“Dad, have you heard of a band called the Velvet
Underground?”
The part of me that’s a rock-and-roll fan – and
left-libertarian free-speech advocate – is minded to say, straight off: yeah, they’re great.
The part of me that’s an inevitably and appropriately
protective dad is minded to say: the Velvet Underground? No, doesn’t ring a bell.
Still, I believe the Carpenters were around at about the same time; they’re
great, you should listen to them.
“But if you haven’t heard of them, how do you know that…?”
Ah, fourteen year old daughter, you are too wise for me.
But the left-libertarian free-speech advocate side wins as
it often does, and there are reasons for this.
First, our family culture just leans this way, sometimes to
a fault. Partly it’s that (as far as day jobs go) we’ve worked for, oh, half a
century between us in the sorts of welfare or therapeutic roles in which
plain-speaking about what would otherwise be ‘hot potato’ subjects goes with
the territory.
Second, it’s that Iris is, these days, a quasi-only child
(quasi- because she has a brother fifteen years older; we're close, we see each other
often but, in the nature of things – kids grow up, they leave home – he hasn’t lived with us since Iris was a toddler). While
we actively try to make sure she’s had the chance to spend time with other
small persons – during the summer holidays as she grew up, for instance, we
arranged plenty of playdates with friends including other ‘onlies’* -
inevitably she also gets included in the ebb and flow of grown-up
conversations; she’s not one of two or more children amongst whom we’re having
to arbitrate.
*(Saara to me – as
given our work schedules, I was being the main ‘summer holiday parent’ that
year: “So do you think there’s going to be enough for Iris to do?” Self: “Yes,
love, don’t worry; I’ve got the phone numbers of all the other mums. Saara: “Yeah,
I bet.”).
Third, I think that these are the times we live in. A much
younger chap I was talking to the other day mentioned that, as a child, he’d
experienced an innocent and momentary curiosity about what it would be like to
be Superman. So he did what small children now do: he typed “how to be
Superman” into a search engine… then he typed it into Amazon, ordered up a few
books and other resources, he’s been a Nietzschean ever since. (Joke).
Anyone now under twenty-five has grown up with, for better
and for worse, the internet at their fingertips [..insert tedious reminiscences about payphones..]; the official remedy
for this, at least if you listen to official guidelines handed out by schools
along with NHS advice about nits and Comic Sans requests that cakes for the
Summer Fayre are left with Ms Butskell in the office on Friday morning, is to
screw things down nice and tight, firewall everything up to the hilt, parental
controls, spyware, trackers, all the rest.
Some of this advice is good; some of it feels almost
mandatory for anyone with any sense (meaning, it fits into the “why wouldn’t you?”
category along with seatbelts, smoke alarms and vaccines); however, even as
someone who’s helped hand the official guidance out (like I’ve helped arrange
cakes on stalls; and don’t get me started about nits), I’ve sometimes had
the nagging feeling that we’re just not doing enough, or we’re just not doing
it right; possibly the official guidance doesn’t sufficiently address the
positive, the sense in which the right response to the instant availability of
information, misinformation, image, myth, rumour, isn’t some Canute-like*
attempt to stem the tide but instead the determination to become, as a parent,
a trusted source of – or conduit for - information and guidance.
*(Yes, he was a wise
ruler attempting to demonstrate something to his courtiers, not some kind of
Anglo-Saxon proto-Trumpian pathological narcissist – I know, I know).
By trusted source or conduit I guess I don’t mean ‘knowing
it all’ – how could you? how could anyone? – more a commitment to being a sort
of imperfect Socratic figure, open-handedly knowing and sharing what one doesn’t know etc. Whether that’s quite
the right way to put it or not, what I’m suggesting is definitely both an
epistemology and an existential stance more than it’s a specific body of
knowledge. There’s perhaps a loose analogy here with drugs education* in
schools: the ‘answer’ isn’t restricting information, still less prophylactic (in the sense of ‘prevenative’) lies, rather it’s countering inevitable street
myth and rumour with balanced, accurate, age-appropriate information which,
acknowledging the attractiveness of drugs as mood-altering substances (users
aren’t drawn even to crack or to heroin for no reason at all; surprising how often
even well-informed well-intentioned people miss this), also pulls no punches about
actual and potential risks and harms.
*(I used to do drugs
education in schools – oh, a decade or so ago now. Getting to the end of a PSHE
visit to school; at the end, any questions? “Yes – was you one yourself?” Well,
I’m not really here to talk about my own background – always best to leave ‘em
with a sense of mystery. Then: a question on a standard Youth Service feedback form, ‘what was the worst thing about this presentation?’; Year 10 lad
writes in,“not being funny, but D.S.’s t-shirt was the worst thing about this
presentation.” Okay, okay; you got me there.)
Fourth, we live in a sort of hippy enclave and we’ve taken
her to a lot of music festivals over the years.
If you’re determined that your child should never hear swear
words, don’t ever take them either to the football or to
music festivals - and if you’re determined only to present a sort of Ladybird Books
picture of the world to them, don’t live even on the outskirts of the
counterculture (now, I hesitate to use the word... but let me walk you around Glastonbury for the afternoon; yep, there's a counterculture).
Of course, you still have to supervise. We were all at
Glastonbury one year; Saara and I were working at a Churches Together-led
welfare project – heck, I could tell you some stories – and there was one lad,
about nineteen, who spent a lot of time with us because he was going through a
various crises and needed that kind of adult grounding maybe, or to be part of
a reparative pseudo-family for the duration: the heart wants what it wants. (Also,
he didn’t have a wristband so was evading security; jumping the fence at
Glastonbury takes real work and ingenuity since the Ring of Steel went up). He
took a shine to Iris as a kind of temporary, honorary little sister, taught her
to play the drums (naturally we had a drum kit), told her funny stories; I was
there in the background, and intervened whenever he forgot himself and began to
include drugs or other misbehaviour in these stories. “Josh, she’s seven.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot, sorry, sorry.”
So, yeah: after running the numbers (one key determinant,
three associated multipliers), it turns out I have heard of the Velvet
Underground... and that I'm top of the world looking down on Creation about that.
[See also: rock family trees]
