I’m old. In my head, I don’t feel old, but my body reminds me every day that I’ve crossed whatever line goes from young to old.
My attitude can often express it, too. Like my parents looked dumbfounded at our leather biker jackets, acid-washed jeans and thrash metal, I don’t get green hair and tackle box face.
I’m at a loss on “gender confusion,” something I wouldn’t have believed if you told me you’d had a time machine and seen the future. And as a musician, gridded six note loops with people cussing over them has very little to do with music as I understand it.
I say these things to confess up front that the world has flown past me.
That said, a lot of what’s accepted as the norm today isn’t healthy, and a lot of what’s been dismissed as antiquated has value.
I introduced my 17-year-old daughter to 50-year-old music, Steely Dan specifically, and she’s enthralled. She’s a musician and singer, and hearing complex jazz-influenced pop tunes was a game changer for her.
Now she sounds like a grumpy old person as she compares the complexity of “Deacon Blues” to the latest Drake or Ariana Grande release.
But it’s not just complaining. It’s longing. She doesn’t want her generation to only have AI-generated, short-looped, shallow music. She wants to know who is today’s Jeff Porcaro bringing the groove to life on a real kit and who is the next Chuck Rainey, pushing the tune on bass.
She wants to know who can actually write lyrics that stir the heart and challenge the brain.
Maybe it will be her. Who knows?
Things like monogamy and lifelong marriage aren’t passé, even if this modern porn-obsessed era may think so. Not if society is to survive well, anyway.
I know that sounds grumpy. Sue me; I’m old.
But pornography is like what the bible calls “dainty morsels,” something that brings a momentary sugar rush, then burns sour like wormwood in the depths of our being. But that’s a topic for another article.
Marriage deserves some focus here, though.
Compare any community in America where committed married couples raising their children has been the norm for my 56 years on Earth with any community where marriage has not been the norm for that duration and you know what you’ll find?
You’ll find something fairly similar to the old TV programs “Leave it to Beaver,” “The Brady Bunch” and even “Mayberry, RFD” in the places where marriage thrives. The people have problems, but they’re mostly not war zone or Third World ones. The community is mostly sane. The schools are good; the kids get educated, go to university, have careers and build their own families.
In communities where marriage mostly died over the decades you’ll find poverty, pain, violence, bad schools and bleak futures. Some make it out. Not nearly enough. Most just shift from one destroyed community to like ones encircling the cities at their epicenter of this post-marriage disaster.
New can be great. We have a 1980s supercomputer in our pocket that communicates with satellites to get us from place to place. It’s a flashlight, a phone, an arcade and our newspaper.
But not everything new is better. We’ll do well to assess and adjust accordingly.
Great write up, Hogan!