THE VADER PROJECT

What happens when noted artists take on Darth Vader?

You get the Vader Project. 

We decided to try to go on a field trip every week that the kids aren't in camp.  This week, we went to the closing weekend of the Vader Project (it moves to New York this week). 

Each artist was given a replica of Darth Vader's actual helmet and told to do whatever they wanted.  These are some of our faves.

FROM ZERO TO ROCK 'N' ROLL IN A YEAR....

It's amazing to watch your kids grow up.  It's more amazing when it happens in little more than a year.

Slightly over a year ago, Cory identified himself as a bass player.  And so we got him a bass (an Ibanez that had retailed for over $600 and we got it for $80 on eBay, thank you very much!).  And he fiddled around on it.  But he really couldn't play.  Yet.

Still there he was, out there calling himself a bass player.  And so the high school band at church asked him to play.  Uh-oh.  He made some excuses.  He stalled.  And I started to get emails -- why wasn't Cory responding to the invitation?

So I asked him if perhaps he had inadvertently oversold his abilities as a bass player.  Relief washed over his face as he responded, "Yes, that's what I did.  I inadvertently oversold my abilities."

We decided the only solution was for him to get his abilities up to the advertised level pronto.  He had his first lesson coming up, and he went in telling his teacher that he had one week to learn enough to be able to muddle his way through a couple of songs with the high school band.

Apparently, he muddled through just fine.  They asked him back on a regular basis.  He had a few more lessons.  And before we knew it, he had his audition for the rock & roll class (excuse me, "rhythm section workshop") at Harvard-Westlake.  He had to play a solo, had to sight read a piece or play along with something.  It was a real audition.  We heard a lot of practicing behind the closed door of his room.  Lee gave him a crash lesson in sight-reading.  And we tucked his bass in the trunk and drove off to the audition.

Apparently, he muddled through again.  He told the teachers he was auditioning for that he'd only had five lessons. "You could've fooled me," was the response.  Five bass players auditioned for the class.  Two got in.  One was Cory.  (And they invited him to take up the upright bass as well and play with the orchestra, bypassing the usually required Beginning Strings class.  He passed, but that was a pretty cool invite.)

So school began, with Cory schlepping his bass back and forth to school every other day, and taking Electronic Music (composition and music theory) on the days he wasn't in rhythm section.  He kept playing with the high school band at church.  Guys from school came over periodically to jam.  We'd find him sitting in front of the computer, headphones on, bass unplugged, playing along to music videos.

And then last weekend our church had its regular Student Sunday, where students take part in the service.  They usher and greet, and whatnot.  But Cory wasn't asked to usher.  He was asked to play with the band.  Not the high school band.  The real band, which is composed of, well, real musicians.  The kind of musicians who make a living as musicians, for the most part.

Two other students were asked to sit in as well.  One was a graduating senior off to the Berklee College of Music in the fall as a voice major.  The other was a graduating senior off to Vanderbilt as a music composition major.  And when they came to intro Cory, the leader of the band said, "And Cory's what, a junior? A senior?"  Cory hemmed and hawed and finally said, "Something like that."  I think he didn't want to admit he's a freshman.  And I'm not sure they would have believed him.

He played great, by the way.  A real pro.  The regular bass player told us he's gonna start worrying about being replaced.

Years slide into one another as our kids grow up.  Cutting with rounded scissors slides into cutting with sharp scissors.  Picture books slide into chapter books slide into young adult literature.  Latin I slides into Latin II, algebra slides into geometry slides into calculus.  We try to mark transitions with graduations and promotions, but they seem somewhat arbitrary at times.

But sometimes you get a moment when you realize something has changed.  A new chapter has opened.  You blink, and suddenly the boy who was worried he'd look foolish because he didn't know what he was doing actually does know what he's doing and then some, and he's up there playing with the pros, doing something you could never have taught him.  And all you had to do with it was to pay for a half dozen lessons and take a few photos and try not to embarrass him by beaming with pride too obviously.

I have a feeling these moments of startled revelation will be coming at me more and more frequently in the next few years.   "Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers, blossoming even as we gaze..."

And in the meantime, if anyone needs a bass player for a gig, well, I can make a recommendation.

LAST THOUGHTS ON LOST

A few last thoughts as we all move on from Lost.....

I have a lot of friends who found the finale deeply moving and perfect.  I have a lot of friends who found the finale deeply infuriating and who were furious at what they viewed as a betrayal.

