"Everything felt right with the world . . .

for a short time this afternoon", said a good friend following a concert of the Florida Chamber Music Project*. While the comment and the concert warmed my heart, I couldn't help wondering if this is our new norm? Being suspended momentarily from life's dailyness is always welcome, yet, this is something else. This is the moment when we realize "we are not in Kansas anymore". I will not label it a wake-up call, nor an existential crisis, though it is both, this is more than that. Much more. When the music in our ears and the sunshine on our faces begins to feel like a short moment when everything is right with the world, what does that say about all the other moments? Are we already swimming in sentiments of the "good ol' days" when we enjoyed an afternoon outing, then easily got on with everything else even as the music lingered in our minds? If so, this is a marker between what was and what is now.

When something begins to feel nostalgic it is because it has already been lost. Some things are already beginning to seem like a distant memory the way a dream recedes in the waking moment. Everything that was easy is getting harder; everything that was already hard is getting harder.

Remember when it used to be easy to buy a dozen eggs, scramble 'em up for breakfast, and call it a day? Today, bare store shelves and soaring prices make "over-easy" seem hard-boiled. It is not a stretch to imagine other shortages of this or that until pretty soon we forget about the price of eggs because we will have forgotten about eggs altogether. This is the way it goes when easy things become harder. We begin to ask ourselves, "Remember when we used to _______________?" In isolated places like Cuba, this is the norm. In March 2024, one year ago, protests began over food shortages as the country experienced the worst living crisis since the early 1990's. When I visited Havanna with a group of American artists in 2015, ten years ago, those store shelves were already bare. I waited on the sidewalk with the locals each with a voucher, or the"other" currency distinguishable from the coins given to tourists, only to enter the dusty concrete store where there was barely a thing to buy. Nada!

The island is just 90 miles south of Miami and a world apart. It may seem like a leap to think we might find ourselves repressed and oppressed by a government that cares little or not at all about its peoples' basic needs. I want to be proven wrong on this. I really do. However, as the already hard things become harder from finding a place to live to finding the truth in the news, to finding the news itself, or finding the books we want to read, finding what is right with the world becomes increasingly hard and ever more significant. Those moments when for a short time everything seems right with the world is one way of holding onto hope.

The U.S. Youth Poet Laureate, Amanda Gorman, in a recent interview** holds such hope in her words even as her book has been banned in public schools in Florida. Wise beyond her years, she asks why any one person should get to say what is best for the rest of us? That is the question that needs to be answered now, not on some future day, and not when we look back with nostalgia for what we have lost.

https://contentmanager.med.uvm.edu/docs/the_hill_we_climb/vccyf-documents/the_hill_we_climb.pdf?sfvrsn=44a33335_2

*https://flchambermusic.org/

***https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR-yervhhBc