Wisdom Wherever You Find It | Just Look at Them and Sigh

I asked my sons-in-law how they find new music.

When I was much younger, the radio was always on in the background while driving, studying or just hanging out. But as different things demanded my attention, I spent more and more time listening to the news in the car, to my little kids when hanging out and to silence at any opportunity. 

I realized, probably way too late, that I had lost touch with contemporary music. I can’t tell you much about rap, hip-hop, country, or pretty much anyone being considered for a Grammy. 

Okay, I know who Bonnie Raitt is. She used to play at the campus coffee house at Northwestern. If you’d like a little break – of your heart – listen to her 2023 song of the year, “Just Like That.”

They both suggested apps like Spotify, which, by my trial and error, would identify current music I might enjoy. When one of them asked, “What do you listen to now?” I replied, “Just the old stuff.”  He responded, “I was afraid you’d say that.”

So when David Crosby died last year, into his eighties (an unimaginable age when he sang with the Byrds and CSNY), I looked at this question all over again.  Like my mother and Harry Belafonte, my father-in-law, and Glenn Miller, and my grandfather and Billy Murray, something about the music of the sixties and seventies seemed to be able to save my mortal soul.

As a kid, I found more truths in rock and roll than in Scripture, including lots of words I never heard in the Bible. But despite my preference for the Beatles (not the Stones then) and Simon and Garfunkel, no song made more of an impression on me than “Teach Your Children.” I was on the road and needed a code, and my hell was slowly going by. 

It was not so long after that time that I began to turn back to Scripture for more inspiration. Though my tastes in music expanded (Stevie Wonder, Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks, Leo Kottke, Bachman Turner Overdrive), there was that song that could make me stop and listen attentively every time, with its sweet harmonies, its intergenerational lyrics and (IMHO) a better counter-melody than “Scarborough Faire.” 

Maybe we each have a song that was like our first true love. Most of us are not ready for that love when we encounter it. 

Except for the fortunate few, it gets away from us as we grow into a capacity to reciprocate and appreciate. But it remains the benchmark as we grow past infatuation and into devotion. 

The wise among us plunge into something resembling a forever love; the foolish keep trying to recreate the naïve purity we think we have lost.

“Teach Your Children” rose above the drama that plagued Stills, Nash and Young and, especially, Crosby to become that benchmark for me. Like every teenager, which I was in 1970, I found myself in the second verse, being of the tender years. Fifty years later, I am much farther down the road, marveling at how much of my hell slowly went by.

But unlike the early loves in my life, all of which are memories that lose their meaning when I think of love as something new, this song— its melody and its lyrics— still resonates.

I think I know why. 

Accidentally or presciently, young Graham Nash identified a truth I wanted to believe and discovered I could. I was fed on my parents’ dreams, and, in turn, I tried to feed my own children on my dreams. 

My life was no more coherent than my taste in music (and probably still isn’t). But I have marveled at my adult children and how they have educated me on the one I picked by the one they each picked.

I am trying to find new music and broaden my appreciation of the old (Billy Murray was pretty funny for his time) and I hope my kids feed me on their playlists so I have a few more picks to know by.

We saw Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in concert some years ago. The stadium was filled with aging boomers, and the musicians were great. Just before they launched into “Teach Your Children,” one of them (I think David Crosby) said with just a tiny hint of snark, “Okay, you wanna sing?” 

Suddenly, thousands of arms holding cell phones went up in the air, including mine. This was not the substitute for butane lighters that became popular— we all had the same impulse: call our kids and let them listen.

Of course, they couldn’t hear. Of course, we sang. 

Of course, we sighed. And we knew.