What Fassbinder film is it?
The one-armed man comes into the flower shop and says: "What flower expresses, 'Days go by, and they just keep going by endlessly, endlessly pulling you into the future. Days go by endlessly, endlessly pulling you into the future?'"
And the florist says: "White Lily."
- Laurie Anderson, "White Lily," from Home of the Brave
Someone I was talking to the other day said, by way of explaining his loss of focus, "...because it's Blursday." Even for me, as someone who is fortunate enough to have a regular work schedule, the days are blurring together. I might know it's Thursday because of the patients I see on that day, but somehow the Thursdays -- and Mondays and Saturdays, etc. -- are much harder to distinguish from each other than prior to quarantine.
Quarantine and social isolation are hard on us for at least the following reasons. First and foremost, we are social animals; being forced to be apart from each other reveals this to a degree impossible to appreciate when in each other's regular and free company. Even more introverted folks, when separated from their trusted others, suffer. Too, the loss of structure and routine, especially for those out of work, can be disorienting and thus emotionally burdensome.
What stands out for me, though, is the loss of novelty. Away from home, we have more we can do -- go to the gym, go out for dinner, go for a walk or a drive, go (somewhere else) to work. Yes, we can workout at home, cook for ourselves, walk around our yard or neighborhood, but even a large and ideally-equipped home can only replace so much of The World, no matter how small a piece of it we typically wander in.
Perhaps more importantly, I hadn't noticed before how much variations in my routine that arose just out of interacting with other humans, even strangers, adds to my sense of the passage of time and so to my sense of existence. One day I am able to get right up to the stoplight at Perring Parkway and Taylor Avenue on my commute; another day, I'm stuck behind someone playing with their phone when it turns green. One day, a suite mate's patients fill the lobby and I greet them as I navigate through, while another it's empty and I stay in my thoughts. One evening, my wife and I strike up a conversation with other folks waiting for a table at a restaurant, another we keep to ourselves. Even my two-block walk to the gym after work varies depending on who else is on the sidewalk and traffic on the busy street I have to cross.
My relationship with my wife and mom has deepened in this time we've shared together, appreciating each other more and more for what we contribute to each other and how precious we are to each other, but our day to day life changes very little and the domestic stage on which it is currently playing out almost not at all. We three wear our daily paths and deviate from them only slightly and rarely, simply because there are so few randomizing forces to influence our vectors. Impetus from ourselves to do something different can only be so effective because it comes from ourselves. We need outsiders to knock us off our trajectories and cause us to course-correct: without them, we have no markers by which to track the passing of time.
For now, our interactions with strangers must remain restricted to waving in gratitude through the door at delivery folks and hello to neighbors in our respective lots. I work to increase the novelty in my life by being creative where I can, trying out new things, home improvement, etc. Sometimes the best I can muster is finding whatever fits through the fiber optic cable. I remain very fortunate -- safe, secure, with an income, healthy -- and very aware of the plight of those much less blessed than me. My challenge is to stay well enough, mentally and physically, to be able to continue to care for my family in our time of collective isolation, so I fight Blursday with novelty.
Thursday, April 16, 2020
Wednesday, April 8, 2020
Days of the Virus: Creeping Malaise
Gotta stay awake
Gotta try and shake off
This creeping malaise.
If I don't stand my own ground
How can I find my way out of this maze?
- Pink Floyd, "Dogs" from the album Animals
Today I struggled more than previously to stay connected, to feel grounded in myself. It wasn't the whole day; sessions with patients went well, which always feels good. But by the time I closed out my last video chat, I felt drained, disconnected, and hungry for something unnamed.
Changing out of my work clothes and coming downstairs, I became more conscious of an absence that has been inching its way into my awareness, but still couldn't get my hands around. I plopped resignedly onto the couch. A copy of BMoreArt lay on the coffee table, a new subscription I've been excited about; I opened it to where I left off, but couldn't concentrate. I thought about a piece of music that I'd started working on recently, but my mind cringed at what seemed like a pointless expenditure of energy that I didn't have and that could only end in dissatisfaction. Same response to the thought of picking up Lynda Barry's comics workbook. Finally, lacking any better idea, I grabbed a bag of pretzels from the pantry, returned to the couch and turned on Netflix, picking up where I left off in the fifth season of Twilight Zone. Two episodes ("Uncle Simon" and "Probe 7, Over and Out") of Serling's sparkling, indulgent, thesaurus-busting dialog later, normally a tickle for me, I felt worse.
