Recorders have mostly become a joke in American culture. I think this is because we learn them in our elementary school music classes and never see them again. Also, because there is very little contemporary music written for the recorder. Has there ever been a recorder featured in a billboard charting popular song? Probably not.

I grew up listening to recorder duets, however. My mother and her friends played recorders. There was something satisfying to me about the sound. These recorders weren’t the crappy plastic ones. They were larger and wooden and the sound was rich and full. They played beautiful music.

My mother played recorder in a local production of Twelfth Night. I went to see it and fell in love. I don’t know that I knew it was Shakespeare at the time. All I knew was that show had been very exciting for me to watch. I got a thrill every time my mom wore her Twelfth Night t-shirt because it reminded me of the magic of it.

Given the circumstances, it is possible that the recorder is responsible for my working with Shakespeare today. O, was this wise?
O, the recorders.

I looked up what this proverb is. It is: While the grass grows, the steed starves.
This is explained as if you wait too long, dreams may not be realized. I’m not sure this makes sense to me. It makes sense as it relates to Hamlet, sure –
But on its own. . .
Why is the steed starving? Do steeds not eat grass?
Is it that they eat hay – like, dried grasses?
I don’t know – it just seems like, if the steed is hungry, it’ll just eat whatever it can find, if the grass is to its taste or not. I’d eat grass if I were starving.

But. . .this proverb is VERY musty. It’s very probable that this was a well used proverb at the time – one every one could complete after hearing just the grass growing part. Modern audiences have to make up what the rest of it might be.

I think I imagined it was something like, “While the grass grows, the sun shines everywhere.” I wanted it to say something about glory going on without a person (or the grass. . .) so the actual proverb is a little bit disappointing compared to the one in my imagination.

Something musty indeed. Something musty in 1599, 1601 or so, is EVEN mustier here in 2016.

You and me both, Hamlet. You and me both.
For years, I searched for what it was that must be wrong with me that kept me from progress. Then I realized that the system was rigged and that no amount of positive thinking would fix it. Shifting the language around this is key – for example, saying I lack advancement is a lot less self-defeating than “I’m not as successful as I’d like to be.” Or “I’ve failed.” I lack advancement in the way that I lack a certain amount of privilege. It’s not something that’s wrong with me – just something that I don’t have in possession. It’s like not having a car. The car isn’t a part of me that’s missing – it’s a thing I don’t have. Would having a car be helpful in getting me where I’d like to go? Absolutely. Same as advancement.
Shifting things to an outside focus means that I can skip the self-flagellation and get about the business of tracking down the things I need – like a car and advancement. Except I don’t really need a car.

How we joke with one another can determine so much. Again and again, Hamlet proposes some opportunities for banter with his old friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and again and again, they let the offers lie. In the improvisation of their rapport, they’re almost always blocking him. He makes an offer. They insist he be serious. He makes another offer – they respond with frustration.
Yet if they found a way to support Hamlet’s play, if they joined in the jokes, in the games he proposes, they might find a more companionable Hamlet and might have a better shot at getting what they want. But they keep banging on the serious gong and lose all their credibility with him.

This sounds like a royal dismissal. A “you don’t have anything else to say, do you? You’re done wasting my time now, right?”
And Rosencrantz’s response has a quality of acknowledging that. Rosencrantz sounds a little wounded – but really, all the spying and lying aside, the imperious tone they took when delivering the Queen’s message was just. . .well, it makes me feel like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern started this change in tone and Hamlet just takes it to the next level.
“You’re going to treat me like a misbehaving child? Fine. Let me remind you that I’m the Prince, you patronizing pricks.”

Oooh. Hamlet getting imperial. Getting all “Royal We” on these guys. Royalty up the language, getting super formal. Ten times our mother is a lot of mother but in the obeying, there is a resistance and a pointing toward his own status, which must, inevitably, diminish theirs.

This word looks funny all on its own.
In context, it’s perfectly clear, perfectly sensible.
By itself, it looks surreal.
I put it on a blue/grey painted canvas, with several abstract shapes and maybe a gear or clockworks.
Across the top, “Impart” is stenciled in block print.
Why? I’m not sure. It’s a painting now, not just a line.

Mother’s Admiration: Part Two – The Sequel
You thought you saw it all in the first one. You thrilled at a mother admiring her son. Audiences cheered for the thrilling story. Now the wildly popular film returns to cinemas this spring for an exciting return to the world so beloved and admired by mothers and their children around the world.
Mother’s Admiration. The Sequel.

Can’t every son ‘stonish his mother? Isn’t that just how parenting works sometimes? First, simply by being born. That is amazing in and of itself.
My friend came to town with her husband and baby boy. Over dumplings on the Upper West Side, she marveled at her son and then marveled at her own marveling. She was simultaneously convinced that her boy was the most admirable baby in the world and aware that every parent is built to feel this way about their child. She knew it was unremarkable to find her son so remarkable but found him remarkable nonetheless.
As we grow, we likely become less astonishing, less surprising or amazing to our parents – or maybe, sometimes, we continue to astonish, to amaze – simply by continuing to exist as someone’s child, someone’s remarkable baby, all grown up.

They said heaps of nice things about her. They made her two cakes. They decorated a seemingly undecoratable conference room. They issued Resolutions and Proclamations. They made slide shows and videos. They took photos. They proclaimed it all over town for a week. When they met me, they told me how great she was. And while I always said, “I know,” I’m not sure I really did. I learned things about her style and her skill at work that I had no idea about before. Most moving was the way so many women thanked her for inspiring them, for mentoring them, for being a great role model.

I wasn’t surprised, exactly. But it’s like looking at a prism from another angle, it refracts light in a different way than you’d seen it previously.