What if, along with "We hold these truths...," "Ain't I a woman?" and "Two paths diverged..," American high school students were made equally familiar with lines like, "Reach out your hand if your cup be empty. If your cup is full, may it be again"?
Everyone instantly recognizes the words of Jefferson, Truth, and Frost. Twenty years ago a fraction -- though a significant one -- would have just as readily recognized those of Robert Hunter, sung by Jerry Garcia. Today, I wouldn't be surprised if no under 18 years old did.
The Grateful Dead broke up 20 years ago with the death of Jerry Garcia. It wasn't just the end of a band. It was the end of a subculture, one that transcended generations. To the sure surprise of today's students, it was an important part of American high school life.
This weekend in Chicago, and last weekend in Santa Clara, the surviving members of the Dead are reuniting to celebrate perhaps the world's most improbable 50th anniversary. What began as drug-laced jam sessions in rattrap at Haight and Ashbury during the Summer of Love will conclude in performances before hundreds of thousands.
These "Fare Thee Well" shows are the last of the 2,295 that the band has played or will ever play. With them, fans get to recover something from their past and from our national past. The band, which has always celebrated the old-fashioned and the analog, is giving America a fleeting gift that makes history real once again. (Reviews, such as those in the SF Chronicle and LA Times, of the Santa Clara shows were mixed. Some say that this finale is just a sell-out. I'm not sure anyone at the shows actually cares.)
No one reveals the ambiguities of America like the Dead do, cozying up to the Devil one moment and strolling through scarlet begonias the next. With shades of rock, bluegrass, blues, and country, they span important segments of American music. But the Dead's primary accomplishments are cultural: their contributions lie not so much in word, melody, or technique but rather in community, ethics, and ethos.
When I was in high school in the early 1990s, a small but distinct number of my fellow students belonged to that community. Muted by the dress code, they still wore some of the characteristic trappings: vintage clothing, tie-dye, dancing bears, Steal Your Face, Birkenstocks, and the rest. Some kids probably chose the style and then the lifestyle; some, the other way around. Who knows how subcultures arise? I'm not sure that it matters.
What matters is the role the Dead played in the ecology of high school. I wasn't a Deadhead. I went to a few shows and knew most of the songs. But I appreciated what the Deadheads were up to. They were different, colorful, for lack of a better description, each dedicated to their own version of '60s idealism or, admittedly, escapism. They stood out in the hallways and made you think.
Neither the band nor its followers are saints, of course. The worst of the Deadhead stereotypes are seldom true, but sometimes they are. Kids surely have lost their ambitions to marijuana and their minds to LSD. Promising careers have gone by the wayside, kidnapped in wayward VW buses. Some kids ran away from good families; others ran away from dysfunctional ones.
Many of the Deadheads I encountered were Deadheads because they needed to be. They didn't feel comfortable with any of the other options, including the option to keep their heads down and be nobodies. Needless to say, high school can be unkind to nonconformists. I hate to imagine the depths of frustration they might have felt today, without the chance to choose a comforting community. Maybe some of them would have become brain surgeons; maybe others would have turned on the Xbox and never come out of their rooms. Becoming a Deadhead was, for many, a gentle way to find a purpose, join a group, and rebel without getting into (too much) trouble.
Of course, new subcultures have arisen in the 20 years since Garcia's death. EDM is the most distinctive and, probably, widespread of the recent trends. It's strangely individualistic, with DJ's hiding behind helmets and kids dancing frantically and apolitically to mostly wordless beats. Mostly, there's also the iPod-ification, YouTube-ization and Spotification of culture: the retreat into the individual screen, the armor of earbuds, and individual tastes so specific that they're hard to share with anyone else. Finally, there are the generic pop omnivores like Taylor Swift, gobbling up fans and their money.
The Dead because they provide such a powerful counterpoint: an alternative to individualism, a stand against commercialization, and, at least nominally, an admirable set of '60s ethics: tolerance, pacifism, improvisation, environmentalism, and community. Kids, of any generation, could do worse than adopt those values.
I mourn the Dead particularly because for the past 15 years I have taught high school and advised students on their college applications. They've all been great, smart kids. But, as the years have gone by, I've seen a sameness about many of the kids I've advised. So many of them want to study business. So many of them idolize Steve Jobs. So many of them have no political convictions. So many of them get good grades, do community service, and stay out of trouble but evince little emotional connection to their pursuits. Many are too earnest to know the truth about the world: that "every silver lining's got a touch of grey."
Dead culture is nothing if not emotional. Deadheads display their feelings publicly: in their dancing, in their politics, and, literally, on their patched, tie-dyed sleeves. I'm sure plenty of kids today, frustrated with politics, bored of mass media, longing for companionship, would join that community if it still existed. Judging by this weekend's crowds, there are plenty of adults -- many of whom have, surely to their high school teachers' surprise, grown up to be upstanding and successful -- who are glad they did.
As of this Sunday, the cup of the 1960s will be empty. I hope today's kids will find ways to fill their cups anew.