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TheVashonLine
A Cross Cultural Vashon Magazine
The Library and a Life Taking Shape
by Tim Morrison on May 13, 2011 · 1 comment
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in Family Life
My son turned 18 last winter. He graduates next month. Eighteen years and a mostly grown adult – there is a lot to ponder here! Included in my reflections are thoughts about the role Vashon played in his upbringing, thoughts on how the village helped raise my child.
photo: Sy Bean
In this respect I am grateful to the library. It’s been the kind of experience that makes me glad that I’m not the king of the world. Before Aidan made his library connection I frowned upon the popular music and video selections available for checkout there. At best, media other than books was outside of the primary focus of the library, and at worst, a waste of the taxpayer’s money.
I work in the library space now, and these days, my librarian acquaintances would tell me (in the kindliest terms, as is their wont) that the libraries-are-about-books attitude I held was wrong for classist and elitist as well as what-the-library-is-actually-about reasons. But when Aidan was 11, I was happy with my opinion. And then Aidan discovered Queen.
Aidan has always been a person of passionate commitments. As a toddler it was to his costumes. Then it was Pokemon – I remember a day hike when 5 miles of conversation between us (very one-sided) was about the characters from that menagerie and their special powers and relative strengths. Then it was sports, which was a hard one because although Aidan loved basketball and baseball and poured his heart into them and almost memorized the sports page each day, sports did not love him back. There were strikeouts and turnovers and sad times at the end of the bench, though he did develop a nice looking jump shot.
It seemed unlikely until it happened that music would be the defining passion of his adolescence, because Aidan was the type of child – common among those with parents of my generation (I’ve learned since) – who frequently would tell his mother and I to turn our music down and who maintained a proud disdain of rock and roll.
But one evening at dinner we caught him nodding his head to a Wilco song, and shortly after that he confessed a fondness for the Beatles.
I don’t know how he learned about Queen, but it was at about the same time he learned that he could check music out from the library. The combination was like fire and tinder. The house became a-clutter with cds and then fan books and band biographies. We learned that Brian May, Aidan’s first guitar hero, wrote the Queen classic Bohemian Rhapsody, has a degree in astrophysics, and built his first guitar using wood from an 18th century fireplace. At one point Aidan asked his bemused grandmother: “ask me anything you want to know about Queen”.
Aidan picked up a guitar. When he started picking and strumming he discovered that his love for music was not unrequited, that he could make the sounds he wanted to hear. He found encouraging teachers and band mates and appreciative audiences.
The library fed Aidan’s further musical interests, into the parentally troubling waters of punk and then metal. How, we asked, does this mild mannered boy come by his identification with bands with names like Rancid, Cannibal Corpse, and Carcass, and whose music to us, sounded like one sustained, atonal scream of rage?
The tables were turned: it was our turn to tell him to turn the music down. We built an outbuilding, partly to serve as a practice space. Neighbors tried not to be disturbed by the sounds emanating therefrom, sounds that seemed to alternate between hyena screech and distressed airplane engine.
Sometimes we had to turn the library cd covers upside down when we found them on the music shelf to spare ourselves the disturbing images.
People more enlightened than me will tell you that it is not for the parent to hope and dream, that this only hinders the child by putting someone else’s expectations in the way of something that belongs to them. Parents should take joy in their child’s personhood in whatever way it manifests itself. My better self understands this, but still, I think there must be something deep in our genes that makes us to want things for our children.
I’ve come to terms with this dilemma by wishing abstractly for Aidan and his sister, by wishing for them not this thing or the other, but rather a meaningful, affirming engagement with something, something of their choosing. Engagement, so my theory goes, leads to many of the worthwhile human conditions: curiosity, commitment, challenge, accomplishment, purpose, etc. So, if Aidan’s life-engagement is with death metal (I told myself, swallowing firmly) then so be it.
And the library cds kept coming: bands with names like Warriors of Death, songs with titles like Evisceration Plague.
Then Aidan discovered Frank Zappa, rock musician, avant-garde composer, iconoclast… activist. This was a more intense attachment then those preceding, involving as it did music, video, and books, most of them library-supplied. Aidan and friends performed Zappa’s I Am the Slime at the Red Bike when Aidan was a sophomore. The connection touched his head and heart as well as his musical soul. Frank Zappa’s music formed a bridge to a universe of musical experience that was undreamt of in my philosophy.
