The present situation – today’s rant.
I should start this rant by admitting that I know that I’m very lucky. I’m not lying awake worrying about how to fund the next meal, or how to cope with horrible domestic circumstances; I’m not lonely, and thank God I’m not, unlike many, having to look outside the music profession for a new job. But I am finding – and I think I can speak for most musicians here – this lockdown much worse than the first. The first one was in a way scarier (well, so far – we don’t know what the new strains will bring), and the daily tragic news was utterly shocking. But at least there was something of a sense of challenge – for musicians at least, many showing astonishing talent as they produced whole chamber performances from their homes. (To take just one of countless examples: this performance by Malin Broman of the last movement of the Mendelssohn Octet – a very hard movement for all the parts – blew my mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWwLSsfdmNk…)
This time around, virtually every musician to whom I’ve spoken agrees that there’s a sickening sense of endlessness, of (as one friend put it) Groundhog Day. Even for those of us not forced to take a job outside our beloved vocation, it’s harder and harder to muster the energy to be creative, to tackle a new project for which we would never have had time in our previous lives. I feel particularly sorry for young musicians, those who were just embarking on their careers, or studies – stopped in their tracks at what must feel like a particularly crucial, and irreplaceable, point in their careers.
But – and I am talking to myself as much as to anyone else here – we just have to ignore the beckoning listlessness. We have to remember that life stopped in a far worse way – and for so many, of course, far more permanently – during two world wars, lasting for four and six years respectively (and with a most uncalled-for encore after the first, in the shape of Spanish flu). And yet – the music world survived! The lull isn’t irreversible. We also have to look around us now, at the general reaction to music at the moment; so many people are saying that it helps, comforts them more than it ever has before. At the few live concerts I’ve been able to play in the past year, the reactions have been so touching. Music has that extraordinary power to take us to worlds far removed from our present worries and stresses – that’s not going to change. People need, and will need it, more than ever.
Meanwhile – what can we musicians do? The one thing we must not do is to succumb to a sense of futility. Because it’s NOT futile! For me, I find that the only way I can avoid lethargy is to give myself goals – not just goals, but goals with timelines, and goals involving other people. We can all say we’d like to learn this or that piece, for instance; we make a start , perhaps – and then let it drift. After all, what’s the point? There is every point! In order to keep ourselves inspired, we have to give ourselves a specific timeline: a date by which we will play that piece through. Not only that, we have to force ourselves to make a recording or video of it and send it to someone whom we respect, in order to get their feedback. We have to make ourselves nervous, in fact, stress ourselves a bit. Otherwise Netflix binges are going to seem too attractive. You feel like writing a book, or a diary? Do it – but do it at a certain time, by a certain time.
Schedules are essential – but realistic schedules, so that we can achieve what we set out to do. And one achievement will lead to another.
After that – we just have to have faith that life will resume. People are saying that the musical world will have changed irrevocably. Maybe so; but not in its essentials. People will still need us to communicate with them through music, they will need to be taken out of themselves – and I believe that they will be more grateful than before to musicians for offering them that path to a better world.
I know it’s all easier said than done; but we have no choice! And we might as well make the best of the situation, and come out stronger the other side…
