A few days ago, I was grumpypants. Just irritable and a little anxious, too.
“Have you eaten, Renee?” I had to ask myself. And then, realizing the answer is no, I had a meal. I cannot begin to tell you how differently I felt on the other side.
Lesson learned, of course.
But then I thought about 1 in 8 people who receive SNAP — including many children — and many of them have not gotten their benefits this month. And I thought of Palestinians — including many children — who have subsisted on so little for years, and especially since this March.
All of this is unjust. And all of this causes all kinds of suffering.
One meal caused a big change for me. What about all these meals lost?
I was once in a band where no one played any instruments.
And I find this to be equal parts hilarious, precious, and ridiculous. Above all, I find this to be so middle school.
Well, to be exact, so junior high.
I didn’t go to a middle school. In my home town, our elementary schools went through 6th grade. This placed 7th and 8th graders together in the junior high, which was located in the same building as the high school, but separated enough so that we youngins wouldn’t be too bullied, intimidated, or enamored by our older counterparts.
We lived there in limbo between younger childhood and older adolescence. Just dorky and free. Just awkward and full of ridiculous dreams. Like starting a band when no one played any instruments.
We did this in all seriousness by the way. That’s what makes it equal parts hilarious, precious, and ridiculous. D and H, two of my closest friends, and I joined together in the hopes of starting a band, writing our own music, and really becoming great.
Are you ready for our band name?
Because it’s also pretty ridiculous.
Our band’s name was just one, single word….
Wretch.
Yes. We were Wretch — not a cover band, mind you, but a band that wrote its own stuff. And true, none of us knew how to play any instruments… But we would! We would learn! In fact, we even chose assignments. D would play drums, H would play rhythm guitar, and I would play the bass. H and I would split the vocals.
We were so earnest about this.
Oh, also, none of us had money to buy these instruments… But we would! We would find a way!
Instead, for six months to a year — I don’t remember the timing, exactly — Wretch wrote song lyrics. That is something we actually did do. In the evenings, the three of us would write them individually in our own respective houses, then hand them to each other in class or while passing each other in the hallways.
And none of these songs had actual melodies. We would wait to write those when we could play the instruments. I mean, first things first, right?
But why not go ahead and write down lyrical masterpieces? Why not pen a prolific number of songs as potent and powerful as Renee’s own creations, such as the goofy, nonsense song entitled, “Cumulus Cloud” or the remarkably emo classic entitled, “Freak”? (I still have these along with many others. They’re in a folder in storage. I’m not telling you where.)
I suppose at some point, this absurd dream of ours just faded. Only a mere couple of years later, we could laugh hard about our go-nowhere, no-music, barely-teenage, only-song-lyrics band.
But for a while, that dream was alive.
And forever and always, that dream will whisper our name.
In it, a therapist talks about the Window of Tolerance. When we face trauma and high stress in our own lives and collective trauma in our public lives, the window by which we can regulate our nervous systems grows smaller. This is why we see people (and perhaps ourselves) reacting more to stress with fight, flight (hyperarousal) and freeze (hypoarousal) responses.
I’m embedding the TikTok below and also linking to it here.
This article from The New York Times tells the story of Spencer Sleyton and Rosalind Guttmann. There is a nearly 60 year age gap between them, but they became friends while playing the game Words with Friends on their phones. Spencer is a rapper and producer from East Harlem; Rosalind lives in Palm Beach, Florida.
The article starts with this really great line. Spencer Sleyton and his friends were sitting around one day naming their best friends. “When it was his turn, he said: ‘My best friend is an 81-year-old white woman who lives in a retirement community in Florida.’”
That was a bit of an exaggeration — maybe not best friends — but they had authentically become quite close. They were assigned to each other via the randomized game player process on Words with Friends, and then they played over 300 games. Throughout these games, they began to use the chat feature to connect, and then they shared wisdom from their lives.
Recently, Spencer Sleyton flew to Palm Beach to meet Rosalind Guttmann for the first time. Such a special experience. Two people who could have easily been strangers now have a special bond.
This is Kinship.
And it’s a reminder that just about any occasion or medium can make this possible. In this case, even a Words with Friends app!
I find myself reflecting on this in my own life and in the lives of people I hold dear. I think about how many simple occasions became entry points to build such life-giving and formative bonds. Many times, I could not have foreseen where they would go.
One common entry point in my relationships seems to be coffee shops. I think about how many meaningful relationships started with getting coffee somewhere. I can look back on various locations and think about them with names attached. This is where I met _______. Here’s where I met ________. Now, these are the kinds of people I cannot imagine not knowing.
There have been other launching points: Returned emails; sitting next to someone at a meeting, then realizing commonalities; Facebook chats, including with people I’ve not met in person; being introduced via shared friendships; showing up for a Meetup Group event.
