I Was An Eight Year Old Deadhead

Art by Christina Casper

Some people are taught about religion from a young age, sitting in uncomfortable church pews for hours each weekend, examining ancient pages of laminated books. It becomes an explicit part of their life, integrated into every aspect. Their own home begins to feel that it is lined with the same stained glass they see on Sundays. My parents are not very religious. They follow a different set of moral codes, one composed in 1965, where the “body” is bud, the “blood” is wheat, and Jerry Garcia is practically God. 

The Grateful Dead is long past its heyday, yet their music has withstood the tests of time. With each generation, the music, culture, and messages are passed down. Calling themselves “Deadheads,” the devotees spread joy to those who are willing to listen. “You just gotta poke around.” My parents are two of those who are willing. They are loyal followers, attending as many concerts as they can, bonding with other members of the community, and passing on this music to me. 

My entire childhood was surrounded by the Grateful Dead.  I used to be embarrassed by it, sort of resenting this passion that had been pushed onto me. During every single car ride, the Grateful Dead station would be blaring from the speakers, preaching to us on our way to the supermarket. A human being can only stomach so much tie-dye. Our house has slowly become a shrine: multicolored dancing bears, skulls busted with a bolt of lightning, records I’ve bought my parents for Christmas, shirts they’ve bought for me. All in one house, a cross-contamination of generations connected by music. At one concert, my mother purchased the ugliest pair of faded, patched up yoga pants I’d ever seen. She wears them with pride because it connects her to the music. It makes me hate them a little less. “Sometimes we live in no particular way than our own.”  

Since leaving the makeshift museum that I called home for 18 years, I’ve officially outgrown my distaste. If anything, I’m a fellow fan. After 20 years of listening, I have learned there’s something about a Grateful Dead song that makes it easy to identify. Maybe it’s the rippling groove of the guitar or the rhythmic bumping of the bass drum, but somewhere in my soul I know it’s them. “It’s a rainbow full of sound.” The songs seem to blend into each other like a constant stream that will never be broken, even after 60 years. It becomes a sort of embedded connection, each note bleeding into the next, yet radically distinct. It’s completely chaotic. It’s incredibly peaceful. The lyrics became a playbook for my day-to-day activities, flowing out of the music and into my vocabulary. How can I help it? That’s what I’ve been taught. “If you’re confused, listen to the music play.” Since being away from home, I find myself dipping into this motto more and more. 

There’s overwhelming joy in independence, yet a pain I’ve never quite felt before. My mother always says that it takes a village. To do what, it doesn’t particularly matter. Just, anything. “Trouble with you is trouble with me.” There is no village quite like the Deadheads. I’ve come to recognize people are a part of the village from little things. The same icons that grace my home appear in theirs too. I always feel a strange sense of comfort in these situations. Seeing others who appreciate the music like my parents do makes me feel connected to them from miles away. It feels like being reunited with a relative, but the only blood that bonds us is music. Our family tree spans continents. “Every silver lining has a touch of gray.” 

I’m rounding the corner of the stage of life where my parents connected. Snowed in at St. Bonaventure University, they were young, college-aged, working on their essays and looking forward to the next boozy weekend. They were like me. My friends. The people I see on campus. “Strangers stopping strangers just to shake their hand.” Surrounded by opportunity, choice, and confusion. I find great comfort in the mental image of them decompressing to the same songs they still do, laying on a big quilted blanket in the quad with their friends, smoking a joint, and repeating the same phrases they say to me now that I’m in their shoes. Since I’ve sat and imagined them like this, I’ve never felt more connected to them in my entire life. 

It warps my mind that I’m no longer a child learning the words of the Lord. I’m a preacher. “Something new is waiting to be born.” My parents, at my age, saw the beauty in the Grateful Dead and decided to instill the messages they learned into me through a flow of music that plays in our heads like calming white noise. Some day, I’ll have children of my own. They may resent the music as I did at their age, but they’ll come back around.  I’ll teach them the words my parents taught me. They’ll hear the music and be transported to a car seat, a jam session ringing through the radio, their small feet kicking the seat in front of them. They’ll be the child, and me the parent, and I will be the one to teach them the things my parents taught me. It will be us, all of us, singing “Thank you for a real good time.”