There's a New Sheriff in Town" by Randy Newman. Then the audience is invited to stand and sing along with the whole group: "Dock of the Bay" (and the audience does). It is an amazing phenomenon to behold: the songwriter sings something, they listen, then sing along, and the circle gets broader.
But why not sing it at home? Isn't there something magic about all the people being together, enjoying this concert together? It is a lovely, happy moment. But for me it doesn't seem like a moment of connection or solidarity. It's a moment of self-indulgence. Everyone is singing the same song—and no one is listening to each other. It's like the whole room is saying "What a cute song, and I've got a good memory." No one's listening to each other's memories. Maybe those are your memories, but probably not mine.
I'm a songwriter. I want to know what other people are thinking about.
If you think you're just hearing my song—you're not. What you're actually hearing is _your_ memory of the song. That's the song of the moment. Not only does everyone hear a different memory, they also hear different songs. They are not coming to that concert with the same experience. "Dock of the Bay" is special to you, maybe "Moon River," maybe "Yesterday." I'm sorry—it's not to me. It's just your version of "Dock of the Bay."
The way to make people feel that this is a moment of connection is to play the _same song_ , together. We can all sing "Dock of the Bay" at the same time and be moved by that—and by each other's emotions—but not much else. A "performance" of music that has some connection to the original—even a very loose connection—will feel a lot more like community than hearing any old version of that song.
Of course, if you are really a great performer, you can make your own audience feel like you are _with_ them, and that you understand their experience.
We can always sing the song together. But we don't always need to sing it _to each other_.
THE BEST TENTACLE FOR THE MOST PEOPLE
Let's take a break from the subject of music to talk about food.
Now, before you feel too bad for the many good people who make their living selling food, let me explain. I do believe food is one of the most creative, delicious, and diverse cuisines on the planet. I love the variety and richness that a rich diet provides. I'm not talking here about the need to eat more calories, but rather how much pleasure and pleasure diversity food can provide.
Consider the difference between a hamburger and a Big Mac. One is a simple thing, but also a wonderful source of sustenance. The other, on the other hand, is about pleasure. But how are you supposed to eat it? With your hands? In one fell swoop?
The Mac also appeals to the same part of our brains that responds to the sound of our favorite song. The music that is made up of those sounds—our own and others' musical memories—is special and precious to us. That's how we want the pleasure of listening to our music to feel.
Is it true that we want to be _part_ of something bigger and better? It's true that if you're part of something that's bigger and better, you will feel connected, especially in moments of difficulty. You have to experience a personal situation in the context of something bigger and better to believe that your own struggle is meaningful. That struggle does not feel like just yours unless you've connected it to something more significant. And that just _isn't_ going to happen unless you are part of a _collective_ effort.
The thing about collective effort is that it doesn't have to be huge. You don't have to join a band and take a thousand people with you. Even something as simple as a club, even something as small as a club, is an experience that is greater than the sum of its parts. If you belong to an actual community of people, like a sports team or a book club, you will feel more connected to other members of that community than you do when you're watching the game alone.
THE ENTANGLEMENT OF WATCHING A GAME
In March 2011, American and Canadian students went to the World Cup together. The games were projected onto a large screen that was projected onto the side of a building so that everyone could see it, no matter where they were sitting. Watching at home together, these two countries—so often at odds over the last decade—were connected in their common love of soccer.
We also need to ask if we want to be connected to something that's bigger than our own life. Sports are an obvious example. The most important moment in any sports fan's life is when they watch their favorite player perform at their highest level. This player is out there, making something magical happen, for all of us, even if we have never met. It is a moment of connection.
Think of a wedding. When a couple makes it official, it feels like the world is a lot bigger than the individual, but it isn't really. When you marry your partner, you are not becoming part of something greater than you are. You are marrying one specific person, and his or her family. So when that marriage occurs, you're connecting two people with their unique histories and families, and you're making them family, too. You are not becoming part of something bigger. But it feels that way, because it's magical—and magical events are bigger than the sum of their parts.
In the same way that an event is bigger than the sum of its parts, something can be bigger than any one person. My wife loves movies. The summer blockbusters, like _Iron Man_ or _Harry Potter_ , she loves. But more than any movie, she loves movies about dinosaurs. For a while, she liked dinosaurs so much that she wanted to be one. But not every moment in the theater is magical.
Every couple that attends a movie has that experience. You're there together. It's a shared experience. The movie isn't magic if you're in it alone.
But a big-budget movie that was made for the masses, with the same stars, by the same director, is not magical either. The thing about that kind of movie is that it doesn't require you to love the story or to be emotionally engaged with the characters in order to have a good time. But when it comes to movies—and to many other experiences—we are not so much in the moment as we are in the _present_. We're looking around. We're looking at the screen. We're looking at the people. We're seeing our parents and our friends, and their parents and friends. We're living in the moment, and the moment doesn't feel magical, even if it is.
The connection that we need doesn't happen if we are just being taken care of by the movie. So we get the person next to us to share in the experience, and a little magic begins to happen.
I'm saying that there is no special technology for connecting you with the world outside yourself. But there is technology for bringing people together in the same room at the same time. And there is technology for putting that experience on a screen that no one can ignore.
THE ENTANGLEMENT OF PERFORMING IN FRONT OF A WALL OF PEOPLE
We can apply that same technology to a performance, even though we aren't all at the same moment in space and time. We are all connected when we sing together, but what we are really connected to is a shared memory of the song.
Performing in front of a _big_ crowd is a new experience for most people. And there are few ways for the performer and the audience to come together. One of the great joys of the small club is that the audience is part of that experience. But you also want to be _in_ the experience, and the experience of seeing a show with your friends is different from seeing it with a bunch of strangers.
A small club has the potential for a magical connection, when we get a really great performer onstage. But, for most people, the pleasure of the performance comes from something bigger than the sum of its parts—namely, the shared experience. So we go to the same clubs, over and over, and the pleasure we get from a particular show comes from remembering the way it felt when we saw it last.
I went to a club in San Francisco about a year ago, and the main reason that I went there was because I didn't have to stand on line at the door. It was a club that was about a block away from where I lived. I loved going to that place, but there were so many people there—so many people I didn't know—that I lost the feeling I had when I was alone.
The place that really felt magical to me is Carnegie Hall. It feels magical for a lot of people because it's so big and it's _permanent_. Going there feels like walking into the museum of my memory of music. When I'm there, I'm part of something bigger than myself.
I don't think it's possible to have that experience at most places you go to
