CODETTA

Coda (It. "tail"). Passage added to any composition, or section of such, to give a stronger sense of finality (cf. Codetta, below).
Codetta (It. "little tail"). (1) Short or less important Coda (see above), e.g. the one at the end of the exposition in sonata form. (2) In Fugue an episodical passage occurring in the exposition.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music

AFTER SEVERAL MINUTES HAD PASSED since Vanderphd switched the phonograph off, took the last of Götterdämmerung's discs from its turntable, untied him and removed his earphones, Jack asked the old man: "Does this mean our educational experiment is over?"

     "Yes," Vanderphd replied wearily "You're free to go."

     "Well?"

     "Well what?"

     "Aren't you going to tell me whether the experiment was a success or a failure?"

     "From your point of view, boy, it couldn't have been more successful!"

     "If that's so, sir, since your purpose was to improve my appreciation of classical music; I don't understand why you're looking and sounding so glum over the result?"

     "How do you expect a man of my age and supposed 'savoir-faire' to look and sound after he's just been beaten so completely at his own game by a Moron wearing short pants!"

     "I don't understand how 'winning' and 'losing' is an issue when it seems plain to me, sir, that we've both come out smelling like roses from what began as a S**tHittingTheFan situation—my WorstMadScientistNightmare—and your BeingOutsmarted ByAnUrchinScenariowise?"

     "You don't have to understand, boy. Now that I've admitted my humiliating defeat there is no point in continuing what was a farce to begin with."

     "So—you weren't serious about the 'civilizing effect' long haired music would have on me?"

     "Of course not! I couldn't have been more insincere about 'trying to see how much an urchin's appreciation for the finer things in life could be expanded before he reached the outer limits of his Moronic mentality.'"

     "All I can say to that, sir, is: It's a crying shame."

     "Why—because by terminating this fiasco now I will put an end to my misery?"

     "No, sir," Jack answered without hesitating. "Because I was really and truly beginning to acquire that taste for Richard Wagner you told me I might."

     "You don't seriously expect me to believe if I were to play the rest of his operas right now you would sit through all of them voluntarily?"

     "How many others did he write?" Jack inquired reasonably; while not concealing his excitement over the news there was more to Wagner's repertoire than the 4 operas that ended with what for him was nothing less than a cosmicsized bang.

     "In addition to the Ring tetralogy," Vanderphd informed him, "there are 8—if one counts such early works as Die Feen and Das Liebesverbot."

     After mulling the matter over for several moments Jack said, "I think I can handle 8, sir. In fact I'm looking forward to them. Especially after hearing that brilliant but alltoo brief Apotheosismotiv at the end of Götterdämmerung!"  Having spent a few moments of his own meditating on Jack's thoughtful response, Vanderphd answered by saying: "Believe me, boy, I'd like nothing better than to call your bluff. But I simply haven't got the stamina for another war of nerves like the one we've just finished. In addition to which: Even if you did manage to survive another 24 hours of nonstop Wagnerizing I would still remain convinced your sudden 'love affair' with him was nothing more than a hoax. So! Let's just call it a night— or day, since it's almost noon!—and, as far as I'm concerned at least, pretend this entire misadventure of ours never happened!"

AT WHICH DRAMATIC JUNCTURE—just as Vanderphd was in the act of forcibly "escorting" Jack up the basement stairs—his sister, Cordelia, came down them carrying what she cheerfully announced was "our lunch" on a tray. "I thought you could both use some nourishment so I prepared a hearty meal of soup and sandwiches for the 3 of us," she said; while forcing Vanderphd and his (unwilling) parolee to retreat for the completion of her "Grand (and providentially so for the future of all mankind BornAgainKlutzianSalvationwise) Entrance."

     "Since we've concluded our experiment, Cordelia, lunch will not be necessary," Vanderphd tried to explain as she set the tray on his desk.

     "That's nice, dear," she said, "but after the ordeal he's been through it wouldn't be civilized to send the boy home on an empty stomach, would it? Besides, I'm dying to know how the experiment you conducted on him turned out. Although, judging from what I see, it looks as if he came through it with flying colors!"

