July 14th, 2024. Fire.

I’m not stupid enough to think any path to national healing begins with an assassination. I hate seeing how quickly Thomas Crooks’ actions are being weaponized by the Right. My guess is that 20 year-old kid would be horrified to realize just how thoroughly he’s failed, giving the Right (how do THEY get to be “Right”) a rallying point and a spectacular photograph to put on t-shirts and banners. If you wanted an image of a strong, triumphant, virile leader, it doesn’t get much better than Trump fighting his own Secret Service agents, streaming blood, to stand clear and fist pump to the crowd to show he’s okay.

I’m not stupid enough to think “oh, if only he’d aimed just an inch over…” and I find myself doom scrolling, knowing there’s nothing new yet. I’m worried about how things catch fire from here, what kind of response is “legitimized” and “warranted” now. What new battlelines have been drawn.

We’ve been onstage for a couple of newsworthy moments over the years. Freddie Grey-inspired riots happened down the street as I ran my open mic in a glass-walled tea house in Baltimore, my phone blowing up and ignored as people texted and called their concerns. The audience all slowly shut off their phones because if you were there you were fine, but if you weren’t you thought Charm City was on fire.

We were on stage in Frederick’s Alive at Five years ago when news broke about Michael Jackson’s death. You could see it ripple through the audience and it was such a distraction that the organizer came up to address the crowd in between our songs.

We’ve certainly had news break and ripple through the comment threads as we’ve played our Live from the Lairs, conversations shattering our concentration, wondering whether we should address issues or not.

But there wasn’t really a visible effect at 7 Locks last night. In hindsight I’m SHOCKED that whatever television stations the bar had on on their various screens didn’t switch over to some sort of emergency programming and there was no visible moment where everyone in the bar was staring at their phones. Maybe the information somehow didn’t percolate through to people. Maybe they were so much in the moment that they didn’t spot news reports. Maybe we’ve all learned to shut notifications off. It seems like something that would’ve knocked the whole bar on its ass. Hell, maybe we actually really had people’s attention! (it sure felt that way).

We know at least one friend came to the show specifically to get out of the doomscrolling cycle. I think only one of our friends in the bar had been avidly following events. We didn’t know what’d happened till our second break and it definitely effected our performance through to the end of the gig.

We came out of the brewery and Kristen’s car refused to start. Fans and friends rallied. SHE ran in to ask people to shuffle their cars around so SHE could get her car around to the front of Kristen’s. SHE had jumper cables and HE readied himself to jump the car. Kristen sat at the wheel and prepared to Receive the Juice and I … I must admit I didn’t do very much, just stood back and watched the wonderful thing that is Chosen Family all working together to help us out.

It’s the way it ought to be. Not running around in a panic. Not doom scrolling.

Unfortunately, the car showed signs of wavering on the drive home, air conditioning losing power, weird moments of almost-stall as we pulled out of the venue. In addition to car trouble, people were driving spectacularly fast, erratically, terrifyingly. I couldn’t help but think this was a bunch of amped-up Trump supporters fist-pumping their way home from various bars and racing up I-95 to join him in Pittsburgh in the morning to show fealty and adoration from the matte-black SUVs and absurdly-inflated pickups that seemed to be the majority of the offenders. Compensation-mobiles careening past us as we do 80 up the interstate, I thought maybe it was just our recent return from the tiny roads and tiny cars of Europe that was affecting my impression of the drive until someone decided they needed to pass us on the shoulder. Frenetic and mad, the drive got even worse on 695 as cars ducked and weaved past us. It was a relief to pull off into Catonsville, glad that the person who’d swerved onto our exit ahead of us wasn’t going our way after all, merely using the exit lane to swerve past another vehicle…

Pulling into the neighbourhood it felt like we’d gotten home in the nick of time. Kristen’s car sputtered, regained power with ALL of its warning lights lit and lost its power steering. We parked as fast as we could, loaded out and abandoned ship, relieved to just be HOME. Sad to have to walk a block or two home in the sultry air with our thoughts racing.

This morning I’ll head off to a museum that is doing good works. I’ll interview African American women who sang their way through desegregation and have fought for change all their Lives – who by being who they are – were fighting for that change simply by existing. Last night someone shot an absolute ass in the ear. An ass that wants to set all that change back, who doesn’t even grasp that that’s what he’s doing. An ass who wants to set the nation on fire for his own ego and self-interest and the adoration of those who can’t see anyone who’s not JUST LIKE THEM (or close enough to “pass”) as part of their greater national family.

I’m not stupid enough to think that if Thomas Crooks had been a better shot that that fire would be extinguished, but holy crap, missing has PROBABLY added a whole lot of fuel to the fire.