This Last Night in Baseball Week Tonight

I watched a baseball game last night. Yankees vs. Astros. Neither team I am interested in but a game is a game so I watched. First off, it seems that the Yankees have continued their practice of selling their collective souls to the devil in return for success. Nothing surprising there.

I was listening to the commentator guy talk and it seemed like I was listening to Irwin Fletcher who somehow faked his way into the on-air booth and was calling the game with his usual panache and "making it up as I go along" attitude. He spoke at length about how the Astros pitcher was "basically unhittable" and then the pitcher gave up 2 home runs and a walk. After the second home run and an awkward pause, the guy said "but, yeah, when he doesn't open up his shoulder and keeps his release point in the middle of his body, he's basically unhittable then." He then proceeded to explain the pitcher's motion with the conviction of Bart Simpson saying "turn the middle side topwise."

And I'd like to close with an apology. I am sorry. I apologize to a certain ethnic group because I started assembling a potentially racist joke in my head. It was wrong of me to try and craft something referencing the Houston, Texas team playing the New York team and including something about "busloads of fans headed to New York." I am so, so sorry.

Random Musical Notes

I spent some time watching a concert last night so I have a series of music based commentary to share. If you don't like it, click on "like" and you won't get any more posts like this until I feel like I want to write more. You're in my house; take off your shoes.

There are 2 kinds of rock and roll drummers: beaters and bangers. I'm a banger and proud of it. While I know a little of the technical stuff, I play be listening and doing, and I build myself on unpolished, innate sense, blundering ahead by feeling my way there. I can't do fancy but I can do earnest. No beater I, even though, as I figure it, almost 100% of professional, famous, "good" and lusted after rock drummers are beaters and I respect that. It makes sense that bangers are the amateurs and I'm ok with that. My future was never written amidst the stars.

But beaters play at being bangers because they know that bangers have more fun. When Hollywood wants to present the stereotypical rock drummer, does it go for the guy who can cold read a chart during a commercial session and one-take it flawlessly? Or one who eats metronomes for breakfast and works on rudiments as foreplay? No. Hollywood calls Animal.

So I'll never do the work to cross over to Beater-ville, and I'll never have a past to be ashamed of, or to be ashamed of missing.

Questions for discussion:

Is Meg White a banger or a beater?

Is Paul McCartney the most successful banger of all time? This leads to a tangential point: is there a distinction between bangers and beaters in all areas? The person who doesn't have to work at anything to be a natural but will never be as good as the guy who builds skills by the book in order to be great. Or the person who reaches "great" by divine gift and is still making it up as he goes along (a rare commodity who makes gold without knowing a bit of chemistry).

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I get told that I was an old man even when I was younger. This might be true -- I'll have to check the kinetoscope. Some people, it seems, were never young. They might have been less chronologically advanced, but they were still old souls. I see this in musicians especially.

Eddie Vedder, Neil Young, the members of The Band, John Fogerty, Keith Richards were all born wizened, wrinkled and jaded. They, even as children were a ragged blend of angry, cynical and aloof.

But others, like Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney will never be old regardless of what any piece of paper proclaims. They will always have the twinkle in the eye of a 17 year old boy who is just discovering joy and anger, greed and celebration in the same moment and who still see the world with an innocence and excitement that has lost since passed away in others. They have found a way to be their youth, not reminisce about it.

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I just now realized how totally bass forward CCR's music is. The bass lines themselves are smart, flirty, insistent and incredibly solid, and the production refuses to let the bass melt into the music bed or be a supporting, background player. The bass is pushed up until it leads, growling like a horn, melodizing like a guitar, driving like a drum. I watched a 1970 concert film (Royal Albert Hall) and I have to say that they are TIGHT and their balance and mix are spot on.

Me forget not

Maybe here's what I fear -- forgetting.

In my old age, I need to have recall of all the trivia and infotainment that never lets me get bored during my internal dialogues.

Just today, I sat on the sofa for 6 full minutes because I couldn't remember Keither Richards' name. Just his name. I could picture him; I could recall one hundred and one memes about him. I could name and sing songs he wrote. I could yell "Glimmer Twins" as loud as I wanted and only mean "Mick." But I couldn't remember the name "Keith Richards." I refused to look it up and, finally and fortunately, I remembered. But the delay scared me.

