Vol. 33 - I'd Make a Deal with God

On jealousy and discovering Kate Bush

“I see babies cry. I watch them grow. They’ll learn much more than I’ll ever know.”

I know you know the lyric. It’s from one of popular music’s greatest and most enduring songs. And now that I’m a parent, it’s a line and, more importantly, a concept that resonates with me in entirely new ways.

Some of what I’m experiencing now is wonder, thinking of the things that my children might see, of the world they will create, inhabit, and, someday, turn over to their children’s children.

Some of it is fear, as we are handing their generation a planet that is on fire and a nation whose civil rights are moving in the wrong direction.

But most of it is jealousy. Not just because they will, in theory (and in all my hopes) live much longer than I, and that they will see all that comes with those years. But jealousy of all of the things I know they have ahead of them yet to discover.

The feeling of a first kiss, of the touch of a man or a woman, of the consumption of teenage love. The experiences of heartbreak and disappointment and failure. The fleeting joy of success. The recognition of resolve as it builds inside them.

Even the more concrete, less esoteric things that my children are going to experience; their first night sleeping under the stars, their first time away from home, the first time they get hit on a football field or score their first goal. These feelings we’ve had countless times over are feelings my children not only have yet to experience but ones they don’t even know exist.

But, as so much of my life has revolved around the music in it, I think I’m most jealous of what’s out there for them to uncover.

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I don’t remember the first time I heard Kate Bush. I remember it was a long time ago and I remember the feeling it gave me; a jumping heart in my chest, a flutter in my throat, the unmistakable rush of hearing something you instantly know will soon obsess you.

Now, as you’ve no doubt heard, thanks to its inclusion as a major plot point in this season of Stranger Things, an entirely new generation (shit, generations) is discovering the inimitable genius of Kate Bush. And all I can think of as I hear “Running Up That Hill” on repeat all summer is how lucky those kids are.

Imagine having just heard Kate Bush for the first time, I say to myself. What a summer.

Thanks to Kate Bush, I’ve spent much of this summer thinking back to the music that has shaped me, trying to remember those first exhilarating moments that left indelible imprints on my soul, just as they did the souls of so many others.

I think of the first time you hear the rumble of Chuck Berry or the groove of Stevie Wonder, and prayed that there was more out there just like that.

And then you hear the opening chords of a Ramones song and your mind is cracked in half. And you think that nothing else can ever make you feel the same way. And then you hear the Buzzcocks. And then you hear The Smiths. And then you hear the Velvet Underground. And then you hear Pizzicato Five. And then you hear Blonde Redhead. And every time, you convince yourself that you’ve found the zenith of your sonic spirituality, that nothing can affect you quite the same way the Pixies did the moment you heard the opening notes of “Debaser.” And then you hear Belle & Sebastian. And then you hear Guided By Voices. And then you hear Pavement. And then you dig backwards, deeper into the tunnel that was bore long before those bands even existed, the same one they eventually crawled through themselves. And you hear Joni Mitchell and you hear The Zombies and you hear the Sweet and you hear Black Sabbath and you hear Ronnie and The Ronettes.

And you convince yourself again and again that nothing will ever quite take your breath like the first time you heard Sonic Youth.

And then you hear Kate Bush. And it happens again.

I’m not sure that my kids will have the same relationship to music that I have, nor do I care that they do. All I want is for them to find something to love as passionately as I have music over the course of my life. If that means music, then great, as I’ll then have a long, strange journey to help them embark on. But if it’s something else, if it’s film or video games or rock climbing or archery or fucking rhythmic gymnastics, then someday I’ll learn something from them, something more than what I already know. Because by then, I’ll be older and far more out of touch than I already am.

Whatever it is, I’ll revel in the fact that they’ve found their thing. But I’ll always be a little bit jealous—or maybe a lot jealous—of their hearts jumping in their chests, of their breath being set aflutter, and their souls forever changed by those things that have always been out there, waiting to be discovered.

And I’ll think to myself, what a wonderful wold.

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