By this time, my wife had finished her workday and came to join me on the couch; she saw plainly that I wasn't myself and asked about it. We talked, unpacking the difficulty we had both been having over the last twenty-four days trying to sort out the best recipe for self-care -- how to recuperate-in-place, how best to use the limited energy we have when work is done, how to stay connected with each other.
Part of the balance I've been trying to strike is spending time with my wife versus making time for creativity. Being married to the woman of my dreams, my best friend, my partner in business as well as life, we seem never to run out of things to share, discuss, even debate; being with her is a delight and a repletion. When circumstances keep us separated for an extended time, we both feel the loss and the cost of reconnecting; our quarantine has felt like a boon in that regard. On the other hand, I have some of that "gotta dance" creative drive; I feel a need to make stuff, whether with sound, words, images, wood-and-screws, or what-have-you. If I don't do something with it, it kind of stagnates and spoils and that spoilage can give off a noisome fume that thickens my mind and mood like the blue cannabis smoke filling the car I first heard Animals in.
At the end of a day's navigating a sea of troubles, I often don't seem able take up my creative arms in opposition and instead settle into the comfort of the company of my wife. Not a bad thing, but if I do this frequently enough, the miasma from the putrefaction of my creativity starts to cloud my sense of self. This can feed back on itself, making it harder to push myself upstairs, into the studio and the uncertainty of invention and away from the comforting presence of my partner and the numbing reassurance of Netflix; a few loops of this and the haze thickens until a find myself drained, disconnected, and namelessly hungry as I did today.
But, this evening, my wife and I sat on the couch and chatted, holding hands, cuddling. After the sun went down and we discovered our lamps wouldn't turn on, we actually had fun figuring out why (there was a wall switch we'd never used). We lay together some more, her scrolling through her social media and me reading that article in BMoreArt I couldn't start earlier. We were present, just being, and it seemed what we both needed. After a while, I said, "I'm going to go write a bit" and came up to my studio and she picked up her current British character drama where she'd left off.
We both cope with the stress of quarantine differently, but we each recognize and respect our differences. It's easier for me to trust her way than my own, but when I remember, I can remind myself that it's okay and go do my thing. And when I do, that creeping malaise blows off me like someone opened a window.
Gotta try and shake off
This creeping malaise.
If I don't stand my own ground
How can I find my way out of this maze?
- Pink Floyd, "Dogs" from the album Animals
Today I struggled more than previously to stay connected, to feel grounded in myself. It wasn't the whole day; sessions with patients went well, which always feels good. But by the time I closed out my last video chat, I felt drained, disconnected, and hungry for something unnamed.
Changing out of my work clothes and coming downstairs, I became more conscious of an absence that has been inching its way into my awareness, but still couldn't get my hands around. I plopped resignedly onto the couch. A copy of BMoreArt lay on the coffee table, a new subscription I've been excited about; I opened it to where I left off, but couldn't concentrate. I thought about a piece of music that I'd started working on recently, but my mind cringed at what seemed like a pointless expenditure of energy that I didn't have and that could only end in dissatisfaction. Same response to the thought of picking up Lynda Barry's comics workbook. Finally, lacking any better idea, I grabbed a bag of pretzels from the pantry, returned to the couch and turned on Netflix, picking up where I left off in the fifth season of Twilight Zone. Two episodes ("Uncle Simon" and "Probe 7, Over and Out") of Serling's sparkling, indulgent, thesaurus-busting dialog later, normally a tickle for me, I felt worse.
By this time, my wife had finished her workday and came to join me on the couch; she saw plainly that I wasn't myself and asked about it. We talked, unpacking the difficulty we had both been having over the last twenty-four days trying to sort out the best recipe for self-care -- how to recuperate-in-place, how best to use the limited energy we have when work is done, how to stay connected with each other.
