By email Blogless Mike asks:
Have you waxed philosophic yet about being a parent… all the things you want to do or not do… teach her/him to read by age 2??
Of course we have. For example, we have discussed at what age it is appropriate to demand of a kid that he or she bring you a beer. But one of my projects is finding music that can help the child connect to his or her heritage — northeastern industrial, southern coal-miner, Celtic, Germanic.
Songs have become so plentiful that the really old ones don’t get heard much anymore, and I’d like our kid to have that grounding. Jung seems to have thought we shared a cultural memory, something inborn — but I suspect it’s much more likely that cultural memory is transmitted through music and story.
Sadly, I don’t know as much of this music as I would like. But I have just learned this one, which is apparently sung to the tune of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic:”
I know a song that gets on everybody’s nerves,
Everybody’s nerves, everybody’s nerves.
I know a song that gets on everybody’s nerves,
And this is how it goes…
I know a song that gets on everybody’s nerves,
Everybody’s nerves, everybody’s nerves.
I know a song that gets on everybody’s nerves,
And this is how it goes…
I know a song that gets on everybody’s nerves,
Everybody’s nerves, everybody’s nerves.
I know a song that gets on everybody’s nerves,
And this is how it goes…
[ Repeat until smacked ]
I can’t believe I haven’t heard that one before. What else do I need to teach my future teacher’s nightmare?
