Updating Connections

My neighbor two buildings away put a sign up on his gate announcing a concert at 4:30pm today. When I found out about it I knew I wouldn’t be “going” other that hearing it from the balcony.  Even so, when he started testing the speakers, just before 4:30, my knee-jerk reaction was to get my shoes on to go over to his yard.  That’s what happens in this neighborhood when Riccardo and Niccolò play. People show up. By the time the music started I’d remembered that I couldn’t go over there. I had to Stay Home. That’s what we’re doing. The lapse in my cognitive process showed me, though, what others are going through. 

I’ve been trying to connect with the world outside of Italy, trying to get them to understand that they can start sooner than we did. Their mathematical curve of cases and deaths can be much flatter than ours if they start to isolate sooner. But very few are listening. Our habits are so ingrained. Our beliefs too.  People see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear (does anyone remember Harry Nilsson’s The Point?). It’s as if the software screaming DANGER! takes its time to download into people’s brains. It’s taking a long time to make the connection. We here in Italy…. We’ve all been updated (some to a greater degree, though, than others).  Others in the world are still working with the older version of the operating system. 

Riccardo and Niccolò played a set and neighbors all around sang with them from their balconies.  I saw Riccardo’s son, my daughter’s good friend, wave from his balcony.  I waved back, long arching waves as wide as I could muster. And then I sat down alone on my balcony and sobbed for the daunting beauty and tenderness of this moment, for all of us trying to do what we can for ourselves and for all of those around us. Connection… it’ll do that to you.  If you’re lucky.