I remember being impressed as a young man by my father’s command of various subjects.  He could expound, fluently and in great detail, on any number of matters.  He was a voracious reader who remembered much of what he read (and heard) and could authoritatively call up various arguments and points of view at will.  He generally spoke without notes.  He taught me the importance of being well-informed about multiple sides of an issue to really be able to talk about it productively.  

This advice echoed what I later learned in law school (along with only using the passive voice when the facts were against you and you wanted to distance yourself from them:  ‘admittedly, the victim was stabbed’– as opposed to ‘admittedly, my client stabbed the victim’) — anticipate the strongest arguments your adversary can throw at you and be able to make the finer points of those arguments as strongly as your own, in order to learn best how to counter each one.

 Although my father was often an adversarial man, engaged in one long fight his whole life and rarely losing a round, I am not speaking now of how he used this skill in an argument.  I’m trying to describe his ability to analyze issues and synthesize his opinions from an understanding of multiple points of view.  It was his habit of looking at multiple sides of a question that made the deep impression on me.  He was aware, even as he generally saw the world in black and white, that there were all kinds of factors that went into making us believe what we believe.   He could articulate alternate theories to almost anything he said.  He saw the other side and could point out quite accurately why they believed they were right, then he’d show you why they were actually wrong.  

My father’s ability to clearly see the other position no doubt was an important component of what made him so formidable to argue against.  But what impressed me was his repeated demonstration of the importance of seeing multiple points of view for anyone seeking to understand something on a more than knee-jerk level.  Seeing things from multiple points of view is always better than having one unalterable, random view of the thing, if you want to understand it fully.

An example from the universe of music.  I have played guitar for many years and only recently, since taking up the ukulele a while back, have I started seeing the fretboard from another angle.  Seeing it differently has allowed me to notice new possibilities of an instrument I’ve played for more than forty years.  

The uke is basically a little guitar and anyone who plays guitar can easily, and with no introduction, make music with a ukulele.  But, while many things are applicable, there are certain things you can play easily on a guitar that are not immediately transferable to a ukulele, all of the root chords that use the guitar’s bass strings, for example.  So if you want to get proficient on ukulele you have to learn to use other positions, also transferable from the guitar, but not ones that would ordinarily come to mind.  

For guitar players, picture a first position D chord, slid up two frets (one whole tone in the scale) becoming an E chord, one more it’s an F.  Then picture the minor versions of these chords, the minor 7th, minor 6ths and so forth.   These are chords there is no good reason to play this way on a guitar, but which are indispensable for the ukulele player.   After mastering these on a ukulele the positions do turn out to be quite handy in arranging things for guitar. Now you are looking at the fretboard from the point of view of the high strings, locating positions from that vantage point rather than the way we all learn to find our positions, from the bass notes up.

This new view raises a number of new possibilities, along with different, sometimes very convenient, ways to finger the familiar chords.  So it is with anything we can understand from another point of view.  It is ironic, and also a blessing, that my father, during a largely adversarial life he regretted having lived in such rigid, uncompromisingly dualistic terms, taught me this deep lesson.  

“De nada,” says the skeleton.