music: Keith Jarrett- Live at the Blue Note d.5
This has been a long week for me as far as school goes: 3 papers, the regular internship, and more reading than could be finished. So it goes. But the hard work during the weekend and the front end of the week allowed me a free Thursday evening. I was to spend it in bar-style revelry with the townies as the Red Sox and Yankees were playing for the pennant, but I had bigger plans. Spearhead was in town, and I had tickets.
Timing couldn’t have been better for Spearhead to roll through. Work was getting that much harder, my internship was beginning to grind on me, and the anonymity and unfriendliness of the city was rubbing off on me in very bad ways. I was beginning to settle into the social and mental hibernation of Boston in the colder months: don’t smile at anyone, don’t talk to anyone, act as if you don’t care and have more important things to do. I get lost in my own thoughts enough as it is as I’m moving around this city. But Spearhead, as they do time and time again, renewed my faith in other people, in society, in myself and the work I’m doing. It’s more a spiritual revival posing as a concert than anything else. It’s as close to a non-demoninatinal place of worship and celebration of life and the sanctity of humanity as one can get in our postmodern urban experience. Truly a beacon of light.
Michael Franti himself said it at Berkfest 2002: “Be a light. Live as you think others should.” Truth. It’s hard to do. It’s hard to maintain that sort of existence in this day and age. It’s hard to hold to your noblest of ideals and live them out, because often it feels like you are operating solo in a sea of adversity. That a concert can reinforce all which is good in everyone in attendance is a powerful thing and nothing to be laughed at or taken for granted.
The Spearhead show went late, finally emptying out around 12:15. It was just about this time that the Yankees pulled off an 11th inning victory over the Red Sox in the ALCS. This year’s pennant run in Boston was as close as they’ve come to reversing The Curse of the Bambino since Buckner did his imitation of a croquet wicket back in the fall of 1986. Angry drunk Sox fans were emptying out of the bars at pretty much the same moment that Spearhead fans were floating out of the theater. We, of course, all aglow from a very affirming experience. Everyone else: drunk, pissed off, almost violent. It was some contrast.
Things never got really ugly, although I heard sirens blaring all night. I managed to bike home without incident (although I took my “GO SOX!” flag off my bike) and enjoy the denoument of the evening. This morning, things were pretty much back to normal. The citywide buzz that came from having the Sox in the playoffs was immediately gone; people were back to their grumbly old selves. Really amazing how something like baseball can make a difference in the morale of a city. I can’t help but think that things woudl have been worse if it weren’t for the overpowering force of positivity in Spearhead last night. In some cosmic algebra, the angry, violent Sox fans and the all-too idealistic Spearhead fans cancelled each other out last night and the net result was an indignant Boston population tending towards slightly unfriendly, preparing for the winter. Pretty much as things are normally.
I grew up rooting for the Red Sox, I think because my parents lived in Boston for a while and rooted for them. I remember watching the ‘86 series with Dad and being very close to tears at the end of game 6. I really do share the familiar pain that the city felt last night, but after Spearhead, it just didn’t get to me. Such is the way of things when you side with the underdog. The entity with whom we affiliate is the team that can’t seem to beat the Yankees, the band that flies in the face of the corporate-controlled music industry, he who has everything to prove, everything to gain, and nothing to lose.
But I think that there is something that the two experiences have in common, something that I find in myself more often than not. In each case, the underdog is celebrated. To follow the thread, it’s a lot like teaching urban minority youth, working with mentally retarded and autistic adults, volunteering at a community radio station. The Sox let us down, sure, but Spearhead reminds us all that there is joy in the struggle. And that, to me, does more than reverses the curse; it negates curses entirely.
Posted by davidtaus at October 18, 2003 12:41 AM