I figure I will need an aide with an encyclopedic knowledge of popular culture (then and now), history and me to act as interpreter and be able to translate my half completed thoughts and sentences, my gap filled statements where I struggle to fill in important details that have camped on the Cape of My Tongue and refuse to leave on the long trek to conscious thought. That person will have to intuit my thoughts and references and provide missing facts that make my nonsense sense. Imagine how scary I'll be without my translator, lost in the middle of a thousand thoughts, none within my grasp, flailing about for words flying away.

This is what I fear -- an inability to remember, express and interact.

Rethinking Parshat Zachor

 

Before I begin I want to make very clear that I presume everything I am about to write is a product of dire ignorance on my part. I’m more than happy to be educated on this so if you know of any commentaries or midrashim which clarify, please let me know. Also, I want to make it clear that none of this is meant to cast aspersions on the Jewish practice of reading Parshat Zachor. My concerns are nit-picky. I gotta be mean.

 

Each year, we are commanded to hear the reading of Parshat Zachor, Devarim 25:17-19 which retells of the attack by Amalek. As this is in Devarim, we can assume that it was spoken/recorded/written towards the end of the Hebrews’ journeys through the wilderness. The text of this reading is as follows:

 

זָכ֕וֹר אֵ֛ת אֲשֶׁר־עָשָׂ֥ה לְךָ֖ עֲמָלֵ֑ק בַּדֶּ֖רֶךְ בְּצֵאתְכֶ֥ם מִמִּצְרָֽיִם׃

אֲשֶׁ֨ר קָֽרְךָ֜ בַּדֶּ֗רֶךְ וַיְזַנֵּ֤ב בְּךָ֙ כׇּל־הַנֶּחֱשָׁלִ֣ים אַֽחֲרֶ֔יךָ וְאַתָּ֖ה עָיֵ֣ף וְיָגֵ֑עַ וְלֹ֥א יָרֵ֖א אֱלֹהִֽים׃

וְהָיָ֡ה בְּהָנִ֣יחַ ה אֱלֹהֶ֣יךָ ׀ לְ֠ךָ֠ מִכׇּל־אֹ֨יְבֶ֜יךָ מִסָּבִ֗יב בָּאָ֙רֶץ֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר ה־אֱ֠לֹהֶ֠יךָ נֹתֵ֨ן לְךָ֤ נַחֲלָה֙ לְרִשְׁתָּ֔הּ תִּמְחֶה֙ אֶת־זֵ֣כֶר עֲמָלֵ֔ק מִתַּ֖חַת הַשָּׁמָ֑יִם לֹ֖א תִּשְׁכָּֽח

 

I looked at the commentaries (thank you Artscroll and Sefaria) and found that this was referencing an event originally recorded in Sh’mot 17, starting in verse 8. The problem is that the version recounted in Devarim is strikingly different from the events of Sh’mot! I’ll go through the various phrases and show what I’m talking about.

 

1.       בַּדֶּ֖רֶךְ בְּצֵאתְכֶ֥ם מִמִּצְרָֽיִם

 

When the events of Amalek’s attack took place, the people were in Refidim. It was there that the people had complained about a lack of water, shown no appreciation for Hashem’s presence and were therefore attacked by Amalek. But, again, the people were not “baderech” on any particular road. They were camped. Additionally, this encampment was on the 23^rd or Iyar according to the Seder Olam, a month after Yam Suf, after 2 other stops and the revelation at Har Sinai (see Bamidbar 33:14 for more). Why is it still reckoned by the Exodus and not marked as the path to Israel or from Har Sinai or just a next stop on their travels. In fact, 17:1 speaks of Refidim as being one of the stages of travel but does NOT connect it to yetzi’at mitzrayim. But let that be for a moment.

 

2.       אֲשֶׁ֨ר קָֽרְךָ֜ בַּדֶּ֗רֶךְ

 

According to the Rambam, the people had been camped at Refidim for a few days (17:1 “ועמדו יום או יומים”). So they weren’t on any literal road. But more than that, the version in Sh’mot says vayavo Amalek – not that Amalek happened upon them (korcha -- לְשׁוֹן מִקְרֶה Rashi, Dev 25:18) but that they intentionally approached the Hebrews.

 

3.       וַיְזַנֵּ֤ב בְּךָ֙ כׇּל־הַנֶּחֱשָׁלִ֣ים אַֽחֲרֶ֔יךָ

 

Amalek, according to Devarim, cut off the stragglers. Devious and cowardly, right? Except the people were camped and had been for a couple of days. How were there stragglers?

