Boy, Matinicus knows how to do the 4th of July. The ratio of explosive devices to population count is possibly the highest in the world. A fantastic parade of vehicles, costumes, horses and marchers and Eva's only public tuba performance as far as I'm aware. There is a tripling of population, and parties and cookouts. These things are done all over the USA, but here perhaps with more eccentricity and community spirit than the mainland suburban realm.
This year captured all the independence and community on a single long weekend.
Independence in its larger sense is the island's DNA, like it or not. Needed skills often include fixing your owner oil burner electrodes, youtubing truck repairs, navigating regulatory bureaucracy with a handful of citizen staff, back country medicine and mundane things like how to get to appointments and get groceries and plumbing parts to and from a weatherbound and remote outcrop 20 miles from shore and civilization.
Independence also gets expressed in a parade which includes a rattling, rusted and muffler-free hatchback festooned in red, white and blue, a Miss Matinicus always with a gender twist, but this year featuring a particularly joyful and courageous individual who I've watched grow from a kindergartener into an amazing adult. Here on the island of crustaceous personalities, we include. It's not about making a statement, it's about who we just are. We don't require anyone to mark us safe from being traumatized by creative gender expression.
I love it all, but selfishly, I love the music on the town dock during fireworks best of all - loud explosions answered by loud drums and guitars. David, Woody, Gardner and I had such natural comfy grooves and covered the bases from Buck Owens to the Beasty Boys. Respectably so, to my ear. There were a butt ton of people in attendance and sweet weather, so I'll ride that wave for a while.
Independence and community can seem like opposed forces. Community requires some surrender of pure self motivated freedom, and some acknowledgement of the cat's cradle of skills and needs that fit together to keep the place turning. As tough and contentious as our community can be, I don't feel the connection between people on the mainland that I do here. Sure, there are friends, colleagues, fellow musicians, but something about the vulnerability of being on an island, and needing to work to solve problems alongside people I might choose to have nothing to do with on the mainland creates that multi faceted, sometimes spiky, thistle-like web of relationships that create this community. If we didn't need each other a little more here, the connection would be much shallower, like it feels in town.
