Chapter Nine: He Makes Community

I'd held meet-ups all over the world to give Peregrination fans a chance to meet each other and meet me. I loved finding out who was watching my videos and why, and I loved bringing people together and getting them to think about their choices and their lives. I had a pretty good system for running meet-ups, and I'd always gotten good feedback about them. However, I'd never had a meet-up with nearly as many people as showed up to the one in Boston, and it scared me a little. When Kurt, Rachel, Blaine, and I showed up at the park, there were hundreds of people waiting, and the noise when they saw us made my hair stand on end.

"Oh my god," said Blaine, "Tell me they aren't going to mob you."

I swallowed, and shook my head. "It's okay. I just tweeted telling them to stay where they are and let me talk. I've got a megaphone. Just stay calm, wave, and if they start crowding in, ask them to give us space. I'm going to go stand on that fence so they can see me."

People did start crowding in almost immediately, but Kurt and Blaine took it upon themselves to be my bodyguards, and the people closest to where I was walking did their best to stand their ground while people farther back tried to push forward.

I sprinted to a tall wooded planked fence and climbed up it so that I could see up over the excited crowd. I turned on my megaphone and called out. "Hello Boston!"

The screaming made Rachel take a few nervous steps backward. She climbed the fence and sat beside me while Kurt and Blaine waved at the ever advancing crowd.

"If I could just get everyone to stand exactly where they are," I called out, "I promise that we'll all get a chance to chat eventually."

The crowd got louder as people yelled at each other to shut up and stand still, and then it slowly quieted down.

"Awesome!" I said, "Thank you so much. I don't think any of us are in the mood for a riot today. This is insane! I've never seen a meet-up this big before."

Everyone cheered, and I took out my camera. "On the count of three, I want you all to call out 'Boston!,' okay? One, two, three!"

The noise was unbelievable, and it was another thirty seconds after I turned off the camera before they calmed down again.

"Alright, here's the deal," I yelled into my megaphone, "We've got about two hours before we have to hit the road for Montreal. I want to meet all of you, and I want to give you guys a chance to meet each other, and to meet my friends, but we're going to have to do it in an organized fashion if there is going to be time. So this is how this is going to work. I want everyone stay where they are while I give the instructions, and then move as quickly as possible once I say go. Are you ready?"

The crowd cheered. I said, "Okay. So when I say go, I need you all to spread out and get into groups of twenty people. Not yet! Wait until I finish talking. Don't worry if you know the people, just pick a bunch of people close to you, and sit in a circle somewhere with a group. It doesn't have to be exactly twenty, but try to make it close. Once your there, choose ONE person—and please, make sure it's ONLY one person from your group who has a cellphone, preferably a smartphone. Get that person to text 'Boston Peregrination' to the number 34664."

People started taking out their phones, and I repeated, "Again, wait until you're in a group of twenty, and then get ONE person to text 'Boston Peregrination' to 34664. If you forget the number, it spells FINNH. 34664. Text "Boston Peregrination.' Okay? If it works properly, you'll be sent a link to a secret page on my blog that will tell you what your group's number is. Kurt, Blaine, Rachel, and I will be coming around to visit each group, switching every five minutes. When it's your group's turn for one of us to come see you, you will get a text message with our name, and you will start shouting that name to show us here your group is sitting. Does that make sense?"

People shouted in mixed agreement, and I said, "Okay. In that first link that you will be sent, there will also be a list of questions and activities. While you are waiting for one of us to come to your group, use what is in this email in whatever way works for your group in order to get to know each other. We're all here for the same reason, so take this unique opportunity to meet new people and expose your stories and experiences to people you might never have known otherwise."

Rachel, Blaine and Kurt were all listening to me with the same slightly awed expression that the crowd is, and it was a little disconcerting.

I said, "So, to sum up, I need you to get into a group, text Boston Peregrination to 34664, and then follow the instructions in the text messages that you receive. Ready? Go!"

People started moving quickly, and Kurt, Rachel, and Blaine all turned and cornered me on the fence. "You didn't tell us that we'd be doing that!" Kurt hissed, "What are we supposed to say to people?"

I grinned, "I dunno. Introduce yourself. Ask people why they're here. Answer what they have to ask. Take pictures. Hug people. It's going to be like five minutes a group. Start doing a drama game or go around the circle answering a question. You'll figure it out. You just have to meet people. Connect with them."

I got a text message that group one was ready, and heard a group twenty feet away start shouting for me, so I wished my friends luck and ran over to begin meeting Bostontonians.

"Hey!" I called out, approaching the group, "How's everyone doing?"

