THE parents of a teenager who opines on Bertolt Brecht and Brutalist buildings wish he would drink cider and vomit at bus stops like his peers.
Martin and Sue Cook hoped their 15-year-old son Julian, who refuses to be referred to as ‘Jules’, was only going through a phase when he began blasting Shostakovich’s 7th through his speakers while ostentatiously flicking through books about Kandinsky.
Sue said: “We were prepared for vaping. We weren’t prepared for him wearing a black – sorry, charcoal – turtleneck while lecturing us on power structures in colonialist literature.
“When we worried about him mixing with the wrong crowd, we didn’t think it would be the attendees at a seminar on Composing Sonic Futures at the Barbican. We blame ourselves for calling him Julian.
“He downs a double espresso before school. He calls football ‘bread and circuses to pacify the proletariat’. He’s 15. He should be unconscious in a hedge, not telling the neighbours that their hedge is an outdated expression of English class anxiety.
“He scoffed at a man wearing Stone Island on the bus for ‘performing masculinity through consumer branding’ which is risky when he’s built like a bookmark.
“I was cleaning his room when I felt something under the mattress. It was Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation. Annotated. Colour-coded tabs. I sat on the bed and wept. You hear about this stuff as a parent, but never think it’ll happen to you.”
Jules said: “Mum and Dad have suggested a lads’ holiday with my friends. A Bauhaus walking tour in Berlin beckons.”
