Our Modern World

When Rachel's brother Mark and his family came to town for a weekend, we tried to make a plan to do something fun. Rachel and Mark's wife Abby voted for the Cezanne exhibit at the art museum. I was in favor of this plan until I checked the web site for tickets and realized they cost $25 apiece.

"I don't think I could enjoy this exhibit now. I'd be thinking about the price the whole time," I said. Mark agreed with me.

I suggested that perhaps instead of going to the museum, we could just drink coffee out of our Cezanne mug, a relic of the exhibit that came through in 1996. And we could listen to the "Cezanne, Father of Cubism" song from the 1980s.

Everyone looked at me with looks of uncomprehension. On Internet forums, people sometimes write "whoosh" to indicate a concept that has flown over their head. This was a whoosh moment.

Fortunately, in the Internet age we have Songza.com. I used it to search for "father of cubism" and it found the song I remembered, by The Special Guests. I played it for the assembled company, none of whom were remotely impressed with my results.

I listened to the song a few times and fondly remembered the video from MTV. Then I did some Google searching and found the Special Guests have long since been forgotten, but there was an article from 1987 in the New York Times reviewing a show and mentioned their main artistic force.

I Googled his name and found his MySpace page, which had a blog. That blog had a link to another, more personal blog, started about a year ago. I read the whole blog - the guy is a very funny writer - and sent him a note on Facebook explaining the morning and my happy rediscovery of his song.

Then I sat back and waited for him to respond with a "I'm so glad you wrote to me" note. I am still waiting.