K n o w n

Y o u ’ v e
A c t Y e a r s
The l T h e s e
fo r A l b y S tua r t H o r w itz
W e wake up day after day to the sound of
our daughter singing somewhere in the house.
On different mornings, we take her singing to
mean different things. We tease Fifer about
how perfect everything is, and she’ll say, “I
admit it. I love my life!” Underneath this
repartee is a sadness that Bonnie and I try to
keep from becoming real jealousy. We envy
her unconscious joy in living, the ability a
ten-year-old has to just brush off the hurt
and wake up singing. Other days, her singing
reminds us that she is a unique individual, a
product of her parents, but with something
else mysterious thrown in.
It used to drive me insane that my daughter
didn’t like to read. She could; she would.
She just preferred to cut designer fashions
out of paper and adorn them with tiny beads
and messy glue. Me, my whole life is words.
I coach writers, I teach writing, I write. From
an early age I saw myself as an incarnation
of genius whose work would someday be
housed between Hesse and Huxley on the
library bookshelf. When, in my adolescence,
I confided my literary dreams to my dad, he
did his best to undermine them. “If you go
to law school,” he said, “I’ll pay for it, but if
you get a graduate degree in English, you’re
on your own.”
He knew what he knew; I know what I know;
he was not particularly predetermined to set
his offspring free, and neither am I.
Then something happened in my mid-thirties,
when my daughter was six or seven: I stopped
reading. I brought crates of novels to a used-
book store and traded them for a T-shirt. I
started to look at the world more directly,
without the filter of black lines across white
pages. I picked up the guitar. How sweet it
was to make music, to bang on strings and
sing to myself—this simple lesson I learned
from my daughter on those mornings when I
had ears to hear. No one was recording me;
I wasn’t going to make a name for myself.
Something even better was emerging: I
was alive.
“They wouldn’t even let me be a Munchkin”
One day, when Fifer was eight, we received a
notice that our local community center was
hosting tryouts for The Wizard of Oz. For the
auditions, kids had to sing a song without
any accompaniment. My daughter learned
“Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” with help
from her grandmother and Bonnie, and then
they trundled off to the audition.
“They wouldn’t even let me be a Munchkin,”
Fifer said upon her return, with a
disappointment that was not tinged with
bitterness, if an adult can imagine such a
thing. And this is a kid with perfect pitch.
I’m not bragging, because her talent doesn’t
come from me. We had started learning
some songs together, with me on the guitar
and her on vocals; I would look over at the
tuner, during an obscure part of the Beatles’
“Within You Without You,” for instance, and
she would be right there on the B-flat. I
remember a friend of hers, a kid symbolically
named Dylan, once asking her, “Why are you
always singing?” Fifer replied, “Because it’s
my destiny.”
Besides being fated to become a vocalist, my
daughter loves money (she’s a Capricorn). To
see this trait so apparent in a child’s eyes was
a little shocking, but it gave me an idea: We
would step it up on the songs we had been
practicing—which made me happy, fulfilling
my role as the father who was supposed to
make her stick with things—and then we
would play them on the streets for money.
Busking is what it’s called; we learned that
term together. “Some dads take their kids
fishing,” Bonnie said. We would perform
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
straight through twice (with the exception
of tracks two and four, which we never got
around to learning). Though Fifer vowed me
to secrecy—she wanted to keep her “normal
girl” status, playing softball (pretty well) and
viola (no worse than anyone else in third
grade)—she looked forward to our “gigs” as
much as I did.
Her enthusiasm for performing didn’t surprise
me. One time when she was about three, we
attended a crowded story time at the local
library. After the reader had stepped down,
Fife crawled between all the sprawled-out
kids and patient parents and got into the big
chair. Then she picked up a book. “Now it’s
my turn,” she said. She couldn’t read yet, so
she sort of performed the book by looking at
the pictures. The reader, an older gentleman
who was vaguely famous, came over and
clapped me on the shoulder. “I’ve never seen
that before. Good luck, Jack.”
Maybe it was genetic. In my early twenties,
as a performance poet, I had stood in front of
the American Express office in Prague after
dawn, declaiming Bob Dylan lyrics, with a
hat placed on the sidewalk to collect tips.
Busking is a genuine artistic experience. No
gatekeepers determine whether you’re good
enough; the audience does. People either
dropped money into our guitar case or they
didn’t. Some, like the crowd outside Fenway
Park, were surly and drunk and not into
having their hearts moved by a young girl.
Others were encouraging, like the woman
who told Fifer, “Jesus loves you, honey.” Fife
turned to me, and without a trace of irony,
said, “That’s so nice!”
We had hecklers. My ex–business partner
said, “You’re teaching your kid to beg, huh?”
But in what other job can an eight-year-old
make over $300 in one summer? Fifer gave
some of the money she made to charity, and
she put some in the bank for a car, but then
she bought herself a powder blue iPod Nano,
for which I paid only the tax. It was a proud
moment in my parenting career.
We didn’t do it for the money, of course. There
were times when we would be walking to our
spot, and one of us would freak out a little and
ask, “Why are we doing this again?” And the
other one would respond with what became
our mantra: “To face our fears!” We did it for
that moment after we had set up our music
stands, when we had taken a deep breath
and were looking around for a sign that we
knew wasn’t going to come from anywhere
but inside us. And then we would start.
I can hear Fife now, imitating Paul: “One! Two!
Three! Fo! [We’re Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely
Hearts Club Band / We hope you have enjoyed
the show…]” It was always easier when a
few people she knew were in the audience;
then if, for instance, the high-E string on my
electric guitar broke during “Lovely Rita,”
we could get other people to sing and clap
along. Other times Fife couldn’t get started
at all. That’s when I would forget about the
weight of the amps that I had to carry and
forget about my own need to be heard, which
was always lurking. I would be ready to pack
it all up again if I had to, and I’d offer to do
so. Then maybe the cloud would pass, and
I could coax Fife back into connecting with
her confidence.
“It always feels better to play than not to
play,” was one of the quotes Fifer wrote
down from those days—she chronicled every
show we did over the span of two summers.
Besides the good lines, she recorded the set
list, the screw-ups, the amount of money we
made (of course), and the magical moments.
She wrote about the time on Boston Common
when we drew a crowd only after a dying
pigeon named Sam did his diseased circle
dance in our guitar case. Then there was the
time we had just finished a set of Sergeant
Pepper’s and an eleven-year-old girl came
up to Fifer and asked, “Did you write those
songs?”
Some things she didn’t write down. My father
and mother came to see us and listened as
we performed “She’s Leaving Home.” I sang
John’s chorus: “We struggled hard all our lives
to get by…What did we do that was wrong?”
I’m not sure how much of the healing my
father and I were doing was conscious, but
afterward he bought me a state-of-the-art
portable recorder to capture our best tunes.
“What does that mean,” Fifer asked, “She’s
leaving home after living alone for so many
years?” You will never know, I said.
The shows went on, and we had our ups and
downs. There were great moments. A female
drummer—Rachel—joined us, and she did
the best-ever “Ah-ah-ah-aahs,” in “A Day
in the Life.” A rhythm section—Robbie and
Timmy—filled in for Rachel one night and
then never left. My daughter, now nine years
old, was fronting a Beatles cover band. Yeah,
that made me proud.

