Teenage Visionary

Didn’t know his name, but I knew mine. He was the 14 year-old son of the owner of a small business that was moving, and I was doing some telecom work for them. While I was messing with wires and computers, this kid was moving some boxes and file cabinets around when I surprisingly initiated a conversation with him. Earlier he had been talking about all kinds of music – offering up a plethora of his CDs for the rest of the office staff to listen to while everyone worked at moving furniture, cleaning, and relocating IT systems. This instantly reminded me of myself at that age, or even sometimes now when I get excited about an artist or group and start exacerbating on the history through beginnings, to personnel changes, to solo albums, the reunions, and to the inevitable legal wranglings that come later when they’re dried up and sue happy. He had been giving everyone the run down on all the CDs contained in his case – if anyone was still listening to him, it was mostly out of polite pity as they were really just waiting for him to stop talking. Most people were preoccupied with the tasks at hand and just wanted some background noise or musical wallpaper like soft rock or new country radio stations, or a vacuum. I know this feeling well. The feeling of informing and educating the woefully ignorant; the feeling of not being listened to and getting sweet smiles and a nice pat on the head for the efforts. The feeling of being told, “something nice, and not too harsh” which translates to, “something that is bland enough to be absorbed by the walls, something we can pleasantly ignore and not notice.” I felt for him. And, I think that’s why I asked him if he played. “Oh yeah!” he said, “drums and guitar but mostly drums.” Since I was the only one in the vicinity that expressed any interest as to what he was saying, he immediately started talking about all the bands he was into and his friends that he jammed with. When I told him that I also played, we started trading little anecdotes on guitar tunings, concerts, and of course; classic Death Metal bands of yesteryear. And while this particular style was never my thing, I know enough about the genre to pass for a slightly less than die-hard fan. He was rattling off bands and eras and record labels and sub-genres like he was teaching an AP class on the stuff. It was amazing and really fun talking to him! In fact, I learned that the Sandoval family is prominent in the L.A. Death scene, and that South American bands are a lot of times made up of families that help each other out in their cooperative Metal world. The kid was awesome. And he taught me enough to pass as an informed die-hard fan, plus his enthusiasm was infectious because I wanted to go home and rock out on guitar!

At the point when I had finished my job and had to go, I shook his hand and told him to “keep playing.” That was about all I could say without sounding like a pretentious old wise man – the kind of older people that will tell a young person what the world has in store for them, giving advice from their experiences while forgetting what it’s like to be young and unencumbered by all the shit that they’re warning about. I didn’t and don’t ever want to be one of those people, but admittedly it’s hard not to give some advice because I felt like I walked into a time warp of sorts. What I wanted to say but ultimately kept to myself was; “Keep playing no matter what. No matter what. When you get a girlfriend and fall in love, when you start wondering about drugs and sex, when you get a job that takes all your time away, when you leave home and struggle with money. With all the harsh and beautiful realities of the world it’s important to have a passion to keep all to your self – something that no one can ever fuck with, no matter what.” If I had said all that, he would’ve blown me off; I know this because I would have too. Just a simple, “Keep playing” was enough. Although I hoped he would understand what I meant or could read my mind in some way, I knew he couldn’t and that’s fine because he probably wouldn’t quite get it anyway – he’s naïve and free, and he’s in a period of his life that is amazingly vast with possibilities, a period that most adults miss and strive to get back but never will because they know too much. The most we adults can now ask of a situation like this, is to shut up and listen, and enjoy somebody else’s moment.