A Lot Like a Thing You Believe In

It has been my good grace recently to pretty much consistently come out on top. In fact, I think I should maybe stop bargaining, because I'm always getting more than I ask for and as much as I can appreciate good fortune, maybe I should leave some for the rest of y'all. I've recently inherited a place to crash in Bloomington, which in itself doesn't make for freestanding joy, Bloomington not being anywhere close to the list on which I secret away my favorite cities. But what it has, being home to one of the largest universities in the country, is a better music scene than the city I call home. Now that I have a place to crash, I can pop down there on weekends to see shows without worrying about driving home late, tired, under the influence.

I've missed shows. And I'm not talking about Verizon Wireless Music Center 10$ Coors Light two football fields away from the stage shows, I'm talking ratty little indie shows where everyone bobs unconsciously to the music, where the concrete floors are unfinished, where even when there are only two people in the audience the bands show up in old minivans and play to the empty room before retiring dirty and sweaty to the floor of whatever living room they can find.

When the Irving Theatre closed its doors last fall, I was bereft - through the two years it was open, the owners graciously allowed me to work the door and concessions in exchange for seeing all the shows for free (it so pays to have friends in the right places). The kind of musical camaraderie I experienced there is still unparalleled, and I doubt I'll ever find it again.

Last night in Bloomington I found a little bit of that again. The club was centered around youth, and aside from someone's parents, I was the oldest person in the room by maybe 5 years. No one was there save a group of giggling teenagers, the staff, the bands, and me. Though I hate that everyone had gone home to the debate by the time the last band (the entire reason I was there) hit the stage, they charmed their way into my heart with a beautiful, terrible cacophony of sound that left me alternately hugging my knees tight to my chest and grinning from ear to ear.

Sometimes, especially at the Irving, where it was my delightful responsibility to wristband the musicians, I'd get so caught up in the delirium of New and Interesting People! I'd forget about the music entirely.

It was nice to sit and let it just wash over me.

I am not a musician. I don't hear technicalities in songs the way that some musicians I know, and I consider myself lucky for that: I get to delight in a key change or a particularly hard break or a perfectly plinked note falling like water from a keyboard without distraction, and I get to fall in love with things as they are, completely whole.

But beyond this musical rediscovery of myself, which has been waxing and waning for the last few months in a way I can't quite catch the tail of, was something else: some kind of hope for the future, for the world.

The third band to play was a girl and a boy with one acoustic guitar. They might have been sixteen, maybe. They broke away from the group of awkward, adorable teenagers who had been in and out of the staff room all night, clearly fixtures at this particular venue that among other things, is a gathering place for the youngsters, to climb nervously onto the stage and play a video they'd made themselves. When they stepped up to microphones, they were all elbows and angles, giggling through their nerves, and played a short set of acoustic songs, the girl's voice high and clear, their harmonies wavering but true to tone.

I was charmed. To borrow a phrase from someone else, their palpable awkwardness was a sight to behold, and it was so obvious that in a couple of years they'll throw high school out the window and become something amazing.

It felt like the same kind of hope I understand when my family gathers, watching my nephew in all his sweaty, soft skinned toddlerness, and I sit back breathless, knowing that something is right in the world if there are children in it who are loved so purely and so completely.

There are kids, there are kids who are not smoking weed or taking guns to seventh grade, there are kids who like art and like music, who create things that are worth appreciating. There are kids who are polite, who have futures, whose minds are focused on more than sex, or defiance, or deviance. There are kids who are being taken care of, kids who know love.

In light of the political and financial themes of the last few weeks, it was nice to stop worrying about the future for a second, nice to stop thinking about all the things I need to learn in order to survive the breakdown of the lives we know, and just be awash in the inevitable continuation of humanity.

Yeah, I liked that.

(P.S. The band I went to see last night was Detroit's The Silent Years, who came very highly recommended to me by two other bands I dearly love, These United States and, of course, The Scourge of the Sea, all three of whose discographies you'll go purchase if you know what's good for you. I was not disappointed.)