[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjgHfAtwMsg?rel=0&w=525&h=330]

A reader made my morning by sending me a story with that above clip embedded within.

Seth Avett, Scott Avett and Bob Crawford had completed the early classic “Pretty Girl From Annapolis,” when Seth leaned into the mic to belt out some of the lyrics to Prince’s “When Doves Cry.” He was accompanied by his brother during the brief but gorgeous interlude. Seth looked skyward after he was done and all three musicians as well as the audience came together to clap and show appreciation for The Purple One.

Watch the clip. It’s heartfelt and beautiful. The Prince part begins near the four-minute mark of the nearly six-minute clip, but if you don’t know the Avett Brothers’ music, I hope you’ll watch the whole thing. They are one of my family’s favorites, and I thank the reader profusely for thinking of us.

Another reader, in a comment, linked to this NPR commentary about Prince’s death, by a Millennial who was raised by religiously conservative parents who forbade her to listen to rock. Therefore, she missed out on Prince’s music. Excerpts:

After a decade-plus of adult life on my own, I’ve learned to blend in, to laugh off the references I don’t get, to shake off the embarrassment about not really knowing much about evolution or falling silent when friends swap prom stories (no dancing at my high school). But this week brought back some of the old feelings of isolation that I first felt in the workplace and around peers from outside my evangelical cocoon — a sense of being out of place and maybe not quite right.

Instead of David Bowie and Prince, I grew up on contemporary Christian artists like Michael W. Smith and Amy Grant — and some others you’ve probably never heard of. Even those artists who occasionally scored crossover hits that made it to the pop charts were viewed by some in my parents’ circles as too “worldly” because their lyrics didn’t always mention Jesus. There were also concerns about Grant’s choice of red leather pants when she performed on stage.

As a result, I missed many of the cultural icons of those decades. Being a rule-follower, unlike some of my evangelical friends, I mostly toed the line and avoided forbidden “secular music.” That’s until I realized that being the only kid in junior high who doesn’t know about the Casey’s Top 40 hit list from last Sunday night makes you an even odder duck than you already are at 13 with braces and bad skin.

She concludes:

After Prince’s death, and Bowie’s a few months ago, and Michael Jackson’s several years back, I recognized, cognitively, their importance. I felt sympathy for my friends who felt their loss. But mostly, I’ve felt isolated from all of you who share these ties, and regret for what I missed. These cultural figures don’t just speak to us as individuals; they join us together as a community. They create touchstones — without which, it’s easy to feel like an outsider.

The reader who posted that link asks if this is what the Benedict Option is all about. That’s not a bad question, but it’s one that makes me smile. Last night, my 16-year-old son deejayed the neighborhood crawfish boil. He played Prince, he played Elvis Costello, he played Marty Robbins. Matt has the most eclectic musical tastes of anybody I know, and that’s saying something. And he has good taste, too. It’s mostly self-selected. If he started listening to music that his mother and I thought was morally harmful to him for whatever reason, we would put our foot down. But he hasn’t.

We raise our other two with the same strictures. When David Bowie died, our 12-year-old, who had taught himself “Diamond Dogs” on the guitar, went into serious mourning. Does he know anything about Bowie’s gender-bending, his drug use, and all that? No, not yet. He will. For now, he enjoys the music.

Here’s the thing, though: I bet not a single 11-year-old within a 100-mile radius felt Bowie’s death as intensely as my son Lucas did. Lucas’s brother got him into Bowie, and because he (Lucas) is a musician, he started listening to a lot of Bowie so he could play it on his guitar (we gave him his 12th birthday present, a Stratocaster, a week early, on the day Bowie died, because he was so broken up about it, and needed a lift). Bowie’s heyday predates Lucas’s father by a few years; the singer’s death didn’t get to me emotionally like it did to my sons.

Here’s a link to the current Billboard singles chart. In our house, we know who Adele is, and who Justin Bieber is, but we don’t listen to them (except sometimes Adele), not out of religious conviction, but rather because we like other music. I’m sure there are artists on that chart whose music my wife and I would object to for our children for moral reasons, but I don’t know for sure. The point is, when any of these artists die, my children will be on the outside of the crowd mourning them. Is that such a bad thing?

When Merle Haggard died, I said a prayer for his soul, but I didn’t mourn him, because his music was simply not a big part of my life. I remember when the NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt died in 2001, I thought, “Who?” Turns out he was a MASSIVELY POPULAR athlete — but just not within my circles. So I missed out on that collective mourning.

But look, why is this such a big deal? Whether or not that author’s parents did the right thing by denying her access to rock and roll is one question. The deeper question is, why is it so bad to be denied a collective experience? Jews and Muslims miss out on Christmas, which is surely a sacrifice for many, but their faith and culture expect that of them. It can be a character-building experience to be willing to forego good things for the sake of higher values.

Aside from that, with popular culture so fragmented, it’s not realistic to expect all of us to share the same experiences. When I was a kid growing up in the Seventies, we had three TV networks. All of us kids would talk the next day at school about what had happened the night before on “Happy Days,” “Laverne and Shirley,” “Welcome Back, Kotter,” and so forth. Nowadays, is it even possible for kids to have that kind of experience, even if it were desirable? I marvel at the broad spectrum of music my kids have to choose from. When I was their age, we had whatever was on commercial radio. You had to really work hard to get beyond that.

Last week in Baton Rouge, a man who had been the Walter Cronkite of local news for most of my childhood died. It made me think about how central the experience of watching local TV news was to our childhood. It wasn’t so much that we kids watched it (though we did, often) as it was that the 6pm and 10pm news were signals to us that the evening had started, and then that the evening had ended, and it was time for bed. It was almost liturgical. We don’t have that anymore. I don’t think this is a bad thing, but it’s a thing.

Point is, this is how we live today, all of us. I am a lot more permissive regarding rock music than that essayist’s father was, but my kids are still not sharing cultural touchstones with most of their generation, simply because they like different music than most their age. I love when their musical taste intersects with mine (e.g., Talking Heads, the Clash, Elvis Costello), but often it doesn’t. My own musical taste began to diverge from the mainstream when I went to boarding school in 1983, at the age of 16, and was immediately exposed to music I’d never heard before (e.g., Talking Heads, the Clash, Elvis Costello) — and loved. Music in this new school was a lot more tribal than anything I had seen before.

Still, Prince was a common touchstone for nearly all of us, which is why my Facebook feed lit up with remembrances from my high school classmates when Prince died.

I wonder if it’s possible for young people today to relate to a musical performer in the same way — I mean, across such a broad spectrum of tastes.

Anyway, to get back to the reader’s question about the Benedict Option. I’ll take a risk here and say that the answer is both yes and no. No, in that not everybody has to shun the same things to be kosher under the Ben Op. It’s best to leave that to families and communities to decide. And, yes in the sense that some hard lines will inevitably have to be drawn, lines that prevent one’s children from sharing certain experiences with the masses. One has to be smart about it, and discerning, but sometimes, one will simply have to make that hard choice.

Religious Jews living in Christian and secular societies have been doing this since forever. This is one more reason why I’m going to have a chapter in my Benedict Option book that focuses on what small-o orthodox Christians can learn from Jews about being outsiders.

In the meantime, please enjoy that Avett Brothers performance, which is sweet and beautiful.