The Pandemic – a view across the plateau
If the climb was strange, unexpected and life-changing, the plateau looks almost more so. I can’t see live events being part of our lives again any time soon. The weekly live event of clapping an invisible but fundamental heroic performance from our doorsteps whilst being essential, life-affirming and necessary, leaves me feeling I somehow missed the main show. And how I do miss my show and being on the road and all the wonderful people I met every weekend for the last however many, many seasons.
Like almost everyone in the UK I met the initial challenges of isolation with two weeks of manic cleaning and tidying. Putting my lorry in order. I added shelves, delved into and purged murky cupboards, discovered props and magic books I had completely forgotten. I made do and mended, some on the new old treadle Singer. I added a rediscovered DAB digital radio to the lorry cell and now enjoy Classic FM in wonderful clarity as I write. I plan shopping expeditions into Older Person’s hour in Sainsbury’s and eke out provisions. I bake. I listen to birdsong and love walks through my bluebell wood in the grounds of the Big House. I do daily yoga. Somehow the climb to the top of the plateau has been worthwhile. I’ve learned about what is essential. Not just, in Saint-Exupéry’s words, is it ‘invisible to the eye’, but the essential has been below the surface and for so long hidden by the need to earn, to own, and to keep on…
And wow has this re-learning curve been steep. Painful. Stoic. For me non-stop days of tidying, burning all the accumulated dead leaves, separating the hard from the ocean plastic. Storing the latter in eco bricks for later inclusion in a wall somewhere. My wood-working neighbour at the yard went bankrupt just before all this and left a ton of detritus which I have separated and filed for future use appropriately.
And in the workshop alongside, my stage is now resplendently established. Mr Alexander’s Youtube Studio. Another learning curve in prospect as I watch ‘how to’ videos on editing, green screen lighting and titling. And review my own complete inadequacy in front of a camera, as anyone watching my amateur efforts thus far will testify. But they will improve. It is hard, not having a director and having zero experience. What I thought was genius turns out on screen to be crass idiocy. How true of the attempts at a creative life is that! But as Elisabeth Gilbert in her wonderful TED talk ‘Your elusive creative genius’, examines, the most important thing is that we ‘show up’ and get on with the job.
And that is what I shall continue to do. This new stage in my performing adventure will begin in earnest as I plot a path across the pandemic plateau (how I like a nice alliteration). I have a plan to use the studio not just as a performance space for mini shows to the strange invisible audience in my head, but also as a contemplation of the lifetime of a performer. I think the two will be alternated in ‘a series of indefinite length’. I’m champing at the bit now and will film the first contemplation in the next few days. It will be my first proper edit too. What an exciting proposition. So I can only echo the moving analysis of our current situation by Sonya Renee Taylor -
We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalised greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate and lack. We should not long to return my friends.
We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature.
What we have been forced to leave behind we needed to leave behind. What is getting us through is what we will need to take forward, all the rest is up to us.
DREAM. While you have so much time. DREAM of the life you want. DREAM of the world you desire to exist in. Look for the places in your new dreams that have parts of the old world and remove them. What is the dream then?
From there we can add to the collective weaving of whatever it is that is next.
All the best from a road, on the other side of the screen, near you,
Mr Alexander