Recent selections from Aidan’s checkout list include John Zorn, Marc Ribot, Bill Frizell, John Coltrane, Benjamin Britton, and others. Aidan leaves for college next fall with a desire to continue his development as a classical guitarist, and an eye on a music degree with an emphasis in improvisation.
There is a turn-off coming up in the essay. Perhaps you, reader, see it ahead also. It is the “if not for the library” exit, in which I end by claiming a critical role for the library in Aidan’s journey to personhood. It’s true that in retrospect it seemed the right thing at the right time. It was accessible; it was away from home. If he couldn’t get a ride he could take his bike. With the exception of the one time we helped him out of a jam involving an impressive late-fee balance, he needed no help or guidance. It offered him a world of music and ideas (borrowing the slogan of a local radio station) to discover at his own pace on his own terms, largely unmediated by the commercial urgings that accompany a lot of content on the web.
Though it is appealing, I won’t take that exit. I won’t go there because I look back on the last eighteen years with the same uncertainty, awe and perplexity that I had when I was looking ahead at its beginning. So much contingency, so many influences and experiences, and underlying it all the human self and the mystery of its maturation.
Maybe without the library he would have found another way to feed his curiosity. Through his mentors, maybe, or a neighbor’s record collection, who knows. How did Aidan end up with a musical experience of such depth; how did his sister, for that matter, come by her compassion and bravery? Were they driven to it and bound to create it with whatever life presented them, or was it an accident of time and place, an alignment of circumstances, or was it some complex interplay of nature and nurture, or something beyond those two ambiguously defined categories?
I will not venture a guess. I will simply offer my gratitude. I’ll forego the appreciation and advocacy (until the next levy perhaps) and just say that the library was there for my boy. It fed him. He grew as a result of his connection with it. And I was fortunate to watch it while it happened.
http://thevashonline.com/2011/05/the-library-and-a-life-taking-shape/
Art
Family Life
Food & Wine
Home & Garden
Media
Nature
TheVashonLine
A Cross Cultural Vashon Magazine
The Library and a Life Taking Shape
by Tim Morrison on May 13, 2011 · 1 comment
18
Share
in Family Life
My son turned 18 last winter. He graduates next month. Eighteen years and a mostly grown adult – there is a lot to ponder here! Included in my reflections are thoughts about the role Vashon played in his upbringing, thoughts on how the village helped raise my child.
photo: Sy Bean
In this respect I am grateful to the library. It’s been the kind of experience that makes me glad that I’m not the king of the world. Before Aidan made his library connection I frowned upon the popular music and video selections available for checkout there. At best, media other than books was outside of the primary focus of the library, and at worst, a waste of the taxpayer’s money.
I work in the library space now, and these days, my librarian acquaintances would tell me (in the kindliest terms, as is their wont) that the libraries-are-about-books attitude I held was wrong for classist and elitist as well as what-the-library-is-actually-about reasons. But when Aidan was 11, I was happy with my opinion. And then Aidan discovered Queen.
Aidan has always been a person of passionate commitments. As a toddler it was to his costumes. Then it was Pokemon – I remember a day hike when 5 miles of conversation between us (very one-sided) was about the characters from that menagerie and their special powers and relative strengths. Then it was sports, which was a hard one because although Aidan loved basketball and baseball and poured his heart into them and almost memorized the sports page each day, sports did not love him back. There were strikeouts and turnovers and sad times at the end of the bench, though he did develop a nice looking jump shot.
It seemed unlikely until it happened that music would be the defining passion of his adolescence, because Aidan was the type of child – common among those with parents of my generation (I’ve learned since) – who frequently would tell his mother and I to turn our music down and who maintained a proud disdain of rock and roll.
But one evening at dinner we caught him nodding his head to a Wilco song, and shortly after that he confessed a fondness for the Beatles.
