Chateau Lloyd

Yesterday I joined 887 other members of Michigan State's Alumni Band for the annual reunion.  We played some music, marched around as in olden days, and did a combined half-time show with what we call the "student band."

It was great to see so many old friends and while the campus continues to change (in some ways for the worse), there was still a strong sense of continuity and enduring tradition. 

One topic of frequent conversation is how the current generation simply isn't having as much fun as we did.  They don't have nearly as much freedom - particularly freedom to explore risk and do stupid things.  They live in a age of constant observation, where rules are viciously and arbitrarily enforced.  No deed is beyond a viral video and public humiliation.  Cameras are everywhere.

A quarter-century ago, college was a place to learn - including how to be a responsible adult.  Often that happened by surviving the consequences of be irresponsible.   There isn't as much tolerance for that today.

That's a shame, because maturation requires making mistakes and learning to accept the consequences.  I think a major part of the rise in suicides is the sense that in today's world, there is no recovering from mistakes.  A single misstep and one's life is over.  Suicide has become a "restart" button.

Still, where there's life there's hope.  And I did my part by telling some of the young folks how things used to be, what we used to get away with and maybe there's a chance society will shift into a more normal direction.

The mere fact that bands still march on fall Saturdays and that Michigan State is celebrating 150 years of music with a record-setting amount of returning alumni musicians comforts me.

For those that don't know, marching band is a strange creature.  In many way's it's remarkably trivial - yet for those who put in the effort, it can have profound meaning.

Marching out of the stadium after a grueling day in the gathering darkness with familiar faces I hadn't seen in years marching along side me, I felt once again the calmness and focus that I once treasured.  There's a certain inner peace that comes from concentrating entirely on music and drill, a task so totally engrossing that everything else in life falls away.  You live entirely in the moment, with no excess capacity for anything else than playing, breathing and marching.

I'm not going to lie - us old farts were pretty bad at it, but we gave it a go all the same and when it was over, the echo of that old inner peace left everyone giddy.  You could see it on their faces as we shook hands, embraced and promised to try to make it back next year.