creative forces

Blog # 104...April 2020

What a difference a few weeks make!
It's almost unimaginable that we celebrated International Women's Day less than a month ago...the last large gathering we'll have for a very long time.

It's not surprising that artists, especially musicians, have jumped into the chasm that opened when venues closed abruptly. Members of our symphony orchestra performed together from their individual homes - that Aaron Copeland piece moves me to tears! And not just professionals, but Italians singing with each other from their balconies, individuals, groups, we're all singing for our lives!

Galleries are offering virtual tours, theatres stage virtual performances and authors are reading from their books and suggesting what we might find comforting to read...apparently The Plague and Decameron are flying off the shelves, or across the bandwidth. I prefer something less evocative myself.

We're all scared, under and over stimulated at once, thrown on our own resources when we're used to seeking them outside, well me anyway. We're all coping in various ways, occupying ourselves with the minutaie of daily existance that we usually rush through. The days pass, one much like another, not much gets accomplished, and we're used to being goal oriented. But, we're safe and healthy and after all, that's all that matters.

An interesting meme has emerged (hope I'm using that word correctly, I'm never quite sure). Anyway it's ASMR, maybe you've seen or heard it...it's popped up in our lexicon like bespoke and woke and mansplaining did a while ago. It means autonomous sensory meridian response, no scientific basis or explanation for it but enough experiential reports to have it given a name.  It refers to and seeks to explain why people are flocking to certain banal, folksy You Tube videos, it's described as a tingling in the scalp, as if a feather is brushing the surface of the brain, causing shoulders and jaw to loosen and relax.  May be the comfort of a mindless, predictable experience in the present uncertainty.. whatever gets you through the day, or night.

And, although, it stretches my imagination at the moment, things will change - they always do.  We'll find we've lost things - and people.We'll have made discoveries and adjustments that are good and that we'll keep and others that need to change again. Maybe we'll have gained some resilience, new ways of doing things, maybe even new friends.

Whatever happens, I'll be back in May with tulips, green leaves and # 105.