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The Birds and the Bees
by
Marvin Payne
Were you expecting
a column? How about a healthy baby elephant instead? This is my
thirty-sixth monthly column of Backstage Graffiti. Steven Kapp Perry,
who has read all my columns, or at least counted them, has brought
to my attention that thirty-six months is the gestation period of
elephants. I have no really good reason to believe that he is wrong
in this calculation, so I’ll go with it. I mean, what difference
does it really make, anyway--except to the elephants?
(My wife and
I have come near to arguing twice in the last ten years. The first
was just before we were married, when I observed, quite sincerely,
that I thought she looked better without make-up. I hadn’t anticipated
that I was attacking sort of a hobby, nay, an art form that she
cherished. I mean, I find make-up a hassle generally, and pretty
sure I wouldn’t wear any at all if I weren’t being paid to. The
second near argument was when she was quite large with child and
I cheerfully pointed out that it only lasts “X” number of months,
and she countered with the knelling announcement that doctors prefer
to measure the time as “Y” number of weeks. When I suggested--helpfully,
I thought--that “X” multiplied by four, factoring in a couple of
weeks’ worth of extra calendar days, appeared to be fewer weeks
than “Y,” she took an infinitesimal shuffle in the direction of
an emotional region probably best designated as “huffy.” If any
elephants are similarly inclined to take exception to Steve’s arithmetic,
I will allow it, and sympathize.)
Sometimes (well,
quite often, really) gestation is good. This is why I’m starting
to write this column three weeks before I have to send it in, three
weeks before it’s, if I may use the word metaphorically, “delivered.”
I’m intrigued with what may happen if we consider these opening
paragraphs to be “conception,” and allow the whole thing to gestate.
Now you may
set this aside for three weeks, as will I.
Delivery
...Well, here
we are again. Thanks for your patience.
The column is
being born. Right now.
(Oh! I have
to give you a journal entry that’s totally germane--and here I use
the word “totally” not to mean “entirely” but actually the way your
son might use it, as if, for example, I had written instead “Oh!
I have to give you a journal entry that’s totally germane, Dude.”:
20 July 1980
[edited slightly
in deference to certain delicate issues--no, I didn’t say “delicate
tissues.” These were primarily the concern of the doctor in attendance.]
I wrapped up
my performance work in the northwest this morning. This whole tour
I’d been worried about the nearness of my wife’s delivery of our
baby. Just before I left home two weeks ago, we consulted the doctor,
who was confident the baby wouldn’t come until after my return.
Night before last I called my wife and everything was normal. Yesterday
morning I called, and there was no reason for concern.
Last night at
about 10:00 Eliza Wren Payne was born. I had left Kennewick, Washington,
at 1:00 in the afternoon, and so missed the birth by about three
hours. Sort of. At 4:50 I got off the interstate at Burley, Idaho,
for some dinner. I called home right after the waitress took my
order--pay phone at J.B.’s. My wife had just gone to the hospital,
driven there by the doctor and Mrs. Doctor. I called there, and
the doctor’s wife guided me through the delivery-- “Here are the
shoulders, here it comes, it’s a girl! Good color! Mom just keeps
smiling!” She was holding out the phone from time to time so I could
hear mom squeal and baby cry.
Then I waited
fifteen minutes--ate a burger--and called my wife in the recovery
room. She asked me to come straight through, so I arrived at 2:30
[don’t do the math, particularly if you work for the Highway Patrol]
and we spent a quiet sweet hour together with our beautiful daughter.)
Well, that was
the only birth among my seven children that I missed, and I didn’t
much mind, really, because what happened instead makes such a better
story. But I didn’t miss any of the gestations. I wouldn’t have
dared.
It's That
Season
It’s the season
of Valentine’s Day, so I think I’ll let this column gestate into
something about the birds and the bees. (Would you rather I focus
on vital organs and arrows? Gruesome.)
It won’t be
any great departure--nearly all my art is about the birds and the
bees--all the songs, plays, poetic meanderings. That’s how it seems,
anyway. I wonder if I have a problem. (More than that, I wonder
if I’m on the verge of having a problem, a very practical problem.
