The oldest voice in my head is the one that says I’m not doing it right. Whatever “it” comes along, and however I do that “it,” the voice in my head says I’m not doing it right. Sometimes it’s low and in the background, sometimes in right in my ear and loud, but it seems to be always there, always saying not enough or too much or just plain wrong.
I still listen to it sometimes, of course. Like yesterday I was wondering if I should be more sad at the passing of Bob Weir — a person who I never knew but who was present for, and contributed to, some of the sweetest moments of my life. Friends of mine seem quite sad about it, especially the ones who had kept going to shows all these years when I wasn’t going. For me, the Grateful Dead was a passage, a time in my life that ended with the death of Jerry Garcia. That one made me very sad, but then again I also remember that I had non-deadhead friends in town that night, and I hung out with them instead of going to the local vigil, and then I felt like I didn’t do that right, either.
I hung around the Dead scene for a little while longer, went to some of the reunion/spinoff shows, kind of got why people were still into it, and then I moved on. I think what I did was take what I learned about community and the power of art and the romantic lure of adventure and the road, bundled all that up with some tapes and a pile of memories, and just … moved on. Thinking about it now, it was like I walked through a mountain range, had adventures and met people and saw things, learned things, then came out the other side and got curious about the valley beyond. Other people wanted to stay in the mountains, or go back and visit, but for whatever reason I’ve never been wired to look backwards and be sentimental, at least very often. For better or worse – and there really are arguments for both – I move and look forward.
Of course, that isn’t what that voice in my head says. It tells me that I don’t care enough about Weir’s death now because I was never really connected to the scene in the first place, or that I was callous and selfish to move on like that. My friends did it right: They kept going to shows, kept dancing, kept the musical flame alive, saw old friends still making magic where I just saw old musicians hanging on to old memories. The voice tells me that this disconnection, this “moving on,” is why even those friends of mine aren’t really friends of mine anymore, because I don’t even do friendship right. They connected with the music, the scene and each other in the proper way, but not me. I was never really there in the first place. I was in my head – like I am now, thinking about my thinking instead of properly mourning the passing of a person who was a big part of something that was once very important to me.
I suppose I could go on thinking like this forever, and I probably will. But another voice in my head asks why I would sit here, aged 59 and living in Spain, beating myself up about what I did or didn’t do when I was 25 and at a concert in Kansas City, or wherever, much less how I feel about it now. It’s all just thinking, and old patterns, and voices that aren’t even real. Am I going to miss this here and now because I’m thinking about how I think about some other here and now that only exists as a memory?
The Grateful Dead existed as a band, and now they don’t. Their music will go on as long as people are around to play and sing it. I got to be there pretty close to the beginning, and it was magical. It was also human, which is to say flawed and limited as well as uplifting and connecting. I listened, I danced, I learned and loved, and then – for me – it ended, and I moved on. To think I did something wrong would be to think I shouldn’t be here now. And to think that is to choose suffering and insanity. I think, instead, I will just wish old Weir the best, say thanks for memories, and then look around for something right in front of me that I’ve been missing and will one day wish I had been more connected with.
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