Role Models

In my mission farewell talk,[fn1] I spent a little time talking about one of my teenage heroes. Charlie “Bird” Parker was an alto saxophone player who revolutionized jazz. With Dizzy Gillespie, he broke with swing and invented bebop, a faster, more cerebral, more harmonically complex style of music.

I admired the Bird’s virtuosity on the saxophone. I admired his improvisational genius. And I admired his work ethic: he may have had a natural genius, but, as a teenager, he also practiced 11-15 hours a day. And it was this work ethic, as much as anything, that appealed to me, and it was this work ethic that made me think of him as a prepared to leave on my mission.[fn2]

Another thing about Bird: he was a junkie. He named one of his songs after his dealer. He periodically pawned his saxophone (you know, the thing that allowed him to make a living) so that he had money to buy drugs. Sometimes on the bandstand, if he hadn’t had a hit of heroin, his arms shook so badly that he couldn’t play.

And there’s no happy ending here: unlike Miles, he didn’t lock himself into an apartment on his dad’s farm and come out clean. He died at 35 of pneumonia and a bleeding ulcer, and had cirrhosis and had had a heart attack. Almost certainly his body had deteriorated in part because of his drug and alcohol use.

On Tracy’s excellent post, a number of people have objected to one or more of the people she quotes as being poor role models for our kids. And frankly, they’re wrong.

Certainly, some (or, probably, all) of the women Tracy highlights and quotes have done things in their lives that I’d rather my daughters not do. But they’ve also done things that I hope my daughters do do. And our youth are smart enough to differentiate between the aspects of a role model that they want to emulate and the aspects that they don’t.

Look, that I wanted to be like Charlie Parker didn’t mean I wanted to use heroin.[fn3] Even as a teenager, I could separate out his musical genius and his incredible work ethic from his self-destructive behavior. I could want to be like him musically without wanting to be like him personally.

Moreover, if our youth can’t make that separation, we desperately need to teach them how to. They’ll have people they look up to who do things that are against our values; they’ll idolize athletes who cheat, dancers who sleep around, businesspeople who defraud investors. They’ll have friends and friends’ parents who drink and who are (not just appear—are) happy and good people.[fn4]

Charlie Parker was a deeply flawed person, one who made many mistakes and who, in many ways, set a poor example for people. But I don’t regret looking up to him in the least: sitting alongside his failings and weaknesses were sublime traits, traits to which I still aspire. I recognized the difference and recognized what parts of him I did and didn’t want to incorporate into my life. And I have no reason to believe our youth can’t make those same judgments, even when we present them with flawed embodiments of those ideals.

Special Bonus: A Bird Spotify Playlist. Enjoy!

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[fn1] Remember when those were a thing?

[fn2] Note that, though I’m linking to many sources for my descriptions of Charlie Parker’s life, my teenage knowledge of these things came from reading the biography Bird Lives!.

[fn3] I’m a good Mormon boy: the only time I’ve seen an illegal drug was on my mission, crossing a bridge, when some kid came up to us, showed us his joint, and told us that he was giving it up for God, or something like that.

[fn4] Heck, if they’re anything like my kids, they’ll have elementary school teachers who drink coffee in class, and you’ll have to teach them that coffee doesn’t make their teachers bad people, but also they [your kids] can’t have coffee.