Yesterday was a LOT. Today… is suspiciously bucolic. Church bells are chiming the hour, the birds are chirping, the streets are silent. The cat is sniffing the air contentedly and my omelet came out perfect. It’s 70 degrees, sunny, and the first day of iced coffee of 2020.
Yesterday was gunshots and police sirens, helicopters and rumours. John Prine died of coronavirus and another friend has been sent home, symptomatic, waiting for testing while he tries to isolate from his wife and two extremely young children. We played a gig in the basement which is the only gig we can play and I slipped fully into my skin. Afterwards I joined an open mic based out of Saint Louis, MO and felt the beauty of those other faces singing back at me intensely. I’ve been up to 6am the last several days and that’s going to start taking its toll soon.
I’ve been running my virtual open mics and making the best of that. I’ve been trying to imagine a New Normal, whether we’ll Return to Normal, or simply keep plugging along. I’m reaching out to venues just to say “hey, we’re thinking about you, we know NO-ONE knows when, but when it’s time to start pulling people back through the doors – we’re ready!” But there was nothing normal about the last 48 hours.
I can’t tell if it’s simply my own paranoia or not, but I DO feel that in the surrounding silence we hear police sirens more often. Maybe it’s just because WE’RE making less noise.
Yesterday was more Baltimore than our part of Baltimore generally is. Kristen and I were strolling around the neighbourhood, awkwardly crossing the street to avoid yard-working neighbours, but as we were walking up one block there were 5 or 6 quick gunshots. These were pretty low and heavy shots, not the little pops you normally hear, and the couple of people a little ways down the block all looked back startled at something around the edge of the house they were next to before picking up the pace and getting away.
We were sort of nonchalant in our departure but from there we pretty much headed straight home where I got a call from Sharif who’s home in quarantine, but monitoring his police scanners. He said that there was someone roaming around with a rifle and that was something that would go through brick walls so get in the basement.
So we got in the basement.
Helicopters and sirens ensued.
I had to put off a number of phone calls today because outside the helicopter was yelling, with its amplified voice, “Get down on the ground” “exit through the back of the building” and conversely “stay in your homes” at various times – I guess figuring whoever was being addressed with the specific commands would KNOW. The actual shots fired were from a woman with a rifle who was quickly “with police” but her home and the guys with handguns were then surround first by patrol cars and then SWAT. All-in-all I was pretty impressed with the speed of the response.
We didn’t watch the clock, but it sure felt like this all went on for an hour or so before the neighbourhood went silent again. Unfortunately, when they stormed the house, the guys were gone but “it was a domestic” so we were told that we shouldn’t worry about it.
Sigh.
Here’s me not worrying about it – but I DO now think “gosh, there’s a house a couple of blocks down the street where there’s a family that felt the need for multiple handguns and a high-powered rifle” and I wonder, if tensions ratchet higher, how those tensions manifest.
Not a quiet day in the neighbourhood. Things settled down in time for us to play our Wednesday Live from the Lair show, but my blood was up and – we played pretty passionately. “Slipping fully into my skin” is how I think of it. Playing FULLY aware.
I don’t know that I do it as much as I ought to because it’s a feeling of losing control, and I’ve gotten somewhat self-conscious about being that passionate during bar gigs, losing myself too much in the music surrounded by people who don’t care.
But “alone”, playing solely with my wife, surrounded by the digital ghosts of an audience I can’t see but who I know has come here for us and us alone… I let my guard down and put my guitar up and screamed ///
