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theseadagiodays · 4 years

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April 6, 2020

Travel at home

I have always been a passionate traveler, with an insatiable curiosity for new experiences, cultures and sensations. But what also comes with all the titillation is a fair dose of unfamiliar, unsettling, and often challenging new circumstances every traveler must agily welcome if they are to thrive. When you are served dinner with no cutlery in Kalkata, scooping sloppy curry with your hands has to do. When you’re penniless and lose your companion, hours from home in Bangkok’s busy streets, you must ingratitate yourself to the kindness of strangers for bus fare to your hotel. It strikes me that this same flexibility can serve us well as we navigate the unchartered territories of this new nation we all inhabit, called COVID.

But what moves me most as I wander the world is the way in which constant new sensory input elevates my present-minded attention so intensely. My ears delight in a particularly evocative call to prayer in Morocco. My mouth savors the sour sweetness of a Colombian maracuya (passionfruit). And my nose even appreciates the cow dung furnaces on the side of the road in India. It is like meditation in motion. After each journey, when I return home, I set the earnest intention to sustain such sensory focus at home. But as the days pass, this consistently becomes increasingly difficult. However now, with little opportunity to venture much more than metres from our door, we need new strategies to remain sane and stimulated. So, I think we can all benefit from living like tourists at home. I believe there is a science to this. I’ve even coined a term for it. It came from a time when I heard education expert Ken Robinson define the word aesthetics. Associated with beauty, most think of the definition as subjective. But he simplified this by pointing out that the opposite of aesthetics is anaesthetics (that which numbs our senses). So, aesthetics are those things which make us feel. Since this revelation, I have come to call myself an aesthesiologist because I believe that all artists are in the business of making people feel. And this is why I feel that sharing artistic resources on this blog is the best medicine I can offer as we all ride out this crisis together.

So, maybe today you can consiciously pay attention to some subtle new observation each of your senses notice in your environment. The way the light hits your tea kettle at dawn. The call of a returning bird at spring time. The crunch of the potato chips that you’re binging on right now. Lately, I’ve certainly learned to feel extra fortunate that I can taste or smell at all, because my husband completely lost his sense of smell 3 weeks ago. Most have probably heard that this is an alarming and bizarre potential sign of COVID, particularly in people with no other symptoms. So, having come thru full incubation period, we’re at least past the scare that it could have become worse or that he might have infected myself or others with whom he’d had contact prior to quarantine. But he never thought he’d look so forward to the day he could smell my farts again. (Meanwhile, I’m indulging in all the beans and garlic I want)

At any rate, if home sensations don’t tickle you enough, there is always virtual travel. And while that certainly risks inspiring a vicarious longing that may not serve you, for others, it can elicit some of the same wonders as adventures themselves. So, if you’re craving sensory immersion into other worlds, New York Times can help you do this with their 13 recommended travel podcasts.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/travel/travel-podcasts.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage&contentCollection=AtHome

I know I have certainly spent many days in quarantine wallowing over my screensaver trip photos, longing for a time when I could journey further afield once more. But I have also been swept away by the photographic brilliance of some of the work that the New York Times is featuring weekly, in their World Through a Lens column. Marcus Westerberg’s shots of Zambian wildlife (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/31/travel/zambia-safari.html) were particularly emotional for me, having just had one of the most meaningful travel experiences of my life there, last year, when I served as resident visiting artist at a music school in Lusaka. In fact, I arrived exactly one year ago, today, and can’t wait to return to those magical people. A girl has to dream, after all...

April 7, 2020

Creativity at Home

If any of you are variety-mongers like me, seeing only the same person or people, day in and day out, can have you dressing up your spouse in wigs or Hawaian skirts or bear costumes just to mix things up a bit. But largely, I’ve been hearing that many parents and siblings are embracing ways to capitalize on their excessive togetherness. I think it’s why the show Survivor has been so successful all these years. Forced into small spaces and “tribes”, we tend to do whatever it takes to get along with our fellow captives. Cooped up together for days on end, there is no limit to the clever activities some families have created to keep themselves occupied.

This crew took a simple tube and board of wood to create some exercise apparatus that has kept them busy for hours: https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5518064

Others are taking vicarious travel to the next level with some Photoshop fun - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/travel/coronavirus-fake-travel.html

And the most impressive might be this 5-person brood, each with operatic quality voices, who belt out their rendition of One More Day, from Les Miserable.

