You think you know a thing. But you don’t. And it is in that exact moment when you suspect you might have a pretty good handle on things, that the totality of it opens up before you, and like a giant flag unfurling before you, you see that the journey isn’t at an end, but once again, is only just beginning. So you do what you’ve been told, you lace up your shoes and hop back on the bus.
In the coming days and weeks, there will be words and thoughts, ideas and opinions, memories and fantasies. There will be arguments and approvals, criticisms and analyses. We’ll try our best to get it right, for history. Because we are now a part of it. We are of the story, we are characters in its pages, and our lives color its words and emotions.
Histories will fill up with faces and names, spaces and planes, times and TIME. There will be plenty to say, and many will listen. Over time we’ll make sense of it, together, and apart. We’ll get a handle on it and again, just as we do, there will be more to learn, more to love, more music to dance to, more people to hug and celebrate alongside.
I made no bones about why I was coming to Chicago. I was coming to see Trey. But of course that was completely wrong. And that doesn’t matter either. Because the realization of what I was actually there for, was much grander, much more expansive.
It was to see where I came from, where the things that I love come from, where they started, what birthed them, what gave them the permission to emerge. It was to see history being made, and be a part of it. It was to be a part of something that I thought would never be available to me.
In my lifetime, I’ve seen thousands of musical concerts. And I’ve now seen three Grateful Dead shows, front to back, that’s all I felt. These were Dead shows. The people, the place, the moment, the words, and the music, the lights, the sound of it all, the energy and the intentions coursing through Chicago.
The Grateful Dead were somehow resurrected and I got a chance to participate, and that is what connects me, and all of us, to history, and a certain tradition, one that we have to and will continue to carry with us. It is our job to take this music, to take this tradition, these values and the tribe of which we are a part, even if at times, we can’t understand why. Even if it hurts, in fact, especially when it does.
