Stuck Inside the COVID-19 Blues Again

But deep inside my heart
I know I can't escape
Oh mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile with the 
Memphis blues again
-Bob Dylan

My cousin called a few days ago and asked how I was doing. I’m okay I said, then paused to consider how to convey gratitude and despair at the same time. Before I could thread together a convincing sentence she said, “You’ve got the COVID blues?”  Yes, and I feel bad about it because I am so fortunate compared to most. I am on sabbatical, which means I was spared a rapid transition to online teaching and dealing with student anxiety. Living in Oakland CA in a family owned cottage, I avoided the brunt of winter and experienced a lovely spring complete with vibrant flowers, warm sunny days for long hikes in our hilly neighborhood or many nearby trails. I work on my research, delve deeply into painting, and read novels. Except when I am too distracted to do anything but stare into space or binge watch British crime shows, which accounts for days at a time.

The uncertainty. I can’t answer questions asked.
My heart is full but it’s breaking apart.

California Spring

Abstract of Alter

I live a double life. I am bursting with joy at moments, most often when painting with music blasting. Dancing. Life flowing freely though my body. An avalanche of color cascading around me. I tell stories. About Oakland, my Oak Knoll neighborhood, the flowers in bloom, Tatiana the live drawing model, my California love story, abstracts of convergence. I sleep in a room lined with paintings and a table covered with oil bars. My floor is discolored from bits of paint ground into the wood. I rub them in with my sock.
Painting is the air I breathe.

Pastels on my table                                                                Titaina

I have moments though. An ominous cloud traveling overhead rains despair on me. I part the curtains of my bubble and see people dying alone, miles of cars lined up at food banks, no money for rent, job one day and gone the next. People I love have been sick and thankfully recovered but this is not over yet. I have disturbing dreams. Sometimes I am escaping, quickly filling a bag to get ahead of someone, not sure who, chasing me down. I wake in panic--the clock says 2am or some ridiculous hour bathed in darkness. It will be hours before I fall asleep again.

Backyard Flowers

We are people in boxes, unable to connect. Boxes within boxes. What did it feel like to bump into a stranger and say pardon me, hug a friend, lace fingers together, link arms, hold out hope that love is still possible, even at my age? Any venture out of my bubble stokes fear. When I return home, I feel a tightening in my chest. I am layers removed from a touching, crowded life. In 1979 I painted a series of paintings about people in boxes in a bomb shelter studio on the kibbutz where I lived near Tel Aviv. I keep thinking about those paintings, like they were a prophecy because I feel I am living in one of those paintings. And cannot see the getting out.

Pearl and I all washed up

There are people out there doing the rescuing. It makes my vanity concerns seem trivial. I abandoned most of them anyway, dark roots and gray sprouting out of my highlighted blonde, wearing the same clothes, and actually forcing myself to wash my hair because I could easily not. I don’t remember what it’s like to stand in front of my closet and think about what shirt, skirt, pants, or dress to put on. I care about my health so I continue to work out, and when I digress and think about my weight or wrinkles I chastise myself. The absence of social gathering, ceremony, and going to work might curb the urge to reflect ourselves in the eyes of others.

Living in boxes distorts you.

With Pandy girl last summer at the beach in Maine

Getting beyond the what’s the point question each day takes some convincing. Take this blog for example. At the start of sabbatical, I had a plan to write posts about my travels, art, commentary on my teaching, research, and world affairs. Free from the daily grind I would cultivate adventures, witty conversations, insightful epiphanies, and paint at a new and deeper level than ever before. I hadn’t counted on Pandy dying followed by a global pandemic. I was leveled in a matter of weeks—no Pandy, travel, visits with friends, and even going to a store is an ordeal. And while I feel surges of excitement about my research or paintings, it’s like a heady buzz from champagne followed by a sobering drop in altitude. What’s the point won’t leave me alone.

Oak Knoll neighborhood concert with Jenn Johns

An artist friend and I were discussing making art in the time of COVID. Is it self-indulgent and insensitive to savor this unexpected excess of time to create? Perhaps partly; however, I believe it's our job as artists to document stories in the best and worst of times. We are living a historic trauma in real time and someday our art will become an important part of the collective narrative--what we saw, felt, lost, and gained. A smile forming while watching birds in flight, finding a handwritten letter in the mailbox, a live concert on a neighbor's lawn. Allowing space for sadness, despair, anger. Noticing what we were too busy to see or feel. Details of confinement spaces. The green kitchen sink, art table, pile of books, trees outside the window, cityscapes and landscapes. Across a chasm, street, or country. The lines of cars at food banks, bodies in cold storage, unrelenting grief, voices heard and overlooked. What saved or nearly sunk us.

Keith and Meiling/3462 Calandria Oak Knoll/Oakland Series

When the COVID blues grip my soul, I’ll remember blues are part of the telling. And when I struggle to answer the what's the point question—why paint, write, or yearn for a future I can no longer imagine, it will be to survive and pay tribute those who fell. We need a better world that is more than just gliding over one false bottom after the other. My job is the telling—as an artist, writer, scholar, teacher, and human. At our best we are dispensers of truth, and also hope, for without it there is no other side to fight for.   

My California Love Story before text

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