Last night, Bastille Day—June 14, 2016—my husband and I went out to see Mavis Staples and Bob Dylan perform at the concert pavilion on the Boston waterfront. We went because we love both artists, and enjoy being near the ocean on gorgeous summer nights.
Lots of other people apparently felt similarly, and as we walked from the parking lot to the show, the mood was festive and upbeat But as we approached the pavilion, we were shocked to see how long the security line was. And when we finally reached the front, I couldn’t believe how thoroughly the worker searched my purse. It wasn’t the typical “quick look and feel” for weapons and/or bottles; instead, she took almost everything out and even went through the small, zipped compartments.
“Is your security always this tight?” I asked.
“It is these days,” she answered. “After Orlando, we’re not taking any chances.” She went on to tell me that some artists are reconsidering whether they’ll even perform this summer, while others have adopted a strict “no bags” policy.
Sad, I thought. Somewhere in the crowd, I heard a person say the security line was bullshit, while others sighed and showed obvious signs of exasperation. And although I didn’t object to the procedures, I understood how some patrons were feeling. Many of them were senior citizens, and standing out there for well over half an hour wasn’t what they’d bargained for. And honestly, despite the recent terrorist attacks around the world, it didn’t seem feasible—at least not to me—that there could be any trouble at the show.
And there wasn’t. Pretty much everything about the evening was great. The musicians were spectacular; the crowd was friendly and appreciative; the weather couldn’t have been nicer. I also got to spend some time with my sweet husband, which doesn’t happen often enough these days. Never—not for one second during the show—did I feel any danger. At one point, the amazing Mavis Staples reminded the crowd that we’re living in troubled times, and I thought about the past couple of weeks and the horrific deaths of Alton Sterling, Philandro Castile, and the officers in Dallas. But we were out there to celebrate life and music, which seemed much more powerful than violence and hate last night on the Boston waterfront.
When we got home, I checked the Internet for news, and what I saw, of course, ripped me to shreds. Not only because the terrorist attack in Nice had happened, but because the crowd in Nice was so much like the crowd I’d just been in: a group of happy people, celebrating life and freedom on their waterfront with no concerns about danger. Then, with no warning, many of their lives were tragically and senselessly ended. Others were wounded—physically and psychologically—with injuries and scars that will last a lifetime.
Why? How can this sort of thing continue to happen in our world? How can it be that I’m even using the term “this sort of thing” to describe such a perverse, violent act? Only because we’ve seen similar attacks in Paris, Brussels, Istanbul, Nigeria, Baghdad, Orlando, Kabul, Syria, New York City, San Bernardino, Egypt, Chad and too many other places to list here. The weapons and methods may differ, but the results are the same: innocent people dying for absolutely no reason.
Like so many others today, I don’t know how to feel any more. I looked on Twitter and Facebook to see if there were any updates to the Nice story, and found that by 4PM EST, it wasn’t trending on either social media outlet. Instead, people were talking about Tom Brady, Mick Jagger, Mike Pence, and a possible military coup in Turkey. Are we so hardened to terrorism that our window of shock and outrage only lasts a few hours now? Or have we become like vampires, absorbing one bloody story, only to sit back and wait for the next? Hmm. Wonder how this coup in Turkey will turn out…
I wish I could end on some positive note, or at least with a moral, but with my brain overwhelmed by stories of death, destruction, terrorism, and hate, I can’t find one here.
I don’t know if Bob Dylan had heard about the attack in Nice when he went on stage last night. Chances are he hadn’t as it’d happened just a couple of hours earlier, and I imagine he’d been busy preparing for his performance during that time. But he did sing “Blowin’ in the Wind,” and I thought about that a lot today.
How many times….?
Unfortunately, after all these years, the answer’s still blowing around out there.