On the need to gather en masse

So Julie’s younger brother David has been taking care of her mom, now in her 90’s, for the past couple of years or so. As anyone who has taken care of an elderly parent out there knows, this can be painful, exhausting, seemingly endless work. We are forever grateful for David.

Rush

Julie recently decided that David needed a break, and a little time to enjoy himself. She invited him to Chicago, where his lifelong favorite band Rush was playing. If you came of age in the 80’s or 90’s or so, Rush was part of the FM radio shuffle for years. We bought tickets for Julie, David and I to attend.

Not to yuck anyone’s yum, but I am not a Rush guy. I don’t get Rush, and/or I never bothered trying. After Julie bought the tickets, I rifled through my memory to determine which, if any, Rush songs I know. I realize I don’t know any at all. I kind of recall six words from a Rush song, but I think I may have them in the wrong order or incorrect altogether:

“Today’s Tom Sawyer, mean, mean pride? Mean, mean guide? Guy?”

None of them seem right, do they? And I’m not gonna Google it. I don’t really care that much.

Anyway, the night of the show arrives, and we filter in to United Center, a pretty massive arena on Chicago’s West Side. I quickly realize that, though I have never been a Rush guy myself, there are a shit ton of Rush guys. This was the last of a four-night stint in that arena, and the place was packed.

The audience was, by-and-large, a motley, aging group. A lot of replaced hips and knees navigating stairs and tight rows of seats. During the concert, a guy in front of me Googled, “How am I funding my pension?”

During. The. Concert.

For those about to rock, this was a strikingly uncool search. It prepared me well for the next, severely uncool few hours.

So the band took the stage, and though I didn’t know a single song front-to-back, the show was, dare I say, pretty damn impressive. Geddy Lee, the 73-year-old front man and multi-instrumentalist, carries perhaps the most well-preserved voice in rock ‘n’ roll. The lead guitarist was amazing, though four-minute jams are not my thing. And if you’re a classic rock kind of person, you likely well aware that back in the day, Rush had a world-renowned drummer at the kit, a drummer’s drummer, perhaps the best drummer of all time, Neil Peart.

Alas, Neil passed away about a decade ago. Replacing him was a woman several decades younger than the men she shared the stage with. Her name is Anika Nilles and I’m telling you, she was lights-out amazing.

Not knowing the music, I had plenty of time to scan the crowd. My first thought was, “Sure this band is talented, but who really likes this crap? Every song sounds just like the last one. Like, why did all these people bother to assemble here?”

But then I heard a couple behind me talking about how they met at a Rush show back in ‘92. The enormous man next to me, struggling to fit in his seat and breathe, knew every word to every song and basked in every beat. And when I looked over at my brother-in-law David, well, I’ve never seen him so fired up before. He was air-drumming, air-guitaring, air-keyboarding, and singing every lyric loud.

No doubt, there was joy in the air.

And before I allowed myself to roll my eyes at this shamelessly nerdy band I’ve never been at all interested in, I checked myself. I recalled my absurd Springsteen fixation. Many times, I have been the guy who has dragged my wife, my son, my daughter-in-law or someone else to a Springsteen show, sometimes in this very space. They were me at this Rush show. I had entered some parallel universe.

I felt their pain. You cannot expect your thing to be someone else’s thing. That doesn’t mean I’m not gonna invite you the next time Bruce comes to town, however. We fanatics are weird that way. We are certain that, if you’ll only experience our thing, you’ll love it like we love it.

But through my sonic Rush headache, I took a few moments to consider why we gather for these things, at all. Just getting there is a hassle. Traffic and parking are a nightmare. Tickets are super expensive. The shows tend to be in the middle of the week, wildly inconvenient.

It occurred to me that the audiences for both Rush and Springsteen’s E Street Band are primarily men of a certain age. And these concerts provide a rare opportunity for even the most repressed male to feel and express his emotions overly. And I’ll be honest, I was kind of emotional during this show I had no interest in. It was really cool to see men feeling themselves and expressing themselves and revisiting their youth unabashedly.

It felt important, necessary.

The concerts

But these massive concerts aren’t just for men, of course.

Today, the Taylor’s, Sabrina’s, Billie’s and Chappell’s are packing arenas ten to twenty times over. So major concert events are not just for men, not by a longshot. Women are joyfully uniting at these shows. The energy is exceptionally high, and the lyrics are locked in, sung by every audience member loudly and felt deeply.

