To guide, to teach, to re-direct, to discipline – these may not be as satisfying emotionally as comforting but when properly done, they are essential.
I am glad to take you by the hand and lead you along an untrodden way into a world where the hand is supreme. But at the very outset we encounter a difficulty. You are so accustomed to light, I fear you will stumble when I try to guide you through the land of darkness and silence. The blind are not supposed to be the best of guides. Still, though I cannot warrant not to lose you, I promise that you shall not be led into fire or water, or fall into a deep pit. If you will follow me patiently, you will find that “there’s a sound so fine, nothing lives ‘twixt it and silence,” and that there is more meant in things than meets the eye. [Helen Keller, The World I Live In (1907), chapter I, “The Seeing Hand.”]
Guidance is to the intellect what comfort is to the emotions. None of us is perfect. The wisest elder can profit from the guidance of others. Done with a little kindness, guidance – like comfort – also conveys a message that others care about us.
Real
True Narratives
Narratives:
- Joshua Kendall, First Dads: Parenting and Politics From George Washington to Barack Obama (Grand Central Publishing, 2016): “How can anyone combine such a brutally demanding job with being a good father? And what does each president’s fitness for parenthood reveal about his fitness to run our country?”
Technical and Analytical Readings
On parenting:
- Jennifer Senior, All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood (Ecco/HarperCollins Publishers, 2014): is it all about the child?
Photographs
Documentary and Educational Films
Imaginary
Fictional Narratives
Poetry
Music: Composers, artists, and major works
Ravi Shankar brought Indian classical music to the West. Here is a link to his playlists, and here are:
- Performing Raga Bhimpalasi live at Monterey International Pop Festival (27’)
- Live at his home in 1969: Kaunsi Kanada (28’)
- Live at his home in 1969: Raga Bihag (39’)
- Raga Tilak Kamod, recorded at the Town House in London (38’)
- Live in 1978, with Alla Rakha (46’)
- Live in 1987, in Patras, Greece (61’)
- Live at Carnegie Hall in 1982, with Ali Akbar Khan (56’)
- Live in San Francisco (album) ()
- Live in concert with Ali Akbar Khan in San Francisco in 1984 (190’)
Compositions evoking guidance:
- Alexander Glazunov, Piano Concerto No. 1 in F minor, Op. 92 (1911) (approx. 28-31’): close emulation of themes characterizes this concerto.
- Friedrich Gernsheim, Piano Quartet No. 1 in E-flat Major, Op. 6 (1865) (approx. 32’)
- Gerald Finzi, Violin Concerto, Op. posth. (1928) (approx. 19-20’): “Finzi’s Violin Concerto owes much to the models by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst and Ernest Bloch.”
- Giacomo Puccini, Suor Angelica (Sister Angelica) (1917) (approx. 51-66’) (libretto): In this opera, Catholic guilt is taken to an extreme. A young woman has become a nun after giving birth to a child, unmarried, seven years earlier. She relinquishes her inheritance, thinking the child is dead, and kills herself, thinking she will join him in heaven. She has forgotten that suicide is a mortal sin. The theme here is misguidance. Performances are conducted by Bonynge, Maazel, Gardelli, Spanjaard and unidentified conductor.
Albums:
- Matthew Shipp Quartet, “Pastoral Composure” (2000) (48’) “plays out like a well-written history of jazz. Traces of everything from Duke Ellington to Miles Davis to more recent jazz innovators like Peter Brotzmann and Evan Parker echo throughout.”
- Roy Mor, “After the Real Thing” (2021) (58’): “An impressively diverse album that borrows from both the Israeli and American musical traditions and which represents a good snapshot of Mor’s musical influences and of his musical journey thus far.”
Music: songs and other short pieces
- Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, “Teach Your Children” (lyrics)
- Cat Stevens, “Father and Son” (lyrics)
Visual Arts
- Norman Rockwell, A Tough One
- Arshile Gorky, How My Mother's Embroidered Apron Unfolds in My Life (1944)
- Norman Rockwell, Outward Bound (1927)
- Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The Piano Lesson (1889)
- Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Education of the Virgin (late 1770s)
- William Hogarth, Surrounded by Artists and Professors (1732-34)
- Ferdinand Bol, David's Dying Charge to Solomon (1643)