Part of the balance I've been trying to strike is spending time with my wife versus making time for creativity. Being married to the woman of my dreams, my best friend, my partner in business as well as life, we seem never to run out of things to share, discuss, even debate; being with her is a delight and a repletion. When circumstances keep us separated for an extended time, we both feel the loss and the cost of reconnecting; our quarantine has felt like a boon in that regard. On the other hand, I have some of that "gotta dance" creative drive; I feel a need to make stuff, whether with sound, words, images, wood-and-screws, or what-have-you. If I don't do something with it, it kind of stagnates and spoils and that spoilage can give off a noisome fume that thickens my mind and mood like the blue cannabis smoke filling the car I first heard Animals in.
At the end of a day's navigating a sea of troubles, I often don't seem able take up my creative arms in opposition and instead settle into the comfort of the company of my wife. Not a bad thing, but if I do this frequently enough, the miasma from the putrefaction of my creativity starts to cloud my sense of self. This can feed back on itself, making it harder to push myself upstairs, into the studio and the uncertainty of invention and away from the comforting presence of my partner and the numbing reassurance of Netflix; a few loops of this and the haze thickens until a find myself drained, disconnected, and namelessly hungry as I did today.
But, this evening, my wife and I sat on the couch and chatted, holding hands, cuddling. After the sun went down and we discovered our lamps wouldn't turn on, we actually had fun figuring out why (there was a wall switch we'd never used). We lay together some more, her scrolling through her social media and me reading that article in BMoreArt I couldn't start earlier. We were present, just being, and it seemed what we both needed. After a while, I said, "I'm going to go write a bit" and came up to my studio and she picked up her current British character drama where she'd left off.
We both cope with the stress of quarantine differently, but we each recognize and respect our differences. It's easier for me to trust her way than my own, but when I remember, I can remind myself that it's okay and go do my thing. And when I do, that creeping malaise blows off me like someone opened a window.
Thursday, April 2, 2020
Days of the Virus: Ceci ñ'est pas une ami
Like most of us who, in our social isolation/quarantine, are fortunate enough to have the household infrastructure to do so, I have been spending a lot more time on videochat than I normally would. Much of this is professional: my psychotherapy practice is now exclusively online, so I'm spending as much as six hours a day looking at the faces of my patients as they manifest on my computer screen. Talks with family and friends are also limited to phone or video; no in-person connections allowed, let alone hugs, yet, it's still better than nothing.
Patients, friends, and family alike have almost universally emphasized how much better videoconferences are than talking on the phone (one-on-one or in groups). I agree: the screen often quickly melts away in the same way it does in a movie theater and one becomes immersed in the interaction with the person. The mediating machinery disappears, leaving our perception filled with only the parts that represent the Other.
From time to time, though, this suspension of reality is interrupted. Sometimes it's due to glitchiness in the system; I've frequently been reminded of what "long distance" telephone calls were like when I was small, with the routine salutations of "Can you hear me okay? -- I can hear you fine" or talking about the quality of the connection with the same casualness one might take discussing the weather. Today, bandwidth and software issues in videochat have replaced copper wire and exchange switch problems from the days when Ma Bell was queen.
But technical challenges are not the only interruptions to the illusion. I've been increasingly aware of a kind of uncanny-valley-ness to videochat. I can, without prompt or warning, become profoundly aware that I am looking at a shimmering constellation of pixels carefully arranged to resemble my interlocutor, a two-dimensional simulacrum composed of 1s and 0s, teleported electronically into my monitor, my own personal Truman Show-reality that I am expected (and choose) to interact with. I can, for moments, feel profoundly self-conscious talking to a picture on a screen that, bizarrely, appears to respond to my responses to it. I feel hyperaware of the Magritte-ness of the proxy with which (with whom?) I am interacting: "This is not a friend" my heart tells me and I am afraid, fearful that I've been duped, that what I trusted to be real is a lie, and perhaps a malicious one.
