School of Rock

I have spent my adult life doing two things: avoiding responsibility and judging the shortcomings of others making music and teaching. Like peanuts and bubble gum, this very particular set of skills (skills I have acquired over a very long career) united today in a salty sweet mix of passable competence as I gave a songwriting class to a group of moderately interested teenagers.
My friend, writer Sion Dayson, has been here from Paris for the month of July leading a creative writing workshop for privileged American teens. Over the past weeks, she has had them studying fiction and poetry while leading them around a city she barely knows. Encouraged to bring in guest speakers, she asked if I would be interested in talking to them about the songwriting process, as several of them had expressed an interest in that. And so I found myself facing seven impassive fifteen-year-olds, armed only with a cd, a laptop and ever increasing misgivings.
My usual interaction with teenagers is as a tutor with one or occasionally two kids in their house, often their room. The dynamic is markedly different from a classroom in July, far from their friends and families, exhausted from a month of class and trips. Also, I teach English. There is a right answer, and a wrong answer, and I didn't make it up. Sometimes the reason for the answer is illogical or unknown, but it's there, verifiable. Explaining the creative process is another matter completely. Especially since a large part of my creative process takes place in traffic. I get around the city by bike, and often use these stretches to work on lyrics or melodies that have been bumping around in my head. Combine that with my explosive impatience with cars and pedestrians, and you get a man speeding through the streets with little regard for the rules of the road, alternately singing and swearing.
I decided that was as good a place as any to start, and brought in some songs from both 2 Skinnee J's and Les Fat Jones to listen to and explain a little about the work that went into them. I gave some biographical information, discussed the genesis of particular ideas, the elaboration that goes into developing lyrics and the communal editing and arranging process that I've experienced in bands. And I played them some music.
"Is today Thursday?" asked one girl as a song finished, its dying notes still ringing in the air.
I think they liked me.