The Anxiety of Influence: My Elders

from a Prompt

Aug 29, 2024

How does one begin to talk about one’s elders?

In a previous piece, I touched briefly on some aspects of my family history in order to introduce a long discussion about ongoing world tensions. That seemed easier than this. How does one quantify the ubiquity of one’s elders?

I have known many people who do not have fair relations with their family. I have met people who are not close to their siblings. I understand them but I do not see them. I struggle to imagine it. I am close1 to my family. Rather than try for some narrative that would encapsulate my prompt2, I have instead riffed here and conjured anecdotes and considerations for the topic.

Let’s see what spells we’ve cast:

When I was ten years old, my father took me to the beach one quiet breezy afternoon and read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to me. As it happened, we had just come upon the chapter that takes place near a beach. The ocean was large and lovely, and the grassy dunes shimmered under the windy sun. A beloved character died. Waves crashed. We went home.

My upbringing affirmed education. My parents managed to foster in me that curiosity that is a longing to know the world intimately. I read well and often learned quick. There was pressure, but always patience, when I was young. Now I am older and being older with elders is a lot different than being younger with elders. I am an elder now. When I was young, I did not always wish to be old. Sometimes, I wished for the privileges of my elders. Obviously, I failed to understand the burden of their responsibilities, and how life is to one who has experienced more of it. Curiosity for the world compels one to engage wholeheartedly with one’s time. My time is a different one than my theirs. It is not that their time has passed; rather, their time is much upon them. We merely occupy different worlds composed of the same matter. Something there is in the years and the culture that divides us.

My father gave me Art Spiegelman’s Maus when I was ten as well. This was part of my Holocaust education. I recall the first time I read that novel and the first time I saw some of those images. It was remarkable to me—indelible. My father had a few comics when I was younger. He kept them in a small cardboard box. These were generally hidden from me due to their gothic nature. These were Batman: Red Rain, Judgment on Gotham, The Killing Joke, etc. Classic tales from the Caped Crusader’s darkest era. I loved them when I was allowed to read them. It was much better than the round animations on children’s networks. Comics had might. They were unbridled visual splendour. Important things happened in them. Tragedy, comedy, and glory. They did not try to teach, they were teachings. Later, novels held the same mystic quality. These stories were not just entertainment, but invocations: Magic I could not understand but affected me deeply. I wanted to understand.

My grandmother kept pace with my reading when I was younger. She asked me to leave the books that I finished on her bedside table. She would then take them up and read them and discuss them with me. She did this until she could not keep up with the quantity of material I left for her. Now, she tells me what she has read and so I discuss her material with her. I do not keep up so well as she did in the early days of our practice, but I am grateful for the effort on both sides. It is good for a reader to have a community. My grandmother has fostered my appreciation for quality as best she can, despite her misgivings about poetry and some fantastical authors she finds unsavoury. She and my father read Harry Potter to me when I was young, as the books were published. These are canon memories: captivating in how formative they are. I am grateful to possess these memories. I recall finishing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows together, my father reading the final chapters to all of us as we crowded around my bed and listened to him read the conclusion of that great modern saga3. It seemed, in hindsight, to mark the beginning of the end of my early childhood.

My mother homeschooled us. What an effort! She tried to have us write book reports. The audacity! I don’t need to report to anyone on books. I am books. I convinced her and my father that reports were unnecessary. If they wanted my opinion, they could ask for it. Much later, my university friends wondered how I could have discussions with them about the themes of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It was simple: I never had to write a book report; I just read the damn books. All education is self-education. Without my mother’s guidance in teaching us, I never would have learned that I am the best teacher I have. That sometimes, I do know best.

My mother homeschooled us, but before that I spent a few years in the public system. While there, I had two excellent teachers, Rico and Oscher. First and third grade, respectively. Rico used to commend me: “You’re smaht, Will, very smaht,” while giving me the firmest handshake I have ever encountered. Later, he won the Crystal Apple Aware for excellence in teaching. Oscher was engaged and clever. She would tease me and challenge me in ways I hadn’t encountered before. She was funny and sincere and she cared for her students. Together, the two fostered a deep passion for learning. I consider them both often, though I have not spoken to either since I was a child.