Fortunately, I can also recognize the moments for what they are, paradoxes of perception, the irony of knowing that the image is false but also knowing that it represents something real. I ground myself in the trust that my friend or patient is real, sitting somewhere in their own bubble of isolation, the camera in their machine capturing and communicating their visage across cables of wonder to the magic mirror into which I gaze; it isn't actually them, but it's enough to reassure me that they are there and hopefully vice versa. After a few more moments, the illusion reseats itself and I can again interact as if the person were here with me and feel the intimacy we share, attenuated though it might be by the media through which it is exchanged.
I am grateful to live with others, sharing our isolation. Walking away from my computer and being able to kiss my wife, to hold my mother's hand, reassure me that they are real, that this is real, that I am real. It seems that it would be terribly easy to lose grasp of reality if I had no confidants but pixels.
Patients, friends, and family alike have almost universally emphasized how much better videoconferences are than talking on the phone (one-on-one or in groups). I agree: the screen often quickly melts away in the same way it does in a movie theater and one becomes immersed in the interaction with the person. The mediating machinery disappears, leaving our perception filled with only the parts that represent the Other.
From time to time, though, this suspension of reality is interrupted. Sometimes it's due to glitchiness in the system; I've frequently been reminded of what "long distance" telephone calls were like when I was small, with the routine salutations of "Can you hear me okay? -- I can hear you fine" or talking about the quality of the connection with the same casualness one might take discussing the weather. Today, bandwidth and software issues in videochat have replaced copper wire and exchange switch problems from the days when Ma Bell was queen.
But technical challenges are not the only interruptions to the illusion. I've been increasingly aware of a kind of uncanny-valley-ness to videochat. I can, without prompt or warning, become profoundly aware that I am looking at a shimmering constellation of pixels carefully arranged to resemble my interlocutor, a two-dimensional simulacrum composed of 1s and 0s, teleported electronically into my monitor, my own personal Truman Show-reality that I am expected (and choose) to interact with. I can, for moments, feel profoundly self-conscious talking to a picture on a screen that, bizarrely, appears to respond to my responses to it. I feel hyperaware of the Magritte-ness of the proxy with which (with whom?) I am interacting: "This is not a friend" my heart tells me and I am afraid, fearful that I've been duped, that what I trusted to be real is a lie, and perhaps a malicious one.
Fortunately, I can also recognize the moments for what they are, paradoxes of perception, the irony of knowing that the image is false but also knowing that it represents something real. I ground myself in the trust that my friend or patient is real, sitting somewhere in their own bubble of isolation, the camera in their machine capturing and communicating their visage across cables of wonder to the magic mirror into which I gaze; it isn't actually them, but it's enough to reassure me that they are there and hopefully vice versa. After a few more moments, the illusion reseats itself and I can again interact as if the person were here with me and feel the intimacy we share, attenuated though it might be by the media through which it is exchanged.
I am grateful to live with others, sharing our isolation. Walking away from my computer and being able to kiss my wife, to hold my mother's hand, reassure me that they are real, that this is real, that I am real. It seems that it would be terribly easy to lose grasp of reality if I had no confidants but pixels.
Monday, March 30, 2020
Miracles in Five
Two of my oldest friends live on and run a vineyard on the Delaware River in New Jersey called Villa Milagro. I have delighted in watching Steve's and Audrey's modest slice of paradise grow and green over the last two decades. Although they don't entertain overnight guests from the public, they frequently have friends and family by; such a stay at the Miracle House is a retreat into repletion and quietude, one that I seem never to take advantage of as often as I'd like. The proprietors, however, are almost ceaselessly active in their efforts to care for their vines and their workers, refine their product, expand their business, and enrich their quality of life. To visit their farm is like taking a summer afternoon nap beneath a hive of benevolent and generous honeybees: the hum of productivity floats through your dreams, carrying you gently off like a magic carpet. This piece is dedicated to my restlessly loving friends.
This was initially conceived during my last stay with Steve and Audrey, sitting up late in their dining room while the rest of the house was asleep. While I love asymmetrical time signatures, I often struggle to write for them in ways that sound natural; I was very pleased with how perfectly this 5/4 time expressed the sense of graceful busyness that I often feel at Villa Milagro. The piece was constructed on four five-note runs, introduced and repeated by the piano. I used them a little like tone rows, where each run defined the allowed notes in the four measure section in which it plays. Given that the runs have only five pitches, building chords was challenging and provided opportunity for some fun experimentation.
