Life for teens these days is a world apart from anyone over 30. Without being too specific about my own age, let's just say I hail from the Age of Aquarius. The technology teens have now, which they randomly whip out between classes or conversations or at any lull in the action, would be like magic to those of us who remember the 1968 Democractic Convention. Still, even with all the sophistication and superficial connection that Ipods, Iphones, IMs, and myspace make possible, teens today have the same social, emotional struggles as any in history and twice the pressure.

Teens are heavy on my mind as I write this because I just completed a week-long stint running groups at a bereavement camp for kids between 12-19, created by a not-for-profit organization called Time For Teens. There is a sense of dislocation that comes with the kinds of losses every one of these kids is going through, which can significantly inhibit their openness to people who are just passing through. But even though we began the week as strangers, a few days later - in a perfect reflection of the camp's theme - we found it hard to say good-bye.

Grieving teens bring a unique combination of an almost unstoppable desire to act on their feelings and a sense of powerlessness over what has happened to them, a mix that can easily turn their energy to seeking excitement and escape through any number of dangerous forms of acting out. Because of that struggle, I feel real empathy for adolescents, and I feel tremendous love for the kids who attended the camp. It may seem a long time ago that I was an adolescent myself - and some of my friends might say I still am in some ways - but I easily recall the tensions, the energy drain of hiding one's interior life in so many social situations, the craving of situations where I could drop the posturing and pretenses. That is why I look back on this camp with such a sense of transcendence. Because we were able to create a space in which these kids could be themselves and they entered into it fully. They came together, everyone's broken heart on their sleeve, caring for each other in astonishing and awe-inspiring displays of openness.

As a trainer, I am once again reminded how well experiential work, well, works. Experiential methods encourage playfulnesss that can easily deepen into more substantive self-expression, and supplies the means to share one's inner life in imaginative ways that are psychologically safe but creatively interesting. Teens living with losses as deep and searing as our campers are a wonderful test for the effectiveness of these methods, because it is very clear where they stand on what we are asking them to do. Either the kids respond and use the tools we offer them, or they simply turn off.

Using a range of warm-ups from simple improvisational games that activate creative energy and heighten a group's connection to the present moment, to more dramatic techniques like Transformational Breathing and Journaling, we were able to garner the creative and spiritual forces of everyone in the room to do tough, serious, therapeutic work. We used imaginative role-playing to bring lost loved ones into the room. The kids faced the emptiness their loss had left inside them but they did not face it alone. These kids took many leaps of faith, and through sharing their secret troubles and buried trauma we were able to weave a net of connection and support and positive energy.

  I want to describe the gift I take from this experience. It is difficult to put into words, but a song from back in my day gives an idea. "What the world needs now, is love, sweet love," the song says. That safety net the teens knit together is for them and not for me, but I know that when the world and my own losses get to me, when next I feel weary and wounded, I will think of it and feel uplifted.

"One of the basic things about a string is that it can vibrate in many different shapes or forms, which gives music its beauty." Edward Witten

My Dad bought a Sears and Roebuck folk guitar with his first paycheck, when he was 14 years old. Those were times when boys became men much earlier than they do now. If the family needed money, boys dropped out of school and went to work, growing up quickly, giving up dreams. This boy's family was fragmented by then, his mother dead by the time he was 7, his father remarried and moved in with the new wife, leaving an older, married sister to look after the younger boys. Born in 1913, he grew up with the automobile industry, when the momentum of new technology set in motion the cultural transformation that continues today at ever-increasing speed. A brilliant mechanic who knew cars the way Yo-Yo Ma knows his way around the cello, my Dad's aspirations to higher learning took a back seat to practical needs. There was money to be made building roads, and out of that money my father got himself a friend for life.

What's nice about a guitar is its mobility. It's ready when you are, for the most part. It was an ideal friend for a boy on his own too soon, in the company of men. A boy with a strong, vibrant baritone, a natural ear and a love of performing. My Dad's massive hands had a delicate touch on the narrow neck of that guitar and it was clear they had a unique relationship. An understanding, a history. His repertoire of cowboy and folk songs spoke of beautiful girls pure of heart, the open sky at night, love, loneliness, the way things come and go in life, crazy characters in the old west, big dreams, hardship that grinds hope into dust. When he sang these songs for us, we had a glimpse of his life before we were born. Even more so, and what I was able to see only as an adult looking back, he revealed his talent as a singer and story-teller.

Music moves. It doesn't wait while you struggle to find the fret, or place your fingers just so. You can get the formation of a chord just right, but in a few seconds have to get another one with the same precision. To play guitar well there has to be an effortless  transition from chord to chord, something that comes only through muscle-memory developed through repetition and discipline. Once the chords are in your hands, you can start to make music.

A mechanic's hands take quite a beating in the course of a day. My Dad's fingers would swell from reactions to the chemicals he worked with, his skin blackened from constant exposure to grease and oil. If a machine had moving parts, he could figure out how it worked, and if it was broken, he could fix it. He labored in punishing heat to repair vehicles he could not afford to own. He had the respect of countless people higher on the socioeconomic food chain than he, which was to him, in many ways a defeat. An intellectually gifted, immensely creative man with an elementary-school education, eight kids and a mortgaged farm, he had dreamed of being a surgeon but spent his life restoring machines and fighting frustration over all the social forces beyond his control.

   I learned to play my Dad's guitar, partly to connect with him, also because it was cool. Using a book with vivid pictures of hands fingering basic chords I quickly learned to sing and play just about any song using 4 chords in the key of G major. Musically, it was a little redundant, but good enough to supply my fantasy of performing "Both Sides Now" for screaming millions in my backyard.  The chords sounded all right once my fingers were in position, but learning to move from one to another was not going well. It required a great deal of pressure on the neck to get these chords to sound remotely in tune.