Community & Tradition

Like most summer nights, after the kids are tucked away in their sleeping bags, I sit under the canopy of our bus and write until the need to sleep overtakes me. Tonight, my head is almost too tired to write, yet I feel the need to get something down in words before another morning comes to pass. I realize that I can no longer hoot with the owls at night and soar with the eagles at dawn. Last night, a few of the counselors (Ryan, Kieran, Chris, and Zoe) stopped by “The Bus Unit” with guitars and banjos and the express purpose of making some noise. Since they have cabins full of young campers to put to sleep, their free time does not begin until almost 11:00 at night. After many songs belted out towards the milky way in the New Hampshire sky, I finally crawled into my own bunk at some point after three in the morning. I loved hearing those happy counselors muckling through the likes of “Seven Drunken Nights,” “Finnegan’s Wake,” “Streets of London,” and a slew of other pub songs that fewer and fewer people seem to know by and with heart. I loved the reverence they showed towards the traditional songs I love so dearly, but, most of all, I loved their irreverent energy as they played and sang with utter abandon, as if each song was their last will and testament to eternity. We were a small circle of folding chairs and cold beers embraced within a larger community that I know cherished our midnight howls sung into the wilderness, for music is the  thriving lifeblood of Windsor Mountain International Camp.  After one song about “old ladies stuck in a lavratory“ some of the singers worried about my kids hearing the bawdy lyrics fifteen feet from the camper where six of them were sleeping--supposedly. I laughed and said that those songs were almost like mother’s milk to them.  All of my kids have grown up around camp fires, in rowdy pubs, and gathered in impromptu living room jam sessions listening and joining in because that is exactly what everyone around them was doing--and trying to get people to “join in” is the beast I wrestle with every time I pick up my guitar and sing before a crowd. Sometimes there is a community that joins right in; sometimes there is a community that listens with open minds and willing hearts, and sometimes there is only the cacophony of the solipsistic and disengaged when I wonder why I am even there. Worse still is the disregarding pack that overtakes by dint of force or sometimes just by sheer numbers. We often wax philosophically about the strength of community and tradition, but not as much about the unwitting actions and disrespect that despoils those same communities and traditions.

Last week was the first time I can remember, after over 30 years of playing, that I felt overtaken to the point of being beat down. It started with a pair of camp shows at a large suburban day camp on the south shore. Nice camp.  They set me up in a grove of pines with a circular ring of logs for seating, which is just about perfect for me. The only wrinkle came when they asked me to play two shows for an hour and a half each. I told them that ninety minutes is a long time to keep the attention of any pack of five year olds, but the pay was great, and I have managed the feat before, so I thought, “no choice; no problem.” The kids and the counselors came and arranged themselves in an arc in front, around, and behind me. I asked if they could move a bit more in front, but I soon realized that the counselors were viewing my show as their free time. They huddled together against a single large log and waited for the “show” to begin.  An hour later I figured I had exhausted every trick of my trade.  Time-tested killer stories and killer songs were soon followed by kids coming up and strumming my guitar, knocking on my microphone, and playing tag around me, while the counselors--none of whom seemed to relish authority--sat back and enjoyed each other. The only passion I aroused was their indignation that I stopped fifteen minutes early and sent them begrudgingly back to “work.” The second show was an equal or greater disaster; I even found myself longing for the passive counselors from the first show.  At least they didn’t start a round of horseback rides around the folksinger. I had a long dispirited ride home, though  I felt like a fool lamenting my day as work crews labored on route 128 in the 95 degree heat. I doubt they’d have empathized with an old folksinger worn out by three hours of singing, and I wondered what camaraderie and what values we could share.

As luck would have it, I had another camp show that night: four hundred kids and families all arranged in front a nice campfire with the counselors singing away surrounded by their campers who joined in with the same enthusiasm they muster every time I perform there. Part of it is that they know and remember me and my songs, but the greater part is the knowable and unknowable tradition of  community.  In a community there is always a place for the good-natured, iconoclastic fool, but there is never a place for the fabric of that place to fray and unravel. The balm of time that a few hours represented was enough for me to dismiss to the vagaries of life the earlier shows planted in my soul, though I couldn’t shake the melancholy--the seeds of doubt about my own vocation--that clung to me like a hacking cough and persisted until the following Thursday and my weekly show at The Colonial Inn in Concord MA.

