Being a teen

When my son was born, I never thought, "oh, he looks like me." But now that he is 16, I often think, "oh, oh, he thinks like I do."

I drive him to school every day because he is in private school. Today, he slipped a "Frampton Comes Alive," CD into the player in the car. I could sing the words to most of the songs. "1976," I told him, "Frampton swept across the country like a storm you watch on TV nowadays." No matter what city he played in, the concerts were sold out. We were a bunch of 16 year olds (my son's age) and we went to the concerts without any parents involved at all. I'm sure we were drinking beer and smoking pot, too.

But that's not the deal now. There are no "big acts" in rock and roll that roar forth with sold-out shows and passion and masses of youth ready to dance and be transformed for a week or two by some music.

Frampton came on the heals of Led Zeppelin, The Doors, The Who, Dylan, The Stones, Clapton, Allman Brothers, etc. And he was gone as fast as a summer downpour. We were so affected by the music and the rock stars of the era. We had the die hard bands we believed would be there forever and we were jazzed by the "fly by nights" that caught our ears and our groove with a chart-busting album or song we played over and over again on our record players.

My son's brain has kind of followed that 60's/70's pattern. He had a blessedly quick foray through the world of death and thrash metal and then settled into Classic Rock. He's a musician. He plays drums, guitar, banjo, ukulele, some piano. It makes me wonder if all the fuss about how the teen brain develops shouldn't include some fuss about how it needs the back beat of rock music. All that drumming by John Bonham sets the groove for the angst of adolescence in such a soothing way! And the lyrics make you wanna scream and shout while you're in the safety of your car. I still need it in my life. There is something about the Blues and Rock that gives our souls a rest while revving us up for life. As his brain keeps hankering for more and more music and sounds, I look forward to when he really immerses himself in The Boss, and U2. I caught him going through our old albums and listening to, "Yes." Then I reminded him of one summer camping up in Vermont a few years ago when "Yes," was the band playing at the State Fair.

When we look at the world in which the music was created, we have to wonder if it really is "all over." My son can't set a groove to save his life in the confines of school. He's got the pressure to attend college and attain the best grades in the world pressing in on him. But what he really wants to do, is retreat to the sounds that are banging around inside his head. He can't do that in the orderly world we've fallen into for our kids. Worlds of planned playdates and all the rest of it. No, he's not at the top of the class. How could he be? He spends most of the night with his head bent over a guitar.

I never gave my son a Gameboy or XBox or any of those video toys. He wanted them. But by fifth grade, he had found plenty of other things to do. Now, though, he can't find the steamy underworld of passion required to blast out rock or the venue for moaning and whining the blues. Everyone he knows has the comforts of unbelievable comforts and they don't know how to hang out and jam. They are trying to fill voids they can't even understand. (Something inherited from their parents.)

Music, art, writing - it can be studied in classrooms. But it really has to be lived and brought forth through experience.

We're afraid of raw experience nowadays. We want to control, protect, insulate, sanitize, make perfect, etc. the lives of our kids and ourselves.

But it was always so much more fun to go out and make mud pies, rather than to sit in a classroom reading about it. Adolescence is a risky time in our lives. And we don't want kids to take risks any more. We say we do. We ask on college apps, "are you a risk taker?" What does that mean?

Real risk taking results in real transformation. How many of our top students nowadays will ever be transformed by their own choices. I think we have a nation of good soldiers, now. Follow the plan, get the grade, earn the accolades, live in the gated community, pretend you're green, and ....wonder why you feel so lost. It looks like our culture will become really stale. No wonder my son likes to enter into the world that fed the Blues and Rock music. It was a real world of art. It had some risks, too.