Enough of this already! We are all going through Corona virus burnout now and unfortunately it’s far from over. Yesterday would have been John Prine’s 74th birthday but this terrible virus ended his life well before he had written all of his songs for us.
I Zoom jammed today with a bunch of good friends as I do almost every weekend now but it would be so much better to socialize with them in person and field complaints about how all I brought was bean dip. One of our jam group reported about how they had recently jammed in person (and from far away outside with no singing) with another good friend who said she hadn’t been out of her house for the last six months.
Fear is a terrible thing and a virus that kills a lot of people puts a monkey wrench into everything you care about. Who would have ever dreamed we would all spend a year with no festivals, no music camps, no weekly jams (not to mention not much sports to speak of, no restaurant dining, etc.)
Worst of all we have to endure a generational fracture because this virus for the most part sails by the younger generation, sometimes with no symptoms, and kills the older generation with pretty good efficiency. Rocking your little grandchild and hugging them is one of the greatest pleasures a senior citizen can have but there might be great risk these days in that simple human act.
I hope we are smart enough to get past this sad state of affairs some day. There’s only so much that can be done sitting in a bubble with your computer screen and a video camera. We need to be humans again, whether that means congregating at a big bluegrass festival or lighting things on fire at Burning Man. Most of all we need to hug our little ones, read to them and bore them to death with how things were so much more difficult in our day.
In the meantime play your music any way you can and connect with loved ones and strangers the same way. It might be the only way to keep our sanity. And hope for a day when we can simply act like humans again.