For a while, I worked at a dairy farm. The farmer who hired me was an intelligent and thoughtful man. He knew I wrote, and that I wrote a fair bit of poetry. He would occasionally tease me about this, telling some visitors that it was his evening pastime to sit with a book of Will Edgcomb’s finest work and let them lull him to sleep. Farmers generally poked fun at my writing habit, some informing me that I would make no money from writing (which is remarkable to hear coming from a farmer). At the dairy farm, my boss would occasionally ask me questions about literature and suggest authors to me. He never teased me about my aspirations. He is an intelligent and thoughtful man. Later, he bought me a collection of Milton Acorn’s poetry, introducing me to both The People’s Poet and to socialism. Well done, Mr. Affleck.

There is a wealth of prestige in my family on both sides, but this prestige takes wildly different avenues. My family history is diverse and traumatized. There was violence, persecution, and abuse. My lineage is marked by all the wonders and terrors of humanity. If it were not for such a diverse background, I may not have the curiosity and patience that I have for others. Though my aplomb has occasionally degraded into apathy, I maintain a passing romance for all my fellow humans. My ancestors taught me this. We are all great and terrible. Let blood speak and you will know there is as much in you as in the next. Some of us were racists, some activists, some doctors, some soldiers, some bourgeoisie, some peasants, some warmongers, some refugees. There’s never been hope in this world; just things, happening. Sometimes those things resemble hope. I think about my ancestors a lot. I think about the stories passed down to me, and I think about the stories that were taken from me.

My parents are both rather good storytellers but diverge wildly in their storytelling style. My father tells a story like a sermon: he has everyone’s attention and rarely falters. My mother tells a story like a song: she meanders between odd rhythms but weaves a tapestry from the melody. They both have a lot to tell but only my siblings and I have heard so much of it. My favourite story my mother tells is horrifying and I won’t detail it here, but it involves a window exploding. It’s a very exciting story. My favourite story my father tells is whichever one he lights up on next. My father’s anecdotes rollick and when he decides to be anecdotal, he typically has others rollicking as well. We have heard many of their stories many times, and so they are not always so amusing to us anymore. Still, I do not forget that they are both good at crafting a tale. They both did a lot of writing when they were younger, and they both have lived remarkable lives.

What is the anxiety of influence? My parents had me when they were nineteen, and my sister less than two years later, my brother in November 2001, my second sister a bit more than two years after, and my youngest brother in the early summer of 2006. Then, they moved us all to Canada, to an Island, when they were about the same age I am while writing this. What have I done in this time with which they had lived so much? I have suffered, mainly. But I am not my parents. I transmute my suffering into patience and philosophy. They transmuted theirs into my siblings and me, and immigration, and land. Some magicians have wildly different mediums. I will never live up to the contribution my parents have given the species. Even if I have children, I will not have five. My parents are brilliant humans. I am also a brilliant human, like most of the humans I’ve known.

What, then, is the anxiety of influence? Honouring those who came before, even when they have failed you.

None are immune to folly. I am presently going through a period of growth where I must recognize my folly. I am kind enough to myself that I recognize that I was doing my best, even if my best was not nearly good enough for me or for the betterment of those around me. It was an unfortunate journey and a strange lesson in personhood. My elders have experienced this. I have seen it in them. This is why I struggle to take them seriously as an adult when they insist on attempting to know better than I. It is the duality of having elders and becoming one: sometimes we just don’t know how to behave ourselves. There’s a bit of the child in all of us, regardless of our status. Yet, the folly in my elders has always been a lesson for me to watch myself. Doubt is a useful tool, and it is the lack of doubt my elders have for their false perceptions that gives me the space to hold doubt for mine. There is grace in elders who teach us how not to be, though their lessons on the matter are often painful and disorienting. The surety of elders is their most caustic rite, demeaning when it is so bloated with certainty. Fortunately, they’re only human, and so it is easy for me to forgive them their own folly. Easier than it is to forgive my own, in many cases.

