Hooked on culture

Looking over the timeline of the songs for January, there are two important ruptures. I wanted something to represent the time in between them.

"America" kind of did that, but also represented Mom moving countries. I wanted something for what life was like before things started splitting off.

Something else that played a lot was Hooked on Classics.

I had never thought about the structure of that album. There literally is a track called "Hooked on Classics Part 1 & 2". I ended up choosing "Rondo Alla Turca" -- that's what I was feeling the most, even though technically I was hearing it as part of track 7, "Hooked on Mozart."

I may be thinking of this more because of an earlier conversation. 

My younger sisters were saying they credited me with some of our tendency to go to cultural events and travel and things like that.

I understood why they thought that, because often when we went together to the opera or ballet or Australia, I did a lot of the planning and paying, back in the day. That is not where it got started.

I pointed out that with our mother being Italian we were always more likely to be interested in going to Italy, at least, and I think that opened things up, as well as opening us up to opera.

I am not saying that it's in the blood. Our mother loved opera, and played it frequently. 

She got that from her father, who also loved it. I think culturally that was pretty common in his time; I'm honestly not sure about now. That's probably something else to ask my cousins.

The culture did not just come from her. Our father was the one who played other classical music and filled the bookcase with books. Those included classic novels and plays, but also Tolkien and some Edgar Rice Burroughs and lots of Time-Life book series. We had a full set of junior and regular encyclopedias.

(Randomly, there were also a few copies of PS Magazine, an army maintenance magazine that started with illustrations by Will Eisner, award-inspiring comic inspiration.) 

As important as school and public libraries have been for me, the library at home was a big influence.

My father's family had some hard times. There were a lot of moves and restarts and some migrant farm work. A cousin has informed me that they had good times too -- it wasn't always a struggle -- but the struggle seems to have imprinted itself more deeply.

The frequent moves affected education. 

I don't know how much of my father's ego was real versus an attempt to cover up deep-rooted insecurities. He seemed to really think he was better than everyone else, but maybe it was a convincing cover bolstered with denial.

Regardless, looking back I see a lot of striving in the collection of books and the pursuit of culture and knowledge. 

I hope he got some enjoyment out of it too. 

We did.