So I work with this kid, he's 20, so he qualifies as a kid. We call him Juice because, well, he looks, talks, and acts like someone who would be called Juice. Personally, I refer to him as my Work Idiot. He's an idiot in every sense of the word, so the phrase, unbeknownst to him, is entirely justified and not at all derogatory as I love this kid. I would bail him out of jail if I had to.
But, as I said, he's a total idiot. His musical taste is questionable in the way that everyone's is when they are 20 (except mine and most of my friends. We are visionaries with impeccable preferences). Juice works in the dish pit, a suitable career choice for a barely educated but well intentioned idiot, and in the dish pit, they are allowed to listen to whatever music they want. When Juice is there, it's usually some sort of new rap garbage that all sounds similarly terrible, and occasionally the 90's hip-hop Pandora station, which is just pure gold all the way through.
I shouldn't have been surprised when, last night, this interaction between he and I took place:
Juice: Do you like The Beatles? (NOTE: He routinely asks simple questions to start conversations. It's great)
Me: Yea, dude. Love The Beatles. I took a class about them in college.
Juice: I just heard them the first time today. They're okay.
Me: WHAT?!?! There is no fucking way, on God's Green Earth, that you never heard The Beatles before. Impossible. Nope.
Juice: Bro, I'm like, 20.
Me: Fuck you, you've heard Beatles songs before. Wait...you fucking with me? Not in the mood to be fucked with right now.
Juice (laughing): Nah, bro. Just never heard them before
Me (walking away): Fuck off.
I go upstairs to the line and tell some other people about what just happened, how a person of legal voting age has never heard The Beatles before today. None of the others, all of whom have known the boy for much longer than I, seemed surprised. I, for one, am shocked. SHOCKED I TELL YOU!
Later in the night, as this incident has been clogging my brain for hours, I had to school Juice a little. It's my duty as an adult to teach the youth of America on the greatness of The Beatles.
Me: Okay, dude. You gotta listen to The Beatles. They are the most influential and important band ever.
Juice: But they're old.
Me: And half of them are dead, but that doesn't matter. Revolver might be the best album ever recorded. Sgt. Pepper's changed the way we physically listen to music. The Beatles are fucking important to know, man. Get on that shit.
Juice: I think my dad knows them. I just never heard them before.
Me: Goddammit.
I then go and list off a bunch of songs this young idiot had to have heard before. Sure enough, some of them are familiar, and I felt a little better. He was clearly not fucking with me, because he isn't clever enough to keep up this ruse for so long, and the other guy downstairs working in the dish pit was on my side through this whole ordeal as well. Needless to say, I listened to Revolver, and all it's brilliance, on my way home.
What I have come to learn is that if we don't educate the youth of today about the music of yesterday, we are all doomed to a generation of blank and shallow nonsense that has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Exposing the classic arts to people with malleable minds is important. Showing them what can be accomplished with some imagination will lead to better music, film, literature, and art in the future. Better art will lead to a better, more well rounded understanding of humanity. And with a more acute sense of the human spirit we will avoid the pitfalls of today. We have to learn from the past, not only the general history, but the artistic history as well. Or else we will be doomed. Again. A shitty arts education will incur more Trump like people in power. Narrow worldviews, those without the arts and culture, are a major contributor to hate and prejudice.
I'm not saying we all have to be artists (although it wouldn't suck), but we need to have an understanding and appreciation for the beauty and wonder that good music, films, literature, and art can do for us as a society.
If anyone needs me, I'll be around, listening to The Beatles all day. We should all aspire to be as great as they were.
SD
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