An Artist Scholar in COVID19
STRANGE TIMES
In the days after my 54th birthday, and like almost all artists, within days of the Pandemic being announced, all my gigs, tours, artist talks and commissions were cancelled. It seems so petty writing it now, a few weeks later. On the other hand, like most Australian academics, we worked day and night to get our face to face music programs online, and save as many casual academic musicians and visting artists/musician jobs as we can. In our case, within 4 working days. As I follow too much social media, I see many artists without income, finding things to do in their newfound time before any meager support they may have runs out, whilst I haven’t stopped working for days, trying to keep staff positive, trying to convince music students that their studies will help them through the times ahead. The times none of us know what they are. We all carry around questions that simply cannot be answered. Anxiety amongst staff and students is high, we are all struggling to understand what is happening, we all find out the news at the same time, the directives sent upon us. I daily remind myself I am lucky to still have a job at all, though news of cuts and reductions in Australian university staffing are starting to come in.
This week, a new phase began, as my teenage son begins school at home. I hear the teachers on the computer, each one trying their best to make it work in their own way, and I realise what we did at the music school was incredible. What we are all doing is incredible. We are keeping it going, when really, all we want to do is hide. The Easter break, a beloved academic holiday where we leave town and catch up with friends was instead a strange period of sleep recovery and realisation; I wouldn’t call it rest. Restless sleep, bad dreams, calling loved ones and thinking through what ifs. I get up and go back to work.
There is no right way to be. We are all already grieving: for so many people dying, including those we know, places we have visited ravaged, our lifestyles changed forever. Insane debates and confusing graphs. Concepts like herd immunity and restarting the economy. As someone who was a child in the Cold War, I remember the feeling that something bad was going to happen. And here it is.
Whatever I write here, on my private little blog, will probably be irrelevant in a few days. I felt a strange sense of relief when my art projects were cancelled at the start, I could focus on the difficult task that I had a feeling might be coming at the university. But now, I have no creative will, I don’t want to make anything. I have gone from relief, to despondency, to realising how important art making is to me, another grief I just have to live with, for now. We can only do what we can, not what we have to.
But most days, I feel optimistic. I have pride in what we are achieving despite the odds, admire the great ideas springing up, amazing gestures of kinship and generosity, and dare think of what good may come of this for our discipline. I wrote a little about that here.
OPPORTUNITES
At the school, we offered 10 x $1000 Commissions, in the #AloneTogether project, for artists to create online content about Australian music to share with students. My group Decibel will commission 20 x 2minute works from composers in our community, two a month for the rest of the year.
ALMOST
The Summers Night Project mentees were announced. We will start working on new pieces, but he concerts will take place when we are back together again. Similarily, my Tectonics gig has been pushed out to 2021, and the work I am doing for a new guitar orchestra project is on hold at draft stage. The Monash Animated Notation Ensemble rehearsed a new commissioned work by Jaslyn Robertson: we are now looking again for a performance opportunity. The day the university closed for face to face teacher, artist in residence Jon Rose arrived at the school - it was his first gig after months of being unwell. IN face of cancelled classes, we made workshop videos, and he and I had amazing conversations together, recorded in the auditorium at the school.
THE THINGS WE CAN DO
I was lucky to be part of a New Waves Aussie Sampler released this month on ABC Classic FM. Decibel are contributing to the April Earth Day Art Model concert this month by contributing videos.