Dead Therapy: My Year of Living Gratefully
I’ve been listening to the Grateful Dead virtually nonstop since the pandemic began. Every day. For a full year. The music has been my sanctuary, helping me cope with the loneliness of social distancing, the monotony of working from home, and the unnerving changes happening as I enter middle age. The music has been my antidote for the hate and division that has paralyzed our country. The music has helped me embrace the unexpected and feel gratitude for the things that really matter. Therapy, meditation, and yoga have never quite soothed my soul as much as a soaring Jerry Garcia guitar solo on a long walk in the woods with my now-constant canine companion Winnie.
It’s not just me either. When I’ve told friends about my recent Dead awakening, they often admit to listening to the Dead more than usual. Or, they say my newfound passion has inspired them to revisit their favorite Dead tunes. What is it about the Dead’s music that speaks so strongly to the moment? Maybe it’s the optimism of a song like Touch of Grey at a time of darkness that reminds us that “we will get by.” Maybe it’s the swagger of Casey Jones that helps us leave “trouble behind.” Maybe it’s the infectiousness of Franklin’s Tower that helps us to remember that “if you get confused, listen to the music play.” Perhaps the 1960’s-era ethos of the Dead’s music has simply struck the right chord for many of us, balancing a desire for individualism with a collective consciousness that our wounded country and world so desperately need at this time.
The Dead’s eclectic sound embodies the multicolored tapestry of American culture. Now, with the fabric of that tapestry being stretched by political polarization, the music feels more relevant than ever. The beauty of the Dead’s music is that it is a melting pot of American musical genres, including folk, blues, rock, jazz, R&B, bluegrass and country. Isn’t that what our country is supposed to be? In a way, then, I think the Dead’s music speaks to me in an inspirational and aspirational way about the success of the American experiment and the quest for a more perfect union. We may be individuals, but our actions affect humanity as a whole, and we need to look out for each other and our planet. “One man gathers what another man spills.”
The strange part of my Dead obsession is that I was not a diehard Deadhead before the pandemic. Sure, I’ve always liked Grateful Dead music, but I’ve only been to one show. The parking lot was a kaleidoscope of color and sound on that blazing hot Sunday at RFK stadium in 1994. You could feel (and smell) the buzz in the air before the show. Alas, as was often the case in the mid-90s as Jerry’s health declined, the Dead’s performance was not cosmic that day.
I unexpectedly tumbled down the Grateful Dead rabbit hole out of boredom and opportunity. Because I am a frequent business traveler, I have spent more time at home in the past year than in the past decade. Added to the time at home, the blessing and curse of my analytical personality pulled me deep beneath the surface of the Dead’s music and into the Deadhead subculture.
It’s easy to go deep with the Dead. Anyone can access the full archive of 40 years of live Grateful Dead shows for free. Thirty years before Facebook, the Dead understood the power of viral adoption. Unlike most bands that prohibited live recordings, Dead concerts featured a designated tapers’ section, where both pros and amateurs could record the concerts. This led to an underground economy of Dead bootleg recordings. Given where sound technology was at the time, the fidelity and diversity of both the audience and soundboard recordings are extraordinary. This treasure trove of live shows has been an elixir for the stinging string of disappointments I have felt over the past year as, one by one, each concert and festival I had planned to attend was cancelled.
One remarkable fact about the Dead is that they never played the exact same set list twice. Let’s think about that for a minute. Of the 2,350 live shows they performed from 1965–1995, the setlist was never identical. It helps that they have hundreds of songs (originals and covers) in their repertoire, but I’ve never known another band that was so adamant about ensuring that the listener’s experience would be fresh from night to night. This must be a reason why so many followed the Dead around back in the day. Every night was a totally unique experience.
Nobody has done a better job at helping the listener get lost in the music than the Dead. As time has blurred over the past year, the seamlessness of the Dead’s music has especially resonated with me. The Dead are well known for long, winding transitions between songs with no clear end to one song and beginning to the next. Perhaps the best example of this is Scarlet Begonias and Fire on The Mountain. I love the tension created by Phil Lesh’s bass line teasing Fire on the Mountain at the end of Scarlet Begonias while Jerry lingers in the space between the songs, resisting the transition until he can resist no further and the band pulls him into Fire. Over the past year, I think we can all relate to this idea of no beginning and no end. Each day seems to bleed into the next, and before you know it, it’s April 2021! “Where does the time go?”
The events of the past year have elicited many, often conflicting feelings. I know I’ve had more time to focus both on the things that are wrong with our country and our world, and the things that are right. I also turned 50 last July and have likely passed the halfway point in my life. My kids are growing up and my parents are growing old. I’ve experienced my share of disappointment and loss, but on whole, I’m “sittin’ plush with a royal flush,” with a tremendous amount to be thankful for.
Not least of which is that my family hasn’t seemed to mind that I’m perpetually playing the Dead on our home stereo. I’ve caught my 11-year-old son bopping along to Ramble on Rose, my 17-year-old son grooving to Tennessee Jed, and my wife belting out “the bottle was dusty, but the liquor was clean” from Brown-Eyed Women. Seems they also feel the music fits the moment.
Something about the Dead’s music embraces the maxim that life is never a straight line. Stories of sailors, jailers, miners, gamblers, and lovers elicit a sense of best-laid plans gone awry. In the summer of 2019, a fluke corneal infection blinded my 18-year-old daughter’s right eye, just before her freshman year of college. While all her friends were posting Instagrams with their new roommates, she was stuck at home, in excruciating pain. When she finally went to college in January 2020, she turned around and came back home after 2 months because of the coronavirus outbreak. Fortunately, she is a resilient person, now thriving back at school. COVID has caused us all to internalize the fact that there are many things in life out of our control and so “what’s the point in callin’ shots.” I know I’ve gained a greater capacity to manage life’s inevitable curve balls and to appreciate the importance of “enjoyin’ the ride.”
Perhaps this exuberance and optimism is what I’ve tapped into most with the Dead’s music. It makes you want to just get up and dance. If you’ve ever seen someone twirling at a Dead show you know what I mean. During the pandemic, it’s been hard to be optimistic. Loss is everywhere and we worry who the virus will affect next. Robert Hunter famously wrote “every silver lining’s got a touch of grey.” That may be true, but during this very grey period I have been reminding myself and my family to consider some silver linings: The structural integrity of our democratic system has remained intact. We’ve seen a record pace of vaccine development, with the potential to revolutionize medicine. An overdue light has been shined on the legacy of social and racial injustice. “One way or another, this darkness got to give.”
For me, by far the most important light amid the darkness has been family time. With many families working and learning from home, we’ve been around one another a lot more than usual. At least from my perspective, I’ve (mostly) loved every minute of that. “Once in a while, you get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right.”
Now that this long strange pandemic is hopefully nearing an end, part of me wonders if this immersive Dead phase of my life is over or if I can ever go back to where the Dead is not the incessant soundtrack of my life. Either way, I owe a debt of gratitude to this legendary band, their crew, and fans that made these shows happen and still live on today.
Note: All italics are lyrics from Grateful Dead songs
