Choir, Preaching

You know how after you just saw a really cool movie with a friend and you and your friend run into a mutual friend and you two are so excited about the movie you describe it in great detail elaborating on one another’s account getting yourselves more and more excited about the movie just through your own process of recalling it and meanwhile your friend is bored to tears and really when you think about it the guy’s only real role here is to be a third party who hasn’t seen the movie so that you and your friend can talk to each other about the movie through him because it wouldn’t really make sense for the two of you to describe the movie to each other because, right, you both just saw it together but still there is something for the two of you to communicate to each other, to relive it and make the experience more common and indeed when you milk that to its fullest you are talking about subtleties that really only someone who has had the experience can relate to and appreciate so your third party gets progressively more estranged from the conversation at the same time that the two of you get more involved.

Well, that’s kinda what articles like this one about the Grateful Dead  are like. Giving stories that anyone who doesn’t already know them isn’t going to be interested in but nevertheless there is a sense that this way of writing the article, pretending that the reader is someone else, is the most effective way to reminisce with the actual readers.