create something interesting for his teeth. He wants multiple squeals, at multiple pitches. He wants diverse gradients of thickness; he wants part of his chicken-surrogate to be stuffed with crinkly paper, because the crinkly paper does something odd for him that a squeaky plastic bladder can't do. Why must the toys have chicken faces, fish faces, Santa faces? Can a dog recognize these characters? I think not. I suspect that twist is mainly for the human owners.

Salvy spent a great deal of time at NYCPet, smelling bully sticks, and Marc really loved forking over dozens and dozens of Alexander Hamiltons for new and varying puppy treats. Salvy enjoyed his Christmas stocking--mainly, the act of eating it. He ate his Halloween bandanna--part of a vision we had for Western Cowboy Salvy--and he ate the glow-in-the-dark battery-powered light-up New Year's tiara that Marc bought for him. He was entered into high-intensity contests--one parent did this, not the other--and his loss at the annual ProspectBark Halloween Costume Pageant was a low blow. Harder still was a decision by the Kansas City press not to include Salvy among Cute-Pets-Inspired-by-KS-Royals-Players-2017. Marc actually contested this decision, and he received, from the reporter, a terse reply indicating that Salvy was not the only pet in the world. Marc considered legal action, but he was dissuaded.

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Why is Stephen Sondheim so obsessed with "Summertime," from "Porgy and Bess"? He says it's one of the greatest songs ever written.

Summertime, and the livin' is easy
Fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high
Oh, your daddy's rich and your ma is good-lookin'
So hush, little baby, don't you cry

One of these mornings you're gonna rise up singing
And you'll spread your wings and you'll take to the sky
But till that morning, there ain't nothin' can harm you
With daddy and mammy standin' by

Sondheim is especially charmed by the word "and," in the first line; here is what he has to say about it:

That "and" is worth a great deal of attention. I would write "Summertime when" but that "and" sets up a tone, a whole poetic tone, not to mention a whole kind of diction that is going to be used in the play; an informal, uneducated diction and a stream of consciousness, as in many of the songs like "My Man's Gone Now." It's the exact right word, and that word is worth its weight in gold. "Summertime when the livin' is easy" is a boring line compared to "Summertime and." The choices of "ands" [and] "buts" become almost traumatic as you are writing a lyric – or should, anyway – because each one weighs so much.

In other words, the ear is trained to hear "when," and the "and" is a surprise. The idea of stream-of-consciousness: It *does* feel as if the speaker is making an un-rehearsed series of observations about the present: It's summertime AND the living is easy [AND] fish are jumping AND the cotton is high. Also, the omission of "it's" stands out; a lesser writer might have said, "It's summertime when the living is easy." Dropping the "it's" gives us a sense of immediacy; it plunges us into the song, and into the opera, which is just starting, now, with these first words. (I also love the subtle parallel structure within the first two lines: "The living IS easy, the fish ARE jumping, the cotton IS high." And I love the use of local color; who among us thinks of fish jumping in the summer, of cotton being "higher" at some times than at others? The speaker lives among cotton crops; she is using the imagery available to her.)

It's also worth noting that the speaker is establishing an Ordinary World; it's dreamy, sleepy, sunny. "Nothing can harm you"--but of course that's never really true. It's always possible to find yourself swept out of an Ordinary World and into a perilous Enchanted World. The writers know this, even if the speaker does not. Observations about the natural world lead the speaker on to some thoughts about the world of humans: Like the flourishing fish, Daddy and Ma are doing well, also. "Daddy's rich and your ma is good-lookin'." An obvious conclusion: "Hush, little baby, don't you cry."

In the next stanza, something mysterious happens. We launch ourselves into the future, to imagine the baby's glorious adulthood: "One of these mornings you're gonna rise up singing and you'll spread your wings and you'll take to the sky." (There's that string of ANDs again. The jumping fish of Stanza One have yielded to the soaring eagle of Stanza Two. Now, the link between animal life and human life is explicit; the speaker uses bird imagery to imagine the baby's stunning ascent to power. It's also poignant to consider that the speaker, in Act Three, is Bess; she's singing a "Summertime" reprise to Clara's baby. Clara is now dead. "Ain't nothin' can harm you"--not so true, and it never was true.) The last two lines use some more local color: the double negative of "ain't nothin'," the "mammy," the idea of "standin' by." Great mystery of life. How exactly do we spread our wings and take to the sky? How do we rise up singing? The lines are so iconic, we might forget that someone studious crafted them. They might seem, to us, simply to spill out of the character's mouth. Of course that's the effect anyone worth his salt would want to achieve!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNLbRdoB9Z8