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-52106893/coronavirus-family-goes-viral-with-lockdown-les-mis-song-adaptation

But, if you happen to be stumped for ideas yourselves, here are a few ways you can kickstart your family’s creativity. A bunch of resourceful theatre company’s have been commissioning playwrights to create short Plays at Home, designed for actors and amateurs alike to perform in their own living rooms. Most are staged for 1-7 humans, with joyful themes, and participants are welcome to share video recordings of their readings.

https://www.playathome.org/?fbclid=IwAR3_Uib1GQV5134ZbF7IEI5F5lpt0HQdxYkd1HtiNeUFws1UKCvVV4_2KEQ

And right here in Vancouver, my friend Vanessa Richards is finding thoughtful ways to engage community in collaborative singing, by sustaining her weekly free choir sessions, now in Livestream, every Wednesday, from 6-7:30. You can check out Van Van Song Society here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/togethersinging/

April 8, 2020

Quarantine Living - Al Yankovic style Some of you may be too young to recognize this reference to our favorite weasly moustached 80’s bard, who humorously bastardized everything from Queen’s Another One Rides the Bus to Michael Jakcson’s Eat It, with his own comic lyrics. But lately, like our Les Miserable family, Weird Al Yancovic’s “wordsquatting” trend is spreading more virally than corona.

This original take on the Beatles, I gotta wash my hands is a classic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxOJ7hh3H-I

For more potty humor, I adore this Philipino artists’ no-toilet paper campaign, I love tabo- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vzb98tQp53I

And certainly, the most high tech example has come from Vancouver’s own Phoenix Chamber Choir, in their rendition of the hugely popular Queen song, Coronavirus Rhapsody- https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1720158275935?fbclid=IwAR3gEdqv95oX4KT_W4F4_naJyASRhUaGpr-T56Aux9k4tCStGvow9xgHIQw

April 9, 2020

Reading Respite Endless screentime has probably left many of us fatigued and squinting, with a need for stronger reading glass prescriptions that we can’t fill, because all the optometry shops have shut down. So, these next suggestions are offered with that caveat. However, for me, the tactile experience of a book in my hand can still be a nourishing antidote to digital overload. Often just a page is capable of transporting my body, mind and soul away from news feeds, virus counts, and press conferences.

Never a fan of e-readers, I have always passionately supported my local bookshops. And thankfully, there is a current intiative intended to do the same, at a time when the threat of a certain Capital A behometh taking over global commerce is greater than ever. So, you can actually feed your spirit and your neighborhood bookseller by purchasing any literary craving here. Thanks to the new site, bookshop.org, you can order what you’d like from the local bookstore of your choice, while this company acts as liason. And the fair split allows your local vendor to keep 30% of total profit, when direct sales that are no longer possible for them may have only been slightly more (40-45%).

As far as what to stories to consume at a time like this, it has amazed me how much films like Contagion and Outbreak have had huge resurgences. This tells me that relevance and resonance are key factors in people’s entertainment choices. However, if you’re looking for something that relates to your current circumstances, but leaves you not with more fear, but with actual hope, inspiration, or tools for survival, here are a few better options:

Emily St. Mandel’s Station Eleven is, in fact, a post-apocalyptic tale. But her narrative’s most clever survivors form a travelling Shakespeare troupe, demonstrating the power of art to heal in dire times.

For some existential musing reaped in self-isolation, Thoreau’s Life in the Woods always still provides.

And if the new stressors arising from this crisis find you busier than ever, but you long to slow down, travel journalist, Pico Iyer, in his prophetic 2014 book, The Art of Stillness, makes a strong case for the fact that “in our madly accelerating world, our lives are crowded, chaotic and noisy. So, there’s never been a greater need to slow down, tune out and give ourselves permission to be still.”

April 10, 2020

How Might We Fill This Space?

Never before have Memes, Tik tok or Cat Videos provided such many needed lifelines for people all over the world. But the video that most stirred me to action was this stunning dance collaboration that popped up in my Facebook feed, during the early days of self-isolation, before my first Zoom conference, before I’d seen my first collaborative musical Quarantine Song spoof. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3pFxsYPLgU

This global initiative to weave together dance gestures, while performers were entirely physically separate, seeded the idea for a community art and writing project that I have recently started with a few friends.

In an effort to connect artists during this physically distant time, we have launched Spool of Thought. And all artistic contributions are welcome to the thread.

https://www.instagram.com/spoolofthought2020/

On this page, we invite people to respond to the question, “How might we fill this space?”as we adjust to different rhythms of being. The idea is to weave together our thoughts, through the fluid form of cursive writing, in a non-linear narrative documenting this unique time on our planet.

The full instructions are below, for those interested and eager to participate:

1.Using Notes (iPhone) or Evernote (Android) and the digital pen, draw a continuous cursive line from the left to right side of the note (arranged horizontally) and write a word, phrase or sentence that responds to the prompt: How Might We Fill This Space?

2. Save it to your photos.

3. Then,send it by email to: [email protected], and we will add your text to the Spool of Thought Instagram page.

4. Please include your name, your location, your occupation, and your Instagram@ for the caption of your photo.

5. And feel free to share this invite with your community, along with these instructions.

6. Finally, enjoy watching the spool unravel on @spoolofthought2020, as the thread grows, and tag us wherever you choose to share: #spoolofthought2020.

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