John O’Mahoney, a great Irish spirit, raconteur, and bodhran player, and Hatrack Gallagher, probably the best harmonica player in the northeast, showed up to play with me.  The magic of their personalities and musical abilities has never been lost on a crowd--until that night. The room soon filled with a young college crowd, most of them from the camp I sing at so often, so I was sure of a good night of fun music. As we began playing, I noticed that the usual crowd of older counselors was not there.  When we play the rowdy drinking songs, those few senior staff would come up and help lead the show with that inimitable energy every great camp counselor must possess.  What soon became apparent was that the counselors were down there for a fun night, and fun for them meant only the songs they wanted to hear.  Our quieter songs meant they could turn their attentions towards each other, to the point where we could hardly hear ourselves singing.  I missed Wally and Matt, two of the best and most musically talented counselors from the camp who could galvanize and focus the rest of the crowd and who could lead their pack respectfully through the night. I honestly don’t blame the college kids; they had a blast--and they did join in heartily when we sang the songs they were expecting to hear; they all thanked me at the end of the night (and the bar manager thanked me for the almost record money take at the bar) but they also tore the net that has always held that small room together. They didn’t notice--and they overwhelmed--the tables of people who came for the full monty; who wanted to to hear the inimitable harmonica solo’s from Hatrack or to hear the rich brogue of Johnny O’ leading them through the heart and soul of irish music and life, or who wanted to continue the musical and personal conversation I’ve had with them in that pub for the past 25 years of Thursdays. They wanted joy and each other, which is a noble gesture, but not when colored by a myopia that demeans the hard earned traditions of a common space--traditions more easily lost than won.

A community is more than a culmination of an ideal or a loose association of common minds and aspirations; it is an unaffected and natural attaching of ourselves to distinct communities within a larger interconnected world--a world that is stronger than any one part.  A single proud drunk has never ruined a show for me, but a coterie of supercilious sycophants will give me a good run for the money. It is easy for any of us to carry the trappings of our hollow shells around with us and try to superimpose ourselves and our values onto a place, yet we still never fully enter into the life of a true community. It is easy for us to hop on any bandwagon that calls for change, but we often confuse change with elevated and progressive thought, which is not always the case. Our self-indulged egos are too slow to recognize the majesty and glory of entering a true community created on a mosaic intricately pieced together upon the proving grounds of time because we are so intent on exploiting our own self-worth and seizing time from the day, as if that were a glorious adventure unto itself. The counselors had a great night out, but they rode in on skittish horses to see the flowers and trampled the best part of the night beneath them.

This is not a clarion call for subservience to the tried and true, but rather a hope that we nurture a respectful wisdom when we enter a new place and hold in abeyance the implications of impulse. We need to look for and discern when, where, how, and why a community exists, and we need to enter quietly and live what that community has to offer before we offer our own prejudices and insights. The woods are an infinitely richer place when we can call every tree and flower and creature by name, so that when we (as Thoreau says) “sheer the woods before her time,” we fully know what we are losing and gaining.  For most of us the communities we enter into and pass through are a massive overlay of larger and smaller spheres sometimes mingling and sometimes not. It is rare to find a person who can move from space to space with both magnanimity and equanimity and a serene cognizance of their place and their role in any given corner of the universe. To do so requires either a child-like simplicity or a willful abnegation of passion and pride. Before we can be proud, we need to find the primal source of our pride, and, when we find it, to begin the process of losing it. St. John of the Cross calls this the “dark night of the soul.” I know I am not there. I’ve stepped into the dark night, but I’ve never made it through, though I trust there is a light that can be reached, and that is the root of my wobbly faith. As I grow older, my own spheres are fewer and smaller but richer beyond measure, and they prepare me well for the wider world I might not ever see.

From this small pocket of New Hampshire woods under a bath of stars, I can still hear the echoes of Ryan’s banjo claw-hammering into the night reminding distant worlds that we are here and you are welcome.

