Inaugural Impressions: A new kind of patriotism

Around nine yesterday morning I walked through Washington's tolerable cold to the Potomac Metro stop. I came to D.C. for inauguration week despite the expectation of paralyzing crowds and icy weather. But the early lesson here has been the significant disconnect between what we expected and what we've found.

The Metro station was all but empty and when the sparse train reached the Smithsonian stop we found the Mall stretched out bare under a chalky gray sky. Though the space between Lincoln and Washington's monuments was ultimately filled for yesterday's celebratory concert, we were able to snag a piece of grass near the front of the public viewing area 90 minutes after gates opened.

It turns out inauguration week isn't so unmanageable after all.

The concert you may have seen on TV probably bore little resemblance to the one we saw in person. Even the front of the public area was too far away to identify who was on stage until they came up on the JumboTron. For many, the distance was irrelevant since a camera platform obscured much of the view. (The seats near the stage were reserved for a handful of lucky ticket holders.)

The show began at 2:30 p.m. and the crowd grew quickly restless when Bishop Gene Robinson's invocation wasn't played on the speakers and for an anxious moment we wondered what would happen if a few hundred thousand people came to a concert they couldn't hear. In a rhythm reminiscent of "Yes We Can," the crowd chanted "We Can't Hear."

But then the sound came on and even when it crackled horribly—as it did for most of the two hour show—it was clear there was no better place to watch this made-for-TV event than amid the Rhode Islanders and Oregonians and Alabamans who had decided to take a chance on inauguration week.

What you couldn't really see on TV was the energy and good nature of the crowd, the singing and dancing of strangers brought together by neighboring blankets.

It was a program that inevitably failed to please all of the people all of the time, so while I found "My Country 'tis of Thee" strangely moving, my neighbors were a bit bored by it. (For the record, the only absolute crowd-pleaser was Garth Brooks). But at one moment or another it was hard not to be captured by a sense of true and meaningful patriotism.

It was perhaps a new kind of patriotism experienced by a crowd not accustomed to flag waving. In what other setting would our nation be so grandly celebrated and still allow Will.i.am to rap a song he himself didn't expect to even be allowed on the radio? When he reached the most cutting lines of "Where is the Love?" he still accused the USA of harboring terrorists but replaced "the big CIA" with an indictment of inadequate schools.

It was perhaps because of these glimpses of the subversive that the moments of fist-pumping Americana rang so true. And when Pete Seeger helped the crowd with the lesser-known lyrics of "This Land Is Your Land," HBO muted his mic, apparently believing it was distracting for him to speak each line before it was sang. But the crowd loved it, and though you couldn't hear them at home, they were belting out words they probably didn't know--and possibly didn't feel--until moments before.

Brook Silva-Braga is a Rhode Island native. The Portsmouth filmmaker's documentary "One Day in Africa" will premiere in March.