 

4.       וְאַתָּ֖ה עָיֵ֣ף וְיָגֵ֑עַ

 

Rashi explains that Ayef (tired) means thirsty. But according to the text, they had already been the recipients of a miracle and there was water! Why would the people be thirsty? [the more homiletic sense that they were thirsting for Torah would at least reflect the loss of faith that brought about the attack, especially since Torah is equated with water, and then the “lo yarei elokim” might even refer to the Hebrews who were absent of Torah and therefore did not show proper yir’ah, but I haven’t seen, via a quick look, anyone who sees the phrase as applying to the people of Israel] Maybe the “atah” is not the people but Moshe who might have been thought to be tired and ineffective after the people’s challenge so Amalek thought that when Moshe was weak would be a good time to attack.

 

So the surprise attack on the stragglers who had fallen behind on the arduous journey is not the way the story is told in Sh’mot and one would think that details like this, the exact ones which inspire an eternal commandment would be given when the event happened, or the details given should be in accord with the way the story is retold 40 years later.

 

Then we have this notion of an obligation to erase the memory of Amalek. In Devarim, we are told that…

 

5.       וְהָיָ֡ה בְּהָנִ֣יחַ ה אֱלֹהֶ֣יךָ ׀ לְ֠ךָ֠ מִכׇּל־אֹ֨יְבֶ֜יךָ מִסָּבִ֗יב בָּאָ֙רֶץ֙

 

When Hashem gives us a respite from the enemies that surround us in our land, THEN timche the memory of Amalek (we will erase). Has that happened yet? Are we at peace with all the surrounding countries? Is there really any rest in Israel even when there isn’t a shooting war taking place? A country with peace doesn’t need a compulsory draft, doesn’t need to build walls, doesn’t need metal detectors at every entrance and doesn’t need to worry, daily, that its children might not come home. We are clearly not at the time when the name will be erased, and those enemies are not Amalek, because we will only have to deal with Amalek when all the other enemies are done, and they are not.

 

That hearkens back to what Hashem actually said in Sh’mot. There, Hashem said that at some indeterminate, future time “macho emche” I will certainly erase. Hashem will do the erasing and not just yet. This is a promise that Hashem will do his part, a first person declaration of certainty (the doubled verb indicates the absolute inevitability) for us to rely on. And if we look at the verb in Devarim, the text reads “timche et…” you will erase, but not as a tzivui/command! This comes as a statement of future fact. We are not being given an order, we are told what will happen.

 

It could be that Hashem is promising us that at some future time, he will take care of the physical Amalek, the one who came up to us while we were encamped and who attacked us for no reason. We will fight them and Hashem will make sure that they are bodily destroyed. But when Moshiach comes and Hashem has helped us reach peace with our surrounding neighbors, then WE will automatically erase the thoughts of Amalek from our knowledge base – but not the physical group. Their nefarious deeds and history will still be known, but the evil that they represent, the kind that is capable of attacking the weak and defenseless, will simply be gone from the world and we cannot forget that promise that Hashem will make us a world in which no one will want to pursue the kind of evil epitomized by Amalek. This is a conceptual/spiritual erasing, as human nature will go through a shift. We won’t have to be commanded – that erasing will just happen.

 

So why, then, are we commanded to read Parshat Zachor each year? Is it to stoke the flames of our hatred and give us a convenient scapegoat which we can blame for everything that has gone wrong? No, quite the opposite. Evil is everywhere now – we can run into it at home or on the road and it attacks us in open and in secret ways. But Parshat Zachor is a promise of a future time when that will no longer happen, creating an opportunity to reinvigorate our faith: not to remember what happened in Sh’mot, but to look forward to the promised change that will come once we merit the arrival of the future king Moshiach.

Take That

My schoolyard taunting skills were both strong and weak. Because they were more technical and complex than the traditional taunts, they were more involved and took longer, thereby making them witheringly mean but inevitably less effective.

The old stand by of "I'm rubber, you are glue" was delivered as "I'm rubber, like a vulcanized rubber, and you're glue, but a glue that doesn't work on rubber -- it works on words, though, so if you say things, they are repulsed by my elastic surface and adhere to you, thereby being applicable to you and not me."

When I saw two young people near each other, I began the sign-song "I see ____ and _____ sitting in a tree, and this is dangerous enough but they alse are sharing germs and practicing unhygienic behaviors at an age too young to be engaged in such activities."

