All In
It's Been a Minute, and I'm Not Taking a Second for Granted.
The other night, I went to a comedy show in Brooklyn. Proof of vaccination was required, but beyond that, for the most part, masks had been ditched. It was standing room only, maybe 400 people, a great turnout for my soon-to-be-son-in-law, Dan, whose weekly comedy show it is, and his fiancée, my daughter Eliza, who was guest performing her own stand-up set.
It was a rush to stand in a darkened cavernous space jammed with happy, excited people, everyone laughing. Full faces, a collective of eyes and foreheads plus the nose-to-chin parts I hadn’t laid eyes on for 18 months, and honest to god, faces are a beautiful sight. For maybe an hour or hour and a half I felt what can best be described as joy. We’re back, kept going through my head.
As the night went on I hit a feeling more complicated, deeper; not a buzzkill but an awareness slowly dawning inside my happiness that this was a moment in post-pandemic time that must not be taken for granted. I thought of Thornton Wilder’s play “Our Town” where the main character, Emily, who has died, gets to return to Earth to re-live her 12th birthday. As this special but normal day goes on, Emily freaks out, becoming acutely aware of all the small, simple things she took for granted when she was alive. For me, as a living person, there is an obliviousness that sometimes happens to what’s going on around you, but in this moment I was joyfully hyperconscious of my fellow engaged humans. As we have learned, none of this is guaranteed; even the small returns to normal are not only profoundly precious but possibly ephemeral.
The other night at The Bell House in Brooklyn I was all in. To be part of a crowd, eyes and ears on the performers, laughing explosively together, felt familiar but newly precious. In my head was I am here, now. We are all here, now, soaking in an exquisite everything sharpened by the absoluteness of nothing to be taken for granted.