     "I certainly did, ma'am!" Jack blurted before Vanderphd could close the conversational barn door his sister had opened. "Or so it seemed—until I learned Das Ring Des Nibelungen was only the tip of a Wagnerian iceberg. And—" he continued choking and sobbing "—that my enjoyment—of it —would be limited—to just—a mere 12 hours—since—given the antiElitist state—of Moronia's cultural affairs—it's unlikely—I'll ever get—another chance—to catch even a glimpse—of the finer things —in life classicalmusicwise!"  Whereupon his intermittent blubbering suddenly became a fullscale torrent of tears.  An emotional turn of events which gave Cordelia the opportunity she had been waiting for since their midnight encounter at the front door to reach out and clutch the terrified tike to the twin pillows of her Old(but fullyfunctional milkofhumankindness wise)Maid's bosom.

     "Is that true, Cyrus?" she asked her brother while consoling Jack by holding his hand and tousling his hair.

     "Is what true?"

     "That this lad is begging for more of the phonographic punishment you've been inflicting on him and you are refusing to oblige him?"

     "If you weren't blinded by your maternal instincts, Cordelia, you'd see these tears of his are the kind crocodiles shed!"

     "But if he's free to leave your 'academic torture chamber' why would he make such a fuss over staying?"

     "To teach me a lesson about the foolishness of thinking a sow's ear can be turned into a silk purse by simply filling it with the rhapsodic sounds a musicologist hears when listening to Wagner's magnum opus—or any of the masterworks comprising the classical canon!"

     "Yes. Well, my dear misguided brother, it's speeches like that which have given your precious 'classical canon' such a bad name. Not just among average Morons, but throughout the entire human race!"

     "Is it my fault if the masses are born deaf when it comes to appreciating the Godgiven genius of composers like Mozart, Verdi, Strauss and Puccini—to name but a handful?"

     "Before you embarked on this 'educational experiment' of yours such a question might have been answered in the negative—but now that you've apparently succeeded you are responsible for continuing to explore a discovery whose consequences for the future of mankind could be no less earthshaking than those made by Columbus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Marx, Einstein and/or Freud!"

     "The only discovery Cyrus Vanderphd has made is that 2 pranks don't add up to an epiphany! All this business about 'educational experiments' was my way of camouflaging what was meant to be nothing more than an elaborate practical joke."

     "Perhaps. But as the Chinese say: We should think twice about the wishes we make because they might just come true. Which in this case seems to be exactly what's happened. And, since the toothpaste has been squeezed from its tube, we all better get used to the idea that there may be more hope for humanity than you ever dreamt was possible in your SilkPurses FromSowsEars philosophy!"

     "Philosophicallyspeaking," Vanderphd countered quickly, "there may be an element of truth in what you say—"

     "That's encouraging!"

     "In practical terms, however, there are certain problems whose insolubility make it impossible for me to proceed any further along the lines of last night's experiment even if I wanted to. And, fortunately for all of us, this is a Pandora's box whose lid can be slammed shut and nailed tightly down before the unintended consequences of my having inadvertently opened it result in a Greek tragedy with one semi and 2 completely innocent victims. The moral of such a story being that: A pair of pranks don't add up to an epiphany."

     "God knows why, Cyrus," Cordelia retorted, "but it sounds to me as if you're deliberately exaggerating any difficulties there might be in substantiating what is nothing less than the miraculous fulfillment of your most impossible dream—"

     "Which dream is that?"

     "The one wherein garden variety Morons can, at the very least, learn not to thumb their noses at the kind of highminded and -browed music, art and literature that, as you keep telling me, is the only hope we have for turning this sociocultural wasteland of ours into a Second (CounterAntiIntellectual) Paradise On Earth."  While Vanderphd was preparing to return his sister's volley with a broadside of his own Jack whispered into her ear: "Shouldn't you be asking him exactly what it is that makes his 'practical problems' so 'insoluble'?"