I was also a master of attacks on parentage -- "Your mother is very large, which, in and of itself shouldn't be something we call attention to, but in her zeal to eat food, she often disregards your emotional needs!"

And let's not forget "U-G-L-Y is what you are and you have no recourse and cannot hide your identity under a presumed name. And your ugliness is more than skin deep. I mean, you are just ugly through and through. Dang. Wow. I mean, really, really ugly."

I like to think that I encouraged good health as people got many steps quickly walking away from me.

A Basic primer on truth

 My BASIC skills are rusty but I going to do this to make a point. I can't guarantee the precision of the code, but I hope you get the idea.

What follows is a Random Number Generator* that I wrote. It will generate a Random Number* between 1 and 50.

10 Let X=RND(50)

20 if X= 46 goto 10

30 print x

40 print "type 1 to get another random number. Type anything else to exit"

50 input y

60 if y=1 then goto 10 else end

*except not 46

=======

If you didn't see the code, you would believe me when I said that this is a random number generator. We defer and don't investigate when we get numbers from a supposed authority.

A quick movie follow up

Just for posterity's sake...

I watched Ip Man 2 last night. 

It is, technically, far superiod to the first movie. The quality of camera and film are much improved and the acting is also much better. It seems somehow more "professiona;" and on the whole, the movie holds together as more organized. That being said, there is much more of a traditional story-telling vibe about it. In fact, I would say that the movie, still exploring the same themes of loyalty and family, plus the quest for superiority over other pugilistic forms (which, symbolically, still stand in for the larger political and social influences of various cultures while the Chinese voice struggles to stand firm and unique even as it fights within to find its single, representative style), morphs into Rocky 3.

Friends become enemies, enemies become friends, lessons are learned, good prevails through tragedy. Babies are born, dust is raised and sandwiches are served. Fin.

On to Ip Man 3 I think...

A movie discussion

Last night I watched Donnie Yen in Ip Man. I have avoided the Ip Man movies for many years now because I didn't really understand what they were all about but on the advice of Nikko (he works in the Leasing Office) I found this particular version and sat down with it.

This is no mere martial arts flick. It uses complex story arcs, incorporates history lessons, had flawed and very believable characters -- even the fight scenes develop a particular personality and language to communicate their message.

There is, however, an expectation of a familiarity or even a fluency with the vocabulary incorporating all the culturalisms which are so engrained that they become subtly asynonymous with each other. The same word, movement or emotion can, by virtue of the complicated shifts in culture mean very different things from another seemingly identical iteration of that word or action. But one needs to understand the entirety of the societal norms and behaviors to appreciate it.

The movie fascinated me. The aesthetic is old school but the depth of character and emotional backstories are so much more modern in their conception and telling. Ip Man is of the model of the stoic master but that impacts his home life and what makes him so successful as a fighter marks his failings as a husband and father. He is dressed up as the invulnerable super fighter, but has to learn to be a man as well. Superman is always off saving the world that he never plays ball with his kid. What the world sees, it admires, but that's just the public face of a man whose family resents him.

The cultural issues, which I'm assuming are represented accurately, amazed me. In earlier martial arts movies, I began to appreciate the use of animal names for various moves because of how the move simulates both the appearance of the animal, but copies its strengths in fighting, and the choice of style is driven by the choice of what animal would best succeed in a given confrontation against any other particular animal. But in this film, things are taken a stem further.

Conflicting schools of Kung Fu are representing different dynasties, styles, locations and philosophies. One sees the Kung Fu as extension of body while the other sees it as an expression of the mind. They are fighting, refining and redefining themselves through the battles. The schools/styles reveal an approach to living and the conception of self, and represent nations and policies so to defeat someone is to show error in his entire way of life. It is almost as if there is a constant quest for a certain shade of hegemony -- all the Kung Fu movies with local battles and duels or larger wars between school and styles are real in an alternate universe, one in which dominance over all  will be awarded to the school that has the "best kung fu" as proven through that series of bracketed face offs and seeded contests. Impress, win, move up or disappear. So every Hollywood presentation is really a documentary about the Darwinian selection system which creates a fight-or-die, force-fed evolution of Kung Fu.

About an hour in, the movie shifts from being a series of character-based studies to being a more traditional plot-driven work. The Hollywood tropes start showing up (and retroactively make one wonder if the first part was only pretending to be outside the traditional box of martial arts films). When you get to the standard redemption, revenge and growth parts, you are rewarded with a training montage set to music. It all leads up to a big, final duel between the representatives of two distinct cultures who are competing on both the macro and micro levels. But it doesn't end there. Just saying.

