Dear Pete Townshend

*An Imaginary letter I wrote to our Tree Audio client (we design and hand-build tube recording consoles), Pete Townshend of The Who, about My Generation.

Dear Pete Townshend,

As I made and soldered the cables for your Tree Audio recording equipment we just sent off to you, I thought about how I spent my early teen years listening to “My Generation” until I wore down the grooves in my album, while sulking, thinking about how misunderstood I was, how The Who really understood me and my generation, all of us raised in the shadow of the Flower Children with our own issues. Unlike the Woodstock crowd, the media didn’t care much about what my peers and I did or what we thought, didn’t follow our every movement, or put down our every waking moment in documentary film–only stopped to warn us that the free love-era had come to a scary halt with AIDS.

You got me, I thought. Then I realized The Who song was written for YOUR generation, my parents’ generation.

Whatever.

My generation, your generation, my kid’s generation… I think we can all relate to being misunderstood. So thanks for getting my anger. Every time you smashed your guitar, I knew you felt what I felt. Or I liked to think so.

Thanks,

Michele,
Your Tree Audio cable maker