Disclaimer: I wrote some of this immediately after the 2019 PASIC but have since edited/updated it.
PASIC, for those of you who don’t know, is an annual multi-day convention devoted to percussion. Each day contains a seemingly infinite number of performances, demos, competitions, and clinics. The whole thing, frankly, seems to defy the laws of physics—I just don’t understand how so much is crammed into such a short window.
The random conversations and coffee meet-ups are always the highlight for me, Indy’s cold weather and the ever-present and EXTREMELY LOUD drumming the lowlight. Over the years, I’ve tried to focus more on promoting community and less on pushing commerce, and this has definitely improved my PASIC experience.
Although I’m sitting this PASIC out, its hard-to-ignore presence on social media has prompted me to reflect on the ways my relationship to it has evolved and on the ways it hasn’t. PASIC has always been a very strange experience for me, and one that has grown all the stranger with each successive year—2020 of course is no exception. What happens is that as I go about my normal PASIC business, I feel like I'm simultaneously reliving past PASICs. This merging of memories is worse when I’m tired, which is all the time while at PASIC (and all the time in general these days).
I think this overlapping of memories has a lot to do with the extreme compression of time and the hyper-activity that takes place. Each year there’s an unexpected convergence and a conflation of memory—when I step into the convention center, faces, names, and conversations that have laid dormant suddenly rush back with an unchecked ferocity. I walk past the reasonably plushy seats near the entrance and I’m back on an immigration advocacy conference call from several years ago, frustration mounting as everything derails in slow motion. I enter the bathroom and I’m standing by the leftmost sink amidst flushing toilets and running water, reading Elizabeth Catte’s takedown of the constructed whiteness of Hillbilly Elegy.
I think a lot of this stems from the 2016 election and the fallout surrounding it. We arrived in Indianapolis the morning after, shell-shocked and finding friends and colleagues similarly shell-shocked. Although the predominant atmosphere inside the convention center was one of community and support, there was also a heavy undercurrent of fear, of paranoia and hopelessness. Then-governor Pence’s office was just a few blocks from the convention center, and MAGA fever around town and around at the country was already running high. At one point, we joined a spontaneous rally on the grounds, circling the building and chanting even as a giant truck with a giant Trump—Pence banner circled us.
I wore my "Donald Eres Un Pendejo" shirt throughout that PASIC and I remember feeling extremely uncomfortable doing so. PASIC is overwhelmingly white and Trump’s supporters are overwhelmingly white, and the intersection of the two is some non-zero number. I’m better these days at confrontation than I used to be, but it’s not something I seek out without conscious effort. These days, I try to make that effort whenever possible and I recognize the fact that I have a choice about engagement is both a privilege and a responsibility to engage.
Walking the Indy streets, especially at night, I started realizing on a deeper, more visceral level that the discomfort I was feeling as a white man was nothing compared to the discomfort experienced by the people deliberately and directly targeted by MAGA because of who they are and because of who they aren’t.
Things clicked for me in a way they hadn’t before. That PASIC marked the beginning of a major shift in who I was, who I am, and who I am working to be. My sense of priority, of what’s important in life and what isn’t also began changing in response. I’ll end by stating the obvious, that this is all an ongoing process of reflection and realization, that it’s all still happening.