Anyway, I liked it a lot.

Failure to Lunch

I'd like to discuss my midday meal yesterday. I'm not going to recount this in an attempt to call anyone out. I shall not attempt that, but I will do it successfully. Not with names -- if this ever gets to the people about whom I am speaking, I will get in plenty of trouble, but the truth must be told. All the details are true but the names, well, they just aren't here.

First off, a quick disclaimer: my hosts were fantastic and nice and the food was good. I enjoy their company (and I have no doubt that there are things about me that annoy them and things about them that annoy me, but that's life).

They had guests. Sadly, the level of humor at the table was having one person comment about going to an ENT and another person then saying "what?" and everyone laughing at how innovative that joke is. Subtlety has left the building.

But then I was talking to a person at lunch. While he regaled me of all the stories which explained his various careers and why people didn't like him, and then about his medical issues and why he doesn't speak to his children or them to him, he worked his way towards explaining what he currently does. He invests. That's nice -- I asked if he had a fancy terminal or a super account so he can get all the most updated info. He said he didn't and he googles things. OK, then. Sounds very cutting edge.

He told me of how he got into the market: his kid encouraged him to, so he bought a stock on the kid's recommendation and it tanked. But he held on to it and then bought more when it was cheap. When it came back up, he made money. This was, he explained, the trick that he discovered -- buy when things are cheaper, and sell them when they get more expensive.

I'm glad he confided this secret to me. Success, here I come.

Mighty Are

 

then she called, out of the blue and just to ask a simple question. A lovely gesture to remind me (if only in my own estimation) that I was still pretty high up on the people-in-her-life list. And while I was chatting with her about the banalities of life I heard her say “ok, well maybe I’ll just go and draw some blood” and then she went back to talking to me until she had to go. I love you and all that, MUAH. But then it hit me – she called from work, from real, full-time, adult, make the world a better place work. And she was one of those angels on earth who heal others with skills I can’t comprehend. She is an actual grown-up human and I, somehow, had something to do with helping her along the way. I am so proud to be her dad, thankful for and celebrating all and every part of who she is.

And at the same time, the voice I heard was somehow 5 years old, and I was a younger man, vital, perfect in my child’s eyes and somehow relevant again. She needed me. Yes, simply to answer a question about a bag, but she needed me because she is still (in my own estimation) that small child who needs to be reminded to look both ways and who has an innocent smile that can shine in any context. She was playing a role, living out a young girl’s dreams while still knowing that when we walk my hand will still grip hers reflexively and inhumanly quickly should she stumble. I know she is stronger, and stronger than I in many, many ways, but in that moment, on the phone, she was just my baby, and I was just her dad.

Bitter-sweet memory

I guess it all started in my childhood, much like my incessant need to have teeth. As a boy, I occasionally found myself at the Y for some sort of event and breakfast. I don't recall much about the breakfast (it probably included lox and I work hard to forget any interaction I have with lox) but I recall what there was to drink. It was in a large can but it wasn't tomato juice. It was something called (IIRC) "Unsweetened Orange Juice."

You have to recall that, way back when, one could not just walk into the store and get fresh orange juice. Want fresh OJ? Buy a bag o' oranges and a juicer and frustrate the hell out of yourself for 3 tablespoons of juice-pulp-seeds and more than that on the counter or your pants. Or just fly to Florida -- it is cheaper. At my house, mom usually came home with frozen, concentrated juice. Peel the tab, get it all into a glass bottle, and then pour in a certain number of canfuls of water. Mix and voila, orange juice. But as far as I understood, what was in there was concentrate and water, no sweetener. The result, though, tasted not unlike actual orange juice.

Unsweetened was a different story. It had hints of grapefruit juice and metal and was totally unsweet but was still orange juice. I never really thought about what it actually was but the touch of bitterness suited me just fine. Now, things called "unsweetened" are still plenty sweet and I don't have my time machine available to go back to nineteen seventy whatever and stock up with cans of the stuff. I have tried grapefruit juice and that's not what I'm craving. I want my can of unsweetened orange juice circa 1979 vintage.

This goes into my list of "food from my youth that I want back" including Buitoni Spaghetti Twists, Stella D'Oro Como Delights, Empire frozen BBQ chicken in sauce, Mrs. Goodcookies tub of dough, Diet Cel-Ray soda, and Burry's Best chocolate cookies among others.

