NPR’s Scott Detrow speaks with New Yorker and grief specialist Barri Leiner Grant, who has written about how the New York Knicks championship run sparked a “collective effervescence” in the city.
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
For the first time in 53 years, the New York Knicks are the NBA champions. New York City was out in the streets on Saturday night, cheering, shouting and celebrating together.
(CHEERING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: We just won the NBA finals for the first time in 50 years.
(CHEERING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: This is insane.
DETROW: The AP captured a few of the many fans who came out after the Knicks finished off the San Antonio Spurs – the conclusion of a two-month playoff run. Not that many things can bring so many people together these days, but sports still can. A grief specialist, Barri Leiner Grant, clocked that in a viral social media post titled “Why The Knicks Win Feels Bigger Than Basketball Right Now.” We reached her in New York. Hi. Congratulations.
BARRI LEINER GRANT: Oh, my goodness. Congratulations to us all, right?
DETROW: Look, I will admit, for people who might not necessarily be Knicks fans listening, I grew up a huge sports fan in the New York market. And to me, like, especially growing up with a lot of teams winning championships, this does feel, like, bigger than the Yankees winning the World Series or the Giants winning the Super Bowl. It just feels like a moment. Like, what does it feel like from your perspective?
GRANT: You know, I was looking for a term to wrap around it, and that’s how collective effervescence came. It’s – sociologist Emile Durkheim a hundred years ago named this. And I think because we spend so much of our time kind of, like, disconnected and on screens, that there was this, like, feeling when I was walking in the city that just felt so rare and where strangers became friends, and we all sort of were sharing this hope. It was incredible.
DETROW: And is it as simple as everybody feeling the same thing, experiencing the same thing in the same moment?
GRANT: It’s that electricity that we feel around a shared experience. You can feel it at a concert. You can feel it at a protest, at a wedding – but when we’re all sort of co-regulating and hoping around the same experience.
DETROW: You’re, of course, a grief specialist. This is a joyous feeling, and they’re pretty interlinked, though, right? If they’re not siblings, they’re cousins, maybe. Like, how do you…
GRANT: I think so.
DETROW: …Think about this?
GRANT: So I think we can’t have one without the other.
DETROW: Yeah.
GRANT: So as a grief specialist, I see a collective effervescence as more than excitement. I actually see it as medicine. Like, we need to be witnessed – seen, heard and witnessed in the highest and the lowest points of our life. And I think that we need belonging. And I think, you know, we don’t watch TV at the same time anymore. We don’t read the same papers. We don’t really share these cultural touch points, I guess, that we once did. So for that one moment, we’re having, like, the same conversation. And we are a we.
DETROW: Yeah. And, like, you know, New York City, especially, has had many examples on the grief side over the…
GRANT: Yeah.
DETROW: …Last 20, 30 years – 9/11, those early horrible months…
GRANT: Yes.
DETROW: …Of COVID, especially.
GRANT: I was thinking about that. Like, we haven’t had a collective experience like this since COVID. And I always said that that was, you know, a grief pandemic, and we weren’t even talking about it. We were just sort of back to normal.
DETROW: Yeah.
GRANT: And I’m hopeful that we’re never back to normal on this front because it really gave us, I think, what we are craving, which is that sense of belonging.
DETROW: Can I talk a little bit more about that relationship between the deep lows and the high highs?
GRANT: Sure.
DETROW: Knicks’ star Karl-Anthony Towns talked about losing his mother in COVID.
GRANT: I mean, that – looking up…
DETROW: Yeah.
GRANT: …I like – I just lost it. Whenever we see grief on a world stage like that, I am here for it. We need to see that. We need to witness that too. All the people that we love that were not here to watch the game, my mother and father included – I wanted to call my dad so badly. And so those moments where we also can bring their names and their memories into this experience felt so much larger than us.
DETROW: You mentioned your mom there.
GRANT: Yeah.
DETROW: Just before we started to tape, we were talking about the fact that both of our moms took us to or encouraged us to go to championship parades when we were younger. If you are speaking to anybody in the broader New York metro area who’s on the fence about whether or not to go to this parade Thursday, what would you tell them?
GRANT: Bring your children. Bring your family. Bring your friends. Go. This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and it is a place where you will absolutely feel what we’re talking about – this collective effervescence. And, you know, we can experience happiness alone. But collectively, that joy is different, and I know it will be present at the parade.
DETROW: Barri Leiner Grant, a grief specialist, talking about the opposite of grief today. Thank you so much for joining us.
GRANT: Thanks, Scott.
(SOUNDBITE OF LOLA YOUNG SONG, “REVOLVE AROUND YOU”)
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