Just logged off the state unemployment site, where I requested my first UI check of the furlough. There's no joy in this, just a sense of very slight relief in the wallet department. I suppose this is the new Monday routine until we can return to work. All I know is that this isn't much fun; it definitely feels more like house arrest than playing hooky. There's a real weight of seriousness to all this, and our mortality is really quite sharply defined right now.
A lot of performers (many of my friends included) have been filling up social media with living room concerts now that none of us can get out to the venues. I'm not inclined to do this, but it's really odd to not be able to play for people in a real life gathering, and I hope these at-home broadcasts are enough of an outlet to help folks get through these strange days and nights. My musical efforts at staying sane are all studio based. I'm lucky to have a place here at home to record, and my focus is on that. It's a very comfortable, familiar thing; there's no immediacy that's missing, no absent rapport with an audience and other players. There's just the project at hand, like there would be if we weren't in shelter-in-place mode. So it feels normal, one of the few things that does. Whatever gets us through the night, right?
Once thing I'm wondering is how much people might be missing live shows. Not talking about artists. We know we miss playing out. But what about the folks that in the past might have given in to the idiot box instead of our gigs and just stayed home? My hope is that when this is all over, they'll have a renewed sense of participation. That they'll remember what this quarantine felt like when they had no place to go or weren't allowed to go there. I hope they'll get off the couch more often.
Be safe, be well. Make some music, even if no one can hear it yet but you.