The instrumentation arose organically as well, but possibly more intuitively; I selected the sounds I heard in my mind as I wrote. I have not written exclusively for non-electronic ensemble in quite a while, so the fully "acoustic" voices surprised me, even as it seemed right. Indeed, as I was tweaking the final mix, I found myself visualizing the musicians on stage, with the piano and glockenspiel on the left, alto flute and oboe on the right, and the women's choir centered behind, an image that supported the balance I tried to strike.
I am still in the midst of a larger project -- a collection of works for viola -- that I've been struggling with somewhat and this piece initially seemed like a distraction from that. In fact, I think it was, but one that turned out to be as welcome as it was unexpected: I feel reconnected to the juice of inspiration and play that is both the source of and reason for my music making. And, while my productivity overall has been slowed by our current shared stressor, I can feel myself re-engaging in the viola project like returning home after a renewing visit with friends.
This was initially conceived during my last stay with Steve and Audrey, sitting up late in their dining room while the rest of the house was asleep. While I love asymmetrical time signatures, I often struggle to write for them in ways that sound natural; I was very pleased with how perfectly this 5/4 time expressed the sense of graceful busyness that I often feel at Villa Milagro. The piece was constructed on four five-note runs, introduced and repeated by the piano. I used them a little like tone rows, where each run defined the allowed notes in the four measure section in which it plays. Given that the runs have only five pitches, building chords was challenging and provided opportunity for some fun experimentation.
The instrumentation arose organically as well, but possibly more intuitively; I selected the sounds I heard in my mind as I wrote. I have not written exclusively for non-electronic ensemble in quite a while, so the fully "acoustic" voices surprised me, even as it seemed right. Indeed, as I was tweaking the final mix, I found myself visualizing the musicians on stage, with the piano and glockenspiel on the left, alto flute and oboe on the right, and the women's choir centered behind, an image that supported the balance I tried to strike.
I am still in the midst of a larger project -- a collection of works for viola -- that I've been struggling with somewhat and this piece initially seemed like a distraction from that. In fact, I think it was, but one that turned out to be as welcome as it was unexpected: I feel reconnected to the juice of inspiration and play that is both the source of and reason for my music making. And, while my productivity overall has been slowed by our current shared stressor, I can feel myself re-engaging in the viola project like returning home after a renewing visit with friends.
Saturday, March 28, 2020
Days of the Virus: The Wait
By the end of the first week of quarantine, my family and I had handled and set up most of what was needed for the near term. Both my and my wife's businesses had been ported to online-only, as had her and the girls' schools, as well as my mom's social life. The girls were each settled into their respective spots to ride out the pandemic, distant from us but safe. Delivery of food and other necessities seemed reliable enough. It felt strange, but it all seemed to be working and we had most of the details sorted. We felt ready as we could be.
Sitting inside our bubble of preparedness, watching the numbers climb, it seemed to me that any day now we would be overwhelmed by stories of hospitals swamped with patients and stacks of bodies exuding viruses, inner cities collapsed into riots, governments paralyzed as leaders fall to the disease, and the sick and uninfected alike plunged into poverty. I looked out to the horizon and could see the tsunami rolling toward our shore.
Except that this week has not been like that. Unquestionably, the news has been terrible: we're now over 100,000 cases and nearly 1,700 deaths nationally and some hospitals in New York City, the most affected region, are close to capacity. The economy has taken a hit as this week's number of newly unemployed leaves all other records in the dust and the federal government's ineffectuality continues. But these numbers, while horrifying, are not yet overwhelming; in a country of 330,000,000 people, less than two thousand deaths means only a small fraction of us will know anyone who's been killed by the disease and even 100K cases means that, although I personally know of one person who has tested positive, I suspect most folks still don't.
