Earlier this week, I received my first dose of the COVID vaccine. My appointment was at an old department store repurposed as a vaccination site. It was huge, and it was certainly the most people I’ve been around since the last concerts I played in February of 2020, and I’m thinking that many others were experiencing the same sensation as I was being around so many people. Most people were alert and looking around, and I don’t remember seeing anyone glued to their phone. In front of me in line were twins I estimated to be in their late seventies—same height, same hair, same eyes smiling over their masks. They were both dressed in purple sweaters. When they walked up to the line, the volunteer said, “I’m guessing you’re together.” Good guess, they said. Two young women accompanied an elderly nun in a wheelchair. One man who chatted with me in line was trying to remember if he’d ever shopped at this store, when it was a store. One of the volunteers, when I asked how he was doing said, “Well, I checked my pulse this morning and it’s still going, so I’m good!” The woman who administered my shot asked how old my children were and we both agreed that those who became first-time mothers during this past year had it hard.
All these little interactions buoyed me. I was bouncing off people in un-predetermined ways and times!
If there’s one thing that we have all thought about during this past year, it is community—in all its various forms—and how important it is for us. We have wondered: What does community look like when you can’t be together? How do we care for each other from afar? And for us performers, how do you create an online/distanced community in a field where we have depended on in-person attendance and density of audience? We are re-imagining how to engage with each other, what being a part of something looks like, and even though our online connections are a pale version of the saturated in-person experience, it can work, and people have created meaningful bonds and even developed new loves and interests. So, without disregarding the disintegration of much in our lives, it’s worth acknowledging the successes.
This spring has not brought me all the feelings that spring is supposed to bring. There’s something about experiencing the same weather as this time last year, but still feeling so much uncertainty a year on. It has made the long haul of this time (especially for musicians) seem a bit longer. Some of us are starting to perform again, but some of us cannot, either because the work isn’t yet there, or perhaps because of other circumstances (like childcare, for instance).
In looking for ways to keep my own spirits and motivation up and maybe even to keep growing, I’ve been remembering the times of my life when I grew the most, whether I knew it at the time or not. Those times have always been in the context looking outside myself and being involved in the world: a chamber music group, an orchestra, a festival. But I’d venture to say that, just as important as these more obvious scenarios were the smaller settings and exchanges—a friend, a mentor, someone who shared thoughts or ideas and deepened my understanding of the world, or of music, or of myself. I’ve been fortunate to have a few of these kinds of relationships that changed me and the course of my life in profound ways.
It has been very easy during this past year to withdraw, and for those of us who are sometimes inclined to keep to ourselves anyway, the tendency is easily amplified. Although solitude is necessary, and we can all use a healthy dose of it, no one grows or changes only in a vacuum. We need each other. Sometimes the “other” is a book or other kind of content that is already out in the world. I have been changed by words I’ve read or films I’ve seen. But often we need something more—a person, or a group of people, with whom we try to work out our thoughts or quandaries or ideas. We need people who ask us questions and who share their own questions with us, people who can share a different perspective or reaction to whatever we might be considering. So many of these interactions and relationships are initiated and developed in a serendipitous way, one that doesn’t depend upon the time of a Zoom call, but I’ve experienced a little bit of serendipity during this sequestered time, and I’m looking forward to more of that as we (I hope) move towards something more like normal.
In the meantime, can I sink deeper into the communities and relationships that I’m already a part of? What more can I offer? How can I be more present to those people? And is there another community or relationship that needs to be created or sought out?
