In my living room

In my house there are two of three offspring still in residence. They are, respectively, 21 and 18 (almost 19) years old, and they are boys. They could not be more different in personality - they could not be more different in social lives - they could not be more different in the ways they like to eat. If you talk about books, their tastes have the edges of a nodding acquaintance. If you talk about movies, there is more overlap. In this house, music is the language we all speak.

At this moment, in my living room, the man who fathered these sons sits with those sons - listening, commenting, pausing it to say "he did that? I didn't know" and "look at the sign behind him" and things like that. They're watching a documentary about "black music" and Atlantic Records, and early recording industry magnates, and Tom Dowd and Ray Charles and Jagger and Aretha ...

And the son who thinks he'd like to make a living making music is cataloging details and comparing this documentary with the movie Ray (we watched it last week), and the son who messes about with his bass guitar and drone metal music couldn't stand the sound any more, and went to get more equipment to hook up to the TV. "Pause it for a second."

And then they talk about relative acoustics - and preferences - and they analyze it all together - they all speak the same language when they talk about the music.

And I do not understand them.

I know music - but I don't know rock music - or blues - or pentatonic scales - or stereo equipment - or recording equipment. They're speaking a language peculiar to the men in this house. And I am finding it curiously delicious to eavesdrop on this conversation. There is respect in this exchange. They respect each other, I mean. They acknowledge the various expertise in each other. And then they all together face toward the genius and creativity and inventiveness and crazy lack of fear in the musicians and early studio execs, and these men in my house do homage.

Last week, our younger son came home spittin' nails. There had been kids messing about on the stage after school, and these kids aren't in the Theater class. The kids weren't supposed to be up there. There are sets and props and things, and they shouldn't be used by people who don't belong up there. And the thing that irritated my boy-turned-man is that there was a blank absence of "respect" for "creative places." "It's like being in church," he said. "Any church - any religion. There are places where you respect what happens there. If it's a recording studio, you don't bring in pizza and make stupid jokes. People should have more respect for creativity than that."

Wow. I know that's not a quote from his mother - it never occurred to me to teach that on purpose. But somewhere along the line, my boys became men who could talk about Lead Belly and Led Zeppelin with their dad. I am quite overwhelmed at the moment because the girl who wasn't "allowed" access to pop culture now has kids who understand why music is supposed to be something you feel in your bones. The sensuality of music - especially blues and jazz - it's not a trick or a trap or a temptation. It's delicious. It's good. And my kids figured it out!