Well, I certainly did not walk into the Franklin High School Spring Band Concert expecting to be taken down in the first five minutes. But then the Vocal Ensemble got done with the Alicia Keys and started in on the Bill Withers, and I barely made it though “Sometimes in our lives / we all have pain / we all have sorrow” before I was blinking away tears and groping in my bag for a tissue.
The band director referred vaguely to “the recent tragedy”* a few times in his remarks, and all his usual stuff about how very, very proud he was of these students seemed to have taken on an extra superlative dimension this evening. He mentioned Avicii’s recent suicide in his intro to the String Orchestra’s heartfelt rendition of “Wake Me Up” -- a song, he pointed out, about wanting to find your place in the world: "It's just so sad that he wasn't able to find his." More blinking and groping. (The house lights were on, because the 17-year-old who knew how to run the booth had gone home, so I was conscious that my barely-controlled weeping was on display for everyone on the stage -- I could only hope I wasn't the only one mortifying my child.) Then the Symphonic Winds came through with a rousing New Orleans funeral medley, including some inspired wailing solos on "The Saints Go Marching In." The strings and winds combined for the final set: the theme from "Game of Thrones" (a show most of the people on stage were officially too young to watch, the director noted, though this did not prevent them from attacking the music with gusto) followed by "Viva la Vida." "This is the point, really," he insisted. "Live life!"
And then at the very end, after the standing ovation had died down and we were all settling back into our seats, we were instructed to look at all our kids’ names on the back of the program. The director waited out the quiet rustling of paper as we all found our programs and flattened them out in our laps. Read every one of those names, he told us. Take them all in. And then look at their shining faces on the stage (okay, he didn't say "shining," but they *were* shining, as all of them looked awkwardly back at all of us, blinking and sniffling in the houselights). Think about all the things they’re going through, said the director. And let's all do our best to make their world a little better in whatever way we can.
*A senior was fatally shot over the weekend while telling ghost stories in a nearby park.
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