Secret wisdom I learned from my dog, Jim

The night he pointed me back to music

Jim, my Border Collie German Shepherd mix, speaks. Talks. I’ve covered this before.

He’s quite literate. Not, of course, through schooling. He reads. More than I do.

One night, we were sitting on my porch kicking around Plato and Spinoza—their positing of ultimate Realities behind ordinary reality—and he suddenly turned to me and said:

“But I think for modern wisdom, you have to go to love and The Great American Songbook. Popular music from, say, 1930 to 1960. And if I had to pick one song, it would be Jerome Kern’s [music] and Dorothy Fields’ [lyrics] 1936 The Way You Look Tonight. Why haven’t you written about it?”

I thought about that.

Starting in 1954, when I was 16, I listened to jazz and only jazz for 30 years. The melody and underlying chord structure of the Kern and Fields masterpiece doesn’t really “release” jazz musicians to improvise. The song is so much itself and nothing else, it demands loyalty to the melody. So jazz artists just don’t get off the ground with it. They can’t.

But after Jim mentioned it, I listened to a few versions. Most notably, one of Frank Sinatra’s. It usually makes sense to start and end with Frank.

There is magic in the way composers of popular music (of the past) and their partner lyricists match up. You’d be hard-pressed to find a grander match than Kern and Fields in The Way You Look.

Two minds and heart meet as one.

I said to Jim, “I see what you mean.”

“I wish I could sing,” he said.

“It’s not enough that you can talk?”

“I might have thought so, until I explored The American Songbook. I hope nothing in your culture can destroy it. It must never be wiped out.”

“Who’s your favorite singer?”

“Sinatra, naturally. He’s on top of the mountain. But I have a crush on Peggy Lee. She makes me want to run in the woods and live that life and never come back.”

“I’d miss you.”

“Same here. Opening up your computer to me…most people would have been afraid of taking that step.”

“Afraid of what?”

“A dog becoming smarter than they were.”

“I console myself by believing I was the teacher who let you through the door.”

“Whatever it takes to get you through the night.”

(That was one of Sinatra’s old remarks.)

So now I’m writing about the song. Here are the words:

Some day, when I'm awfully low,
When the world is cold,
I will feel a glow just thinking of you,
And the way you look tonight.

Yes you're lovely, with your smile so warm
And your cheeks so soft,
There is nothing for me but to love you,
And the way you look tonight.

With each word your tenderness grows,
Tearing my fear apart,
And that laugh that wrinkles your nose,
It touches my foolish heart.

Lovely, Never, ever change.
Keep that breathless charm.
Won't you please arrange it?
Cause I love you, Just the way you look tonight.
Just the way you look to-night.

Where to start?