A story of reconciliation amidst division

I keep going into the week when it is time for me to write a column with an idea that I know I want to write about but events keep pushing that idea further out into the future.

I was ready to write it in June, and then my dad died and I needed to write about him. I was going to go with that idea this week. And then Saturday happened. Hopefully I’ll get to that other idea in August.

Like many people out there, I was glued to cable news for hours on Saturday. I was working in the studio mixing audio files that will eventually end up as a promo video for the band I’ve been working with for too long with that basic tool. I saw a notification that had something to do with the former president being escorted from a stage. But I was deep in the mixing state of mind and ignored it until my wife texted me with the actual news.

I am not writing about that news. It was obviously a historic event. But I don’t have anything of value to add. So better to stay quiet about it. It did, however, make me think about a personal story of division and, eventually, some kind of healing and reconciliation.

Come with me, boys and girls, as we enter the Wayback Machine and visit the years before we all collectively lost our minds. Set the controls to about… Let’s call it 2010-ish.

My twisted professional history comes into play here. In 2010, I was still the editor of a trade magazine for audio professionals called Front of House. I had been in that position since early 2002 and for 7 years prior to that had been the editor of a magazine for working musicians called GIG.

For most of the people involved with GIG, it was a kind of holy quest more than a job. The mission was something we all deeply believed in. And, in fact, the 1995-2002 version was actually a second bite at the apple. The magazine had been started in the mid 1980s as an indie publication. It failed financially and was resurrected by a New York publishing company in ‘95. Although the original publisher and myself were the only ones from the old crew officially employed by the new organization, the old gang was always around and working in a freelance capacity.

Which, finally, brings me to my friend Jim Love.

Jim was the art director at that early, indie version of GIG and one of the smartest and most tech-savvy people I had ever known. He taught me pretty much everything about how I look at and deal with tech. In the few years between when the original magazine failed and was then brought back, Jim and I worked on an online version under a different name. We were pioneers with a capital P.

I’ll never forget the Saturday afternoon in 1993 when Jim called me and said, “I need to show you this thing called the World Wide Web.”

Together, we built one of the very first online publications out there and that web-based effort was what caught the attention of the publisher who brought back the physical magazine. Jim and I kept working together and he developed the web site for that magazine which was, again, doing stuff literally no one else had thought about yet.

We did an email newsletter when that still meant sending the same email to 25 people at a time, long before things like Mail Chimp and Constant Contact made newsletters a thing literally anyone could do. Magazines that went to paying subscribers had a code printed under my signature on the editor’s note and that code unlocked a bunch of premium online content.

By 2010, Jim and I were again working on a web project called the Live2Play Network and continuing to do pretty neat stuff together.

Back then, I was pretty loud and proud online about my libertarianism. And, like too many of us, I said harsh and dismissive and maybe even borderline toxic things online. It is so easy to get caught in the trap of saying things from behind a screen and keyboard that you would never even consider saying to someone in person. Some of the things I posted back then still come up in the algorithmicly-generated “memories” feed and I read them and kind of cringe a little bit.

I still don’t know if it was one thing I wrote or said or if it was a cumulative thing, but one day I got a message out of the blue from Jim.

I should clarify that while I lean a bit to the right politically, Jim leans way to the left. But back before about 2015, we could all disagree and still be friends. Politics had not totally become an existential war yet. (It was well on the way, though and had been since the concurrent rise of the Tea Party and Occupy movements in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown.)

The message from Jim was pretty direct and it came in the form of an actual letter in the mail. It read, “You call yourself a libertarian. That means you are either a sociopath or a moron and I choose not to engage with either.”

I tried a few times to reach out, but there was never a response. We had been friends for more than 20 years and suddenly, it was over.

I still found myself quoting Jim about technology and other stuff when I told stories, but it appeared our relationship had come to an end.

Until, that is, a couple of months ago.

I got a text message from Quint Randle, the guy who started the whole GIG Magazine thing and who had introduced Jim and I back in like 1989. The message said, “I was talking to Jim Love today about a project he’s working on and he would like to talk to you about it. “

I was kinda floored and told Quint what had happened between us more than a decade earlier and he said, “Yeah, Jim said that is what happened. But hopefully we have all grown up a little since then.”

I texted in a group chat between Quint and Jim and I and then the two of us had a long phone conversation. We caught each other up on our lives over the past decade-plus and talked about the project he was trying to get off the ground. No big surprise that the idea is a variation on and the fourth or fifth bite at the apple of creating an authoritative info source for musicians.

I gave him my thoughts and told him that, sure, I would do anything I could to help out within the restrictions of time in my too-busy life.

Since then we have communicated back and forth, mostly via text, a half-dozen times and I am introducing him to some of the freelance writers I worked with on the old Live2Play project. He is developing the concept and I hope he is the one who can finally make the idea really go.

And, I would say that we are friends again.

You should note what didn’t happen as part of this reconciliation. We never talked about what had caused it or who said what or tried to convince one another of who was right or who was wrong. We had both grown up enough to understand that stuff was just not all that important. A friendship and working to create cool stuff together was way more of something to fight for.

As a society, we are obviously pretty bitterly divided. And, as much as I hope that recent events will lead to some kind of kinder, gentler discourse, I have to admit that I don’t believe that many people are capable of that and the ability to hide behind a screen will continue to free people to be the worst version of themselves.

As long as we treat politics like an existential war, we will never change a heart or mind and division will be the main item on the menu. But if you have someone in your life with whom you have lost contact over this stuff, think about reaching out. Differing opinions or world views? Just don’t talk about ‘em.

In the grand scheme of things, the stuff that divides us is a lot less important (or cool or fun) than the stuff that brings us together.