Driving from Bloomington to Chicago takes four to five hours and is a pretty boring drive. This year’s highlight was a lone sign saying “Boycott Fox News”, a stark contrast to what we had last year at around this time.
There are many reasons to go to Chicago. This time I had the privilege to be needed as company, because my daughter wanted to see Morrissey.
I am not very literate when it comes to popular music. The concerts I look back to with fondness had “stars” like Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen, or Bhimsen Joshi present. No, I didn’t listen to The Smiths. But this is what our kids are for: To educate us.
And Morrissey impresses. He says what he thinks not to be a clown, but to be himself, and he is still good at it. His band was dressed in T-shirts saying “This country makes me sick”. Morrissey was obviously very angry.
The theater was sold out, with a very diverse crowd. A few rows away a group started smoking weed early on. Chicago. But they all had a good time.
It was good to see this kind of solidarity across generations. It is the kind of angriness that brings people together.
The Inner Frame 