A Sense of Community

September 10, 2021

As I was thinking about my first blog post after several weeks off, I was wrestling with what to write about.  I do have plenty of movie ideas in the tank (including a jumbo Fall movie preview starting next week), but I felt like I wanted to do something different this week.  I wouldn’t say I had “writer’s block”, but just in case I did, I thought I’d watch a movie about a struggling author to see if I could get any inspiration.  Naturally, I turned to The Shining, which I found pretty enlightening and gave me some great ideas – both for my writing and some general life lessons.  Fortunately, my wife doesn’t get that joke or she might be horrified.  No, I didn’t watch that film for writing inspiration – I just wanted to rewatch it for fun as I have been making my way through the brilliant filmography of Stanley Kubrick, and it’s coming up on Halloween, so I had an itch for a horror movie.

In reality, as I thought about this post, I kept coming back to the word “community.”  The word itself can take on many meanings – family, friends, workplaces, sports teams, clubs, organizations, neighborhoods, towns, states, and even a country.  As much as we like to think we are all part of a community, unfortunately we’ve seen a dramatic change in our country’s sense of community and caring over the last twenty years. 

There are so many causes you can point to – the 2008 financial crisis and resulting massive expansion in the wealth gap, the growth of technology which allows anyone with a cellphone to fall deeper and deeper into the isolation of their own world, an explosion in social media that allows people to become anonymous keyboard warriors able to spew hatred and misinformation without any ramifications, a divisive political environment led by elected officials who (mostly) have forgotten that their job is to put their constituents ahead of their career ambitions, and lastly, a worldwide pandemic that has driven a massive wedge into the country, despite the potential for us to rally around a common cause. 

Whew.  That’s a lot and I’m sure there are other considerations I didn’t mention.  Are we doomed to get progressively worse?  Is there hope that we can get back to a sense of community and caring?  As someone who can be guilty of the worst kind of cynicism (especially under periods of great stress), I still find myself hoping that things can get better.  I thought a lot about this concept as I reflected back on the most trying time in most of our lives, which occurred twenty years ago this weekend.

A Day of Remembrance

My brain works strangely.  I have an uncanny memory for dates and little details from decades ago, but don’t always remember a conversation from 15 minutes ago.  My wife is either vigorously nodding or cursing right now.  So, when I hear a song from Metallica’s Black Album at the gym, and I think to myself, “Yup, that was 1991…Holy crap, that was 30 years ago!”, that’s just how my brain works.  Speaking of which, the music of that year will be making an appearance in a future post thanks to my strange-working brain and a recent interaction with a couple of high-school friends on Facebook.  So, while I have a knack of remembering all sorts of anniversaries, the last several weeks have reminded us that there is a very important one this weekend. 

Normally when a big anniversary comes up for something that I love (like a movie, an album, or even a sports event), I’ll find a way to re-experience that event through a relevant article, video, or even a rewatch / relisten.  This weekend, despite all of the media opportunities thrown our way leading up to the anniversary, I don’t have any interest in revisiting the events of September 11^th.  Last year, I read a wonderful book, The Only Plane in the Sky by Garrett Graff, which is the definitive oral history about that day, and tells you everything you need to know and appreciate about the people who experienced the events firsthand.  About a month ago, I signed up for the Tribeca Film Festival, which offered a number of interesting options virtually.  One of those films was 9/11: One Day in America.  I mistakenly thought it was just a two-hour documentary, but later realized it was only the first part of a series that is now available on the National Geographic channel.  The documentary was well made, covering the initial hours of that fateful day, in a powerful and emotional way.  But the pain and heartache of those memories are just too much for me to watch the rest of the series.  I can’t judge what someone else wants to watch, but to me, it felt like I was intruding on someone else’s pain and suffering, in a way that just wasn’t healthy.  But there was something else I was reminded of while I watched that film.

As the events of September 11^th unfolded, there seemed to be this gravitational pull that brought us all together.  No matter where you were from, what your profession was, who or what you believed in religiously, politically, or hell, even what sports team you cheered for – we were all in it together.  Our country had been attacked.  Thousands of lives had been lost and many more had been changed forever.  Never mind the retribution that some people felt needed to happen (and you can spend a lot of time dissecting what went wrong in the twenty years since then), we needed to heal as a nationwide community. 