     "Yes, Cyrus—rather than all those glittering generalities I think you ought to—"

     "There's no need to repeat a question I was meant to overhear! And one, my dear sister, I was just about to answer in the greatest detail anyway!"

WHICH HE BEGAN DOING at some considerable length; but, for the sake of brevity, we will boil down to:

[1] THE (LACK OF) TIME PROBLEM arising from the incompatibility of his 9am-to-midnight scholarly activities and Jack's dawn-to-(wellpast)dusk pursuit of childhood happiness—a circumstance that, making the most minimal allowances for sleep, ruled out any repetition of their night&morninglong Wagnerfest of the previous day on a regular basis;

[2] THE (IL)LEGAL RAMIFICATIONS of attempting to raise Jack's IQ without first obtaining his parents' consent to diminish what they would no doubt regard as the blissfulness of their son's hereditary ignorance included not only the possibility of being hauled into court on charges of kidnapping, child molestation and engaging in general acts of pedagogical promiscuity with a minor—but exposing a prepubescent to musical (Stravinsky's Rake's Progress, Mozart's Don Giovanni & Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Bizet's Carmen, Monteverdi's L'Incoronozione di Poppea, Strauss' Salome etc.), Literary (Lady Chatterly's Lover, The Satyricon, Fanny Hill, The Rape Of The Lock, Germinal, etc.) and artistic (Botticelli's Birth of Venus, Michelangelo's David, Goya's Naked Maja, Manet's Dejeuner sur l'herbe, etc.) pornography;

[3]THE NEED FOR (& COMPLETE ABSENCE OF) PRIVACY in a nation populated entirely by men and women whose own lives are so dull they spend them sniffing among those of their neighbors for the slightest scent of some deviant behavior that might be at least marginally more exciting than the tedium of that "blissful" ignorance from which they try so fruitlessly to escape. Not that these amateur busybodies represented the only threat to the kind of "clandestine extracurricularism" the FIB's ubiquitous and (at least semi)professional agents constantly guard against so that "Moronia's domestic tranquillity remains undisturbed by any countercultural troublemakers who might upset its All Morons Are Created Equally Mindless Applecart." And, finally;

[4] THE NOW THAT YOU ARE SMARTER THAN YOUR FAMILY, FRIENDS, COLLEAGUES & COMPATRIOTS WILL YOU HAVE ANY LEFT? PARADOX—a Catch-22 condition commonly afflicting even nonMoronic autodidacts whose erudition reaches such a (relatively) elevated state the only intelligent conversations they can carry on are those they have with themselves. For a dyedinthewool Moron, of course, acquiring even the most rudimentary knowledge about the "finer things" in life is sufficient to brand him (or her) as a pariah, misfit, Weishenheimer, snob, elitist, highbrow, egghead, aristocrat, Enemy Of The People, apostate, heretic, oddball, and/or antiEgalitarian. Consequently the Vanderphds were doing Jack a favor by not leading him any further along the path toward what would be—pursuingsocioculturallhappinessinacommunityofmentalmidgetswise—the deadest of deadends.

His analytical and linguistic skills having been refined to a considerable degree simply as a result of the Götterdämmerung Apotheosis, Jack had little difficulty refuting the first 3 of Vanderphd's "points" with the single argument that: Because all urchins were adept at escaping undetected from their huts, shacks and hovels to engage in the kind of nocturnal mischief which accidentally ended on such a fortuitous educational note the previous evening; parentalconsent- and privacywise there was nothing to prevent them from continuing their allnightlong tutorials in the same secretive manner.  As for the apparent R&R deficit arising from their respective 9am-to-midnight and dawn-to-(wellpast)dusk musicologist/urchinhood schedules, Jack reminded Vanderphd that: Since, like all Morons, he had learned at the earliest age to sleepwalk, daydream and hibernate through 99% of a waking life that could be lived quite successfully without any heavy intellectual lifting, he would have more than enough surplus physical and mental energy for generating a nightly head of scholastic steam.

