Friday, August 21, 2009

Martin - the musical


Martin is leading an unstructured life in the final days before school begins. Today, he and I strolled over to the college library to find something interesting to do. As soon as we got out the door, Martin began to sing. Every word that came out of his mouth was part of the song. In fact, I think he sang every word he thought. Here's a sample of his lyrics:

We're walking on the sidewalk...
I am the men...
You are the women...
And it's starting to rain...
And I'm singing in the rain...
And I forgot my raincoat...
And my boots.

We're walking on the sidewalk...
Praise God...
Oh, the Jesus...
Praise the Lord...
I am the men...
And you are the women...
There's Abraham Lincoln...
And he's got some pennies...
And we're at the college library...
Now, I'm quiet as a mouse.

I'm not sure what to make of this moment. I think the whole exercise made Martin really happy. And I got a kick out of it, too. Not just because it was funny. Not just because I now had a sense of what post-modern psalms might be. I was thrilled because Martin wanted to get all his interior stuff into the exterior world. He gave words. He gave music. He offered all the things that he could so easily keep and cherish and obsess over in his own little brain. He shared them with me.

It felt like such a gift.

4 comments:

  1. And it totally has verses and a chorus: "I am the men...And you are the women..." It's really profound actually. I like it.

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  2. I just realized why he says "I am the men... And you are the women." The other day I was out with Martin at a coffee shop and he told me he had to go to the bathroom. I showed him where the bathrooms were and he ran headlong for the women's. I said, "Martin, you don't go into women, you go into men." I said it like this because he is very literal. I wanted the word I used to match exactly with the word on the door. I said, "Mama is women, and you and I are men." And he said, "I am men. Papa is men. Mama is women." And for the purposes of identifying the correct bathroom to go into, he is absolutely right. We'll work out the whole singular/plural thing later.

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  3. Doug and Jodie think that Stacy needs to always add comments. The toilet one was the best for that!

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  4. This is beautiful. Thank you for sharing it with us.

    I'm praying for a good first day of school on Monday.

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