We collectively live much longer than we once did. The status of the elder changes. There are more now than ever had been. The elder is not the pillar of the community, though they still hold prestige. There is a traditional aspect to their role. We say, respect your elders, but this has little meaning in the Internet Age. I say, respect your elders when your elders behave respectably. I have to say that for my own sanity. Sometimes, elders are not respectable people. I am fortunate to have elders who are broadly respectable as long as they mind their own. I have no masters, and so I have no romance for my elders. My perception of them is not blinded by their prestige or by the traditional respect I have been expected to hold for them. They are not my teachers any more than I am theirs now. Age means less the longer we live, and so what is wise to the elder is often traumatic data from a different time than my own. Sometimes, I feel sorrow for their upbringing in the past century. My peers don’t seem to have as much space for this consideration: the past century has been a wild affair. Our elders are traumatized, and they don’t have a firm grasp of the Otherworld, the Internet. Their understanding of it is quite different than that of the younger folk, because they have not been raised with the Otherworld omnipresent. They’re analog old folk trying to aid the digital youth. Sometimes, it seems hopeless. Their wisdom-saves4 are not that effective against the magic of the Online Realm. This is to say nothing of the traumas of capitalism, globalism, or ‘terrorism.’ They are almost too great to consider. Our elders are only human, like we. It is difficult to be human sometimes.

My father is not tech-savvy. I would not characterize him this way. However, he has influenced me through his tech use from an early age. It was my father who first showed me The White Stripe’s “Seven Nation Army” on YouTube when I was younger and who showed me how to burn a CD and how to use Microsoft Word5. My mother is much better with tech. She helped me with my first e-mail account, with social media, and now talks about LLMs with me. She does not understand the Internet the way I do, and my father even less so, but together they had given me an invaluable foundation for navigating the Otherworld. I have never been uncomfortable online. Even the one time I have encountered a virus, I destroyed it. I am a confident and responsible internet user. Thank you, parents, for trusting me to navigate the Otherworld on my own and along my own development. And thank you, me, for abstaining from places online that would have traumatized me.

When I was nineteen, I endured a rough break-up that was entirely my fault6. During this time, I ended up back in California for the first time in eight years and visited family. This included attending a Twenty-One Pilots concert7 with my older cousin. He asked me about the breakup and my feelings about it. After some discussion, he gave me advice: “Feel this.”

I am a slow chess player8. Sometimes, ‘feeling this’ is an awful long process. Nonetheless, it is invaluable advice. I consider it often: Am I feeling this? The answer is typically yes, but there are many layers to feeling, some unseen or inaccessible. Thus, it is a deep mantra: Feel this. When we meditate: Feel this. When we are sad: Feel this. When we are happy: Feel this. Then, we try and let it go9. Thank you, cos.

As I write this, I realize that it could be quite long and biographical, and that I have strayed from the prompt. How have my parental figures inspired my storytelling? My father is a brilliant writer. When I read his writing, it inspires me to practice the craft, to become better. My mother is a brilliant problem-solver. When I approach difficulty, I know it is through her lessons that I am working to overcome strife. My grandmother is a brilliant tactician. When I find my work is unreasonable, I channel her critical eye to dissect what is faulty and needs adjustment. My grandfather was a brilliant collector. When I am working, I assemble a mass of inspirations and hoard them for consideration like he hoarded his music. My elders are not inspirational alone, though. As I said, I have no masters, no mentors, and perhaps this has given me the freedom to let go of my romantic idealism for my elders. More than anything, what has inspired me about them is the crushing recognition of their humanity. Their folly has inspired me to hold patience for my own. Life is not short, but the longest thing any of us will experience. It is humbling to have been raised by elders and to recognize that there is no moment when you are finished learning or growing up. You are always in a state of becoming the next thing. Tomorrow never knows. The future is an impossible seed.

I am an elder. Not like my parents or my grandparents or like your mentor, Sweet Reader, if you have one. I am an elder like the Wolf is an elder of the forest. I am part of an ecosystem, and I play a crucial role in that system. My mistakes are held to a high standard. My success benefits everyone. I have no idea what I am doing, but I am hungry. I keep pace with the lowest and am the soul of the night. I am why you love fire and song and stories. I am the useless elder, the one who contains the most inspiration. I meditate on the anxiety of influence and seek the middle way.
I am the translator of the untranslatable. Like all elders, I am just an animal.
May nature have mercy on me.

the Distended Orthonym

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