Mon, Apr 27, 2020
Read in 3 minutes
From the USA
The grief I’ve felt during this quarantine process has come and gone like a virus itself… if I’m not busy; it can permeate into my whole morning, afternoon, and/or evening. What is it that I grieve? There is an infectious disease out there that sounds like a monstrous experience… a monstrous experience if it leads to death or not. From a medical standpoint, it’s novel, but not completely unprecedented… there have been “new” influenzas in history… AIDS infiltrated humanity. It’s an infection that’s finding a home in human lungs… but for some reason, it’s seemed to make everything outside our door toxic as well.
Maybe the world was in need of a good scrubbin’ any way – there are some pretty filthy cities out there… I know I live in one. The mayor signed a clean-up plan that looked forward a whole fuckin’ decade… a collective, concerted effort might be able to “wrap it up” in a few months.
A few folks have mentioned FOMO. I think that is an interesting concept to unpack… FOMO – fear of missing out – like basically all other things, was conceptualized, rolled out, then seemed to be a trendy concept that went to the wayside. Grief is misery. Grief is anguish. Grief is distress. Fear is terror. Fear is dread. The dread of missing out… but at least in FOMO, one resented not partaking in an event in which others joyously participated… but now there is no event out there to miss. For me, I love live music and many of my regrets are not carving out the time to go to music events with friends. I came to that realization a few years ago and became a “yes man” – shout out to Jim Carrey. I love live music in the summer time… outdoors, cold beer in my hand, sun shining, situated on the grass alongside thousands, all faced forward towards the stage like sunflowers absorbing what they love.
In the past two months, I’ve felt grief. I’ve felt fear. I felt sad when a summer concert plan was cancelled (postponed to next summer). I read the news and I literally frowned. I frowned and then thought about the human response of frowning when sad… was it indoctrinated muscle memory? or is that a part of the human design? I felt sad and I frowned – I looked up from my computer screen upon reading the news. I then looked at all the little souvenirs in my apartment. A conch shell from a trip to the Caribbean… a plastic mug from a bar at a beach resort… concert tickets held up via magnet on the refrigerator… This quarantine and virus will be a Dark Age. A Dark Age is a demographic, cultural and economic deterioration per good ole’ Wikipedia. Pretty fitting I’d say… we’ll see how long it will last. There won’t be any little souvenirs during this process… but God; I hope there’s a renaissance and period of enlightenment that follows it… that we all get to experience.