How To Hear Music
Grow up with music—Sam & Dave and Dionne Warwick, The Temptations, The Supremes. MC Hammer, Michael Jackson, Teena Teena, Boys II Men. As a kid dance the electric slide with your cousins at weddings, and then, once you’ve moved south with your parents, re-learn. This time with a grape vine, the country western way. At the first day camp they send you to, learn the achy breaky heart, which no one in your family knows, which makes them tilt their heads when you show them. Pant your own music as you dance around the driveway, naming the steps out loud as you do them. “Don’t tell my heart-turn, my achy breaky grape-vine.” Notice how your parents tilt their heads at you more often.