This week, I felt a gap between the relative mundanity of my day-to-day life and the sense that a tidal wave hung over it, ready to flood everything at any moment. After the press of the previous week to get everything working and everyone settled into safety, life has seemed oddly quiet, even as we watched the pandemic grow. I think that there is an emotional-fueled expectation that the storm will begin as soon as you close the shelter door, but that's not how it works if one has attended to the signs and gotten into the shelter in a timely way. The storm moves how a storm moves.
And the COVID-19 pandemic is moving how a pandemic moves. It is nonlinear, exponential -- but it's not magic. It can't go from infecting a few hundred people to hundreds of thousands overnight (if it did, the story would have been entirely different from the start). This week we've watched the number of cases triple in Maryland since last Sunday, which is a frightening rate, but it's still a small fraction of the people living here.
Thus this paradoxical experience of seeing the tidal wave arching over our heads* but yet it moves more slowly than an hour hand. We look up and can see the sun through the water, refracted light scattering strangely, and know that disaster is upon us and that we are as prepared as we can be. And yet we still breath, the birds still twitter and court in the arriving spring, the magnolias blossom and litter the ground with their gentle and generous petals, and children pass the days playing in the shadow of the tsunami.
*Yes, I know tsunamis don't actually do that. Work with me here.
Sitting inside our bubble of preparedness, watching the numbers climb, it seemed to me that any day now we would be overwhelmed by stories of hospitals swamped with patients and stacks of bodies exuding viruses, inner cities collapsed into riots, governments paralyzed as leaders fall to the disease, and the sick and uninfected alike plunged into poverty. I looked out to the horizon and could see the tsunami rolling toward our shore.
Except that this week has not been like that. Unquestionably, the news has been terrible: we're now over 100,000 cases and nearly 1,700 deaths nationally and some hospitals in New York City, the most affected region, are close to capacity. The economy has taken a hit as this week's number of newly unemployed leaves all other records in the dust and the federal government's ineffectuality continues. But these numbers, while horrifying, are not yet overwhelming; in a country of 330,000,000 people, less than two thousand deaths means only a small fraction of us will know anyone who's been killed by the disease and even 100K cases means that, although I personally know of one person who has tested positive, I suspect most folks still don't.
This week, I felt a gap between the relative mundanity of my day-to-day life and the sense that a tidal wave hung over it, ready to flood everything at any moment. After the press of the previous week to get everything working and everyone settled into safety, life has seemed oddly quiet, even as we watched the pandemic grow. I think that there is an emotional-fueled expectation that the storm will begin as soon as you close the shelter door, but that's not how it works if one has attended to the signs and gotten into the shelter in a timely way. The storm moves how a storm moves.
And the COVID-19 pandemic is moving how a pandemic moves. It is nonlinear, exponential -- but it's not magic. It can't go from infecting a few hundred people to hundreds of thousands overnight (if it did, the story would have been entirely different from the start). This week we've watched the number of cases triple in Maryland since last Sunday, which is a frightening rate, but it's still a small fraction of the people living here.
Thus this paradoxical experience of seeing the tidal wave arching over our heads* but yet it moves more slowly than an hour hand. We look up and can see the sun through the water, refracted light scattering strangely, and know that disaster is upon us and that we are as prepared as we can be. And yet we still breath, the birds still twitter and court in the arriving spring, the magnolias blossom and litter the ground with their gentle and generous petals, and children pass the days playing in the shadow of the tsunami.
*Yes, I know tsunamis don't actually do that. Work with me here.
Sunday, March 22, 2020
Days of the Virus: Creativity (and Not)
It's not a new thing for me to feel torn between the relaxation of sitting down at my DAW or picking up my viola and creating anything from bizarre noises to (hopefully) transporting music and the relaxation of sitting next to my wife on our couch and taking in a movie (or, let's be honest, bingeing on some series on Netflix). No, that is not at all a problem unique to quarantine. Yet, for some reason, it has seemed more challenging recently than usual.
I think part of it is that the stresses of setting up to work from home and getting my daughter's settled into their own quarantines (or worrying about them when someone else is helping them do it) and the almost inescapable fire hose of bad news has simply left me more drained at the end of each day, such that I often could do little other than be a couch potato. And it's typically the case that my creative projects suffer when I end the day feeling really drained.