     Moreover, because of Jack's newlyfound autodidactic avidity it wouldn't be necessary for Vanderphd to do anything except provide him with a lesson plan, grade the results and, if the occasion presented itself, answer any questions that might help to maximize an educational experience like the one Abraham Lincoln had when, with nothing more than a piece of coal, a common shovel blade and the Bible as a textbook he transformed the hearth of his humble log cabin into an ivory tower rivaling—if not surpassing—those of Harvard, Yale, Cambridge and Oxford.  Along with the laissez-faire role he would play in Jack's "selfteaching" [as all genuinely worthwhile learning is when the NEA smoke about their overcrowded and underfunded classrooms is blown away] scheme—this trenchant evocation of Lincoln's bootstrap rise from the deepest depths of scholastic poverty to the pinnacle of autodidactic excellence left Vanderphd no option but that of yielding to his newfound "protege's" entreaties with shrugged shoulders and the less than encouraging observation that:

"In the final analysis I suppose it's really your funeral after all since, at my age, the only thing I have to fear isn't being vilified as Moronia's answer to Socrates, Benedict Arnold, Georges Jacques Danton and Leon Trotsky in steadfastly refusing to love this adopted—and socalled—'country' of mine rightorwrongwise."

A bitterish pill Jack swallowed bravely before icing his rhetorical cake with these Patrick Henrylike words of defiance:

"If the choice before me is whether to spend my life in a state of selfimposed solitary confinement or in the company of my friends, family, colleagues and compatriots as we slowly drown in the rising tide of our communal mediocrity— fatewise I would gladly choose the former over the latter."

† † †

SO IT WAS THAT, EVERY NIGHT for the next 5 years, young Jack studiously applied himself to becoming knowledgeable not just about every one of the 400plus albums comprising Vanderphd's classical record collection but with all the scores, biographies and textbooks on technical matters in his mentor's library that deepened his appreciation of music. After which he began reading his way through those sections of that same library dealing with such subjects as literature, history, economics, politics, philosophy and, finally, aesthetics. By his third year, in addition to the book reports, essays, critiques and term papers he routinely submitted for Vanderphd's approval, Jack wrote his first musical composition —a string quartet in B flat Major "inspired by Ludwig v. Beethoven's Opus of the same name"—a debut he followed with a piano sonata, horn concerto and symphonic tone poem "patterned after Richard Strauss' Also Spracht Zarathustra." And, although Jack's efforts couldn't be equated with the juvenile output of Mozart, Mendelssohn or Schubert, Vanderphd had to admit he was deeply impressed by "the mere fact they were even attempted by an 11yearold Moron." Encouraged by the "qualified" success of these early musical works Jack expanded his creative horizons by writing several "Salingerstyle" shortstories and a satirical novel(ette) entitled A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Moron.

     In the fourth year (among other things!) Jack tried his hand at Sculpture, painting, drama and poetry; with results that— to Cordelia Vanderphd at least—were "nothing short of Rodinese, Picassoesque, Shakespearean and Byronic!"

     "If," she told him (prophetically!), "your talents continue progressing as they have in just these few short years, the name Jack F. Klutz will become a shining symbol not just in Moronia but throughout the entire civilized world of what every child can accomplish when given the tools to make the most of his—and/or even her!—mind." And while Vanderphd cautioned her and Jack against "entertaining what could still turn out to be delusions of intellectual grandeur," privately he shared his sister's hopes their "adopted" son might indeed leave his trailblazing mark on an approaching millennium that otherwise seemed certain to become a New Dark Age from which this time there would be no escape for Western Civilization Second Renaissancewise.

[I say "privately" but in point of nonfiction fact Vanderphd jotted these and all his other "clinical observations" in a journal he began keeping shortly after it became plain that if Jack wasn't faking the Götterdämmerun Epiphany a meticulous record had to be kept of his apotheosis from sow's ear to silk purse for the edification of a scientific community which would be justifiably skeptical about such a miraculous transofrmation. And, as you will shortly discover dear reader, this journal would find its way not only into Jack's hands—where it played no small role in the evolution of his worldsaving NeoEgalitarian theories—but following his demise into mine during that brief period when I was able to mentally photograph his personal effects in the FIB's top secret evidence room. A chain of fortuitous events that explains how I acquired the foregoing information concerning a perfect "crime" committed by 3 people who were all deceased long before I even thought about writing this book of Klutzian Revelations.]

