Going to concerts (to the extent that I could, given that many venues didn’t particularly care for opening their door to kids who couldn’t legally buy alcohol) became a life-affirming, group tribal ritual that both strengthened bonds between us and to the music and the artists.
Having a circle of kids my own age that I could talk to about the music that not only served as a soundtrack to my life but increasingly served to give my life meaning in a period of extreme alienation meant so much to me that I can’t really express it accurately with mere words. I guess the next time I felt that sense of community was when I was in middle school and high school in Maryland and I had immersed myself in two or three different musical subcultures. Parents frequently sent us to one of our neighbors to ask for something in particular or to offer them something, or just to invite them over. Knocking on someone’s door was never an issue, not for any reason. We also knew almost all of the adults in the neighborhood. I knew damn near all the kids in the neighborhood, exactly where they lived, who their parents were, who they hung out with, who they were and weren’t friendly with… all the kids in the neighborhood did. Daliri’s store on that street that was uphill from us, with a bunch of cash in my pockets. I knew that whenever we needed any day to day stuff - groceries, gum, candy, whatever - I’d run up to Mr. I just knew that so and so lived one block down from us or two blocks over. That’s your job.”Įven back then I didn’t really know the street names and didn’t care. He said, “do you realize how many people in this city go from home to work and back and that’s it? Outside of work and service people they literally have no one in their lives, no one to talk to, not one friend. I’ll never forget the time when the program director of a radio station where I used to host a music show called me in to his office one day and explained to me that my job is really to be a friend to folks who may not necessarily have one.
Nevertheless, some of us are fortunate enough to have found such a place a community, a home, a place that we long for when we’re away from it, friends, neighbors, family, ties that bond and bonds that matter, not just people whom we nod our heads and say hello to whenever we happen to see them.īut many of us are not so fortunate. Even those of us who live in the atomized, hyperindividualistic West long for such a place, even if it’s not an organic part of the environment that we live in, which is particularly true when it comes to urban and suburban areas.
A place that, no matter where else we find ourselves, 50 miles away or halfway around the globe, always calls us back to it. Whether we realize it or not, we all need a sense of community, a sense of belonging, a place to call home.
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