One day many months ago... perhaps years ago, I was driving to somewhere or other and in the car with me were my friends Matt and Sarah.  I suppose I should preface this story by explaining that my friends are perhaps 15 years or so younger than I... about the age I was when I graduated college.  Anyway we were tooling along and listening to some tunes and I was "in my thing" with the music when I noticed my companions were stifling laughter...

"Sorry.  Do I look stupid?"  I asked.

"No it's not that, " Sarah explained, "It's just that it's weird to see you getting into the music like that."

"Why?"

"Because that's the kind of thing we would do... people your age don't typically do that."  Matt replied.

At the time I think I responded, "How old do you have to be to stop loving music?"  But I thought about it for a long time after.  In fact every time I am working at my desk and getting into whatever funky groove I am listening to, nodding my head or otherwise responding to the beat, I suddenly see Matt and Sarah smiling at me in my mind's eye, and I feel self conscious.

Am I avoiding adulthood?  Am I being immature?  Is this one of those childish things I should put aside?  I've never seen my Dad or Mom get their groove on, and heck, I'm 38... I'll be forty in just a couple years.  Maybe I shouldn't be "rocking out".  Do I present the image of an aging dork who doesn't realize he no longer belongs on the dance floor?  I wonder.

I once watched a short documentary about some record company executive who was leaving his company to start a new label.  In one segment he and his staff were sitting around an oval table listening to a piece by some new singer they were planning to sign, and the executive was "rocking out" at the head of the table.  He was in his late seventies and wearing an expensive suit and silk tie.  Grandpa getting his freak on.  Apparently this was how many such meetings went, it wasn't staged and it wasn't a joke.  It looked ridiculous to me at the time, and I was reminded of that when my young friends expressed surprise that I would get into music in much the same way they would.

In high school the nuns told me the Catholic Church was worried about rock and roll because it hypnotized people.  Maybe they were right.  Music (at least for me) is transformational, the more I get into it, the less of myself remains and the less I desire to be myself or indeed anyone at all.  I've always wanted to write a poem about that feeling of Nirvana, of utopian nothingness, that music leads me to. But I am sure I could not accurately describe it with words.

Getting into music allows me to temporarily put aside the mask I have to wear in all other forms of social interaction, I don't need to think about logic, or what to say... I can just forget all that and lose myself in the sound.  It's something I've always loved to do.  But for awhile I worried that perhaps it was a sign that I am avoiding my responsibilities as an adult.  Time to grow up?

Eventually I decided not to worry about it.  If I'm a flabby, immature old fart shaking his thang, so be it.  It makes me happy.  That's me, and I hope I'm still doing it when I am 70 plus.

Rock on, grandpa.