Gee: Can music and sports bring together a divided America?
Feb 13, 2019, 12:57 PM
So I’m getting gas the other night and the familiar sounds of The Reverend Al Green come through the outdoor speakers. That familiar music came along and I hear this voice from the other side of the pumps. Man, it was outstanding. Whoever this dude was, he was singing along, and he was for real.
I, I’m I’m so in love with you
Whatever you want to do
Is all right with me
I’m thinking, “Yeah, man. I’m feeling this right now. I just got to look and see who is belting out this song.”
So I popped my head around the pump. It was like one of those moments that you see in the movies where a loud record scratch sound happens to exaggerate the effect — “Scrrrrrrrrrpppppppppp!”
I did not expect this dude to look like Billy Idol wearing a Black Sabbath T-shirt.
But it was cool. Real cool. This dude kept on singing, he nodded to me as he got in his car and left.
We shared a moment there, and I liked it. It got me thinking, like these things often do. On the surface, this guy and I had little in common. But a song, a simple love song from nearly 50 years ago, brought two strangers together for a brief moment. We weren’t talking about politics, or arguing over policies that elected officials can’t ever seem to agree on. We just enjoyed a song together.
The same sort of thing happens to me when I travel. I will have on some sort of Seahawks apparel and I will hear a “Go Hawks” from a random stranger and we will make eye contact, maybe even stop and chat for a second. Then we’ll be off on our separate ways.
Maybe we all need to connect with each other through music and sports, and then find ways to reach common ground about all that “other stuff” we seem to disagree on.
Hmm … maybe I am onto something. Stay tuned, there will be more on this to come.
