I think that Karyn and I both thought we’d cry a lot more during the graduation ceremony. This is what we’d braced ourselves for, after all, basically just streaming tears through the whole ceremony. I can’t even explain why this would be the case, not on any rational level, at least. We know it’s celebratory, and yet I think we’re geared to have some internal emotional overflow reservoir that just defaults to a relief valve of weeping.
I did have to wipe a few tears, but this was a small part of it. The overarching theme was not simply a celebratory rush to leave school behind. Instead, there was joy. I write this and realize that this seems trite. I mean “joy” in the full embodiment-of-self kind of way. This high school graduation celebrated individuals and the community they create. The athlete and the drama queen and the tuba player and the literary nerd and the math geek and all the rest were all cheered and revered. Teachers hugged students and wiped their own tears; students cheered for the underdogs and the achievers, all.
It hit me most especially when I was watching “Dancing Queen” get performed by an ensemble in their caps and gowns. It was introduced with a fiery electric guitar, fingers dancing down the neck as students and parents cheered. Then came the upbeat rhythm, unironically enthusiastic vocals emanating from broad grinned faces, an unlikely violin backing up the electrified band composed of whatever instruments the collective could put together the weeks before graduation. This vibrance shone in the same setting and upon the same stage that diplomas were handed out, where a speech and name tags honored students of other schools who lost their lives in school shootings, where cords were ceremoniously draped upon students with arrays of accomplishments, and where advice was generally dished out to be compassionate, to be the change you wish to see in the world, to strive forward.
I thought that this joy and community and individuality was captured in Anna’s speech, where she explained her disdain for the music of “Pomp and Circumstance” simply because it was traditional and repetitive, and nowhere fitting of the students being honored that day. After exemplifying this with cases represented in the students sitting before her, including her own love of knitting, books, and whales, as well as a break from tradition to tell a beloved teacher to “kiss my ass” (to thundering cheers and applause), she concluded:
Play Pomp and Circumstance as you see fit. Slide to each note. Chop each bow stroke. Jazz it up. Squeak. Add some dance moves. Or play it as written. Defy my expectations, our stereotypes. Play music as [our school] lives it: surprising everyone with misplaced crescendos and swung tempos. In fact, family and friends of our class, learn from us. Pick up your metaphorical triangles, your symbolic cymbals, perhaps your literal cowbells, and play along. Help us complete our anthem the way we arranged it.
Previous to all this, I’d thought I could offer Anna advice about her speech. She never needed it. It was her, her class, her school, and this joyful, active, admirable generation that I watched and admired and cheered as they danced, collectively but each to their own beat, up the aisle and on their way out the door. I can’t help but follow them.
