This most misleading statement was heard two summers ago when the Pop King had a fatal heart attack arrest: “Michael Jackson is dead. He was 52.” His body, his persona and his stardom could have vanished from this planet, yet his essence through Pop music had never become more alive and present. The passion for authentic expression, the urge to change, inward, as an individual, a society and an entire humanity was outstanding. Collective expressions the arts in urban settings have dragged us humans to break any possible paradigms. The power emerges from our human desire to reach the entire world. Crowds of diversity, different ages, social contexts, and religious believes have transcended neighborhoods, cities, and entire regions allowing us to transcend and in turn receive the echoes for freedom we all seek in these events.
Why do we human reverberate these movements? What do we linger for as we engage or passively appraise them? And how do these movements impact us and possess us? These themes have been abundantly explored and researched not only in social sciences but also in poetry. Antonio Machado has several compositions regarding these issues. In his poem “La Fiesta” he celebrates impact a villain and a king embracing each other’s hand in a festivity, only to wake up the next day as opponents once again. The fairytale “Pied Piper of Hamelin” from the Grimm Brothers illustrates how a single man was able to articulate such a powerful strategy which proved effective beyond any other attempt: with his magic flute he convinced a crowd of rats to abandon their routines and leave the city, freeing it from the infestation they had caused. There was enchantment beyond merely clearing the plague-ridden town, since this musician’s tunes were able to trap all children as well, as a revenge of the debt for his services. This tale, familiar to most of us, is full allegory, metaphor, symbolism and irony but these literary devices can and do become real in our daily lives. The synergy propelled by collective marches and fine-tuned rhythms, leads us into unison. The same power prevailed in combats during World War I and civil wars all over. As a result, our emotions connect within each other and we no longer are isolated. Individuals participating in parades, marches and bands act like tributaries of a river, the more they advance and the greater number of contributors, the more powerful their actions and impact become.
There have been “Walks” these last decades, a slower pace of this same phenomenon, which are devoted to a cause; marathons and marches fit the same scheme of Pied Piper of Hamelin. Becoming enacted, the end prevails and only the means diversify.
When serious actions on art are taken, one of the first angles is the training of the mind to analyze the scene taking place in front of it: an altar piece, an illuminated manuscript, a triptych, etc. They all trigger a reaction on the observer. We begin appraising art by analyzing the piece, maybe the medium, the historic context of the artist, the composition and theme, but it takes the eye of an expert to understand its purpose, the movements which lead to its creation in the first place and it is this approach, the tool that should enable us to analyze the impact of a Mob.
In an artistic collective phenomena such as the Mob mentioned by Shukaitis, music becomes an object; its sounds and composition materialized into diverse alive entities which portray the melody imprinting their own volume and accent. Thus this robust face and that elderly vocalization are the prevailing notes, while the astonishment and silence of some kids give the composition its own tempo. As the march progresses the power in number is enhanced and we can clearly distinguish a triumphant rhythm and a melody of conquer.
Why are these events still the exception and not the rule? What deprive us from engaging in them or creating our own? There are severe barriers to get an answer and the first one is related to the division between personal and public space. We would have to conceive space differently: the streets not only lines of danger where vehicles run at very high speeds and pedestrians are impeded to transit except during the infinitesimal blink of a green light. We conceive streets the same way we do now with rivers. They are death, confined to a tube, distributing every single drop of water hiding, silently out of sight.
We need to regain livelihood of our public spaces and allow streets to be out of congested traffic of vehicles, turn them into scenarios where every spectator has a seat in first row as the march progresses in from of each house and dwelling. We need to lower the speed of our daily chores and be able to assign time to reach to each other, be equal to each other.
The most challenging barrier to overcome our stagnated lives and remove impediments to flow, to migrate as we did it millions of years ago, is to reassign priority values to the things that deserve it. As long as we rush ourselves from bed every morning to remain at least 8 hours looking in one direction, answering rather than questioning and confined instead of in touch, our communities’ live will continue to erode.
I lived in Montréal during my teen years and was amazed by the livelihood of the streets: from the Laughter Festival, Just pour Rire, to the Jazz festival, the Saint Patrick, Twins and Gay couple parades, to the Grand Prix, there were flows of crowds during Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall. The streets of this tiny island in the middle of the Saint Laurence river were vibrant. In this case these flows were the rule and not the exception. The Montréal community has citizens from all over the world, they as a diverse majority who knows better what it means to be human and act accordingly to have their bare necessities fulfilled.
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