This morning, while Linette and Clementine were out running errands, Arlo and I spent a little time cleaning up his bedroom. And, because he’s too young to know of any music that isn’t my music, we listened to Wire’s Pink Flag and The Velvet Underground & Nico. For the post part he just sat and quietly played with legos as I swept under his bed, put away his clothes, and sorted all of his toys into various boxes. While he didn’t sing along, he also didn’t complain, which I took as a victory. After hearing The Velvet’s perform Heroin, though, he stopped what he was doing for a moment and said the following to me.
[The original image accompanying this post contained a misspelled word. To my knowledge, this was the first instance of misspelling on this site. I give you my word that it will never happen again.]
If you’re curious as to how I trained Arlo to sit through entire Velvet Underground albums without complaint, I think it’s mostly conditioning. In accordance with cool dad protocol, he’s been listening to my favorite records since he was about one week old. [Infants, it’s been my experience, can warm up to anything – even Captain Beefheart – if you expose them to it while they’re breastfeeding.] Also, last summer, I locked Arlo and his sister in the Velvet Underground room at the Andy Warhol Museum for several hours while I drank at the bar downstairs.
[If you’ve got a few extra minutes, check out our Totally Quotable Arlo archive.]
4 Comments
Try Sister Ray.
“Infants, it’s been my experience, can warm up to anything – even Captain Beefheart – if you play it while they’re breastfeeding.” I heard this is also true for adults.
Absolutely. They say that, if you drink a big, warm glass of breastmilk while paying your taxes, you’re not nearly as angry.
The quote from Arlo, as I originally quoted it, contained a misspelling. A professor at U-M alerted me to it with the following note.
“And he can’t even spell correctly when he talks.”
I have fixed it.