Beethoven's wig is very big
Beethoven's wig is long and curly and it's white
Beethoven takes his wig off when he sleeps at night
Because it's big
It's very big
Beethoven's wig is big
Purists may shudder but my son and I enjoy Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik ("Please don't play your violin at night") as a nice break from "I'm a Little Teapot". And, according to contemporary baby theory, we are staving off a close call with underachievement.
Great writing, too, is sometimes tough to sell on proficiency and technique alone. I have yet to get my husband to read with my "this piece uses repetition and imagery to emphasize the central idea" pitch. He's busy and has the attention span of a SportsCenter highlight. If I want to share reading material it needs to be intellectually engaging for me, fun to read for him. Meghan Daum is our Beethoven's Wig.
Daum spins the dry elements of essay writing (state your thesis, support your thesis, restate your thesis, yawn) into cotton candy. Her work is light but substantial, lilting but satisfying. Think Ensure, chocolate milk, peanut butter Power Bars.
Like her fellow 'new beat' writers, Daum had the requisite quirky childhood complete with band camp, and like Sarah Vowell makes her living in part by bemoaning her living. The most well-crafted subject matter from these gals is their not-so-sheen veneer. Would Vowell's pen be as incisive held by a manicured hand at the end of a gym-toned and Hamptons-tanned arm? These girls peak when they're peaked. Their punch comes from outside the inner circle. Bruised and wrinkled is where their metaphors thrive.
Daum's "Music is my Bag", while not the feature of her marquee essay collection "My Misspent Youth" is certainly the best written. It is light-headed fun ("Beethoven's wig is very big") - a verbal fireworks show - a sit-and-spin for readers.
Consider thesis:
"The image I want to get across is that of the 15-year-old boy with the beginning traces of a mustache who hangs out in the band room after school playing the opening bars of a Billy Joel song on the piano"..."he may not yet have the tote bag, but the hat, the Billy Joel, the tacit euphoria brought on by a sexual awakening that, for him, centers entirely around band, is all he needs to be delivered into the unmistakable realm that is Music is My Bagdom."
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