Like most summer nights, after the kids are tucked away in their sleeping bags, I sit under the canopy of our bus and write until the need to sleep overtakes me. Tonight, my head is almost too tired to write, yet I feel the need to get something down in words before another morning comes to pass. I realize that I can no longer hoot with the owls at night and soar with the eagles at dawn. Last night, a few of the counselors (Ryan, Kieran, Chris, and Zoe) stopped by “The Bus Unit” with guitars and banjos and the express purpose of making some noise. Since they have cabins full of young campers to put to sleep, their free time does not begin until almost 11:00 at night. After many songs belted out towards the milky way in the New Hampshire sky, I finally crawled into my own bunk at some point after three in the morning. I loved hearing those happy counselors muckling through the likes of “Seven Drunken Nights,” “Finnegan’s Wake,” “Streets of London,” and a slew of other pub songs that fewer and fewer people seem to know by and with heart. I loved the reverence they showed towards the traditional songs I love so dearly, but, most of all, I loved their irreverent energy as they played and sang with utter abandon, as if each song was their last will and testament to eternity. We were a small circle of folding chairs and cold beers embraced within a larger community that I know cherished our midnight howls sung into the wilderness, for music is the  thriving lifeblood of Windsor Mountain International Camp.  After one song about “old ladies stuck in a lavratory“ some of the singers worried about my kids hearing the bawdy lyrics fifteen feet from the camper where six of them were sleeping--supposedly. I laughed and said that those songs were almost like mother’s milk to them.  All of my kids have grown up around camp fires, in rowdy pubs, and gathered in impromptu living room jam sessions listening and joining in because that is exactly what everyone around them was doing--and trying to get people to “join in” is the beast I wrestle with every time I pick up my guitar and sing before a crowd. Sometimes there is a community that joins right in; sometimes there is a community that listens with open minds and willing hearts, and sometimes there is only the cacophony of the solipsistic and disengaged when I wonder why I am even there. Worse still is the disregarding pack that overtakes by dint of force or sometimes just by sheer numbers. We often wax philosophically about the strength of community and tradition, but not as much about the unwitting actions and disrespect that despoils those same communities and traditions.

Last week was the first time I can remember, after over 30 years of playing, that I felt overtaken to the point of being beat down. It started with a pair of camp shows at a large suburban day camp on the south shore. Nice camp.  They set me up in a grove of pines with a circular ring of logs for seating, which is just about perfect for me. The only wrinkle came when they asked me to play two shows for an hour and a half each. I told them that ninety minutes is a long time to keep the attention of any pack of five year olds, but the pay was great, and I have managed the feat before, so I thought, “no choice; no problem.” The kids and the counselors came and arranged themselves in an arc in front, around, and behind me. I asked if they could move a bit more in front, but I soon realized that the counselors were viewing my show as their free time. They huddled together against a single large log and waited for the “show” to begin.  An hour later I figured I had exhausted every trick of my trade.  Time-tested killer stories and killer songs were soon followed by kids coming up and strumming my guitar, knocking on my microphone, and playing tag around me, while the counselors--none of whom seemed to relish authority--sat back and enjoyed each other. The only passion I aroused was their indignation that I stopped fifteen minutes early and sent them begrudgingly back to “work.” The second show was an equal or greater disaster; I even found myself longing for the passive counselors from the first show.  At least they didn’t start a round of horseback rides around the folksinger. I had a long dispirited ride home, though  I felt like a fool lamenting my day as work crews labored on route 128 in the 95 degree heat. I doubt they’d have empathized with an old folksinger worn out by three hours of singing, and I wondered what camaraderie and what values we could share.

As luck would have it, I had another camp show that night: four hundred kids and families all arranged in front a nice campfire with the counselors singing away surrounded by their campers who joined in with the same enthusiasm they muster every time I perform there. Part of it is that they know and remember me and my songs, but the greater part is the knowable and unknowable tradition of  community.  In a community there is always a place for the good-natured, iconoclastic fool, but there is never a place for the fabric of that place to fray and unravel. The balm of time that a few hours represented was enough for me to dismiss to the vagaries of life the earlier shows planted in my soul, though I couldn’t shake the melancholy--the seeds of doubt about my own vocation--that clung to me like a hacking cough and persisted until the following Thursday and my weekly show at The Colonial Inn in Concord MA.

