I suppose that this could have been addressed to any band
out there, but it isn’t. It isn’t
because she chose you.
I’m not sure when it happens, but I suppose it happens to
all teenagers and their mothers. The slow transition of introspective self
isolation, when they start spending more time alone in their room, beginning
the segregation of themselves from the crowd with the insertion of ear buds,
the creeping feeling that the people who have nurtured them for their whole
lives no longer understand them. So then we begin the awkward dance of what
feels like interrogations over dinner and evasive answers because she is sure
that I could never understand her. The worry on my part and the frustration on
hers builds.
But I do understand her. I understand her because I remember
myself what it felt like and what music meant to me when I was her age. When
the pressures of growing up are drowning you and music feels like air in your
lungs. How when no one else understands
and you can’t form the words to help them understand, that somehow that
song, those lyrics GET it. She has connected with you, with your music,
on a level that is personal and meaningful. When she isolates herself away and
I look at her closed bedroom door, I can take solace in fact that you are there
for her when she feels like no one else is.
You need to know that she is amazing. Beyond amazing. She is
cuttingly witty and intelligent. She is
a marvelously talented classically instructed double bassist. When she is
finished with her requisite scales, and measure after measure of complicated
pieces, she decompresses by playing your music. She writes the notes
down in a bound journal of lines that is tucked away in her case like a
treasure. She’s the kid in the
orchestra pit with purple in her hair and black on black Vans.
I bought her tickets to your concert tour this summer. She
didn’t ask for them because she was unsure if we would allow her to go. It will be her first concert
experience. I bought them because I
want her to know how it feels to stand in an arena with thousands of other
people that feel just like her. To feel the bass in her feet, the drums thump
in her chest, the sound of thousands of kids singing back the lines that she
has connected with. It is an experience
that YouTube just cannot provide and it is the least I can do for her.
She is amazing. She is mighty. She is mine.
But she is also yours. You are the anthem of her youth, so Thank You.
