What a heartbreaking time.
Last week, before the Uvalde shooting knocked everything off its axis another few degrees, I had several conversations with friends about how we were finding joy and meaning in our lives right now. The simplicity of those two words felt bracing, clarifying and extremely useful (I suddenly got why Marie Kondo’s question for organizing is “does it spark joy?”).
While there’s a considerable amount to mourn right now — there’s nothing joyful about guns and bullets, and if there's any meaning to be found in tragic and disastrous events it’s that we should be motivated to make sure it doesn’t happen again — I’ve been looking for joy when and where I can.
Last weekend, we caught Rhythmix’s latest site-specific Island City Waterways performance out at Alameda Point. A narrative of the history of the Point and its various uses and intersections with global events told through modern dance, spoken word and taiko drums, the piece was moving, and slightly subversive. A couple of weeks ago, when I took a different ferry connection back from the city, I decided to walk from Seaplane to Main St to retrieve my car. The way was less straightforward than I expected, and I was afraid at times, walking past a stretch of abandoned buildings and through a scruffy field strewn with a few picnic benches. Now a theater group was reenacting scenes from Tule Lake Relocation center on the site as actors read letters written by internees at the time. The finale was a stirring taiko and marimba performance by Maze Daiko. It all added up to feel like a strong dose of medicine, in the form of art, song and story, for an overused place.
This weekend, we had a run of gigs in three different counties, including serving as the entertainment for a long-running neighborhood block party. The block party, an annual tradition in ‘normal times’ of a very connected West End block, was the first since the pandemic began. In 2019, when Bay Station was first schedule to play it, it was rained out. This year, the party was postponed again when the host's brother passed away unexpectedly.
Finally, on the last Saturday of the month, tradition resumed. Local residents closed off their street to traffic, set up tables in the middle of the street and filled them with potluck. Trays full of salmon, bowls of quinoa salad, gumbo, fried chicken, chips, spring rolls, several green salads, cookies, brownies, pie and a couple different kinds of cake with chocolate icing. One house had an inflatable jumpy castle set up in its yard. Another driveway was given over to the adult beverages: a keg of local brew, a card table full of wine and a cooler full of canned margaritas and hard cider. We set up on the north end of the street at the same time an ice cream truck pulled up. After serving the line of children, the driver got out of the truck to fill his plate and put his feet up for a few minutes.
In the middle of the first set, we stopped to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to a woman in a tiara. In the second, we backed Steve's friend and our host on The Waterboys’ 'Fisherman's Blues’, a tune that Kwame often plays with his brothers at family gatherings and our host reportedly often played at parties with his brother. It felt cathartic to have him up to front the band on the tune (when he came up empty on the last verse, Kwame took it), and in general to be rocking and rolling in the middle of the street. By the end of the evening, the tarmac was full of dancers.