Morning miscellany

1. Hunger approached him and he considered rising to it and getting something to eat. He knew had to be careful in his choice of choices -- nothing too spicy. His intestinal system had made that clear when it made its feelings known for the entire length of a very uncomfortable night. I knew I should keep my spicy down to the level of a carrot, but not one of them spicy carrots, neither.

2. Admittedly, I'm still getting over that Bruce Boxleitner is a lefty.

3. I wonder what the largest amount of meat I can get on one hamburger order at each fast food place would be. Like a double double, third pounder double or whatever.

4. Idea for a story: a guy falls in love with a woman and later discovers she has an identical twin. Hilarity, romance, murder and other assorted hijinks ensue.

5. I have not yet encountered anybody who uses the film-based social media platform "Letterbox" who actually knows why the word "letterbox" has any relevance to film. And when I try to explain it, no one believes me.

6. I watched the movie "The Forbidden Kingdom" last night. It was very enjoyable but I'm not fully clear on the exact mechanism of some of the events which were purported to have occurred. I feel that some of the forensics should be re-evaluated and some of the witness statements, reconsidered.

I did like the movie. I have never before really appreciated the names of and uses for the different styles within each martial art -- the choice of a useful style and how each focuses on a strength and approach of the animal. It was actually very neat.

More movie notes

Tonight's first choice was The Forbidden Kingdom but that's not available to stream for free so I moved past it. Then I saw the poster for (and trailer for) The Misfits with Pierce Brosnan. This looked like a movie for me. In the end, I think it was an it wasn't.

As I watched it i had a strong, strong feeling like I had seen it before. I was completely convinced that I had. But the thing is, the weird thing is, I have no memory at all of ever having seen it before! I'd think that I'd think that that's pretty important to have when trying to remember things. So what's going on here?

But my point is that at 41 minutes in to the movie, the "Misfits" (hence the title, I guess) are to travel across what they report to be "30 miles of virgin desert" (I know, sounds hot!) via camels. That makes sense. But in the next few scenes we get a series of shots (aerial, front, from the back and like that) showing a line of camels, traveling one behind the next, all connected by a rope and each being led by a local guide. That means that the local guides had to walk 30 miles in the virgin desert. I'm pretty sure that's not how these thing work.

The movie continued and for the love of all that is Pete, I was still sure that I remembered so many scenes. It was a constant state of I have deja viewed this before. But then there were scenes that I didn't recall AT ALL and I certainly could neither remember nor intuit the ending.

The movie turned into a very poor man's version of Oceans 11 down to the stylings of the musical accompanyment and incidental music but I don't recall any of that from before.

It wasn't that the directing was bad -- the directing was fine and even good and the director is to be commended. It's just that the movie, itself, was bad. Poor. Insultingly iterated. Derivative but not in a good way. I can only speak of a single human character because none of the roles on screen presented enough personality on its own to be considered human, and only when all the fractions were added up did there amount to be anything resembling a complete character. The story was muddled, the pacing inconsistent, and the timeline unclear.

The plot is about items stolen, slightly reshaped and returned without having ever become anything new. Oh, wait, did I write "about" up there? Delete that "about" and read the sentence again.

So in the end, the film is exactly for me, so much so that I get the sense that I have chosen it before. But it isn't for me because I deserve so much better.

Idea for a video

A musical tale told wordlessly:

A simple man walks down the road playing a simple man's tune on a tin whistle. He dances happily past another man with a fiddle. The first man stops and plays more of the tune. The fiddler picks of the tune and joins the walk, adding a melody which, surprisingly, shows the simple tune to be a harmony!

They pass a third man, one who is holding a different instrument. He joins etc. until a whole mass of accumulated marchers, now playing a much fuller song and the simple tune has been woven within a much more complex piece of music, they walk past the rock club. Patrons and musicians watch them suspiciously, this rag tag group playing a piece of non-rock musicians, then they join and complement the arrangement, improving it by addition. Then past the church and the choir joins in, then the symphony etc and everyone, no matter the background or difference in style, joins and augments to make the simple tune grander and grander.

The song culminates with a once more through the chorus and then home. Fin. Everyone looks at each other and starts shaking hands and comparing ideas about music.

Camera pans way out and over...miles away and zooms back into a view of a 5 year old kid who is crouching, drawing on the street with dirt and a rock scratching into asphalt while unconsciously humming the same simple tune.