I don’t know how he learned about Queen, but it was at about the same time he learned that he could check music out from the library. The combination was like fire and tinder. The house became a-clutter with cds and then fan books and band biographies. We learned that Brian May, Aidan’s first guitar hero, wrote the Queen classic Bohemian Rhapsody, has a degree in astrophysics, and built his first guitar using wood from an 18th century fireplace. At one point Aidan asked his bemused grandmother: “ask me anything you want to know about Queen”.
Aidan picked up a guitar. When he started picking and strumming he discovered that his love for music was not unrequited, that he could make the sounds he wanted to hear. He found encouraging teachers and band mates and appreciative audiences.
The library fed Aidan’s further musical interests, into the parentally troubling waters of punk and then metal. How, we asked, does this mild mannered boy come by his identification with bands with names like Rancid, Cannibal Corpse, and Carcass, and whose music to us, sounded like one sustained, atonal scream of rage?
The tables were turned: it was our turn to tell him to turn the music down. We built an outbuilding, partly to serve as a practice space. Neighbors tried not to be disturbed by the sounds emanating therefrom, sounds that seemed to alternate between hyena screech and distressed airplane engine.
Sometimes we had to turn the library cd covers upside down when we found them on the music shelf to spare ourselves the disturbing images.
People more enlightened than me will tell you that it is not for the parent to hope and dream, that this only hinders the child by putting someone else’s expectations in the way of something that belongs to them. Parents should take joy in their child’s personhood in whatever way it manifests itself. My better self understands this, but still, I think there must be something deep in our genes that makes us to want things for our children.
I’ve come to terms with this dilemma by wishing abstractly for Aidan and his sister, by wishing for them not this thing or the other, but rather a meaningful, affirming engagement with something, something of their choosing. Engagement, so my theory goes, leads to many of the worthwhile human conditions: curiosity, commitment, challenge, accomplishment, purpose, etc. So, if Aidan’s life-engagement is with death metal (I told myself, swallowing firmly) then so be it.
And the library cds kept coming: bands with names like Warriors of Death, songs with titles like Evisceration Plague.
Then Aidan discovered Frank Zappa, rock musician, avant-garde composer, iconoclast… activist. This was a more intense attachment then those preceding, involving as it did music, video, and books, most of them library-supplied. Aidan and friends performed Zappa’s I Am the Slime at the Red Bike when Aidan was a sophomore. The connection touched his head and heart as well as his musical soul. Frank Zappa’s music formed a bridge to a universe of musical experience that was undreamt of in my philosophy.
Recent selections from Aidan’s checkout list include John Zorn, Marc Ribot, Bill Frizell, John Coltrane, Benjamin Britton, and others. Aidan leaves for college next fall with a desire to continue his development as a classical guitarist, and an eye on a music degree with an emphasis in improvisation.
There is a turn-off coming up in the essay. Perhaps you, reader, see it ahead also. It is the “if not for the library” exit, in which I end by claiming a critical role for the library in Aidan’s journey to personhood. It’s true that in retrospect it seemed the right thing at the right time. It was accessible; it was away from home. If he couldn’t get a ride he could take his bike. With the exception of the one time we helped him out of a jam involving an impressive late-fee balance, he needed no help or guidance. It offered him a world of music and ideas (borrowing the slogan of a local radio station) to discover at his own pace on his own terms, largely unmediated by the commercial urgings that accompany a lot of content on the web.
Though it is appealing, I won’t take that exit. I won’t go there because I look back on the last eighteen years with the same uncertainty, awe and perplexity that I had when I was looking ahead at its beginning. So much contingency, so many influences and experiences, and underlying it all the human self and the mystery of its maturation.
Maybe without the library he would have found another way to feed his curiosity. Through his mentors, maybe, or a neighbor’s record collection, who knows. How did Aidan end up with a musical experience of such depth; how did his sister, for that matter, come by her compassion and bravery? Were they driven to it and bound to create it with whatever life presented them, or was it an accident of time and place, an alignment of circumstances, or was it some complex interplay of nature and nurture, or something beyond those two ambiguously defined categories?
I will not venture a guess. I will simply offer my gratitude. I’ll forego the appreciation and advocacy (until the next levy perhaps) and just say that the library was there for my boy. It fed him. He grew as a result of his connection with it. And I was fortunate to watch it while it happened.
http://thevashonline.com/2011/05/the-library-and-a-life-taking-shape/
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