Songadaysiblings

Thanksgiving 2007:

07 O Come Emmanuel!

07 For The Widows in Ypsilante

07 We Three Kings

07 Seven Swans

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Thanksgiving, Kimberly in Uganda. Our brother-in-law joined Song-A-Day-Siblings for these four.

August 6: New York Territory

The end.

New York Territory

 

I'm sitting in an emptier apartment. Outside the window, The Empire State Building seems much further away, much lonelier. Kimberly boarded Metro-North to New Haven at 8:07 p.m. and now it's just me and the mouse, this little bugger that we saw sneaking around for the first time last night while we watched The Royal Tenenbaums.

 

On May 30, Kimberly and I spontaneously undertook this project to write, record and upload a song every day while we lived together. In The Royal Tenenbaums, an estranged father of three has six weeks left to live with his family before "the cancer" kills him; Kimberly and I had 71 days in New York City before "the train" took her.

 

Uzi Tenenbaum: Who's your father? 
Chas Tenenbaum: His name is Royal Tenenbaum. 
Ari Tenenbaum: You told us he was already dead.
Chas Tenenbaum: Yeah, well now he's really dying.

 

In The Royal Tenenbaums, Chas harbors hate against Royal for shooting him in the hand with an BB gun as a child (among other reasons); coincidentally, we subtitled this blog, "Siblings who hate each other." But similar to how the whole Tenenbaum family moves back home while Royal lives out his final weeks, gambling with his grandsons (Ari and Uzi) at the dog fights and bringing his adopted daughter (Margot) to his mother's grave for the first time, Kimberly and I wanted to make the most of our stint living together by writing a song everyday for two months. The parameters were no more artificial than Royal's own battle with cancer.

 

Royal [After being exposed and thrown out of the house]: The past six days have been the best six days of probably my whole life. 
Narrator: Immediately after making this statement, Royal realized that it was true.

 

It did Royal good and it did us good. Kimberly was recovering from a rough year as a resident assistant at her college, which included losing girlfriends and boyfriends and preparing for a senior year in Uganda. I was recovering from a rough move to New York City, which included unemployment, minimum wage employment, and repeated rejections. I think we both felt a bit like The Empire State Building. Toward the end of The Royal Tenenbaums, when Royal finds his grandsons a new dog after their's is run over by the next-door-neighbor, Chas finally breaks down and says, "I've had a rough year, dad." Royal responds, "I know you have, Chassie."

 

You know, the Twin Towers never looked lonely. I wonder if The Empire State Building wishes for a sibling, because Wall Street's two haughty and proud beacons always appeared up to no good way up in the clouds. How many times did Kimberly and I get asked if we were twins? Twin Towers, working through our Empire State Building funk. But the Twin Towers fell and now it's back to being a solitary blinking light in midtown.

 

Eli Cash: I always wanted to be a Tenenbaum.

Royal Tenenbaum: Me too, me too.

 

This has been a great way to document the summer. When Kimberly and I are both old and smelling like dirty diapers (that's assuming she makes it back from Africa), we'll log onto the Internet (or whatever it'll be called in 50 years) and listen to our songs of the summer, "representin' BK to the fullest," as the Notorious B.I.G. said.

 

Since The Royal Tenenbaums is loosely based on J.D. Salinger's Glass family, I shamelessly end with his words: “Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”

August 5: Robert Moses V. Upholding the Arms of Moses

Upholding the Arms of Moses

Robert%20Moses

In the fifth and final song about Robert Moses, we end with one of my favorite images from The Power Broker, as Robert Caro quotes Iphigene Sulzberger (wife to the publisher of The New York York Times, she loved Moses' park projects to a fault), looking from her Fifth Avenue apartment onto Central Park: "There has never been as great a public servant. ... He was a man of vision ... a giant. ... He was a hero of old, always rushing into battle wirth Excaliber waving above his head. I thought of the Park Association as Aaron and Hur. Do you know who Aaron and Hur were? They were the soldiers in the Bible who stood behind Moses and held up his arms when he got tired [at the battle of Rephidim, at which 'Israel prevailed' so long as Moses held up his hands]. Well, that's how I thought of the Park Association, as upholding the arms of Moses."

August 4: Robert Moses IV. The Subways are Crowded! The Highways are Clogged!

The Subways are Crowded! The Roads a

Number four in our continued lyrical meanderings about Robert Moses. (1:59 min.)

August 3: Robert Moses III. Bridges to Power

Moses

Robert Moses III.5

This is the third installment in a series of songs about Robert Moses, who built seven monumental bridges, some of them anchored by towers as tall as seventy-story buildings and supported by cables made up of enough wire to drop a noose around the earth: the Triborough, the Verrazano, the Throgs Neck, the Marine, the Henry Hudson, the Cross Bay, and the Bronx-Whitestone.

August 2: Robert Moses II. Losing Long Island

Long island

Robert Moses II

This is the second installment in a series of songs about Robert Moses, The Power Broker. His first official appointment from Alfred Smith was as Long Island Parks Commissioner, where he learned the art of choosing your battles wisely, and also that the ends do justify the means. As we say in the song, "Paving the way to paradise, any means are right; right?" Moses piece-mealed state land and pried land loose from the grip of Long Island's barons to pave the Northern Long Island Parkway and the Southern Long Island Parkway all the way out to Jones Beach and others. Robert Moses cracked open Long Island and put an end to sleepy fishing villages and thousands of acres of untouched land.

August 1: Robert Moses I. Al Smith and His Bill Drafter

AlSmithWaves

Robert Moses I

This is the first installment in a series of songs about Robert Moses, The Power Broker, exploring why Lewis Mumford said, "In the twentieth century, the influence of Robert Moses on the cities of America was greater than that of any other person."

July 31: Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia

on·o·mat·o·poe·ia
(ŏn'ə-māt'ə-pē'ə, -mä'tə-)
n.  
The formation or use of words that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to.

1577, from L.L., from Gk. onomatopoiia "the making of a name or word" (in imitation of a sound associated with the thing being named), from onomatopoios, from onoma (gen. onomatos) "word, name" (see name) + a derivative of poiein "compose," "make."

(3:51 min.)

July 30: Dancing in the Den

Dancing in the Den

The eldest and youngest of we siblings three lyricized in preparation for this 30th of July. Kristi-Lynn is pregnant with her first child, the same age Linda was pregnant with her first, which makes sense because today Linda turned double her eldest daughter's age. Thank you to Meema, who died half Kimberly's age ago, for giving birth to our mother 26x2 years ago today. Happy Birthday Linda Ann. (3:12 min.)

July 29: 3 Sibs

3 Sibs

Kristi-Lynn rode Metro-North into the city to turn Song-A-Day-Siblings into a trio. Although she is pregnant (sorry to Ian, but mad-props to Adam!), so maybe we're a developing quartet? This one was written by KL. (1:55 min.)