Been a long time

It was a strange evening. Gaye was out teaching. Aidan was over at the friend’s place. Zach and I had the place to ourselves.

I had arrived home tired out, as usual, though for a new reason. My first week at the new firm had come to a close and I was full of confidence that I understood what was expected, and in my own ability to fulfil that expectation. However, it’s all about people – everything – so who to talk to, how to navigate the byzantine hierarchy: all this was still a mystery. Moreover, it is a full moon. I don’t know what that means, other than to say that I noticed.

When I got home Zach was busy downloading and listening to music on iTunes. I saw his little body moving and being moved by the pure emotion of sound. Just as I remembered Aidan being moved. Just as I remember being moved at the same age.

Music is so arbitrary. We each, at ‘that’ age, feel that the music of our generation reaches right inside us. It’s magical, of course, but arbitrary. At the time we feel it is an absolute, and that people will be moved forever by the sounds that moved us. In a thousand years time, we think, people will be moved to tears when they hear this.

Of course they won’t, just as we are not when we hear our own father’s music, or his father’s. Who now can listen to ‘old’ music except those of us tormented by a fatal dose of the whimsical. Similarly we are not amused when we hear our children’s unless we are having a mid-life crisis.

The sounds themselves are not important, because they are just fashion. It is what is in us that matters: at that age. At that age we have passion.

And as he grooved and I did the dishes with a freezing vodka at my elbow I remembered the songs that moved me. I played a couple. They still work, but they meant nothing to Zach; he smiled indulgently. He was smart enough to know that there was no point in trying to discuss the music in any kind of rational way – because there is nothing rational to be discussed. There was no comparison to be made, no sense in trying to convince or be convinced over value.

I said to him, “I’d tell your mother but she’d probably forget. I’d tell Aidan but I know he’d forget. So I’m telling you, boy. When I die, and I don’t plan for this to be soon, I want you to play Rock and Roll by Led Zeppelin.”

He said, “I’ll remember.”

That was when we shared a musical moment. Not the music itself, because music is just fashion and changes from generation to generation. But we saw the look in each others’ eyes and recognised the joye de vive that music can give you when you are in ‘that’ mood. That’s why I became a Dad: to talk music with someone who understood.