Teenage spaces \u2013 stairwells, liminal spaces. Places to hang out, be themselves. Kids are not allowed to make too much noise at void decks, in case they are a public nuisance. But okay, then where are kids supposed to hang out? Where are they supposed to grow and develop beyond who they are in their families, in their schools?<\/p>\n
What about me? Where did I grow up? I find myself thinking about the local music scene. Recently I caught myself using an analogy from there to think about what frustrates me about the modern media landscape. What happens in the local music scene is this \u2013 a group of people come together, some form bands, some are audience members, and everyone participates for a few years. After a while, some bands wind down and break up or just go on indefinite hiatus because they got weary of it all. And then new bands take their place. And this happens over and over again. What I find frustrating is how little self-referencing the scene as a whole does. People reinvent the wheel, and have to re-learn almost everything from scratch. There are a few veterans who persist (the old-time music engineers and equipment providers are the real heroes), but most people don\u2019t seem very interested in the history of the scene as a whole. What I think should happen is \u2013 more people should reference the music of the past. They should do covers of artists from 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago. This gives the music a depth and continuity that it wouldn\u2019t otherwise have, and it draws in old fans out of the woodwork. It would allow the scene to grow. Alas, this doesn\u2019t really happen. Everyone\u2019s kind of focused on the short-term. When they leave, they don\u2019t leave very much behind. This is beginning to change a little bit I think because YouTube, etc are much more enduring mediums than CDs, but my frustration is with artists who don\u2019t look back. There should at least be some.<\/p>\n
Similarly, my frustration with the media landscape at large is this sort of ahistoricity. Apart from the occasional writer who writes a book and digs into a ton of research review and such (and these people do a great service to the rest of us), most people seem to reinvent the wheel over and over again. It\u2019s a real shame, IMHO. It makes discussions unnecessarily superficial and speculative. We can learn so much just from studying the history of such discussions. We don\u2019t need to go through the same argument all the way through, with all the false turns and dead ends. But that\u2019s what people do most of the time.<\/p>\n
This is what I\u2019m trying to do with my word vomit project, and with my bookmarks and the blogposts that I\u2019ve been sitting on for a long time about the internet and race and gender and whatnot. In essence I suppose I\u2019m holding these as potential book projects, because it\u2019s a lot more work than one would expect from a blogpost. I should probably revisit and reimagine how I think about these things. Because I\u2019m not going to find the time to sit down and write entire books from start to finish. So I\u2019m going to have to slice it up, and then connect it all together, and then rely on feedback in order to see what works and what doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
So that\u2019s what I gotta do with regards to my writing. But I came to this point because I was initially thinking about teenage spaces. And I\u2019m thinking about how teenagers are forced to find all these weird, twisted spaces because the world isn\u2019t designed for them. There might be a few, I suppose \u2013 but \u201cdesignated spot for teenagers\u201d is automatically going to be the most uncool place for any teenager to be, because teenagers are by nature supposed to defy authority.<\/p>\n
So I suppose my original line of thinking \u2013 \u201cit\u2019s tragic that teenagers have to do all these contortions to find spaces of their own\u201d \u2013 is a little misguided itself. Because giving them designated spaces probably won\u2019t cut it, unless we somehow just leave spaces for them without particularly making a big deal of it. And the furtiveness of teen life kinda helps you appreciate the more earned, paid spaces of adult life. Or does it? How do rich kids feel about it? I\u2019m not sure if there\u2019s a simple answer. Anyway this whole thing was really just a reflection or rumination rather than some sort of serious policy suggestion. It will inform how I raise my own kids, if I have kids. I would encourage them to invite friends over for house parties of their own, and do my best to stay out of their way. I would engage them as much as I can, take them out for ice cream, ask them about life, about their aspirations, about their interests, about their fears. <\/p>\n
What does this tell me about what I should do with who I am right now? Well, I should start preparing, even if I don\u2019t have children. The broader point is that people need spaces, people need encouragement, people need hope\u2026 and if I weren\u2019t given those things, then I can \u2018have\u2019 it for myself by giving it away to others.<\/p>\n
A nagging thought though \u2013 what if people who are given things don\u2019t appreciate them? The quote comes to mind \u2013 hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times. Is this inevitable, inescapable? Can you help your children appreciate what they\u2019ve got? I\u2019m sure it\u2019s POSSIBLE, but it requires voluntarily entering hardship. It means bringing your kids to soup kitchens and such, helping them see from day one how lucky they are to have what they have \u2013 and not in a preachy, bullshit way, because kids see through preachy bullshit very easily.<\/p>\n
I guess the thing about having kids, if you\u2019re serious about it, is that they force you to confront your own bullshit. And you WILL end up bullshitting them about some things in order to keep the peace, as Paul Graham pointed out in his essay about lies we tell kids, and taboos and whatnot. Maybe it\u2019ll be a good habit to keep a list of times you bullshit your kids. At least then you can be conscientious about it, and you can let them know about it when they become adults.<\/p>\n
I think my biggest wish for any kids that I might have is that I\u2019d want them to be the sort of people I\u2019d love to hang out with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Teenage spaces \u2013 stairwells, liminal spaces. Places to hang out, be themselves. Kids are not allowed to make too much noise at void decks, in case they are a public nuisance. But okay, then where are kids supposed to hang out? Where are they supposed to grow and develop beyond… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[334,169],"class_list":["post-10385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-word-vomit","tag-peopling","tag-goals"],"yoast_head":"\n