Even if you weren’t personally impacted, it felt like we all were affected because our belief in what we felt was normal had been shaken to its core.  Remember those first few days when there were literally no planes in the sky?  Remember asking ourselves how we would ever feel safe again on a plane?  On a subway?  At a crowded stadium?  It scared the shit out of us, and for a long period of time, we seemed to come together as a country, rallying around a belief that we were there for each other.  I’ve been thinking a lot about those days recently.  And maybe after twenty years, I’ve romanticized the feelings of coming together and tuned out the ugliness that we saw, including racism towards individuals in this country who looked differently than some of us.  Regardless, those moments are ones that have been on my mind.

Still in the Woods

OK, so you can blame me.  It’s my fault – I’m the one who jinxed it.  About three months ago, I wrote about our pathway back to “normal” and how it felt good to be on that path.  Well, it seems like we’ve still got some pandemic problems in this country and we are decidedly not out of the woods yet.  What seemed like the key to normalcy in the way of an extremely effective vaccine has been derailed by so many problems.  Distribution roadblocks that (for the most part) appear to have subsided.  Children under the age of 12 not yet approved for receiving the vaccine due to delays in the final study results.  A serious variant that has seemed to develop a knack for decreasing the infection protection of the vaccines, although not significantly impacting the protection the vaccines were intended for (preventing serious illness).  But most importantly, we’ve been derailed by an enormous number of individuals across the country who have decided that they do not need the vaccine or (more dangerously) have believed the misinformation on the internet and social media that they would be better off taking their chances than getting a vaccine that would protect them.

Of all of the things that I thought about over the last eighteen months, I have to admit, I didn’t see this one coming.  When shit got real last March and everyone started working from home, I immediately thought that the commercial real estate market was doomed (and I still believe there is a bubble coming.  P.S. – that’s a personal opinion, not professional investment advice).  When I saw how effective South Korea was in managing their case count, I immediately realized that their strategy of detailed contact tracing would never work in this country.  So, I did see a few things coming.  But not this.  Even when I saw glimmers of hope in the early days when people seemed more courteous in stores and even on the roads, I naively thought we would come together.  Not so much anymore. 

Even as I saw people resisting what their government told them they should do for their own protective health (like wear a mask in a grocery store.  It’s not like they were being drafted to fight a war overseas), I somehow never thought people would refuse to gladly take a life-saving measure to protect themselves and their community.  If you had said back in early 2020, “We’ll have a vaccine in a year that’s safe and highly effective,” I would have thought everyone would have raised their hands emphatically.  Nope – not even close.  But I guess that’s the problem – there’s been a loss of community, and it has dramatically impacted our ability to get back to some sense of normalcy with the tool that is readily available to anyone who wants it. 

I can only hope that we can inch our way forward in a positive way.  One inch at a time can add up to a lot of progress when millions of people can move in the right direction.  And quite simply – we have to do it.  For the health care workers, teachers, students, and all the people who are still dealing with the risks and impacts of many people who have either taken no action or harmful action (looking your way, Florida), we need to do better as a society.  As I heard someone on a podcast put it so elegantly, “The thing about public health is that the PUBLIC has to participate to make it work.”  So, on that front, it feels like things have been slipping away, but I’m not going to lose hope.  It turns out, I had to go North to find some.

Back to My Happy Place

Who would have thought that one of my happiest moments of 2021 would take place in Gilford, New Hampshire?  On August 24^th, after more than two years – 773 days to be exact – I was finally at my happy place again – at a live show for Dave Matthews Band, my favorite artist.  With a number of music acts canceling their tours this year amidst a still high level of uncertainty, DMB decided to announce their tour dates and get back on the road.  Granted, when they announced their intentions in April, it seemed pretty dicey if they could pull it off.  They started their tour in late July and everything seemed fine at the start.  A few weeks in, they announced that going forward you would need to show either proof of vaccination or a negative test to get into the venue.  As the data started to turn sideways in early August, I welcomed this approach for the shows we were planning to attend.  After all, if we were in a large crowd of people who were at low risk because of vaccination or a negative test, hadn’t we done as much as we could to mitigate the risk and still enjoy something outside of our houses?  It’s always been about risk calculus.  Was the risk lower than it was a year ago?  Absolutely.  Was it zero?  Of course not, but what in our lives has zero risk?  My son and I decided to go forth and attend the shows and we were so glad that we did.  A meme I saw several months ago put it perfectly: “Vaccines are a gateway drug to concerts.”  Let’s go……

