[984] Dance Monkey Dance

I don’t know that it means anything, but it feels worth mentioning. Today, in two of my groups, two members expressed they were feeling suicidal. They gave full-throated explanations of either the extreme guilt they felt about the people who have been hurt, or their overwhelming depression and anxiety that was making it so they couldn’t get up or out of the house. Neither, mind you, is on the brink of suicide, but both were trending poorly and needed some redirection, questioning, and encouragement. Both looked focused and like something clicked when I told them to put everything on their mind on paper and we can parse through each thing until we get to smaller and smaller bits that feel manageable. Then, I went to see a band who has a famous song that goes, “I wish you would step back from that ledge my friend.”

Seeing so many concerts back-to-back or in relatively quick succession is provoking another series of thoughts. The Third Eye Blind frontman invited the crowd to turn to their neighbor and introduce themselves, and later to put your arm around the person next to you and sing together. One of the HAIM sisters from a few weeks ago said something akin to, “I want you to have the best night of your life!” Few bands not located deep in the metal genre aren’t going to encourage you to clap your hands as the band pulls back and riffs on what an amazing tour it’s been, how strange covid lockdown was, or the privilege of rolling with their supporting acts.

Both scenarios are a show.

In the first show, I play counselor. I use my genuine connection to a hopelessly embittered and resentful existence and certain enthrallment with death to hit a tone of voice, type of word choice, and borrow from my earned experience dealing with a lot of sad people to turn you from desperate chaos into littlest productive or uplifting bite. It’s unfortunate I don’t feel a certain way about that ability. I just know I’m playing my part. These people need healthcare, money, and individual therapists. I’m so much duct tape.

In the second show, there’s a degree of custom and lack of options. Instead of clapping, what? Squawk? I could see the likes of Steaksauce Mustache eliciting a raucous parrot chorus, but that’s not most bands’ vibe. I find encores generally bizarre. There’s the suggestion that, because we all know some or most of the words to a song that’s been playing on the radio for 20+ years, we’re all connected by something real and meaningful as opposed to merely familiar. I did not take a stranger in my arms, for several reasons before implicitly rejecting the premise.

Music is personal. I can sing along to hundreds of songs. I might have a few dozen that have conjured any real excitable or puncturing feeling. If I thought too hard about that, it might be less. But my experience of music isn’t why hundreds of bands I’ve never heard of in genres and languages I don’t listen to can still greatly succeed. Put out 300 songs over 20 or 30 years, keep touring and advertising, and buy off a radio station, you’re likely to get a plurality of people just working the playing field.

Your experience of your feelings is personal. This is why when you tell us you’re feeling suicidal, we don’t panic and try to get you committed, we run you through a few questionnaires. You have the language of “not feeling” or “thinking about suicide” in the manner that you have the songs on the radio or words you’ve been taught in how you relate to the world.

Why am I thinking about this? I’m not searching for anything more or less from my job or the concerts I attend than the money, the “I did that” points, and the ability to talk about new facets and patterns of my experience. My experience of music is not necessarily diminished the more I feel like a scene head or find the live renditions of favorite songs lacking. Nor am I less likely to try to keep someone alive and moving just because I can.

I think I’m attempting to illustrate once more how I’m after that “real” shit. I want to go to a concert where I’m feeling so good and the music is so moving that the crowd starts spontaneously hugging each other. Is that going to be your typical show? Are most people going to be sober? If you’re being honest, is even your favorite band pulling that off? (Okay, maybe Jacob Collier.) You know why I don’t feel like hugging my neighbor? I live in Indiana, and there’s a decent chance they’re a fascist. Because the venues I go to, for their thousands and thousands of people, aren’t a collection of diverse agreeable people singing in unison. It’s people with money, and free time, and sometimes an infuriating degree of ambivalence and entitlement with regard to those around them or what’s happening on stage. I’ve counted like 6 black people and 2 Indians in the 20 thousand I’ve encountered the last few months.

We’re not all in this together. The ones pretending to are sitting down and chatting away through any song released after 1999. Maybe this is why raves and DJs got so popular. You can all take molly and bounce around without even having to pretend to mouth the words to engage in the pageantry.

On the drive, I was watching The History of Comedy. I appreciated Dick Gregory talking about how he knew he was not going to turn the racist tide of America by telling jokes. They discussed Chappelle experiencing the wrong kind of laughter at one of his skits. So many comics discuss their pill regimen or addiction history and the ones who died too young. We’re unified in laughter! So goes that genre and familiar lore. Or, we gravitate towards what we already agree with like we listen to preferred genres of music. Not everyone is in on the jokes or appreciates the art form, but if you’re first to a niche, and you grind, if you don’t ascend to legend, you certainly fit like so many opening bands.

You’re not struggling through the music you like. They aren’t doing you a favor. Insofar that you share networked radio stations or shaky fond memories associated with an album or track is the extent of the connection. There is no shared sacrifice or journey together. You may cling to certain bands as the soundtrack for your whole life, but I’d start speculating something weirder was going on there. I just find myself thinking I’m not going to like the song or artist anymore or less the harder they sell or more completely explain what they think they’re doing or signifying.

You wouldn’t find me crass for claiming to save people’s lives every time they don’t die after saying they want to? For how much time we spend and words we dedicate to describing our experience as some kind of way, we work to ensure it actually is that way so little. You know how you get depressed no matter how much you affirm your love for your kids as the reason you’re still alive? You don’t work to love yourself, so onto entertaining the idea of death and gambling on what that example will set for them. Brilliant.

Listen to your music. Sing your song and tell your jokes. Feel your feelings, and if it helps you find or move on from them, you can write like me. You know what my blogs aren’t doing? Rallying us around thoughtful actionable coalitions working to discuss and move on the ideas nor discuss the themes. You know what you can’t be? The first to say anything you’re soaking in word for word from those around you. You know why we don’t know what really brings us together? We don’t accurately identify, let alone actually try to do the work to share and receive or mutually sacrifice in service to a greater end. It won’t be the bandleader, your counselor, nor Jesus who can do the work for you despite so much of our experience acting incredibly thirsty for so many mythological scapegoats. All you have to do is cut ties with all the lies that you’ve been living in.