The night I saw Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young in 2006

Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young performed at Polaris amphitheater on August 29, 2006. What happened? If only I’d taken my video camera – clothes that are from the past and the present, tie dye, grateful dead t-shirts. People smoking lots of pot, clove cigarettes, these smells all wafting around the area, all night long. Breathe deeply. Smell the past, think of the past and the present converging. Peace, war. Love, loss of love. Injustice, symbols, 1960, Viet Nam, Iraq, Presidents, history, war, my personal past and those mistakes and joys. “The cost of freedom, buried in the ground.” I went deeper and yet some people were deadening themselves in order to feel something, imagining that it was deeper and more real. See the colors and imagine the fabric of reality. Pot and very expensive, bad beer. Does one need these to flow with the music and the themes of the moment, the evening of music? The Grateful Dead has always been about the drugs, - their music makes no sense if you aren’t high. Why would you come to this concert in a Grateful Dead t-shirt? Is it only about the drugs?
Crosby Stills, Nash & Young are about personal responsibility and the power to make a change by recognizing that things aren’t what they seem on the surface. The government is not about the people and they have never honored the principles of Mill (John Stuart). It’s a sad world with a depth of pain that CSN&Y try to fathom through their music. And they are still, and maybe even better than before, killer musicians. So both the past and the memories and the present, like a circle wound around and brought through a spiral to now make a reality that is felt through music and we respond with our hands – clapping, and our bodies – swaying and feeling – should we shout or hug or sing along – what would everyone think? What would they do? Do we feel and act or do we shrink back and feel afraid of other people’s judgment? Music, when we let ourselves feel it deeply enough, is like religion – taking us deeper and farther than we can ever go alone and realize that we just exist and we are. I am. That’s all.