It always starts somewhere. It can start just about anywhere.
So what new occasions might open doors for Kinship, maybe even soon? We can look for these. We can cultivate these.
Over the weekend, I wandered into a local art gallery and saw a gorgeous solo show by Matt Shlian. He’s known for creating intricate folds in paper, building elaborate forms and patterns out of the simplest materials. I loved his work.
I also loved a story that was told in a description of one of his pieces. Years before, Matt Shlian and his young child had cared for two chrysalises, each with a caterpillar inside. Together, they awaited two butterflies. But in the end, only one butterfly emerged.
Shlian was trying to consider his words carefully, so he could explain that one of the caterpillars had died. But before he could speak, his child said, “Dad, it’s OK — some caterpillars stay caterpillars.”
The description sign added, “Though Matt built up the excitement for the transformation of caterpillar to butterfly, his child recognized it’s a miracle that we even have caterpillars. He loved this idea that it’s OK that some things transform and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes there is no magic or the magic is in the ordinary.”
If something has not transformed yet, or even If it never will, or even If it once existed, but then, it ended,
I recently bought a boombox — yes, an actual boombox that plays cassettes. I was floored that such a thing still exists on the shelves at Best Buy. I originally bought it so I could hear the voice of a loved one who has passed. I found some old cassette tapes and wanted to listen again. That experience has been deeply meaningful.
Then, a few days ago, I was searching for a particular CD in my house and stumbled upon a different one altogether: a live recording from the Marktoberdorf Chamber Choir Competition. My college choir, the University of Louisville Cardinal Singers, performed there in 2005. It was one of the most extraordinary musical experiences of my life — an honor, a joy, a stretch, a moment that formed us.
And I remembered… this new boombox plays CDs too!
So I put it in — and it still works. What amazed me was how instantly the music returned to my body. I hadn’t thought about these pieces in years. I couldn’t have sung any of them on command. But the moment the track started playing, I knew every entrance, every vowel, every breath.
Only one piece on the recording is in English. These texts and these musical notes were just lying there dormant in my body in German, Latin, Spanish, and Latvian. One track title didn’t immediately ring a bell, but the second it began, I found myself singing every word in quick Russian, perfectly in sync.
These things live in us.
The moments in our lives when collective effervescence strikes — when we belong to something larger than ourselves, and when meaning is shared rather than carried alone — they stay. They take root in the body. They shape memory from the inside out.
It has been nearly twenty years. And still, in a way that shocked me, I was able to access all of this again.
If these moments linger in us this deeply, maybe it’s worth seeking them — and making them — as often as we can.
Jacob Collier and Chris Thile, Photo: Renee Roederer
Once a year, I make sure to see Jacob Collier in concert. His performances move me deeply — not just for their creativity, but for the way he brings people together. This year, I got to see him right here in Ann Arbor, my own town.
I was thrilled when I bought tickets in Row D, assuming they were the fourth row. But when I arrived at Hill Auditorium, I learned that Row D is actually the third row (not sure why?). I was already excited about that, but then I realized the first two rows were left empty on purpose. That meant we had front-row views of the magic of Jacob Collier and Chris Thile — two wildly talented, creative, improvisational artists — performing alongside the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra.
Throughout the night, Chris Thile made frequent eye contact with us — playful, knowing, in the moment. Together, the two of them had extraordinary synergy, weaving piano and mandolin together in improvisations that defied logic and overflowed with joy.
The most incredible moment came when Jacob Collier created a completely spontaneous orchestral piece in real time. He stood on the podium and addressed the musicians section by section:
“How many of you are first violins? Great — could you please play a G? You three here, play a B. You all, a C-sharp.”
Bit by bit, he built an ethereal chord — violins bowing, harp and glockenspiel sparkling underneath. Then he turned to the cellos and basses, layering in rhythm. With the brass, he added rich, resonant harmonies. The woodwinds trilled softly, and suddenly, the entire orchestra was animated with sound.
Then Jacob said, “Now we’ll do it all together. I’ll conduct from the piano — I have a part too, but I haven’t told you what it is yet.”
He began to play, and to everyone’s surprise, he came in with, “Look at the stars…” — starting to sing Coldplay’s Yellow. The orchestra swelled around him, perfectly in sync. Then Chris Thile joined in, singing a completely different song — “Every breath you take…” by The Police. Then they sang both these songs simultaneously.
Soon, Jacob had the entire audience singing along, too — “Look at the stars…” — while others layered “Every step you take…” in harmony. Voices rose from the floor, mezzanine, and balcony. Thousands of people sang together, in layers.
This iscollective effervescence.
This is what happens when music becomes something larger than performance — when sound turns into connection, when art becomes shared experience.
And sitting there in the first row, singing with everyone else, I marveled that we’re capable of moments like this.
Smuggling Grace 