Recently I attended a show featuring the
Lt. Dan Band at the
Uptown Theater in KC,MO. Mostly due to the fact that my mother and sister were both in love with the bassist:
Gary Sinise, and partly because I was intrigued.
The show was great and everything and I was amazed and a little proud that I recognized most of the songs, their majority I consider to be 'oldies'.
During the chorus of a certain slower song; I forget the title (apologies), many people rose from their seats (much to the dismay of those seated posterior to them) and started rocking, you know with their arms on each others' shoulders and all that; to which my sister and I exchanged glances, smiled, and shook our heads.
The meat of the anectdote is: that when the song was in full swing some of the younger show-goers there (a shocking number I might add) opened their cellular phones which allowed the lights to appear and began waving them over their heads in a rythmic fashion reminiscent of raised Bicâ„¢ lighters. And to show their still living inner youth, a (very) few half-wasted adults thrusted their plastic fire starters in the air also in salute.
This awoke in me a certain feeling of vital connection that still exists between ages, across cultural lines, and through the spirits of the young and old. Paired with the already wooing effects of the melodic song still being performed, this might've earned a happy tear from myself had I been any more sentimental at the time.