Just finished a stint as a member of a voter registration team on the Dave Matthews
Band tour from Aug. 16 - Sept. 5, working with a project called The New
Voters Project (http://www.newvotersproject.org), and HeadCount
(http://www.headcount.org)
Some thoughts...
As news hit that a tour bus alleged to belong to the Dave Matthews Band
summer tour had dumped raw sewage onto a tour boat and its passengers in
Chicago, we were traveling with the band in Phoenix, setting up our voter
registration tent inside the venue at the DMB show...right next to the men's
room.
Dave's onstage pre-show plug about registering to vote drew cheers as he
noted our tent location then joked that this was cool because after
registering to vote, you could just...go to the bathroom!
Associating politics with a steaming pile of human waste comes naturally to
people, especially the average DMB concertgoer; young Americans easily
characterized as shallow, empty, over marketed consumer robots, naturally
averse to civic engagement, political activity just another source of hurt
and disappointment to be defended against.
We aren't born into such powerlessness and apathy. Over time, we build
these defenses ourselves. Daring to hope that we can change the world
around us through participating in our democracy grows ever more naïve when
faced with the reeking toilet politics has become.
But at the DMB shows, something was different - over 3000 fans registered to
vote during my 3 week stint with the band.
Maybe it's the music.
Like all good music, Dave's music has a special brand of power, one that
creates a space in which it is O.K. to feel...feel anything. Go on, just go
there, and it'll be o.k. Really.
The fans may arrive at a show as ants marching to a ritual, and depart just
as methodically, but in between, Dave renders their hearts vulnerable, their
spiritual safety in his own hands. Like bumping by accident into the smell
of grandma's kitchen, it catches us off guard, finding ourselves transported
through a song to a better place of possibility over impossibility,
redemption over condemnation, empowerment over powerlessness.
Injecting politics into this space must have been a difficult decision, for
as his joke showed, Dave Matthews knows what a crock everyone believes
politics to be. We all know it. Like too many high hopes, every election
year predictably deteriorates into yet more dreams dying ugly deaths on the
rocks of imagined expectation.
And because Dave lets on that he knows it too, maybe it's o.k. to invest
hope in registering to vote. Maybe it's o.k. to overcome the absurdly low
expectations, shake off the cliché, and actually participate. After all, if
Dave is going there, reeking toilet and all, maybe we can, too, if only to
tread lightly into a place where things might somehow be brighter on the
other side, despite all we know.
