So I’ve been swinging back and forth betwixt disbelief, morbid fascination, acceptance, a little bit of surrealist terror, and all the little emotional compass points in-between.
I’ve cancelled my open mics and ilyAIMY’s show to the beginning of April, and have the sneaking suspicion that we won’t be unshuttering by then. Early on we’d gotten cancellation warnings as far out as August – which I continue to think is unwarranted – but it’s now seeming less outlandish than it once did. If the curve is truly flattened, we evade catastrophe and instead roll a long, long tide of disruption that threatens to become the new normal through it’s sheer length of presence.
We’re an adaptable species. We can get used to anything given time.
And so I worry that maybe this never goes back, and I’m not sure what my place is in that world.
To be clear – I don’t THINK “it never goes back” – I just worry about it in a detached way. That too many venues and small restaurants and things go under. That too many homes and friends get too worried about invasive infections and no longer open their homes to concerts or even houseguests. The former – perhaps Congress will manage to pass something that will somehow keep businesses from going under with a 2 to 4 to 6 to 8 week disruption in business. The latter – I don’t know how you recover trust from nationwide hypochondria. (well, it’s currently a warranted fear of germs, I’m HOPING that one day it will be unwarranted again)
I don’t know how you recover trust.
I fear that we’re about to reap the whirlwind of a “post-truth” world. That in a society where we’ve gleefully embraced “alternative facts” and happily discarded trust and central repositories of knowledge and news that there’s no way we shut a pandemic down. There are huge swaths of the population that will never believe in Covid-19 unless it hits them personally and I saw it in how venues reacted to me cancelling gigs : some were supportive (thank you Teavolve) and are in the process of taking this all very, very seriously – and other venues that I’m hesitant to name have been dismissive or downright hostile.
Chuck the Madd Ox recording tracks in the Lair.
As I look at how different news services are dealing with Covid-19 I’m glad to see that even Fox News seems to be getting with the program, though you’ve still got headlines about how Dr. Oz says “washing your hands is practically a vaccine” with the underlying information about social distancing et al buried beneath.
We’re staying busy, though I feel like so far I’ve been busy with everyone ELSE’S panic. I’ve got more newsletters to write for Focus Music and Institute of Musical Traditions tomorrow… Kristen and I have been going on walks around the neighbourhood and cleaning… and today we gathered a couple of other local performers together to some recording. So productivity’s happening.
I’m impressed at just how swiftly a lot of friends got on the webcast game, and though many of them are frankly unlistenable, I’m impressed at just how fast people switched gears. I imagine many of them were on the road and it was a matter of simply turning on their phones – but we’ll be following suit soon (though perhaps the whole band won’t be able to since the rest of the band suddenly has their kids home from school).
We’ll see what becomes of us. This too shall pass. We just don’t know how slow it’s going.
1 thought on “March 15th, 2020. Home Recording and Social Distancing.”
Very well said.