Leaning a bit into the candid for this episode of Remote, I wonder how many of us have been alternating periodically between positive and negative narratives regarding our role in the national effort to ‘flatten the curve’. There are probably bouts of feeling useless in the face of it all, and believing that adhering to social distancing rules, though of paramount importance, is nowhere near enough to meet the enormity of the task at hand.
My girlfriend’s grandmother succumbed to the Coronavirus this week, and it’s the helplessness felt by long-term-care homes, like the one she was in, that most acutely invokes this intermittent sense of uselessness. Of course, the key is to not let that negativity hold sway over our perception of what the near future holds in store. Easier said in an article, than done in reality.
Whatever it is we do with our moments of doubt, this is an opportunity to make a particularly empathetic observation: for the approximately 4.9 million Canadians living in poverty before this pandemic, this temporary state of affairs is their permanent reality. For those living beneath the poverty line, a persistent sense of helplessness and insufficiency is their lot regardless of a global pandemic or recession. This moment is a rare instance to share a collective sense of the limitations that a substantial portion of our population live with, rain or shine.
It’s not all doom and gloom, this is as well a moment for us to brandish a coarse sense of optimism that we don’t often get to exercise. To remain hopeful of our prospects of returning to some sort of normal while being able to openly admit, to ourselves and others, the less than optimal and perhaps dire circumstances of our current situation. That is why I’m so grateful for the contribution made to this series by Canadian librettist David James Brock. He joins us to talk about anti-creativity and re-thinking the meaning of accessibility in the arts, among other things.
How are you doing at this time?
I’m alone through this, so I’m a little sick of myself, but I’m grateful to have a few people checking in on me regularly. A lot of anxious talk is happening privately, and seeking positive voices and interactions is something I’m hopeful I’ll keep up through the rest of this and beyond. If anything, I wish I was more ‘useful’ to the collective good at a time like this, and the word gratitude is paltry for how I feel towards those who are actively out there keeping this whole thing together, who are themselves subject to a whole different type of trauma.
Personally, my mood and my coping mechanisms (some unhealthy, some not) are all over the place. In the first couple of weeks, I felt this intense anti-creativity. It was a weird mix of admin and therapy, adjusting to current projects-in-progress going on pause (or outright cancelled) as well as this little period I had feeling guilty for writing about pandemics and illnesses on my past few theatre and opera projects. These bits of creative despair pop in from time to time, and in my chats with my friends who are writers, performers, and composers, there’s this true grappling with our own ‘essentialness’ right now…with what do we do now…when should we do it…should we even bother?
What are some of the ways you are keeping busy now? (or perhaps not keeping ‘busy’?)
I don’t have any concerns about productivity, but I do have concerns about physical and mental stagnation. One thing that I’ve been doing to keep moving is to return to older work, unproduced work that clearly had my attention at some point. In one abandoned play, I had written the lyrics for three songs, so now I’m messing around with adding the music myself, which is something I’ve never done. It’s just some basic guitar chords for now, but fumbling with something creatively new has allowed me to ignore any notions of “excellence” for the time being.
This process of revisiting old drafts is also taking the pressure off of having something new or profound to say about life in the time of COVID-19 (or new about anything right now)…there’s a stress of trying to record slippery emotions that change hour to hour. Looking at older work has also put me in touch with a sort of more innocent creative time. It’s like that #MeAt20 thing going around where people share a photo of themselves at 20 years of age. I understand the desire to participate in that…to share a version of the self far removed from a global pandemic, perhaps at a transitional time in your life where even if things weren’t perfect, there was maybe some optimism or vision around who you might become. I think we’re all looking for a little optimistic visualization right now, even if it’s filtered through a kind of nostalgic pain.
Any specific books, films, or TV on the go?
Other than working my way through whatever comes up next on Netflix, I’m consciously reconnecting with my desire for spectacle and beautiful noise, for authentic applause or laughter from an audience, so I’m watching a hell of a lot of RuPaul’s Drag Race and 80s/90s professional wrestling. I also started streaming Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals and have just watched the BBC recording of Electric Company/Kidd Pivot’s Betroffenheit, which was able to capture the magic of that perfect theatre experience.
I’ve recently pulled Peter Guralnick’s book Sweet Soul Music off my shelf. It details the history of American soul music in the 50s and 60s has been a part of my morning ritual. I’m reading it very slowly, almost like those childhood books with tapes where you’re prompted to turn the page by the recording. So each time an artist or song is alluded to in the book, I’ll put it on to soundtrack my reading, to engage myself and quiet that glum inner voice that likes to dwell on uncertainty.
Any words of wisdom to get through this?
I don’t want us to abandon curiosity, but I do want to let go of this need to be so artistically impressive right now. Learn to make gnocchi. Give in to the duolingo owl begging you to come back to Greek Basics 1. Try to write a song with the only 4 guitar chords you know, comfortable with the idea that it’s not going to be the next Fiona Apple album.
What do you think are some of the ways arts communities can better prepare for adjusting to a crisis such as this?
I hope that the new world we’re all bracing ourselves for isn’t simply going to be one where we slap technology onto old models in an attempt to resurrect them. I don’t know that there’s enough of a sensory intimacy in online plays and concerts, though I do think there’s something comforting about online readings like Janet Munsil’s Canadian Play Thing (live readings of new and under-produced Canadian plays online) and Jen & Peter McGillivray’s Quarantine Players (live readings of Shakespeare plays). Long term, I don’t think Skype operas can fill the void (I’m guilty of one of these from 2013), but I also don’t think it’s fair to dismiss the raw, even desperate experimentation from the opera and theatre communities we’re seeing now as “disposable digital theatre.” As always, artists will process this incredible loss in real-time. We’ll take the best bits, leave what doesn’t work behind, and hopefully evolve better creation and presentation formats through recombination.
At the very least, I want to see a huge re-thinking of what accessible arts means at every level from creation & development to audience & outreach now that everyone is experiencing forms of inaccessibility first-hand. I’m an instructor for Inkwell Workshops, a writing community for people living with mental-health or addictions issues. Necessarily, they’ve moved workshops online, but I think the broader arts community will be well advised to look at the systems which Inkwell has created, not just for accessible arts education, but for trauma-informed programming, which will be a huge part of any rebuild in the aftermath of this pandemic.
The slate isn’t exactly clean, but maybe we’re closer than we’ve been for a long time. And while I think artists (and arts organizations) are doing a great job at articulating and acknowledging the struggles ahead, I do hope that this incredible support for the arts doesn’t forget the actual artists at the expense of salvaging legacies, logos and buildings.
#LUDWIGVAN
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- THE REMOTE PODCAST | Conductor Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser On The Cultural Changes Taking Place In Orchestras - November 23, 2020
- THE REMOTE PODCAST | Catching Up With Tapestry Opera’s Savvy Artistic Director Michael Mori - November 6, 2020
- REMOTE | Diane Leung: ‘This Is The Time Where We Are Forced To Grow And Change’ - October 22, 2020