WHEN, ON THE EVE OF HIS 13th birthday—an event to which he attached so little importance it completely escaped his now alwayspreoccupiedwithmoreimportantmatters mind—Jack entered Vanderphd's basement he was startled to see the room's normally drab decor festooned with brightlycolored crepepaper streamers, homemade tinfoil ornaments and garlands of laurel leaves interwoven with the season's first turnipblossoms. Cordelia and her brother greeted him with spirited shouts of "surprise!" but he detected a note of falsity in their enthusiasm. This was confirmed by the redness and swelling he observed around Cordelia's eyes. "Only tears of joy, my darling," she answered when he asked her if she had been crying.

     "I'm afraid Cordelia isn't being entirely honest, Jack," said Cyrus.

     "She isn't?"

     "No, my boy. The truth is this little party we're throwing is to celebrate more than just your coming of age—"

     "Of course it is!" Jack cried, striking his temple with the heel of one hand. "How could I have forgotten? This is the 5th anniversary of that night when, with your help and guidance, I began my passionate love affair with the finer things in life!"

     "Yes, but there is a 3rd reason for this celebration—and that's the one causing our emotions to be so mixed festive occasionwise."

     "Well? Are you going to let me in on this 'dark' secret of yours—or is it another of those 'pedagogical riddles' I'm supposed to solve?"

     "I wish you could, Jack! But, as bright as you are, I'm afraid the solution to this puzzle is so unthinkable it lies beyond your Moronic ken."

     "Perhaps. However with that clue you just gave me, added to what I've already been told—and judging from those gloomy messages I see written on your faces—I can only guess this mysterious '3rd reason' is related to some ominous change that's about to alter what's been the blissful nature of our relationship."

     "Forgive me for underestimating your intelligence, Jack!" Vanderphd exclaimed, before adding in an appropriately graver tone of voice: "Yes. For reasons that will become obvious when you ponder them hereafter, this anniversary also marks the end of the successful 'educational experiment' we began so inauspiciously 5 years ago."

[The reasons why Jack and his foster parents had to reluctantly go their separate ways are, of course, not unlike those you will face, my dear reader, (if and) when you come out of your autodidactic closet, remove your house wife's apron for the last time—along with all those other shackles of domestic servitude—and proudly proclaim yourself to be a "Cardcarrying Weisenheimer, Revolutionary SocioCulturist & Born Again Klutzian!" In Jack's case, the consequences of his simply having turned 13 meant he would no longer enjoy the privileges of urchin hood and JayDeedom which allowed him to pursue his nocturnal activities unmolested by the Moronville Constabulary, FIB and, most seriously of all now that he would be a freshman at Central High, the squad of Truant Officers who showed no mercy when it came to enforcing Moronia's (American style) Compulsory Universal Education Act. But beyond these problems caused by the onset of manhood, was the plain(tive) and simple fact that: Just as this "Thought Train" of ours has (but for what little remains of this Codetta) exhausted its head of artistic, psychosexual and, above all, pedagogical steam—there was little more Jack could learn from his mentor.]

At the conclusion of what indeed turn out to be their farewell "party" the Vanderphd's presented Jack with two gifts. Cordelia's gave him a fountain pen her grandfather once owned; and on whose cloisonné barrel the following motto had been etched in gold: a maximis ad minima ("from the smallest to the greatest"—a cartbeforethehorse version of the conventional a minima ad maxima. [And one that, nutshellwise, pretty much sums up the 457 pages of my Treatise On The Theory Of Micro cosmicity!] Cyrus' "gift" was in the enigmatic form of a breadboxsized parcel (whose dimensions and brown wrappingpaper were almost identical to those of the package containing this book's original manuscript) to which he had affixed the following note:

