Personal essays
It’s time to make a change
The father
Charlie sent me an email last week with a kind note followed by a reminder that our fiftieth high school reunion will be next August.
Whoosh.
I was taken back in time to memories of that time and who I was and what I thought I’d be and do.
Two of those things were radio DJ and high school math teacher and I did both for a while.
The radio DJ in me starts the song “Father & Son” by Cat Stevens (now Yusuf) and the guitar plays while I continue to tell this story.
I actually didn’t discover this song until later. My first Cat Stevens album was “Buddha and the Chocolate Box.”
I used to play “Father & Son” as part of a keynote I did at Cocoa Conf. It’s a conversation between a father and son (duh) and begins with the father gently reminding his son,
“It’s not time to make a change Just relax, take it easy”
Last week I sent Maggie way too many texts with political items from excessive doom scrolling.
She spoke to me in this father’s voice from the song and advised me to relax, take it easy.
Maggie is my favorite adult and today she is enjoying the final day of her twenties.
The context
The song continues,
“Your still young, that’s your fault There’s so much you have to know.”
Already I’m jarred. That’s your fault?
But the people listening to my keynote are waving their iPhones back and forth with the flashlights on. It’s what people do during slow songs at concerts now.
I don’t know if these young people know that it began as a joke, parodying the older practice of waving lit cigarette lighters back and forth at concerts.
I don’t fault them for not knowing. I don’t fault them for being young. I fault some of them for thinking there’s little they have to know. They’ll just Google it or ask AI.
I like the old fashioned way. Stumbling on something I didn’t know or having someone tell me.
Like those waving their iPhones I listened to this pretty song for years not truly understanding what it was about. Some of the lyrics confused me and I never dug deeper. The father sings,
“Take your time, think a lot Why, think of everything you’ve got For you will still be here tomorrow But your dreams may not.”
WTF. This isn’t a pretty sweet song. My dreams may be gone and I still have to live on surrounded by my stuff.
In the two hundredth episode of the Song Exploder podcast, Yusuf explained that this was a song he originally wrote for a musical about the Russian Revolution.
Ahh. That’s why the father sings,
“I was once like you are now and I know that it’s not easy to be calm when you’ve found Something going on.”
Could be written today about today.
The son
The melody line jumps up an octave and the son responds to the father. The voice is louder more urgent and complaining that the elders are listening and just want him to be quiet.
Yusuf smiles and says when he listens to the son’s voice in the song he actually hears the sound of his father’s voice.
In 2020 for the fiftieth anniversary of the song, Yusuf recorded a new version.
He still voices both the father and the son but he used an interesting device. He sings the part of the father but he uses the vocals from a live concert he performed at the Troubador in 1970 for the part of the young man.
In this version it is literally a dialog between Yusuf and his younger self.
You hear the life worn wisdom of the older man and the raw frustration of the younger one who sings about,
“All the times I’ve cried Keeping all the things I knew inside It’s hard But it’s harder to ignore it”
And tomorrow Maggie turns thirty.
And, because everything is really about me, tomorrow I become the parent of a thirty year old child.
And I notice her starting to sing the lower parts of the song while I have the experience of the father but now sing the parts of the son.
Perhaps that’s why Yusuf heard the sound of his father’s voice in his singing of the son’s voice.
It’s that circle of life, where, if we’re lucky, we return to the fire of our youth when we realize our days are short.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 336. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe