We have had an interesting week here in London, from the amazing experience that was Live 8 last week, to Wednesday's excitement accompanying the city's winning of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, to the devastation and sadness of yesterday's tube and bus bombings. Yet, through it all, London goes on....
It remains unshakable, confident, sprawling, determined. There is a spirit and a soul here not found in other places, a remarkable spirit that makes London so special and civilized, even when things go terribly wrong like yesterday.
I have a pretty privileged job, being R.E.M.'s advisor for the past two decades plus, and one of the best things about my role is the many times I get to travel here. London ... the long soft landing of a fairly intensive year of travel and shows. Yesterday was a day off, and we were all set for this coming weekend, including R.E.M.'s return engagement in Hyde Park, highly anticipated for the whole year.
I first realized something was up when I couldn't get a cab for a meeting over at MTV. Kind of embarrassing to be this late, what an idiot I am, all the normal kind of self-talk that accompanies the misfortune of being cabless in a light rain across town from where you are supposed to be and all the cabs are full....
Finally, I gave up, telephoned in my regrets and came back to my rental apartment to take the meeting by telephone. And then, over the next few minutes, by now around 10 o'clock, the news shifted from bomb scare to power surge to the real story: buses and tube station bombings. The rest of the day was given over to monitoring the situation and charting its impact on our little corner of the world. Overlooking the park, I stayed bunkered by the computer and the landline (the cell towers had been shut down to thwart any further terrorist incidents) and tried to figure out our next move.
It became pretty clear by noon that there wouldn't be any shows in Hyde Park this weekend (infrastructure, personnel, appropriateness, limits to everything...), so the conversations shifted to the choice of outright cancellation or mere postponement. And actually, the decision was in a large sense made for us: the London authorities made clear the inability of the city to handle the show this coming weekend, but their willingness to allow it a week later. And being that the band is here to play, and the 80,000 people who are looking forward to that, even though it means extending the tour, and our whole team's personal commitments, by a week, it was a fairly straightforward decision to make. So, assuming everything stays on course, next Saturday the 16th of July should be a pretty special show, for R.E.M., for London, for the sense of normalcy that everybody craves.
My wife and I decided at the last minute to go ahead and eat out as planned, at our favorite restaurant anywhere, the River Café, and we enjoyed a chance to reflect on the terrible sadness of the day, the sense of loss felt by those affected, the heroic feats of emergency workers in the face of suffering, the "there but by the grace of God..." feelings, the abundant blessings unchanged by the events of the day (family, personal health and happiness, lessons learned). And we marveled at the full restaurant, the convivial exchanges, the life going on aspect to it all. Normal never felt so good. London thrives. And we are lucky to be a part of it