December 3: these go to eleven

I have always used the above quote from 1984’s “This is Spinal Tap” to characterize the thought processes of someone who just doesn’t get it. A student who refuses to see another point of view. A colleague who is not quite clever enough to understand his own obvious folly.

In this scene, Christopher Guest’s brain cell-challenged Nigel Tufnel explains to the interviewer that Spinal Tap’s sound is so much bigger than other bands’ because Tap has special amplifiers with dials that go past 10—where most settings stop—to 11. So, while “other blokes” can’t get any louder than 10, Spinal Tap has a little more oomph, a little more sumpin-sumpin, that little extra.

Nigel Tufnel : What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?

Marty DiBergi : Put it up to eleven.

Nigel Tufnel : Eleven. Exactly. One louder.

Marty DiBergi : Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?

Nigel Tufnel : [pause] These go to eleven.

But perhaps it is not Nigel who doesn’t get it, but Marty.

Nigel has such zeal, such dedication to his band and his music that he knows that Spinal Tap can always be more, louder, bigger than anyone else. When Marty implies that anyone can be like Spinal Tap by just making 10 louder, Nigel doesn’t get it, because it is simply not true to him.

It doesn’t matter how much louder 10 is, Spinal Tap’s amplifiers go up to 11.

Nigel’s sound is always +1.

It’s his absolute faith in the power of what he creates that I admire. Nigel doesn’t have the distraction of mind to take him away from what his heart knows: his music means more to him than an ordinary scale of 1-10 can express. It goes to 11. Nigel’s message goes out to his audience, his audience (which does not include Marty), at a volume only they can hear. He believes in himself to the 11th degree. Even in the 11th hour—or perhaps the 25th hour—of Spinal Tap’s career.

Nigel’s confusion isn’t in not recognizing the obvious; it’s in not understanding why others don’t.

I’ve been Nigel. I’ve expressed confusion at everyone else’s inability to see what is obvious to me: poetry is physical and takes up space in the world and time is fluid and constantly replenishing.

And I’ve been laughed at for it.

As time from the vessel (the amphora, the metaphor) of our year drains and yet fills the next, believe in your +1—you have more time, more poetry, and more volume than anyone else understands because yours goes all the way to you.