"Burning of the Midnight Lamp"

 "Loneliness is Such a Drag"

In David Brooks's new book How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, he expends a great deal of energy extolling the virtues of community and looks askance at the nihilistic solitude of our new techno world. Technology, he argues, can be a great tool for building community. However, all too often, it reinforces a withdrawal from community. People inhabit echo chambers that do little to relieve their sense of isolation and being misunderstood.

Rock Creek Park 1989

I've always loved the opening track to Wilco's Being There, "Misunderstood," as it resonates with this emotional landscape Brooks is describing. It's a feeling of being around people but not being of them. It's a feeling of looking at the world through rain splattered window panes rather than being wet out on the street. Much as I try to describe it, the feeling is ineffable. While such emotion can be beatific at times and lead to great insight (see Kerouac), without a community to share one's epiphanies, such insights are empty ephemera. Thus, loneliness.

As a middle-aged, working stiff in Post-Truth America, my sense of loneliness can hit at the weirdest of times. The loneliness can hit hardest when surrounded by all sorts of people at work, home, or even going out. (How could I ever explain, for example, as Garcia once did, that psychedelics were one of the most formative and important experiences of my life?) Stubbornly, as a Mainer, alienation and isolation are not uncommon or even unwelcome feelings. My county in Maine is 60% larger than the state of Rhode Island with a population of 54,000 as compared to Rhode Island's 1,000,000. We like it that way. Still, emotionally, there can be dead zones, deep ones.

In various interviews, Brooks argues that one way to cross the moat between oneself and the community on the other side is to find like-minded people doing like-minded things. Well, duh, I've thought, for the 8th or 9th time hearing him say it in radio interviews. And yet, like Occam's Razor, the simplest solutions are often the most profound. Why wouldn't I be feeling bouts of loneliness in middle age? After all, I'd spent my teens and twenties immersed in the American hardcore and Deadhead scenes. (Yes, I see a Venn diagram overlapping Dead and punk.) From the time I started going to concerts, hung out on the streets of Portsmouth, NH, took my first stage dive, dropped acid with friends, and hugged a sweaty stranger at the Richmond Coliseum, I belonged somewhere.

In Amir Bar-Lev's brilliant documentary about the Grateful Dead, Long Strange Trip, the central trope is Jerry's fascination with Frankenstein. A freak cobbled together out of other dead body parts and technology, the monster finds gentle, earthly delights in a meadow inside a copse of poplars beside a stream. There, a young girl offers him a flower. It's basically the same trope that Jerry used to describe to Sam Cutler who the Grateful Dead were, when they first met around 1969. A monster, feeling like a social reject, struggles through a tight forest only to stumble into light, and warmth, and welcoming. A teenage, mohawked punk meets a skater kid and a Two-Tone skanker in an otherwise desolate town, and BOOM! Suddenly, there's a scene, a community.

How many of us felt this sense of relief and joy in community we'll never know for sure. My guess is that we number in the millions. How many people stumbled into that copse only to thrash about and run back to the main, paved road in fear, we'll never know. I bet they number in the tens of millions, though. Fear of being led astray is funny that way. Still, when the light shone down on me, and it all clicked, yet again, I'd felt a community. I belonged. My behavior wasn't aberrant or abhorrent. My dreams and visions and concerns didn't exist in solitude. Shouting my passion from the rooftop (or tailgate), I'd receive hi-fives and hugs in return. I could find my own brand of introverted solitude in the comfort of the crowd, not just any crowd, but my people.

Naturally, one's 30s come knocking. Some prepare for these transitions better than others. I was not prepared, and like a horse resisting the saddle, the bit, and the spur, I did every damn thing I could to resist the Puritan work yoke. Stubborn as a mule, economic necessity and the ever droning "get a job" reality of modern America stifled my wandering ways. On the other hand, that's a natural transition, too, and, as one Maine islander said to me back at the turn of the millennium, "Well, everybody's got to be somebody somewhere." Thank heavens I'd landed in a community of rummy fishermen and islander renegades. Community takes all forms. 

Way leads to way, and that chapter ended, too. Being on the mainland, entering into a "bigger job," dealing with more and more adulting by my 40s, finding connection and community seemed tougher and tougher. The feelings of isolation or being unseen crept in more and more. And why wouldn't they? The early 2000s Phil Quintet scene had dried up. My show experiences were catch as catch can. I was eternally grateful for the Gathering of the Vibes summer fests and the momentary presence of Furthur. Phish's reunion has been a revelation, too, but these are moments that I slip into like ice fishermen huddled around a hole, hikers sharing a camping tip or two; it's seasonal.

Fare Thee Well 2015

Connection to a like minded community should never be seasonal in the best of worlds. It should be an "everything." But unless you went all-in on a Mapleton or Walton, Oregon commune and spent all winter preparing for the Country Fair, unless you hitched your wagon to the music industry or vending in festival lots, unless you made a concerted effort to paint outside the American lines, you have probably found yourself longing for the community of like-minded Deadheads with whom you can grok up on music and psychedelic enlightenment, speechlessly, warmth in the eyes and tinkle of ankle bells and hugs and dancing and no judgment. Unless you have painted outside the lines, you have probably had the experience of driving home from work while an exhilarating Dark Star plays, wondering what would happen if you just kept on driving.

We were introduced to community and connection in such a profound way in our youth that it is understandable that we might not feel the same in middle age. Philosophically, David Brooks is late to the party (but we'll leave him a seat at the table if he so chooses). We know this, because we keep coming back, trying to connect and find one another in the dark, American night. Hoping, hoping against all odds, to "keep the mother rollin' / One more time."

Love you all. Happy Holidays.