They all cheered and started talking at once. Several of them were filming me. I said, "Okay stay in the circle. I'll come around and you'll each have a bout ten seconds for a chat or a hug or a picture or whatever. I know it's a bummer that we have to move so quickly, but try to remember that the meet-up is about the community connecting with each other, and not just with me. Stick around and get to know each other after I move on, okay?"

And I did; I took pictures, I got hugs, I listened to stories, I answered questions, I gave advice, and I learned more and more about the unbelievable passion and intelligence of my audience. Over the next two hours, I met somewhere around five hundred people, including many who had travelled from outside of the city to meet me, and many more who had been at the show the night before and had great things to say about it. I even met the girl who chaired the Boston Peregrination society, and she gave me her email address so we could get in touch when I had the time.

It was insanely exhausting to meet that many people, and obviously it became a little repetitive and overwhelming at times. Still, no matter how many meet-ups I held and people I met, I never failed to be amazed at how rewarding and inspiring it was to have made an impact on so many people big enough that they would take time out of their day to come meet me. The journey that I'd chronicled on my vlog over the last few years had been hugely important to me; it had helped me heal and mature and figure out what it meant to be passionate.

Those people in that park had shared that journey with me, and each and every one of them were going through their own journeys—journeys that might play out a little bit differently from having watched my vlogs and heard my ideas.

So I cherished every exhausting moment of meeting people.

Once we'd been around to every circle, Rachel, Kurt, Blaine and I stood on the fence again, and I said through my megaphone, "Thank you all for your support and your passion. It's been a pleasure finally getting to meet you all. We have to head out now, but feel free to continue talking and mingling amongst each other after I'm gone. Remember; we're all Peregrinators and we're all on journeys, so let's bond together and make that journey easier on all of us."

The crowd cheered and I filmed it for my vlog, and then Kurt, Blaine, Rachel, and I disappeared into the RV. Kurt took the wheel and we drove away.

After a few moments of nervousness as a crowd of people chased the RV and we scrambled to bring up maps on our smartphones, we found the highway we needed to take us up to Canada, and I could finally relax a little.

"Oi," I said, "Thanks for doing that with me, guys. I know it's stressful. If it's too much, you don't have to come with me to all of them."

Kurt shook his head, "No," he said, "That was really really powerful. I wouldn't have missed it for the world."

Blaine nodded quietly, watching me with his masked, unreadable eyes. Rachel said, "I had no idea that you did stuff like that. I thought you were just going to go meet people. But that was… kind of amazing. The way you brought people together and got them to start talking and connect with each other."

Kurt said, "Yeah. People were really emotional in a few of the groups I went to. Those questions and activities you had them doing… where did you come up with that stuff?"

I shrugged. "It's all been developed over years of trial and error. I just figure that there's no point in a group of people coming together to celebrate one person's journey—my journey—when all of them are on journeys of their own. So I've tried to develop a system that gets everyone to recognise and share with each other what events led to them all being together in that place at the same time. I've never done it with a group that big before. It was so rushed. Do you think people really got into it?"

"Oh yeah," Rachel said, "It was rushed for you, running around to each group, but the groups themselves got to spend two hours together. The prompts you gave them to get discussion going were potent enough to turn those two hours into something pretty significant. Almost every group I went to was very engaged and invested in the whole thing."

Nodding, Kurt said, "Well done, Finn. I… yeah, I'm impressed. Beyond impressed. You could probably make a lot of money running seminars based on what you gave them all for free in a single text message."

I felt embarrassed, wondering why they were all looking at me with such intent, curious eyes. "Well," I said, "I've met a lot of people over the years. I know how to get them talking. And I know how important talking is. So there you have it. Thanks for helping. I'm sorry if the meetups distract from the real purpose of the tour. I just can't justify going places and not meeting the people."

Blaine, who had been very quiet since we'd returned to the RV, said, "I think that what you did for all of those people is a lot more significant than what our play does for people, so of course you need to keep bringing that to people. Don't even think about apologizing for it."

"No," I said sharply, "No, it's not more important. Don't think that for a moment."

Rachel agreed, "They're two separate things. We make art, he makes community. And I think it's pretty overwhelmingly clear that people are extremely effected by both."

Nodding, Kurt said, "Everyone was so kind to me about Soundtrack. They seem to really have connected with it."

With a small, proud smile, Blaine said, "I know. It made me tear up a few times. I got nothing but compliments on it. And thoughtful compliments too, which is important."

Rachel hugged him. "You deserve all of the compliments in the world. Soundtrack is a masterpiece. Between that and Finn's meetups, I think that a lot of people are going to be very positively influenced by this little tour."

I said, "I think so too."

And I think we all tried not to reveal how hard we were trying not to both cry and beam with pride.