This is understandable, but also moderately frustrating. Prior to the outbreak, I had been working on an all-viola album, something I anticipated would take me most of this year to do, but that I felt moderately optimistic that I could complete. Suddenly, I found myself with next to no patience nor even physical strength for practicing. In the last few weeks, most of the work that I've done -- which is little -- has been on the computer, transcribing pieces, experimenting with effects, etc. I feel disappointed, even as I admit how drained I am.
Yet, it's hard to get too worked up about it, given how fortunate my circumstances are. So far, anyway, the evidence is that my family will be able to ride this out fairly safely. My wife and mother and I have little need to leave our house and are all good at keeping our risk low when we do. Our daughters are safe and in good hands. My wife and I can make our livings from home and my mother's savings are likely to be robust in the long run to the short-term ups and downs of the economy. Hardly an hour passes when I don't feel momentarily gobsmacked at our good luck, especially when it was not long ago at all that we were much more vulnerable.
Many of the headlines and memes I see these days are variations on the theme of having suddenly too much time. That is definitely not my problem. For better or worse, I need to work at least as hard as I usually do to make time to create. On the whole, I think I'm doing okay, my predisposition to disappointment notwithstanding. I may or may not bring my auralization of a collection of viola works into reality by 2021, but I haven't quit on it. I have other satisfying side projects, too, to engage in, not the least of which is this blog. The balance of work, family, and creative time is an unstable Lagrange point, requiring constant tweaking and course corrections, as small factors have unpredictably large impacts on the system. Twas ever thus.
I think part of it is that the stresses of setting up to work from home and getting my daughter's settled into their own quarantines (or worrying about them when someone else is helping them do it) and the almost inescapable fire hose of bad news has simply left me more drained at the end of each day, such that I often could do little other than be a couch potato. And it's typically the case that my creative projects suffer when I end the day feeling really drained.
This is understandable, but also moderately frustrating. Prior to the outbreak, I had been working on an all-viola album, something I anticipated would take me most of this year to do, but that I felt moderately optimistic that I could complete. Suddenly, I found myself with next to no patience nor even physical strength for practicing. In the last few weeks, most of the work that I've done -- which is little -- has been on the computer, transcribing pieces, experimenting with effects, etc. I feel disappointed, even as I admit how drained I am.
Yet, it's hard to get too worked up about it, given how fortunate my circumstances are. So far, anyway, the evidence is that my family will be able to ride this out fairly safely. My wife and mother and I have little need to leave our house and are all good at keeping our risk low when we do. Our daughters are safe and in good hands. My wife and I can make our livings from home and my mother's savings are likely to be robust in the long run to the short-term ups and downs of the economy. Hardly an hour passes when I don't feel momentarily gobsmacked at our good luck, especially when it was not long ago at all that we were much more vulnerable.
Many of the headlines and memes I see these days are variations on the theme of having suddenly too much time. That is definitely not my problem. For better or worse, I need to work at least as hard as I usually do to make time to create. On the whole, I think I'm doing okay, my predisposition to disappointment notwithstanding. I may or may not bring my auralization of a collection of viola works into reality by 2021, but I haven't quit on it. I have other satisfying side projects, too, to engage in, not the least of which is this blog. The balance of work, family, and creative time is an unstable Lagrange point, requiring constant tweaking and course corrections, as small factors have unpredictably large impacts on the system. Twas ever thus.
Days of the Virus: Week Two
Today marks the beginning of the second week of quarantine for my family and me. The most striking thing about that is two things: how dramatically things changed in that time and how quickly it became the new normal.
In the last week, the number of cases of COVID-19 has grown an order of magnitude: from a few dozen cases to nearly 250 in Maryland and from ~3,000 to nearly 33,000 nationwide*. Some state and local governments appear to be taking the situation seriously and are responding as proactively as possible, given the late start, while the Federal government's responses continue to range from impotent to nonsensical. At the beginning of the week, droves of young immortals flooded beaches and bars as spring break erupted; this weekend it seems that at least some of them have been chastened, although I presume it's too little too late.
