On the outside

It would have been a remarkable experience: immersed in the exultancy of the million people cheering on 40 thousand runners of the Marathon this superb April afternoon, this day of triumph, this truly a splendid day.

I love the high emotion; I remember once weeping on Memorial Drive once following note by note the last measures of Mahler's 2nd symphony, and glad, even proud to be so moved. Today a real chorus of hundreds of thousands was singing its own 'Resurrection,' scripted, for sure, but truly heart-felt. This was a real event, not just a performance. If I wanted to experience the tight chest, the caught breath, the wet cheeks, why was I not there? It's not enough to say I had students to teach. I was in some way aloof to the memorable occasion and to the crowd which had given itself to it.

There are pernicious crowd phenomena, of course, that one must resist the appeal of,  but this was not one of those; rather it was a moment of trans-individual bigness that included everyone who loved the city and the event. Of course, it's the business of TV to make all things into everything. Sure, there must have been issues of parking, access, crowding, obstructed views. Still this was undeniably a great day (even if the Red Sox lost), and part of me wanted to be carried away with it--except I wasn't.

To such events, these powerful community events, I have intellectual responses and private reactions but I'm generally swept up in communal celebrations or griefs even ones like the Red Sox victory or the dread during the lock-down following the Marathon (Confession: I had to escape that day; what a relief to drive over the line into Dedham). On the other hand, political victories leave me giddy, and losses, disconsolate.

I don't feel superior to the high spirits of the glorious day, but rather envious. How wonderful to be enraptured as many were today. Am I left out of the transcendent communal moments that the mass of mankind sometimes experiences simply because of my congenital reluctance or incapacity? What can us en masse see I cannot; what feel that I don't.?

Anthropologists report an 'on the outside' feeling when they describe the expressions of grief at the funerals of a family they are studying. Of course, there's a requirement to be and a satisfaction in being cool, dispassionate; we all in our world of mediated experiences know well how to be distant, analytical. This is my training too. But sometimes passing up a chance to be actually jostled and jubilant can mean missing an encounter with an Other that is all of us, the Other in which we all are.

(I didn't expect this post to turn out as it did. It's a little embarrassing to have to confess a childish desire to be included in the form of 'Oh, that I had...' So be it.)