In many ways, I understand both their points of view.  I think how you responded to Lost was very much determined by your own expectations, and by the types of questions you wanted answered.  If you demanded intellectual, plot-driven answers (Who built the statue?  What about Walt?  How did that pendulum work?), you were drastically disappointed.  If you wanted emotional, character-driven answers (Does Kate belong with Sawyer or Jack?  Will Jack ever conquer his father issues?  Will we see the real John Locke again?), you were satisfied.

In some ways, this takes me back to the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  With Hallows, my expectations were very much fulfilled because they were (ahem) so very correct.   I already *knew* Harry would live.  I already *knew* Ron and Hermione would end up together (and ditto for Harry and Ginny).  I already *knew* Snape was a good guy.  I already *knew* Snape had kept Dumbledore alive for that last year, and that when he killed Dumbledore, he was really just releasing the death that he himself had kept corked up in that blackened hand for a year (the "stoppered death" theory).  I already *knew* Snape loved Lily.  I already *knew* Harry would pretend to be dead and his friends would believe it....  The only thing I got wrong was that Harry was a Horcrux, and in the grand scheme of things, that wasn't that much a disappointment.

With Lost, however, my expectations were not quite in synch with the writers' plan.  I did want the happy ending and everyone restored, so emotionally, yes, it hit the target.  But I honestly thought during the season that the Sideways world was going to turn out to be the "real" world -- the real world to be created in the finale when they succeeded in destroying the island -- and part of coming to terms with the finale was coming to terms with how wrong my own expectations were.  

The parallels between the ending of Lost and Deathly Hallows continue in that, in both cases, the very ending of each was written at the beginning of each saga.  J.J. Abrams apparently wrote the ending in the church right after he wrote the pilot episode, and J.K. Rowling reportedly wrote the Epilogue when she was writing the first book.

What we have in each, then, is a situation where the creator of the story has pre-dictated an ending that may or may not be totally in synch with the story by the time the story itself actually gets there.

I loved how Deathly Hallows ended... except for the Epilogue.  When I initially read it, I found it very flat and uninformative.  I wanted answers, and it didn't give me enough.  I also found it not as well written as the rest of the series; not surprising, as Rowling's writing improved so drastically during that time.

However, very soon afterward, Rowling started giving interviews telling us what happened to various characters, who married whom, etc. and I found that getting the info I wanted outside the narrative of the story was just fine for me.  And when I went back and read the Epilogue again, well, I still thought it wasn't as well written, but I was no longer dissatisfied with it, and I understood how Rowling herself might think it was a perfect ending.

I think we're dealing with the same situation with Lost.  If the original J.J. Abrams ending was considered sacrosanct, certain things fall into place:  Like why the showrunners have been saying for years that they knew where they were going.  Like why so many plot threads were left dangling -- after all, if your ending is predestined to be character-driven, then that's what you're going to head for, and if you created lots of subplots maybe to pass the time because you didn't know how many episodes you had till you reached the ending, well, that's just something that happened.  Like why Sayid ended up with Shannon, because when Abrams wrote the ending, Nadia didn't exist yet and no one knew how much we would all hate Shannon.

Personally, I think they could have had it both ways -- or at least closer to both ways.  I think they could have stepped out and said, what plot lines do we need to tie up, and then ditched most of the temple storyline in Season 6 to focus on plot holes, all while keeping the Sideways storyline driving toward the finale.

But thinking it through, if they felt they had to choose between plot-driven and character-driven, I think ultimately they made the correct choice.  Lee and I have spent years telling our screenwriting students that "Feeling comes first."  And that's precisely the dictum the showrunners followed here:  They chose to close up the emotional storylines, to let the characters come to their own resolutions.

Think how very unsatisfying it would have been if they had chosen the plot-driven route.  If we had known the technical details of how they ended up in the 1970s, what that outrigger shootout was all about, and what Libby was doing in the mental hospital, we could have filled out our checklist of unanswered questions, but would we have been satisifed with the ending?  I doubt it.

Again, I think they could have answered more plot questions and given us the satisfying endings for the characters.  I think they may have been a bit hamstrung by the fact that they had to connect the dots to a pre-written ending that, for me, did not quite jibe with the rest of the final episode.  But I do think they made the right choice to focus on the characters, and to focus on the journey to the afterlife (a pretty risky and unexpected path for a network TV show to take).

And beyond that, as far as I'm concerned, whatever happened, happened.