The man in the ball

THE BRIDE’S reading, I’m likely writing, Daughter #1’s giving little D1D1 her bath, then the little girl’s dad will read her a few books and she’s off to bed. Our evening routine.

Fresh out of the tub and wrapped in a bath towel, D1D1 likes to come into the old people’s quarters to stand before a blazing wood stove, there to bathe again in a cozy yellow light. Odds are she’ll also want to hear a music video at my work station.

One of her favorites? The man in the ball. That’s what she calls Peter Gabriel’s Growing Up, his take on birth, death, rebirth, all those mystery-laden what-ifs? of life.

Whenever D1D1’s digging the man in the ball, her little sister starts doing flip-flops in the womb. What do you suppose that means? If anything?

Whatever it may be, it’s uncanny. Happens every time.

Let’s say it’s a random nothing. The little girl in utero happens to like the beat. She’s rocking out while still in. So what?

I sure wish she could tell us when she gets here. That’s another five weeks out, give or take. By the time she can talk I doubt she’ll remember what her womb-self was thinking about the man in the ball.

When she gets here, I’ll tell her, just for nothing, that Peter Gabriel is whacked; that in the 80’s he wasn’t the man in the ball yet, just another guy with a train going around and around his head.

What if she’s not digging Peter Gabriel just for the beat? Speaking of around and around, might little D1D2, more formally known as Daughter #2 of Daughter #1, be saying:  Yes! What the man in the ball said! That’s exactly it! I’ve been around and around a hundred times over! Now I’m nearly back! I’m on my way! See you in five weeks, family!

That would be Peter Gabriel’s take. He’d say the sudden burst of flip-flops is the only language she has right now. It’s her way of getting a message from the not-quite-there to the not-quite-here.

My agnosticism says I don’t know.

The most I’ll do is factor in the observed phenomena. I note that Peter Gabriel’s a wonderful writer, poet, artist and showman, a fine fellow by all reports. And that he’s inclined to talk bollocks in his stage patter to an audience.

I’ve heard him say the murder rate doubles under a full moon. It does no such thing.

He’s gobsmacked that there’s a mere 1-percent difference between our DNA and our bonobo cousins. In point of fact, there’s no “mere” about it; in the vastness of the genome a 1-percent difference is infinitely different. The artist means to suggest it’s negligible.

He’s got the number wrong, in any event—100 percent wrong: our DNA is 2-percent different.

Close enough for a guy who wants to BE…  Your sledge… Hammer.

I dig his art, his writing, his music, the philosophical bent he brings to it all, as he does while running around stage in the ball. He cleverly uses the ball as a double metaphor: it’s the womb, then the body that exits the womb, a traveling home for the soul, until “breathing stops, I don’t know when, in transition once again…”

If an artist so wrong about the moon and the bonobo is right about this, well… that would be lovely. I’m content to know when I know. Or when I don’t, if there happens to be nothing to know, and no I to know it. I don’t guess about the things of this world let alone some other, don’t repeat other people’s guesses and opinions. Given how I’m wired, the argument from authority, modern or ancient, is the weakest case someone can make to me.

Maybe that’s why I was a journalist at one time. Not often a great one, on some days not even a good one, for it’s all touched by fallible human hands, and on deadline pressure to boot. But I kind of like saying I was once paid to ask the only real operative question in the world: What are the facts?

Remember them? Facts?

Make of it what you will, here’s the performance that launches little D1D2 into her gymnastics routine while folded in what Gabriel calls the fleshy purse. I can hardly wait to meet this little traveler when she gets here next month.

Folded in your fleshy purse
I am floating once again
While the muted sounds are pumping rhythm
All the walls close in on me
Pressure’s building wave on wave
Till the water breaks – and outside I go, oh

One dot, that’s on or off, defines what is and what is not, one dot
Two dot, a pair of eyes, a voice, a touch, complete surprise, two dot
Growing up,
Looking for a place to live
Growing up,
Looking for a place to live
Growing up,
Looking for a place to live

My ghost likes to travel so far in the unknown
My ghost likes to travel so deep into your space

Three dot, a trinity, a way to map the universe, three dot
Four dot, is what will make a square, a bed to build on, it’s all there, four dot

My ghost likes to travel so far in the unknown
My ghost likes to travel so deep into your space

All the slow clouds pass us by
Make the Empire State look high
As you take me in your sea-stained sweetness
It spills, it tingles and it stings
All the pleasure that it brings
‘Til the door has let the outside inside here

Well on the floor there’s a long wooden table
On the table there’s an open book
On the page there’s a detailed drawing
And on the drawing is the name I took
My ghost likes to travel so far in the unknown
My ghost likes to travel so deep into your space

Growing up,
Looking for a place to live
Growing up,
Looking for a place to live
Growing up,
Looking for a place to live
Growing up,
Looking for a place to live

My ghost likes to travel
My ghost likes to travel
Moving inside of your space
My ghost likes to travel
My ghost likes to travel
Moving inside of your space
My ghost likes to travel
Moving inside
My ghost likes to travel
Moving inside of your space
My ghost likes to travel
Moving inside
My ghost likes to travel
Moving inside of your space

Breathing stops, I don’t know when
In transition once again
Such a struggle getting through these changes
And it all seems so absurd
To be flying like a bird
When I do not feel I’ve really landed here.

Tony DePaul, February 12, 2019, Cranston, Rhode Island, USA