If Adolescence Were Music, by Pamela Schloesser Canepa

I have very high respect for Jazz music, but I sure don't understand it. Why is it necessary to understand everything anyhow? A little bit of chaos can be a good thing. Just think of little Lisa on the Simpsons, busting out with her saxophone , getting out of line, refusing to perform in harmony or follow the music book. Yes, by busting out of line she sounds much better than the line of kids struggling to follow the musical notes in their book. It's like she is letting her instrument guide her, instead of trying to make it follow a plan. And this is like adolescence because......adolescence follows no plan.
A book I once read, "Mumbo Jumbo," was part of an American Lit. college course, and we studied the Jazz period of American History. You have to give U.N.F credit because they had a wonderful Jazz department, or a great music department with a jazz section; remember I am a lay person. Anyway, in this book, white Americans in the time of the Harlem Renaissance were very paranoid about the up rise of jazz in the clubs, and how it would always make the black Americans dance. Things could get out of control. They did not trust jazz and sought to indoctrinate African Americans to reject it. Somewhere in the book it mentioned that jazz "has no text." Maybe this refers to its seemingly unplanned nature. Hey, it just seems to flow. How is that a bad thing? You can sit back and listen and not wait for a refrain or memorize the lyrics, just relax, get groovy. Yeah, I suppose it would worry some uptight folks especially back during the Harlem Renaissance. Believe me, I am not "all groovy" by nature, I am quite a worrywart, but something like jazz really helps me with that problem. Why should we be so uptight about something like jazz?
Same with adolescence. I was so uptight about my son's entry into adolescence. But, I've learned a lot about it, parenting a teenager. I've learned to look back at my own adolescence. We learned a lot of lessons by experimenting. I took stupid risks. It did not all fit in with who I was. That’s because I was changing. Deciding who I would become. My life did not follow a script. The book "Mumbo Jumbo" has a lot of references to voodoo in its characters, specifically those creators of jazz. It's mysterious. We don't understand it, don't trust it, just like adolescence. Truly, I think the book made comment to our fear of "the other," those who are different than us by looks, culture, and practices. The references to voodoo really appeal to our fear, or the knowledge that our beliefs, our God, will not control everything for us.
This also brings to mind the "goat-footed balloon man" from an ee cummings poem. He "whistles far and wee......and betty and disbel come dancing from hop scotch..." Of course, the fact that the balloon man is "goat footed" makes him suspicious, as if something devilish is taking over our children, interrupting their play, making them try new things. I am not even getting close here to the fact that the poem takes place in spring time? It is just our fear that stands out to me, our fear of what? Evolution? Adolescence is certainly an evolution. And it is either brought about or pushed along by the balloon man's whistling. Somewhere I got the idea or read that this whistling was from a flute. Was it the pagan god Pan who used a flute? It is a seductive music, right? It inspires us, tempts us. So we fear it, just as we fear the unknown and we, for the most part, fear change.
In the book, "Blue like Jazz," the author states that "Jazz never resolves itself" and he was comparing this to God, or our understanding of God. The narrator of the book learns a lot about jazz from his dad, a very open-minded liberal sort of guy, as opposed to the narrator's super religious mother. He has to work through the discovery of his mother's imperfection. Isn't this so common to many teens? We all make that discovery of our parents in varying degrees, and it does not all make sense. By the end of the book, the narrator seems to be saying that we can't really understand God or how he works, but we can experience him. He seems to finally accept that after a personal struggle. Our understanding of God may never have closure. So many jazz songs are like that. They seem to ramble on. I don't mean that in a negative way. But that's why some people can't stand it. I say it's more like, they can't understand it. Well, I don't either, but when it all blends together for some reason, all the various elements finally sound so harmonious....
So, we as parents sit back and act all scared about what happens to our children. It's not an act. We are scared. There are so many aspects to adolescence, and each teen is different. I can never be an expert at adolescence, I can only know my experience living through it, and living through parenting my teen. I know where I have been as a teen. I can think of times when I was in quite dangerous situations. Yes, it can be much scarier today. It is hard to trust teens when they have so much at their fingertips. They know so much more than we did. Or, they know different things than we did. Perhaps technology is the new balloon man. It makes a new music, we are not all attuned to it. They are. There is no text, no written plan, and things will always keep changing in front of our eyes. And, it probably is actually a good thing that no two adolescents are alike.