Gratuitous Offspring Boast

OK, so I know everyone hates it when people brag on their kids. Then again, no one really reads this page anymore, and I'm still resisting the lures of Greater Zuckerbergia, so, screw it, I'm going for it.

I haven't gotten a lot of new music lately--keeping my spending low, etc., etc.--but one thing I have gotten is the new Bob Dylan, Tempest. Which is really good, BTW, although maybe not quite the late-life masterwork that almost everyone in the music press has labelled it. To me it seems like a worthy, if not radically different, continuation of Dylan's efforts over the last decade, notably, Love & Theft and Modern Times, and of about the same quality. But what do I know? It is quite good. The title track is an ambling epic, a 14-minute folk shuffle, sans chorus, about the sinking of a rather famous ship.

And that brings me to a certain young woman, not quite six years old. Lang came up to me a couple of days ago and announced, "Daddy, this song is about the Titanic!" Well, yes it is, I told her, do you know what that is? Turns out she did. They taught her something about it in school, more evidence that kindergarten ain't what it used to be (the significant homework was another clue). More boggling, however, was that she somehow picked out the core topic of a Bob Dylan song, and a meandering one at that, something that I myself can't do with any promised regularity. She's done this kind of thing before, and it scares me a little having a child whose perceptiveness and emotional complexity so dwarfs my own. I expect she'll be trouble in a few years. For now I'm just enjoying the tranquil ocean view.