A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

from The Sartorialist

"There was always the music. There were songs and dancing on the Brooklyn streets in those long ago summers and the days should have been joyous. But there was something sad about those summers, something sad about the children, thin in body but with the baby curves still lingering in their faces, singing in sad monotony as they went through the figures of a ring game. It was sad the way they were still babies of four and five years of age but so precocious about taking care of themselves. 'The Blue Danube' that the band played was sad as well as bad. The monkey had sad eyes under his bright red cap. The organ grinder's tune was sad under its lilting shrillness.
Even the minstrels who came in the back yards and sang,

If I had my way,
You would never grow old.

were sad too. They were bums and they were hungry and they didn't have talent for song-making. All they had in the world was the nerve to stand in a back yard with cap in hand and sing loudly. The sad thing was in the knowing that all their nerve would get them nowhere in the world and that they were lost as all people in Brooklyn seem lost when the day is nearly over and even though the sun is still bright, it is thin and doesn't give you warmth when it shines on you." -from Betty Smith's gorgeous book of the same title

If you only heard bad music from the day you were born, would you know it was wrong somehow? Surely you would hate the clanging unruly rhythm and the screeching brassy dissonance. But from hearing the discord, could you know what it would sound like at its best? Or would you follow it around, still fascinated by the hint of potential beauty?