Live music is such a unique and important experience. I’m writing right now a bit shook that Irish singer Glen Hansard passed away suddenly the other day. I’ve seen him a couple of times live. And he was a beautiful performer, astonishing. And it was magical to see him in concert with a group of like-minded fans. It’s the alchemy of the collective that made nights with him so special.

Live music matters. I’m sitting in my office a couple of blocks from Chicago’s Grant Park, the home to this coming weekend’s Lollapalooza music festival. And though many of my young clients will be attending (and many of their parents are a bit nervous), I’m so excited for them. Live music matters. It helps us establish a point of view. It makes us feel heard. It either helps form some core sense of identity for us that we were unaware of before. Or it brings us back.

I’m hoping for all of that for those decked-out, hopeful, excited Lolla attendees. This will be their music, their lifelong soundtracks. Music matters. Live music matters a lot.

Gathering en masse

So all of this got me to thinking about mass gatherings in general. I make it a habit, albeit a lazy one, to announce pretty frequently that I do not particularly like crowds. I can get overstimulated like a lot of us pretty quickly. And doing crowds day after day, you may very well be like me. At some point, you want to tap out, couch rot alone and rejuvenate.

All that said, gatherings of all kinds are meaningful. A Rush concert. Lollapalooza. The World Cup. The Savannah Bananas. Church.

In a world in which we are increasingly alone and often deeply lonely, we carry an inherent need to gather, at least on occasion, with other people, often a lot of other people. We need to celebrate and mourn and chant our beliefs and sing and pray and receive and remember. And we need to know that there are others sharing that space for the same reasons. Going to the thing, even when you don’t feel like it, is important at least some of the time.

The big public gathering matters. It puts our lives in context. It takes us out of ourselves and our every day, and creates something special and magical and unique. Literally something that will never happen quite in the same way ever again. Because it’s live. Because of the alchemy of the people involved. This has proven true in my own life, over and over again.

As you may know, my first Springsteen concert shocked me into self-awareness and jump-started my own beating heart, brought me to life.

George and Lauren’s wedding was a seminal moment in my life, and I felt deeply connected to every one of the 200 people there. Celebrating love through joyful tears in big crowds is underrated.

My talks to groups of parents always feel hopeful to me. It’s a truly precious privilege to bear witness to busy people working so hard to be their best for their kids.

I felt an unfamiliar, deep and special feeling during my first marathon, surrounded by the other runners and the tireless fans cheering hour after hour. What a party. Running alone can be lovely (and agonizing), but running with 50,000 allies all around you hits different.

Bigger.

Even my mother’s funeral a few years back evolved into a joyful event, an honest celebration of a life, in large part due to the people in the room. Far more people and far more love than I expected.

Gathering punctuates the ordinary. It gets our heart racing. It draws out dormant emotions. It puts our lives in context. It drives our senses of identity and community. And we gather for so many important reasons.

We gather to celebrate.

We gather to party.

We gather to sing out loud.

We gather to reminisce.

We gather for love.

We gather to grieve.

We gather for justice.

And we gather to witness the joy of others, to marvel at the human spirit. That happened for me at the Rush concert.

So I would love for you to take a moment, right now, and think back to a large public event that moved you, changed you, left you in awe. They may not be the only events that do so, but the likelihood increases when you’re with the people. And when that next invite arrives, for a wedding or a rally, a tournament or a concert, a birthday or a funeral, consider attending. Not just making an entrance, but really attending. And I would urge you to step out of the margins and the shadows, and become one with the throngs, at least for a bit.

It may change your feeling, your perspective, your life.

I recently attended the 80th birthday celebration for a reasonably well-known family friend who in time became a lifelong personal friend and North Star for me. This man was close to my parents throughout their lives and deaths. I thought I should make an appearance.

I said my peace, wished him well on his birthday. And I planned a very quick Irish goodbye. But he caught me, reading my mind:

“You’re going to want to stick around, Duffy. This is gonna be good.”

And so I did. And he was so very right. I ran into people I hadn’t seen since grade school, and had the privilege of hearing their stories. I served as an audience for so many former client families, and was privy to the outcomes of our work together, a rare privilege for any therapist. And I got to tell this man what he meant to me, and he reciprocated, a beautiful gesture.

Attend the thing. Even if you’re afraid, or tired, or nervous, or don’t know a single lyric.

It just might change your life.