This could be serious. Here’s the problem that worries me first.
Will the blocking software the Proctors have on their internet configuration--the
“birds and bees” blocker, refuse to let this column be delivered
to Meridian Magazine? If a Backstage Graffiti column fails to appear
at your house on schedule, if there’s a month completely devoid
of graffiti, you’ll know why. Actually, I guess you won’t know why--I
guess that’s the problem--for me, anyway. I mean, how could I survive
emotionally without those two monthly e-mails from column readers
telling me they weren’t particularly offended by what I’d just written?
Oh no! A possible new problem! What if these sneak through the birds-and-bees
filter and the column reader e-mails don’t come anyway, because
finally they WERE offended? I guess if any column could do it, this
would be the one. Oh well, here goes.)
Not long ago
we did a new three-player musical at BYU called “Soft Shoe.” (See
Backstage Graffiti Archives under “Heavenly Choreography”--did you
know there was an archive? Or, I mean, some archives? You could
go nuts in there! Breathlessly, tentatively, tiptoeing in among
all those hushed columns and vaulted ceilings and musty dignity
suggested by the word “archives” and then reverently turning a shadowy
corner and Ta-da! a hundred pages of Backstage Graffiti frolicking
boisterously on a polished oak shelf.) Before our show opened, people
would ask me what it was about. (The show, not the archives.) I
usually said, “Well, it’s all about the birds and the bees.” That’s
not what was written in the press release we gave to the BYU Daily
Universe, but it’s the truth.
The young heroine
was looking for her father who never bothered to marry her mother,
a birds-and-bees issue--this made the heroine feel wounded, discounted,
and alone, a typical response. The young hero was afraid to love
anybody because he thought birds and bees was (were?) the ruin of
his long-fled mother, “a regular on every casting couch between
here and Atlantic City.” My character (the Dad, as always) was afraid
to love anybody because I was the one who was so ignorant of the
true mission of birds and bees that after buzzing and flapping among
them, I took off, leaving the young heroine’s mother in the family
way.
Every character’s
life was punched into a different difficult shape because somebody
close to them didn’t understand the meaning of birds and/or bees.
But by curtain call, the birdsong was clear as light, and the buzzing
like a reverent hum. I liked being in that play a whole lot. Because
the writers had the right idea--the whole idea of moving among birds
and bees with a certain reverence.
Just like I
liked the movie I had just done up in Northern Idaho playing a crusty
old sheriff (Not The DAD!! Yay!!) who assumes that if the young
heroine was raised by a shady lady and is employed by a shady lady,
then she must be a shady lady too, an abuser of birds and bees,
as it were (or as she were). He warns the young hero to stay away
from the suspect young heroine, but happily for everyone (except
the suspect young heroine) the young hero hasn’t yet come to appreciate
that the suspect young heroine is in fact Female. (The general dimness
of youth is sometimes a blessing, I think.)
Anyway, they
overcome the misunderstandings and malignings of Valentinic love
and look like they’ll probably live happily ever after, and do said
living against the backdrop of some pretty glorious country. (Isn’t
there a song about some other pretty glorious setting with a line
about “bees were humming, sweet birds singing”? Okay, that had to
be about something else. But we’re getting away from the Metaphor
here. Or, more honestly, the Euphemism.) The movie is “Where Rivers
Meet.” Ably written and directed by Bill Shira. Coming soon to a
theatre near you. Even sooner if you live in Northern Idaho. I like
the movie a lot--this G-rated movie about, well, the birds and the
bees. And about getting some responsibility and reverence into the
interaction of birds, bees, and humans.
Family: A
Joyful Proclamation
But then, hey,
I’m half of the team that created “Family: A Joyful Proclamation,”
a big fat choral CD that’s more about the procreative association
between a man and a woman (Oops, I just gave the Metaphor away)
than anything I ever heard before, including Puff Daddy’s latest
rap effort (which I actually never heard before and, well, hopefully
never will). It even has a getting-a-body song, a falling-in-love
song, a wedding-night song and a couple of baby-having songs in
it. What musical celebration of the Family Proclamation wouldn’t?
