"Look for the helpers"

There was going to be a post about food and drink here but my heart’s not in it this morning. Because we’re all digitally connected in real time these days, travel and many other experiences are much different than they used to be, even from what I remember as a kid. It’s harder to “go away” now and while that makes travel feel safer and more secure than it used to (both for the traveler and those left behind) and lets people share their foreign experiences in a more immediate way, the results of this 24-7 connection are still unpredictable. Like finding out circa 10pm local time about the two bombs that went off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Yep, good luck sleeping.

This morning, shortly after my first cup of coffee, Radio Stephansdom began broadcasting Mahler’s Second Symphony: “Resurrection” and while I don’t assume there’s any particular reason for this, it immediately stopped my day in its tracks. This was the piece Leonard Bernstein conducted after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 and on Mt. Scopus after the end of the Six Day War in 1967. Some of my fellow musicians at Indiana University also performed the fourth movement, “O Röschen rot,” on September 12, 2001. There could not be a clearer signal to stop and reflect.

I choose to focus on the thoughtful and heartfelt responses I’ve seen so far from my friends, acquaintances, and public figures. Patton Ostwalt’s statement and the reappearances of a quote from Fred Rodgers originally in response to 9/11 (“look for the helpers”) stand out. So does the quote from Leonard Bernstein circulated by the New York Philharmonic (from the same concert in 1963 that he led the “Resurrection” symphony) about the artist’s response to violence… “to make music more beautifully, more intensely, more devotedly than ever before.” Can art “help” anything? Not really, except that it helps us feel, and perceive beauty, and make meaning. I reject the platitudes about senselessness… there is always meaning to be made, even if it’s a painful process and even when events seem beyond reason. Yes, this meaning making can go to dangerous places—it’s what sends people to war—but even more perilous is the invitation to opt out of the process of reflection and response offered by the trope of “senseless violence.” Because that’s not what people really mean when they say that... just because we can’t fathom why someone would commit an act of violence doesn’t mean we stop fathoming at all.

I can’t say what this means—or will come to mean—for anyone in Boston, or for anyone else. I can say that I’ve thought a lot this morning about fear. It’s very likely nobody will ever be able to say (or write) the meaning of the events of yesterday in a way that speaks to everyone. I can only say I don’t believe they are meaningless; or rather, that I believe in the meaning of events and actions, particularly all the different kinds of “helpers.”