Happy 26th Birthday, Jimi! November 27, 1968.

In the clearing stands a boxer | And a fighter by his trade | And he carries the reminders | of every glove that laid him down | and cut him till he cried out | In his anger and his shame | "I am leaving, I am leaving" | But the fighter still remains - The Boxer by Simon & Garfunkel

Sometimes we need a reminder. We've been here before.

What does survival sound like in a world that’s bent on breaking? Is it the thud of a fist landing on flesh, the electric wail of a guitar, or the stubborn, unrelenting beat of a heart that refuses to stop? 56 years ago, on November 27, 1968, the night before Thanksgiving just like this one, survival sounded like Jimi Hendrix, stepping onto the stage at the Rhode Island Auditorium on what happened to be his 26th birthday, to rip apart the national anthem and reassemble it in order to instill hope in a divided nation that that it could stitch itself back together again.

According to those who visited the auditorium, this wasn’t just another venue—it was a place where echoes lingered, where sweat and sound soaked into the walls like ghosts. The Rhode Island Auditorium, located at 1111 North Main Street in Providence, wasn’t grand or glam—it was scrappy, stubborn, a bruiser of a building. The seats were cramped, the air heavy with smoke that never really lifted, and the lights always flickered, as though the whole place was holding on for dear life. But it had seen things. Felt things. It had cradled survival in its gnarled fingers—on nights like tonight.

On this night, Jimi—a man born on this very day in 1942—will take the stage with his guitar slung low, fingers ready to unleash something transcendent. It’s his birthday, but the world around him isn’t in a celebrating mood. The year has been a grinder: Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated, Bobby Kennedy gunned down, Vietnam tearing lives apart overseas and at home, cities aflame, the country at war with itself.

Hendrix knows this. He’s lived survival in his own way—in a world that often refused to let a man like him realize his full brilliance. He rose up on the ragged streets of Seattle, clawed his way through the unforgiving music scene, and found his voice in the raw, distorted howl of his guitar. And tonight, on his birthday, he’ll reimagine The Star-Spangled Banner, in the only way he knows how. It won’t be the clean, triumphant anthem everyone learned in school. It will reflect the chaos and beauty, dissonance and hope of the world around him. It will sound like what America is, not what it pretends to be: bombs bursting, rockets screaming, and somehow, in all that noise, the faint, persistent hum of something that could still be called hope or salvation or promise.

 The crowd tonight will be a different mix: long-haired kids swaying in the haze of - well -, hardened veterans with creased brows, curious locals leaning in. They’ll sit stunned as Hendrix drags the anthem through the muck of reality and pulls it back out, battered but alive. It won’t be disrespect—it will be resurrection. And as the final notes wail and collapse into silence, the audience will feel the weight of it. The anthem isn’t gone. It’s just been made honest. Its a fight song. A fight for a better tomorrow.

 Nineteen years earlier, on July 18, 1949, survival looked different but in the same - long gone - arena. That night, the crowd packed in shoulder to shoulder, hoping for blood. Harry Haft, at 5-foot-9 and 180 pounds, was a fighter in more ways than one. He wasn’t here just to box; he was here to prove something. Here was a man who had survived Auschwitz, where his opponents weren’t competitors but fellow prisoners, forced to fight in matches for the amusement of his sadistic captors. Winning meant scraps of food and a sliver of a chance to live another day. That kind of survival leaves a mark, and by the time Haft stepped into the ring with Rocky Marciano, it was all he had.

 Marciano, five pounds heavier and with fists like hammers, wasn’t just a man—he was momentum. The crowd loved him, the promise of what he represented: clean-cut, unstoppable, American. Haft wasn’t supposed to win, and he didn’t. By the third round, Marciano’s punches forced him to the mat. The crowd roared for the victor, but maybe, just maybe, a few of them noticed the courage in the man who got back up, who had already survived worse than anything a boxing ring could deliver. It would be his last boxing match “but the fighter still remain[ed]”.

 So, here we are, two nights that couldn’t seem more different yet tell the same story - a timeless American story. Jimi Hendrix will play tonight to remind us all that survival is messy, loud, and never guaranteed - himself gone two years later. Harry Haft will fight to survive in a world that tried to erase him. And the Rhode Island Auditorium, with its creaky seats and flickering lights, will hold it all for a few more years anyway—the punches, the chords, the blood, the cries, the echoes of survival passing through its brick walls like ghosts whispering, keep fighting, keep fighting, keep fighting. Tonight, it all comes back to the same question: how far will we go to be heard? How many times will we get up off the mat? How far can we stretch that note for hope before it breaks?

Today, the Rhode Island Auditorium is gone, replaced by a nondescript lot. The crowds have long gone home, but the fighters - us - remain.