Now I have attended dozens of concerts over the last thirty (plus) years and have witnessed countless “cool” moments.  Maybe it’s the precarious state of mind that we have all been in the last eighteen months, or maybe it’s just because some music moments can hit me harder than others, but there were a few times during the first night when I had feelings of emotion come over me being back at a major concert.  The buzz in the crowd before the band came onstage, the insane fact that the two people sitting in front of us were friends from college that I had not seen in many, many years, the fact that my son and I could be together, back in our happy place.  All of these things probably contributed to my feelings.  One moment, though, resonated the most.  A few songs into their set, the band started playing Dancing Nancies, one of their oldest numbers, and one of my all-time favorites.  The song builds and builds throughout the verses, until an exploding chorus at the end when Dave (and the crowd, at the top of their lungs) scream “Sing and dance, la la la hey, la la la hey”.  Goosebumps moment for sure.  Oh, and when they busted out (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction by The Rolling Stones, in tribute to Charlie Watts, who died earlier that day, that was pretty cool too.

I’ve written hundreds (or maybe thousands) of words about why I love this band and those two nights in New Hampshire reiterated why their music means so much to me – they create a sense of community with their fans, carefully crafting a setlist of songs to set the right tone and bring a good time to the audience.  Never was this more on display than this past weekend in upstate Washington, if you’ll indulge me one more fanboy story.

An Alternative Format

Every Labor Day weekend, DMB plays three nights at The Gorge, an amphitheater on the banks of the Columbia River, a few hours outside Seattle.  I’ve never been there, but the pictures I’ve seen are beautiful.  Seeing DMB at the Gorge over Labor Day weekend is the ultimate bucket list trip for a long-time fan of the band.  Most people stay at the enormous campground and go to all three shows, since the band will play over 60 songs during the weekend, without any repeats.  That’s because they know most of their fans will go to all the shows, so why give them the same song twice?  Well, on Friday afternoon, the band issued a statement that they had a COVID outbreak in their organization and they would be playing that weekend’s shows in an “alternative format.”  No one online knew what the hell that meant.  In hindsight, the band probably didn’t know either.  But that night’s show was being simulcast on Sirius, so we would all find out together.

It turns out, their drummer and bassist both tested positive and couldn’t play all weekend.  These were two of the three founding members still in the band (you don’t have to be a fan of the band to guess the third).  Everyone in the band and crew has been vaccinated, but they have protocols in place, and they are following them, regardless of who tests positive.  If any other band lost their rhythm section a few hours before three straight nights on stage, they probably would have issued an apology and canceled the weekend.  But this band is different.  They did what they do best – they improvised.  Dave played some solo songs, he played some acoustic songs with his fellow guitarist, Tim Reynolds.  They brought out the horns section and keyboardist and played stripped down versions of songs without bass and drums.  They had their keyboardist play drums on a few songs (which is insane, when you think about it).  They had guest musicians join them on some songs.  They played a lot of original songs, and some cover songs.  And throughout a three night high wire act (with no repeats, of course), they delivered for their fans. 

Now, obviously I wasn’t there.  But, I know what it’s like to see your favorite band bring all of their energy to entertain their dedicated fans.  I know what it’s like to feel that energy immerse itself into a crowd of thousands of people singing, dancing, enjoying life together, and forgetting about the world’s problems for a few hours.  And I’ve listened to recordings of these shows and read some reviews, and it’s clear that (despite a few understandable hiccups here and there), the result was magnificent.  I still find it incredible that they even went on stage.  Yes, I’m sure there were financial considerations if they didn’t, and they could have rescheduled to a future date (or even next year).  But they also knew that thousands of their fans had already traveled across the country to the most special place to see their favorite band.  They said, “Yeah, this sucks, but let’s not let it ruin everything.”  They did what we could all be doing everyday – keep things in perspective, make the best of a bad situation, look out for each other, and in the simplest of terms – contribute to a caring community.

Thanks for reading.  See you next week.