Then there were nights when she wanted to

go to church or a school party. But we had
already made all of our arrangements, and

“
you can’t just cancel on other people at the

It
last minute…

New York was probably our finest hour, blasting

through a punk version of “Somewhere Over

always
the Rainbow” in defiance to what had started
the whole experience, or holding an a cappella
sing-along during Bob Marley’s “Redemption
Song” (we had increased our repertoire by

feels
then). A guy named Adam approached us in
Washington Square Park, offered us fruit, and
called us “his lovelies.” “You have helped me
feel free again,” he pronounced. Somebody

better
else said they wanted to make a documentary
about us.

And then Fifer said she was done. She gave

to play
no reason, until I pushed, and then her
reasons kept changing. “There’re too many
kids here,” she said one night in Newport,
when we drove away from the town without

than
ever playing a note. (Was she getting self-
conscious now that she was approaching
preadolescence?) Or she would say, “I’m
bored.” But how can you say that? You had

not to
your arms up in exultation after your last
performance, squealing, “That was so fun!”
Then I recovered a little Zen. It is what it is.

”
Stop asking questions. Don’t accuse her of

play
being lazy, not committed. Let it go and be
there for her in the way she needs you to be.
Keep learning the lessons at hand.
Three months after our last gig, someone
e-mailed us about an upcoming audition.
The national tour of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
was coming to a stage much bigger than the
one where The Wizard of Oz had played. Did
she want to go try out? Because it was totally
up to her; I wasn’t going to take the rap as
some pushy stage father. Yes, she said. And
yes again, when I asked again later.
The ornate lobby was crammed with kids
warming up for their well-taught dance
routines. Eighty-six kids were trying out for
seven spots. When a ten-year-old next to me
belted out “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,”
I thought it was Ethel Merman herself. “Well,
it’s a good experience,” I told Fife. “Think
about all the people who aren’t even here.
There’s no way they’re going to make it—
right?—if they’re not even here?”
Fifer was going to perform her last, best
busking song, the one we would play over and
over again in Central Park, when the tourists
couldn’t give two shits about us: “…And you,
take me the way I am.” They took the kids
away in groups of ten, leaving us parents in
the lobby.
“Tell me again how she said it?” I asked.
Fife had returned to the lobby, and I wanted
her to describe precisely how the judge had
responded to her performance. Fife went
through a few different intonations until she
was satisfied with her delivery: “Wowwww!”
I was the first in the house to find out Fife had
been picked for the part. I bought the Chitty
Chitty Bang Bang DVD and played the theme
song loud enough one November morning to
wake everyone with the news.
That night, I wanted to watch the movie.
“Dad,” Fifer said, “the performances aren’t
until March.”
Apparently I was still learning, about
nonattachment, about doing the thing that is
to be done in that moment, about being there
for somebody even when what they need is
changing too fast for conscious record. Then
I settled into our rematch of Sorry! Sliders,
trying my best to beat her, because that’s
how we do things around here.
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