WELCOME BACK

Normalcy. Back to normal. Getting back to the way things were. The way they used to be. The way things ought to be – the rhythms, habits, tendencies, and traditions of our memories. Everything our synapses taught themselves to connect over, right up until March 15, 2020. And then, everything changed. Businesses “moved home,” restaurants and theatres and nightclubs and concert venues and untold others all closed, shuttered, and boarded up – left for some future date when the world might “open up” once more…when we might “get back to normal.”

Normal is a strange term. As young children living amidst the milieu of our own family dynamics, OTHER families look normal: “Why can’t WE be like THEM?! They are NORMAL!” From a distance, many aspects of the human experience “look normal.” But, when we look more closely, when we really cast our observant gaze upon that which we’ve declared “normal,” we see nuance, variety, and unexplained deviations from our own narrow definitions OF “normal.” As American author Dean Koontz famously noted in The Book of Counted Sorrows, “In the real world as in dreams, nothing is quite what it seems.” And it is here that we find ourselves…

Lockdowns and masks and social distancing have been cast aside in favor of “getting back to normal.” Vaccines are the new superhighways to back home, as if the COVID-19 pandemic and unrest of 2020 presented but a strange detour from the normalcy we shrouded ourselves in 24/7/365. But it wasn’t.

People passed. Businesses closed permanently. Others lost jobs, homes, and purpose. Our local and greater communities experienced social unrest and growing pains. 

Our world is different today than it was back in early March of 2020. For ITG Music, “getting back” doesn’t seem like an actual possibility, and it might not even be a desirable destination. Our staff rose to the challenges foisted upon us by an unseen viral army. We packed up, moved home, and stayed connected via the internet – both with each other and with our clients, who themselves were each facing a version of “the new normal.” And in adapting to these changes, we learned more about ourselves than we ever thought possible. It has taken strength, resiliency, adaptability, and leadership to survive in the pandemic (and beyond). We had to reconfigure our company’s cultural sense of “normal.” 

Doing so kept us strong, viable, and together as a small band of passionate people, engaging with the world by embracing our core mission: connecting people through sound.

I’d say, “Welcome back,” but that alone dishonors what we, and so many others, have learned about ourselves, our businesses, and the worlds we each inhabit. The pandemic and other tribulations over the last year were never  detours, instead they presented opportunities – big, scary, and dangerous, but opportunities just the same. In many ways they have shown us a strange version of what Robert Frost wrote long ago,

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.”

Welcome to the new world; we’re very glad you’re with us. We’re happy to see your faces and hear your voices again.

Be well,

-Brian B. Reidinger || Partner

In The Groove Music LLC

Live music, hugs, birthdays, weddings, and even office parties. ITG Studios created nine new songs that celebrate the joy of being together again. Check out the video and playlist of tracks that will be sure to get you feeling those summer vibes.