Boston Solstice 2024 Retrospective

post by jefftk (jkaufman) · 2024-12-29T15:40:05.095Z · LW · GW · 0 comments

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Last night was the ninth Boston Secular Solstice ( 2023, 2022, 2019, 2018). This is not counting the 2020 one which was everywhere nearly simultaneously, with carefully calibrated delay. Skyler continued as lead organizer, with me coordinating music and Taymon helping in a bunch of ways.

If you were there, it would be great if you could fill out the survey so we can make it better next year!

For the first time since 2017 we were in a real venue, Connexion in East Somerville. They donated the space, because they want to support this kind of thing, which was really generous of them. If they'd charged us normal rates it would have been ~$10/person, and if you'd like to make a contribution to the venue you can do that here.

Not being in my living room had pluses and minuses. Reconfiguring the house for maximum capacity had been a lot of work, where last year I spent about six hours on setup and teardown. We also had more people this year—I counted 52—which is more than would have fit in our house anyway. On the other hand, it wasn't as good a space for kids: at home we have separate areas where kids can hang out, including putting them to bed before its over. This time no one else brought their kids, and we hired a babysitter to stay home with our younger two. We also didn't attend the afterparty, when we would have had it been in our living room. Overall, though, I'm very happy switching back to a space built for this purpose.

I again prepared two sets of slides (audience, musicians). Next time I want to include placeholders for the speeches on the musician slides, so it's easier to follow along.

Here are the songs we did this year:

• Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, by Eric Idle

  I don't have audio for this one because the recording shut off for some reason. My guess is that the cable jiggled and it briefly lost the connection, which it doesn't recover from. USB-C is not as sturdy as USB-A, especially with adapters giving extra leverage on the port. Regardless, I think this is the one where my piano playing was worst, so I don't mind having missed it too much!

• Gather Round, Ray Arnold
  (mp3)

  It took me a long time to figure out a way of playing Gather Round that I was happy with, but I'm decently happy with where I ended up. The main thing that made it tricky is that it uses very few chords: almost the whole song just wants to be over a C chord.

• The Circle, by Taylor Smith
  (mp3)

  A song about the expanding moral circle that I like a lot. We did make a few tweaks to it this year:

  • We merged the "bring the stranger in" and "bring the far ones in" verses, since both of them cover expanding the circle to include all of humanity:

    And will we bring the stranger in,
    Circle, grow and grow.
    every state and speech and skin?
    Circle, grow and grow.
    For the hands you'll never hold,
    for the names you'll never learn,
    for all far-off hearts that yearn,
    let compassion boundless roll!
    Circle, circle grow and grow.
    

  • Julia reworked the last verse, with some help from Claude, to be less ominous while still expanding the circle to the far future:

    And will we bring the future in?
    Circle, grow and grow.
    Every soul that might begin
    Circle, grow and grow.
    From Earth's cradle, shining bright
    Spreading through the starry deep
    Lights unborn, for you we keep
    will and hope, though dark the night
    Circle, circle grow and grow.
    

• You've Got A Friend In Me, by Randy Newman
  (mp3)

  Mostly straightforward, with a tricky bridge ("some other folks might be..."). I do like the bridge, but in this context it didn't work so we decided to cut it.

• Unison in Harmony, by Jim Boyes
  (mp3)

  Easy to pick up, good feeling.

• Somebody Will, by Ada Palmer
  (mp3)

  A very difficult song melodically, but we've now been doing it long enough that we have a good range of people who can carry the tune. I like how it sounded this year.

• Give My Children Wings, Kathy Mar
  (mp3)

  Our first time doing this song. It fit thematically and isn't too hard to pick up; you can hear over the course of the song as more and more people figure it out and start singing confidently.

• We Will All Go Together When We Go, by Tom Lehrer
  (mp3)

  We've done this several times and it's often on-theme, but it's a bit hard to fit in energy-wise because it starts somber and ends incongruously happily. This time we did it in the second half, but I think I like it better in the lighter part of the program?

• When I Die, by Glen Rafael
  (mp3)

  I learned this at the initial 2011 solstice, and it's a good fit for group singing.

• When I'm Gone, Phil Ochs
  (mp3)

  We cut this down two four verses, since seven is quite long. In retrospect I think five would have been moderately better.

• No One Is Alone, by Stephen Sondheim
  (mp3)

  The original is for two voices and has some complex sections. Julia put together a version with a single melodic line, drawing from the Bernadette Peters version. We did keep the "people make mistakes" bridge, even though it's tricky, because the song really needs it.

• Brighter Than Today, by Ray Arnold
  (mp3)

  Boston version, as always.

  This time we turned on the house lights in parallel with lighting the audience candles. I now think it would have been better to just light the candles and leave the house lights for later in the program. Some of this is that I really like the feeling of the room when it's just lots of people with candles, and no electric lights.

• Endless Lights, by Ray Arnold
  (mp3)

  Possibly this is when the house lights could have come on?

  I edited the song slightly for length, removing some of the more repetitive sections.

• The Mary Ellen Spider song, words by Bob Blue to music by Stan Rogers
  (mp3)

  

  I asked Lily if she wanted to lead a song at solstice this year, and of the ones Skyler had picked out this was the clear best choice.

• Battle Hymn of Truth, words by Scott Alexander, adapted from words by Julia Ward Howe, to traditional music.
  (mp3)

  Songs that people already know the melody to are ideal.

• Old Devil Time, by Pete Seeger
  (mp3)

  I like that we have a tradition of ending with Old Devil Time each year.

It was fun working with Skyler, Julia, Alex, Charlie, and Lily on the music! There were three songs I didn't play or sing on, which is more three more than we've had in years, and is great. Looking forward to next year!

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