It's a typical Friday night in Cambridge, Mass. College types stroll the street below, ignoring the frigid wind and drizzle. It's another Friday we've fought hard for, another denouement to a week of classes that we're happy to have made it through. In a few hours, we'll be hitting the bars, the clubs, the concerts in force. Some people will be laughing; some people will be drunk; some people will dance; and some people might actually meet somebody worth more than five minutes of their time. Almost everybody will be trying to have fun.
What we won't admit is how much we'll all still be trying to forget.
It's been almost a month since the towers fell and the world stopped feeling safe. There have been over three full weeks to react, reflect, reconsider. Three weeks full of rhetoric and bombast, three weeks where we saw patriotism and unity overwhelm a few Americans' disturbing xenophobia. In the wake of mourning and pain is solidarity and, for many, a renewed sense of purpose.
You cannot celebrate the fruits of tragedy, but in the aftermath of one, you can still try to enjoy yourself. I've spent many nights out at concerts, in bars and in clubs. The places still look the same--the glassy downtown disco with all the people dressed in black, purposefully aloof, or the sweaty throng of scantily clad women and questionably drunk sleazeballs in the college bars. The music is as loud as ever, exhorting us to joy and demanding us to move.
During other times of crisis, our youth--the fortunate ones--often responded by partying harder. Eras that saw us sink into depression and war were also marked by all-night dance contests and a panoply of upbeat radio jingles and saccharine films. Perhaps the kids were living the Epicurean fantasy we previously knew only as bad Dave Matthews lyrics: "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die." Or, more seriously, one of the great mantras of the Jewish faith: L'chaim--to life, as it is today. Maybe living an escapist fantasy of peppy feel-goodism is a healthy reaction to tragedy. Maybe these times, more than others, demand that we live for today. Certainly, thinking about tomorrow is too painful.
I thought about that a few weekends ago as I stood in a nightclub listening to a dance remix of U2's "Beautiful Day," the jubilant radio hit that brought Bono and company back to the top of the charts. "It's a beautiful day," the song goes, "don't let it get away." But as the music played and the bodies ground together, I couldn't help but remind myself that no, it wasn't.
As we throw our hands in the air, I feel like we're all dancing into the apocalypse, willfully blind to what's ahead. There's an attempted amnesia, an unspoken rule that says not to talk about "it," or think about "it." Just, as so many songs say, let the music set you free.
But there is no song to take me away from "it." There is no party big enough, no entertainment absorbing enough. Going on with our lives means returning to the things we loved doing before--and in my case, that definitely includes music and dancing and partying. But rather than feel like an escape or a way to forget, it all feels like a sick joke. The shattering, terrible facts of reality loom far too large.
By the time this goes to press, I'll be back at Duke for Homecoming. Much like the rest of my world, I bet the place will look the same. There will be the same clumps of similarly dressed students roving the same loud and crowded quads. There will be a football game (I'll spare any prediction of the outcome). There will be alcohol, dancing and music.
It will be a changed place, too--a place that has suffered, a place whose president finally took a laudable stand when she refused to sign the non-violence pledge and a place whose students and teachers must direct their energies outward. It will be a place invested with a mightier purpose because the future it will help shape is no longer certain.
Once again, I'll be trying to live for the moment, doing the things I've always enjoyed. But I can't help but wonder if, once again, they will be infused with an intangible sense of dread.
Nonetheless, there will be joy in coming back. In some ways, Duke is an oasis far from the strife of reality, even in a time when events have struck us all so closely. It's also a place that, for better and worse, nurtured my young adulthood and built my strongest friendships. Duke may not prove to be my escape, but it will help. For this place is no longer my home, but it remains the nexus of my dreams.
Jonas Blank, Trinity '01, is a former editor of Recess.
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