My cul-de-sac has been filled with cars and children playing and people walking their dogs; it appears everyone is either out of work or working from home (although I haven't actually asked, as my relationships with my neighbors has been limited to friendly waves and an occasional respectful note asking them not to park in front of our house). Normally, a drone shot of my circle would clearly indicate whether the photo was taken on a weekday or a weekend, but no more; every day is the same, with the only changes the occasional delivery van popping by.
I've been conducting therapy via videoconference since Saturday the 14th. Patients' responses to the transition ranged mostly from grateful to tolerant and everyone who took the plunge expressed surprise at how transparent it becomes even a few minutes into the session, rather like getting lost in the screen at the movies. The first week was a challenge for me, though, for two reasons: setup meant scheduling extra time outside of patients' sessions to get the system tested with each person (then there was the snafu with my original platform, prompting a last-minute port) and, unexpectedly, my desk chair proved to be problematic after an hour or two of sitting in it. This week however, neither of these should be an issue, as the former was a front-end problem now resolved and the latter was replaced by my office chair 💖 gratefully retrieved today.
By Thursday, it actually started to feel natural to sit at the computer waiting for patients to log on, to be able to replenish my drink at the end of a session simply by walking downstairs (and saying hello to my wife and mother while I'm there), to disassemble my "office" at the end of the day and return my music studio to its natural state -- and to scan the headlines in the morning and the evening to see what fresh, unforeseen horrors have arisen and how many lives have fallen since my last scan.
Still, a week is nothing. I believe we are very much at the leading edge of the pandemic here in the US. The first 20, 50, even 70 miles of a cycling century, if you've trained well, feel like a breeze -- "I could do this all day!" I've thought to myself almost every time. It's miles 85 and up that are the the hard part -- and we don't actually know how many miles we have to go.
Pace yourself.
In the last week, the number of cases of COVID-19 has grown an order of magnitude: from a few dozen cases to nearly 250 in Maryland and from ~3,000 to nearly 33,000 nationwide*. Some state and local governments appear to be taking the situation seriously and are responding as proactively as possible, given the late start, while the Federal government's responses continue to range from impotent to nonsensical. At the beginning of the week, droves of young immortals flooded beaches and bars as spring break erupted; this weekend it seems that at least some of them have been chastened, although I presume it's too little too late.
My cul-de-sac has been filled with cars and children playing and people walking their dogs; it appears everyone is either out of work or working from home (although I haven't actually asked, as my relationships with my neighbors has been limited to friendly waves and an occasional respectful note asking them not to park in front of our house). Normally, a drone shot of my circle would clearly indicate whether the photo was taken on a weekday or a weekend, but no more; every day is the same, with the only changes the occasional delivery van popping by.
I've been conducting therapy via videoconference since Saturday the 14th. Patients' responses to the transition ranged mostly from grateful to tolerant and everyone who took the plunge expressed surprise at how transparent it becomes even a few minutes into the session, rather like getting lost in the screen at the movies. The first week was a challenge for me, though, for two reasons: setup meant scheduling extra time outside of patients' sessions to get the system tested with each person (then there was the snafu with my original platform, prompting a last-minute port) and, unexpectedly, my desk chair proved to be problematic after an hour or two of sitting in it. This week however, neither of these should be an issue, as the former was a front-end problem now resolved and the latter was replaced by my office chair 💖 gratefully retrieved today.
By Thursday, it actually started to feel natural to sit at the computer waiting for patients to log on, to be able to replenish my drink at the end of a session simply by walking downstairs (and saying hello to my wife and mother while I'm there), to disassemble my "office" at the end of the day and return my music studio to its natural state -- and to scan the headlines in the morning and the evening to see what fresh, unforeseen horrors have arisen and how many lives have fallen since my last scan.
Still, a week is nothing. I believe we are very much at the leading edge of the pandemic here in the US. The first 20, 50, even 70 miles of a cycling century, if you've trained well, feel like a breeze -- "I could do this all day!" I've thought to myself almost every time. It's miles 85 and up that are the the hard part -- and we don't actually know how many miles we have to go.
Pace yourself.
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