Moment of Humanity
Last weekend, I attended the wedding of a dear friend. A college roommate. An impeccable man marrying an extraordinary woman.
The wedding was on Cape Cod, at a family residence that we had visited over the years. Though New England weather is notoriously fickle, a beautiful day emerged.
Our group of roommates is a staggering eight people (and, yes, we managed to find a room big enough to house all eight of us for our senior year). More importantly, all eight of us were able to attend.
I’m loath to admit it, but I spent a great deal of the day thinking more about me than them. My divorce reached its full conclusion in May of this year and I had not attended a wedding since.
I was not deterred from having a great time. I found the right blend of casual small talk and poignant reflection that comes only in the presence of people who have known you for years.
I nearly closed down the dance floor at 2 AM, making moves in a silent disco that will be discussed for many years. The best entertainment was taking the headphones off and listening to 30 drunk 30+ year-olds loudly and terribly singing along to their favorite jams. I ate and drank and made merry. It was a joy to tell people that I was rapping, watching their faces ride a roller coaster of joy and bemusement.
There were also moments that left me in the emotional Upside Down. Weddings are a rare occasion in which we opine on love. What it means, how we portray it, how it will carry us through. And I noticed a more critical ear than I might have had in the past. Like I’ve seen love up close, and learned that its seemingly perfect array of bricks are pocked and marked. Love IS incredibly powerful, but it is not a salve for all ails.
I thought about what advice I would give if someone asked me today about love and marriage (no one did). I believe in both love and marriage, strongly, but I also know their complications better than I did when I said “I do.”
It is one thing to have heard my wedding song (should I even call it that anymore?) on a playlist or the radio. It is quite another to hear it on the dance floor at a wedding, feeling immediately transported back to our first dance. The choreography, the small conversation we had that no one else could hear.
Should I leave the dance floor, I wondered?
Does anyone else know?
The biggest question I pondered over the weekend was, “How many people that attended my wedding don’t know that I’m divorced?”
Rather than remove myself, I just sang louder. I danced harder. I thought about the immense lift of evolving our relationship over the past 12 months. And I channeled the relief that I felt and moved it across the straw-covered dance floor.
All of these little idiosyncrasies, these moments, are the seeds for songs. They are tiny notches on the timeline of my existence that do not merit a celebration or a magnifying glass, but they are still memorable.
One of the things that I learned from storytelling is that, often, the mundane details are the ones that really allow us to connect. Sensing sameness in the experience of another draws us closer to them.
I may not write a song about being divorced and going to a wedding for the first time. But I think I might write a song about relearning what love means. I might try to capture the type of toast I would want to give at a wedding at this point in my life. I might try to wrestle with the question of whether or not I think I’ll ever get married again.
You may never hear any of these songs, or you may hear all of them. Once the seed is planted, I can only water it and hope that it grows in fertile soil.
But I know that these are the songs that I want to write. I want to capture these confusing, beautiful, heartbreaking moments of humanity and give them a new soundtrack. They deserve it. And those who are feeling them deserve a way to feel connected in those moments.
I’m aware that I’m oversharing. Maybe no one cares about these thoughts. No one asked.
But if they do, it brings me great joy to know that these words are here. That these songs may one day find the airwaves. And that is a good enough reason for me to keep writing and sharing, requested or not.
Your Friend,
Jack
