Summertime

Grand Lake has a summer Thursday night live music series: each week, some goofy little folk group of some sort is set up in the gazebo when I arrive for call. They're constantly playing to tiny and passive audiences of around ten to twenty people, including the two guys who are selling popcorn. The effort is made yet more quixotic by the mercurial mountain weather, which has delivered rain every Thursday thus far--and not all day, mind you, just in time for the music. The first week it was in the forties out there and the few spectators were under blankets; last week the rain was insignificant enough that most of the audience was in lawn chairs. Tonight, though, was seriously wet, and only a small coterie was present, popcorn in hand, protected under the awnings of the library.

I don't know where they find these bands, but each one of them suggests a wealth of stories that I'd really like to hear--or at least that's what I think at first, before I become irritated by their music/stage banter/both and go inside. The first week it was a Christian family band from Nebraska, complete with a battery of golden-haired, mandolin-playing youngsters; tonight it was a trio of guitar, piano and drums playing "Summertime" and "Proud Mary" in the chilly mist. The primary singer in these bands is never who you expect, in fact is generally the last person on the stage you think to look at.

I'll admit it, though, my heart grows three sizes when I see these groups out there week after week. God knows where they come from or who's continued to encourage their pursuits. I wonder if all of their audiences are as vaguely disinterested as the ones here. I myself rarely tolerate much more than a song and a half, but I'm still just so glad to see those people out there. Because playing music, learning to physically play an instrument and then want to play it in front of people, rain and apathy be damned, is a weird, irrational thing to do, but there are times when weird irrationality is vital, and this happens to be a manifestation of it that I particularly believe in.

I'm thinking of the Peter Garland quotation I put on here a year ago May, describing continued human expression, in the face of the horrors of the twentieth century, as "heroic." The twentieth century, with its mass war-induced recognition of human brutality, is over. For Americans, at least, that awareness and introspection has cooled and hardened into ironic detachment--into a steady state of impassivity where pursuits, generally speaking, are often considered frivolous if not entirely futile.

There's not a damn reason to play music. It'll never be as polished as a studio recording, and you'll never be as good as the ten thousand other people who already play that instrument. And besides, there's already muzak coming over the speakers in here, don't you hear? If you start playing, someone's going to have to walk over and turn it down. All the more reason to keep playing. Just picking up an instrument is becoming an act of defiance. So pick the thing up, right now, and take it outside. Like Ed Abbey said: "Don't drop it on your foot--throw it at something big and glassy. What do you have to lose?"