Our heat wave continues, and according to what my youngest told me when I picked her up from the SPCA this afternoon, where she works as a Junior Counselor, we should expect no relief this week. When it comes to the weather, or news in general, I've learned that my teens are as plugged in as I am, especially on days when I did not listen to NPR in the background.
Since one of my sons is starting up guitar lessons again, we made our way to a music store and had a string on his instrument repaired. Seven dollars and fifty cents -- two-thirds of it labor. That seemed pretty reasonable to me, although I know if we lived in Appalachia, we'd be doing the repair work ourselves, or paying considerably less for someone to fix it for us.
At some point in the past, I did have a fantasy of living out my life in a rural setting, far from the noisy, dirty, dangerous city. But another part of me feeds off the city's energy, its people and the exchange of ideas available here.
The rest of the country, in ignorance, may consider San Francisco a marginal zone, and I can understand their perspective. As a native Midwesterner myself, the way we do things out here can appear strange from a distance. But I've been here so long that our culture in this place is the norm by which I judge other places; thus we have it more or less right here, from my POV (except for high housing prices) and those other regions look pretty damn weird.
***
Music is good for the soul. It doesn't matter what kind of music, whatever kind of music floats your kayak is just fine. But music is the equivalent of non-intuitive math flowing from our brain cells (when we write it) through our vocal chords (when we sing it) through our ears (when we hear it.)
I'm happy my son will be able to play a few chords and riffs when he moves away to college somewhere next year. That's a very good skill to have, the guitar, and not just to get girls!
***
Talking with other parents, I often find myself in a familiar conversation. The choices, challenges and opportunities facing our young adults today are so radically different from what we knew at their age.
Disruptive changes undermine a parent's confidence in knowing how to advise her child. The basics remain clear -- be honest, kind, generous, work hard, be persistent, stay hopeful -- but the specifics have become confused. Societies changing as rapidly as ours is create new hazards we never had to deal with, such as video game addiction or dealers spiking the weed that courses through this city's streets like a green river with other addictive substances like meth.
These things scare us.
On the other hand, our kids who are on the verge of becoming adults may find opportunities never available to us when young. Like starting a company that revolutionizes how millions of others live their lives going forward. Generating untold wealth. Or -- much more importantly -- helping to find solutions to our worst collective problems, like climate change, that might help preserve life for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren going forward.
In that sense, it is all about hope, isn't it?
That's where music comes back into focus. The best music, even the blues, gives you hope. At least that is what I think. Same with gospel, rock, folk, pop, classical, jazz, whatever...
What do you think?
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