While driving recently, an old song came on—Begin the Beguine, one of my mother's favorites. Instantly, I was pulled into another era: dance halls, wartime memories, my parents as young people before I knew them, before they became my parents.
I found myself wondering about the music of those times.
Big band music emerged during years marked by uncertainty—the aftermath of the Great Depression and the unfolding of war. People gathered in dance halls. Soldiers carried songs with them overseas. Music was not simply entertainment. It offered something more.
Rhythm.
Belonging.
Relief.
People moved together.
They sang together.
For a few hours, perhaps they remembered themselves beyond fear.
Later generations had their own cultural currents. Folk music and the music of the 1960s carried questions about war, justice, civil rights, and possibility. Songs became something people shared—a language helping them recognize one another.
Lately, I have found myself wondering:
Where is that now?
We are living through our own era of uncertainty.
War. Economic instability. Violence. Deep political division. Questions about democracy, belonging, and our collective future.
Yet our cultural experience often feels fragmented.
Many of us move through the world wearing earbuds. We scroll through thousands of separate streams of information and music, each of us inhabiting slightly different worlds. We consume culture privately.
Perhaps what I am missing is not simply music.
Perhaps I am missing the experience of gathering.
The experience of breathing together.
Singing together.
Listening together.
Feeling ourselves become part of something larger than our own thoughts and worries.
I don't think culture arrives from the top down.
I wonder if it often rises from smaller places:
A circle around a fire.
A shared meal.
A local concert.
A porch.
A storytelling gathering.
A room where people feel permission to show up more honestly.
Maybe culture begins whenever people risk creating spaces where we remember belonging.
Maybe the question is not: Where is the music?
Maybe the question is: What songs, stories, gatherings, and acts of courage are quietly beginning around us now?
And perhaps: What part are we being invited to play?
A quiet invitation:
Pause today and notice:
Where do you feel most connected to aliveness?
What places, people, songs, or gatherings help you remember yourself?
And is there one small way you might help create more of that—for yourself or someone else?
This reflection also lives in the questions shaping this year's Summer Solstice Retreat at The Forest House:
How do we create spaces where people remember belonging, relationship, and aliveness?"
Learn More Here → Summer Solstice Retreat