     The "finality" of the Vanderphds' farewell became an irrevocable fact of Jack's life when, only a week later, the old Haunted House burned so completely to the ground even the contents of its basement were reduced (with, as you will learn presently, 1 notable exception) to ashes and the charred remains of Cyrus and Cordelia were found locked in what some smartalecky reporter for the Moronville Gazette (luridly) described as "an ambiguous embrace whose meaning can be interpreted as either: (1) That of a 'loving' brother & sister or; (2) The result of a squalid struggle to save their individual skins by trying simultaneously to escape through a service entrance whose passageway was only wide enough for them to exit in singlefile." The verdict of the inquest was inconclusive as to "whether the Vanderphds died as a result of arson; an inadvertently lethal act of harmless vandalism or; a simple accident, considering the antiquated state of their once modern (1874) mansion's electrical wiring. Although they left no suicide note behind, Jack had a hunch his beloved benefactors took their own lives—a suspicion that was confirmed when, along with all the other curiosityseekers and lookieloos who sifted through the soggy rubble hoping to scrounge some article of monetary or titillational value, he managed to find what for him was the most precious of all possible mementos: The phonograph Vanderphd originally intended as an instrument of torture—but which proved itself to be just the opposite impossibledreamofturningsowsearsintosilkpursescomingtruewise.

     Moreover the mostly melted but still recognizable machine had been moved—no doubt intentionally—from its usual location to a small alcove (normally used for storing wine) where it was at least partially shielded from the intense heat. Upon closer inspection, Jack made an even more stunning discovery relevant to satisfying both his "suicide pact" theory and his hope of salvaging some souvenir from the scene of his childhood "crimes." There, on the phonograph's turntable, he found a warped record whose scorched and peeling label disclosed just enough information for him to recognize it as not only the one containing the Götterdämmerung Apotheosis Motiv but was Vanderphd's way of telling him from the grave his fiery demise was a sacrificial act designed to prevent him—Jack—from even thinking about the possibility of renewing their former relationship.

JACK ADMIRED THE BOLDNESS of the stroke by which Vanderphd made such a noble gesture. But the loss of all those cultural treasures that were also consumed in his blaze of chivalrous glory saddened him. Notwithstanding those wisest of Emersonian words his old mentor repeated so often to him about "not being so overawed by the 'genius' of earlier artists and intellectuals we lack the boldness to break our own uniquely new ground in the quest for individual excellence." Accordingly, instead of indulging a sentimentality he knew might come back to haunt him with its subversive implications Jack left the record behind—and allowed that happiest chapter of his life to close with only his memories to console him. The remainder of this "Klutz Affair" story is (or soon will be when, through their reading of Morons Awake!, millions of other "ordinary housewives" like you, my dearest reader, mobilize themselves to reverse the decline of Western Civilization) not just any history but the kind that forever alters the very nature of human existence by putting an end to the erroneous notions that All Men Are Created Equally Mediocre and/or An Entire Lifetime Of Ignorant Bliss Is Better Than A Single Day Of Pursuing (No Matter How Unsuccessfully!) Intellectual Happiness. With the single exception of the Handraising Episode (or "First Klutz Affair") there was nothing to distinguish Jack's life from that of any other dyedinthewool Moron. He graduated from CHS with a straight C average and was hired by the Moronville Branch of a Zurich bank as one of its assistant tellers—a job which, like those held by Einstein, T. S Eliot, Gaugin and Kafka, left his intellect untaxed and enabled him to rent a bachelor apartment where, during the next 15 years, he engaged in those clandestine artistic labors whose fruits can be found in the libraries, museums and galleries that bear his name and fill every Moron's heart with ethnic pride.

† † †

     And now, my dearest reader, having come to the end of our "literary" loveaffair, there is nothing more I can tell you— except perhaps to paraphrase (slightly) what a certain heavenly creature posing as a common coffeeshop waitress said at the conclusion of her historymaking flirtation with me: So long, gorgeous—and thanks for the memories.

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