A question of character.

I had occasion to babysit a seven-year-old recently. We reached the "questions" portion of the evening.

Me: What's your first question?

7yo: Who are you pretending to be?

Me: Whoa! That's an intense question!

7yo: Why?

Me: Well, it presumes that I'm pretending to be someone other than myself. That's a powerful claim.

7yo: You can pretend to be yourself.

Me: Yeah, but that's a cop-out. (Back of my head: Actually, it's a valid observation. "We are what we pretend to be.") I'd rather address the question in its own spirit. So, I'd say... I'm pretending to be someone who is always calm, cool, and collected, even when I'm feeling excited, or upset.

7yo: No, no, what *character* are you pretending to be? Like, from a book or movie.

Me: ... Oh.

Notes on the Encanto soundtrack.

In listening to songs from "Encanto" (spoilers!) after the initial viewing, I noticed some new things.

"Surface Pressure": There's a foreshadowing sigh right at the start, after the first couplet. Also, the songs seems to have two hooks! ("Under the surface" and "Pressure like a drip, drip, drip".)

"What Else Can I Do": This one struck me from the start as sounding like a traditional Disney princess song. The weird thing is that the gratuitous modulation shifts the key down a whole step. A gratuitous modulation is always up a whole step! But it works. The key mirrors Isabela's stepping down from perfection, and how that works for her.

"We Don't Talk About Bruno": Dolores explicitly gives away that Bruno is still there, and I missed it! She says it right after she names her fear, so the line can be dismissed as something residual going on in her head. "Grew to live in fear of Bruno stuttering or stumbling / I can always hear him sort of muttering and mumbling". Her line, "Do you understand?" could have a lot of meanings, but one of them is, "Mirabel, do you get what I just told you about Bruno in a way that didn't give away his secret to the rest of the family?" And it just now occurs to me that she has such a hard time keeping secrets; how did she keep this one for so long? Or did she just keep saying plausibly ambiguous stuff like that, and having people dismiss her? For example, her later lines, "It's like I hear him now / It's like I can hear him now / I can hear him now". After Camilo's verse, everyone sings "We don't talk about Bruno" together, except for Dolores, who lags behind and sings it more quietly. Like she's not quite with them on this.

(I kind of want to walk into a crowded room, loudly sing out, "We don't talk about Bruno, no, no," and leave. Just to get it stuck in everybody's head.)

"All of you": "But the stars don't shine; they burn. And the constellations shift." That line kind of confused me for a while. But Mirabel is talking about the family, and their need to embrace change.

I've learned to play "Dos Oruguitas". It needs practice. And maybe a twelve-string guitar. Or a tiple.