Life is better on the margins

Almost a year ago, I published an essay at dkos entitled, “Late night optimism“.  This is a partial repost with some additional commentary about what’s changed since then, and what’s remained – wonderfully – the same.

Here was the original text, and I’ll add my new reflections at the bottom:

I stumbled back home a few hours ago from a Saturday night on the town, and I wanted to share a few observations with you all before bed.  This isn’t a hardcore political diary, but I had politics on the mind tonight – in the more abstract form of social interaction. 

Maybe a bar isn’t always the best place to be thinking about the Democratic party on the mind, not to mention dailykos.  I’ve been participating less and less here, partially because of an increased level of responsibility at my job, and partially because – and this happens to anyone who takes breaks from here – I’d felt the community was shifting away from what I’d come to know.

Which is fine.  Communities change over time; some people enter and some people leave, and it’s not always easy to find your bearings – even when you’ve been around for a while.  But I’m going to back up a bit and tell you about my night, and the kinds of thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head:

There’s a once-monthly dance night at one of the local bars that attracts an odd crowd of outsiders; when describing it to a friend, the best I could come up with was alternative-queer-punk-metro-grunge-something.  Imagine you’ve grabbed all those subcultures together, packed them into a smallish bar with a mix of music leaning heavily on indie rock from the 80s, and you’ll have some idea of the kind of atmosphere we’re talking about. 

But what an interesting mix of people!  The crowd tonight was nearly half gay, and neither side seemed to mind that the other half was there.  Guys were dancing with guys, girls with girls, guys with girls, and of course, a lot of people were having a damned good time by themselves.  People who spend time doing political activism were dancing with people who couldn’t care less about politics; people who spend time writing poetry were dancing with people who couldn’t care less about poetry; and on the rare occasion a popular song came up in the playlist, the entire room shouted the lyrics, even if it didn’t fit with the subculture they were there representing.

I got to thinking: this is what it looks like, really.  We sometimes talk about the Democratic party being a loose confederation of interest groups – women, minorities, LGBT, etc. – and we often see how interest groups can make dialogue on a broader platform more difficult.  How can people who have no real platform in common come together towards goals that should be common?

We’ve seen this kind of fracturing in the site time and time again, and it’s not just the interest groups: pragmatists can’t stand the way that idealists scuttle dialogue; idealists can’t stand the way that pragmatists dismiss important concerns.  Sensationalists run with exciting stories without double checking them; cynics question everything to the point that nothing gets done. 

And somehow, through all the pie fights, the shouting, the endless diaries arguing back and forth over controversial points, things do get done.  It’s not efficient, it’s not clean, but the site (and likewise the Democratic party) slugs along towards common goals – almost in spite of itself. 

I’m not a Romantic, by any stretch of the imagination, and as I looked at the room full of excited young people, I knew well enough that, if you asked them to sit down and work out political platforms together, they’d likely be fighting within the hour.  But somehow, those differences didn’t matter for now.  We could get together over beer and music, and those nagging roadblocks to communication just melted away.

So for tonight, I offer everyone a conciliatory beer and an invitation to join the dance.  It’s about community, after all.  And even if the members of the community have nothing else in common (h/t), we can still all groove to the same music.

That was mid-November, 2006.  Last night I went back, for the dozenth time, to the same once-monthly shindig and had many of the same reactions that I had when I first wrote this diary.

But some things have changed, or have been changing since I first attended this event back in 2003 or so.  The news of a gay-friendly club night has attracted a larger and more geographically diverse gay crowd, and we met people who’d driven an hour to come to what is essentially a local thing.  The increased gay presence also means that less straight people are attending, and soon it may hit a tipping point, after which the monthly get-together will become, for all intents and purposes, a gay night rather than the delirious mix that drew me to there in the first place.  Possibly because of that, the music is slowly shifting away from ragtag indie rock towards an equally ragtag indie electronica. 

As a gay night, it’ll be heads above anything in the area (for an ostensibly liberal haven, we’re pretty sad in that department), and I imagine it’ll be a huge success if the bar decides to embrace it as such.  But something will be missing.

This is what happens, the natural life and death cycle of something too good to keep a secret forever.  Maybe last night was one of the last times the mix would still be bizarre enough to enjoy, but at least we had last night, since I’m sure many people never get to experience a night like this at all.  There were drag queens and punks, frat boys and cheerleaders, black, white, Asian, Middle Eastern, and all points in between, and it felt great to be there.  The socially lubricating qualities of beer didn’t hurt, either.

It’s a pity places like this always exist on the margins of mainstream culture, but in a way, they have to be: mainstream culture tends to flatten things out, and events like this rely on a scruffy, underdog charm.  Granted, this event ceased to be purely marginal the moment I started attending (I’m the very definition of uncool, so if I know about it, it’s already sold out), but it still hovered (hovers?) safely outside popular radar, which is part of the reason it can exist at all.  Popularity brings with it a certain need for expectations, but the margins are free to drift in sense of hazy indeterminateness. 

The margins can be an exhilarating place to live, where the culture clash is greeting by a warm, inviting community.  It exists in places like New Orleans’ Marigny, a neighborhood bursting with elderly folks who’ve never left, bohemian young adults who can hardly afford rent, musicians, painters, queers, students, transients, and on, and on.  Its identity is protean, which both accounts for its value and explains why it can never be preserved.  Eventually the trendiness of the Marigny will encourage more people to migrate there, and money will start flowing, and houses will be restored, and property values will go up, and the neighborhood will acquire a capital I Identity.

Natural life cycles, of a sort. 

The cover charge at the club was higher this year than in the past.  We can sense the coming changes by the lighter weight of our pockets.  The extra two dollars carried a whiff of inevitability.