John O’Mahoney, a great Irish spirit, raconteur, and bodhran player, and Hatrack Gallagher, probably the best harmonica player in the northeast, showed up to play with me.  The magic of their personalities and musical abilities has never been lost on a crowd--until that night. The room soon filled with a young college crowd, most of them from the camp I sing at so often, so I was sure of a good night of fun music. As we began playing, I noticed that the usual crowd of older counselors was not there.  When we play the rowdy drinking songs, those few senior staff would come up and help lead the show with that inimitable energy every great camp counselor must possess.  What soon became apparent was that the counselors were down there for a fun night, and fun for them meant only the songs they wanted to hear.  Our quieter songs meant they could turn their attentions towards each other, to the point where we could hardly hear ourselves singing.  I missed Wally and Matt, two of the best and most musically talented counselors from the camp who could galvanize and focus the rest of the crowd and who could lead their pack respectfully through the night. I honestly don’t blame the college kids; they had a blast--and they did join in heartily when we sang the songs they were expecting to hear; they all thanked me at the end of the night (and the bar manager thanked me for the almost record money take at the bar) but they also tore the net that has always held that small room together. They didn’t notice--and they overwhelmed--the tables of people who came for the full monty; who wanted to to hear the inimitable harmonica solo’s from Hatrack or to hear the rich brogue of Johnny O’ leading them through the heart and soul of irish music and life, or who wanted to continue the musical and personal conversation I’ve had with them in that pub for the past 25 years of Thursdays. They wanted joy and each other, which is a noble gesture, but not when colored by a myopia that demeans the hard earned traditions of a common space--traditions more easily lost than won.

A community is more than a culmination of an ideal or a loose association of common minds and aspirations; it is an unaffected and natural attaching of ourselves to distinct communities within a larger interconnected world--a world that is stronger than any one part.  A single proud drunk has never ruined a show for me, but a coterie of supercilious sycophants will give me a good run for the money. It is easy for any of us to carry the trappings of our hollow shells around with us and try to superimpose ourselves and our values onto a place, yet we still never fully enter into the life of a true community. It is easy for us to hop on any bandwagon that calls for change, but we often confuse change with elevated and progressive thought, which is not always the case. Our self-indulged egos are too slow to recognize the majesty and glory of entering a true community created on a mosaic intricately pieced together upon the proving grounds of time because we are so intent on exploiting our own self-worth and seizing time from the day, as if that were a glorious adventure unto itself. The counselors had a great night out, but they rode in on skittish horses to see the flowers and trampled the best part of the night beneath them.

This is not a clarion call for subservience to the tried and true, but rather a hope that we nurture a respectful wisdom when we enter a new place and hold in abeyance the implications of impulse. We need to look for and discern when, where, how, and why a community exists, and we need to enter quietly and live what that community has to offer before we offer our own prejudices and insights. The woods are an infinitely richer place when we can call every tree and flower and creature by name, so that when we (as Thoreau says) “sheer the woods before her time,” we fully know what we are losing and gaining.  For most of us the communities we enter into and pass through are a massive overlay of larger and smaller spheres sometimes mingling and sometimes not. It is rare to find a person who can move from space to space with both magnanimity and equanimity and a serene cognizance of their place and their role in any given corner of the universe. To do so requires either a child-like simplicity or a willful abnegation of passion and pride. Before we can be proud, we need to find the primal source of our pride, and, when we find it, to begin the process of losing it. St. John of the Cross calls this the “dark night of the soul.” I know I am not there. I’ve stepped into the dark night, but I’ve never made it through, though I trust there is a light that can be reached, and that is the root of my wobbly faith. As I grow older, my own spheres are fewer and smaller but richer beyond measure, and they prepare me well for the wider world I might not ever see.

From this small pocket of New Hampshire woods under a bath of stars, I can still hear the echoes of Ryan’s banjo claw-hammering into the night reminding distant worlds that we are here and you are welcome.