George

Did you ever notice that we have a whole RITUAL around the end of things?

The season ends and suddenly everybody needs to GATHER. Everybody needs to be IN A PLACE, together, eating food, as if the food is going to somehow VALIDATE what just happened. As if the burgers are going to turn to you and say, yes, what you did this season, that MATTERED.

And here’s the thing —

[leans forward]

It does.

It actually does matter and that’s what nobody tells you. They set up all this machinery — the invitation, the date, the address, seventy Scituate Street, Arlington, rear garden, one o’clock, bring something — all this APPARATUS of gathering, and you’re supposed to roll your eyes at it because rolling your eyes is what smart people do —

but the smart people are WRONG.

The gathering is the point. It was always the point. Human beings have been doing this since before they had addresses. Since before they had rear gardens. They found a place, they made a fire, and they stood around it together because the alternative — the alternative is standing alone in the dark, which, I’ve tried it, not great.

[pause]

Now. Jeannine.

I want to talk about Jeannine.

Jeannine is at the grill. Jeannine is ALWAYS at the grill. And everybody acts like this is a small thing — oh, Jeannine’s doing the grill again, lovely — but what Jeannine is actually doing, what she has ALWAYS been doing, is the oldest human act there is. She is controlling fire to feed people she loves. That’s it. That’s civilization. Everything else — the internet, the space program, the McRib, all of it — everything else is just a footnote to the moment the first person stood at a fire and fed somebody.

Jeannine is not a footnote.

Jeannine IS the text.

[drinks water]

They want you to bring food or drink. The coordination is forthcoming — and I love that word, forthcoming, it’s such a POLITE way of saying we have no idea who’s bringing what but we’re optimistic — and Felice is handling it, and when Felice is handling it you can relax, you can actually relax, because there are maybe twelve people on this earth who can be trusted to handle something and Felice is one of them and you know it and I know it and more importantly FELICE knows it.

[stands up]

So here’s what’s going to happen.

You’re going to go. May seventeenth. Sunday. One o’clock. Seventy Scituate Street, Arlington, Massachusetts, rear garden, through the side gate, you’ll know it by the smoke. You’re going to bring something because you’re not an animal. You’re going to stand in that garden in that May afternoon light and you’re going to eat Jeannine’s food and something in you — something you didn’t know needed it — is going to just.

[exhales]

Settle.

Because that’s what the gathering does. That’s what it’s always done. That’s why we keep doing it even when we pretend we’re too sophisticated for it.

We’re not too sophisticated for it.

Nobody is.

[picks up stool. walks off.]

[turns back one more time]

The Boston Magic Lab. Good people. Doing the thing.

Don’t miss it.