This document we all have hanging innocently (archivally, even,
in many cases) on our walls, festooned with dried flowers and gold-sprayed
macaroni, has more to say about the place of birds and bees in our
eternal journey than any other piece of writing ten times its length.
(Sales are right now a tad sluggish on our web sites, incidentally,
I think a lot of you are getting carried away and typing too many
“p”s into “stevenkappperry.com.” You may find “marvinpayne.com”
easier to spell, but don’t let me influence you just because Meridian
has a potential readership of gazillions and Steve is not currently
a columnist. Actually, I think he’s a Republican.)
Not all my art
is about the birds and bees.
I’ve written
some songs and tweaked some scripts for a couple of talented brothers,
Chris and Nate Smith, sons of my old comrade (this was before I
had Republican friends) from days of youth and poverty, Gary Smith,
the really good painter of fields and farmers and gods and prophets
and, well, you name it. (In those old days, before fame roared in
like a William Blake angel, Gary and I would tell each other stories
about going around checking telephone booths for nickels left in
the trays. He hasn’t done that for lo, these many years. I haven’t
done it since, hmm... just after Christmas.)
These two Smith
guys are making clay-mation movies of Bible stories, sort of “Wallace
and Gromit Meet Samson and Delilah.” (Picture that. No, let them
do it.) Their visual mentor and advisor is James Christensen, so
it’s all pretty magical. (James is the artist who was asked by the
Prophet, when he was being shown James’ sublime and monumental mural
work for the Nauvoo Temple, “Okay, Brother Christensen, where’s
the fairy?”)
It’s enormous
fun. At least it has the refreshing advantage of not being one more
project about the birds and the bees. (I just have to get away from
birds and bees for awhile.) The first episode, which I think is
entirely finished now, is about Jonah, who ran away from what God
wanted him to do, thinking he’d find peace on the lonely beaches
of Tarshish. You see, God wanted Jonah to use his body, strength,
and passion (gifts God had given him) to teach and lift and save
people, to be like a father to them, caring about their temptations
and obstacles and particularly how well they were dealing with the
challenge of how properly to incorporate birds and bees into their...
(Oh no! There they are again! If only I could just pretend there
were no such things as birds and bees and find a nice, quiet beach
somewhere... I know! I’ll go to Spain! Which was anciently called...
what was it? Oh yeah, Tarshish. Oops!)
(Hastily Inserted
Relevant Observation: I had this column pretty much wrapped. Then
I was up until about midnight, helping produce a CD for a lovely
young sister who sings really wonderfully. She sang an inspiring
theatre song or two, a serene seminary song, and a couple of fairly
harmless rock ‘n’ roll songs. Then she belted a song in which the
singer assumes the character of a hard, proud lady of the evening
in her New Orleans boudoir, a place just raging with birds and bees
that are wondering what in Hades they’re doing there ((this is not
profanity, this is geography)). So I guess it’s not just me whose
art is all about the birds and the bees, but everybody else’s art
too. Maybe it would be safer to sing instead about buffalo roaming
and antelope playing all the time. Or maybe, if we ever hope to
account well for the talents the Lord has given us, we’d better
tell the truth about birds and bees all we can, like the Family
Proclamation does.)
It’s not just
during Valentine’s season that we have to deal with our attitudes
(and actions) involving birds and bees. And I suppose it’s futile
to pretend there can be a world without them, although it might
be an easier world to live in, sometimes. “Safer,” some would say.
I think a lot of people would say that, actually. Like everybody
in the Puritan era, for example, or the Victorian era, perhaps.
Or the monastic epoch. (We’re talking Epochs, here. Epochs are really
long--way longer than trifling little Eras. Archival, even.) Maybe
it would turn all our minds around (and frustrate the Adversary
no end) merely to remember who created said birds and bees, and
what for. And for how long, which, if we are to inherit all the
Father has, would be “eternally” (which is measurably, no, immeasurably
longer than your epochs and eras put together). Perhaps, without
birds and bees, the world might be an easier place to live in. But
it would be a whole lot harder place to get to.
Happy Valentine’s
Day.
--------------------------------------
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marvinpayne.com!
"...come
unto Christ, and lay hold upon every good gift..." (from
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