A Friday Sidebar:

Navigating a Big Thud

I’m a proponent of proper attribution.

And I’ve searched for hours over the past few days to credit the source of a phrase that I’ve used for years.

When John Lennon was murdered, we shared and grieved together in the expected ways.

People went to the city park to be together.

They went to the record store together.

Somehow, buying an album equated to honoring the artist.

They commiserated. Together.

They watched the news together.

All normal reactions. Variations on, “This is bad. Let’s keep each other company and be together. Because this is bad.”

A few weeks later, I was reading one of the hundreds of articles about the tragedy. A writer had an apt description of how it feels when someone famous dies. Especially if the passing it was unexpected in some way.

As I said, the source is lost to me, so I can’t properly attribute the author. But I’ve remembered their descriptive definition ever since:

The big thud.

For me, that’s about right. A big thud. You’re stopped in your tracks. You intellectually know what you’ve just learned, but you have a visceral need to internally repeat it a few times, so that it sinks in.

Many people might say, “Sure, it’s sad. But why are you upset about this? It’s not like you knew them, or they knew you.”

And oddly, that might be the whole point. Not personally knowing someone, but communally knowing them with other “strangers,” somehow has an unusual side-efffect.

It’s hard to describe.

Maybe it’s your consciousness deploying a sneaky reminder:

A somehow necessary check-in on your own, inevitable mortality.

My theory: One way that we measure the passage of time is by subconsciously pairing up public events, in step with our own life’s milestones. I’ll mercifully save you all a paragraph: Chuck Small’s current series is a perfect illustration of what I’m thinking about, here.

Earlier in the week, I had a big thud. I read the news and learned of the unexpected passing of a famous musician. And as my mind did the spilt-second computational math to compare ages, along with the requisite “where-was-I-when-I-first-heard-the-song…” thingy, I had another reaction that surprised me.

I went full-on “Jimmy Olsen” mode.

On a perhaps presumptuous impulse, your cub reporter started writing a simple article for y’all. It seemed important to report what I’d just learned, even if 7,000 actual news outlets had already done so.

What was the motivation? Same as it ever was:

To gather together.

To listen to the music together.

To commiserate together.

To watch the news together.

And to try and do so with no sensationalism, snark, disrespect, or rumor-mongering. I hope that’s how it came across.

It’s an open secret that your humble servant is making this whole website thing up on the fly. I promise you all that I don’t really know anything.

Except for one thing: I know for sure that when there’s a big thud, I want to be around folks like you.

Thanks for the together. This week and always.

Good on you all,