Hi, welcome back.
Spent this morning helping my husband set up a recording studio in our living room. He’s recording his first Bad Buddhist Video vlog, based off his original Bad Buddhist Radio podcasts right now. I plan to do something similar, myself, although I don’t have a body of work to pull from like he does. Also hoping to get my own podcast up and running soon.
Anyway, all of this we’re doing lately — the blogs, the vlogs, the podcasts — made me think of how old-fashioned this stuff is (despite the technology). Whether we’re writing a book, or a song; making a blog post, filming a video, or recording a podcast … they’re all basically the same thing. We’re all reaching out,trying to make connections with other people to stave off feelings of loneliness and isolation.
Because believe me, no matter how much we all deny it, humans really do need other humans. Connections — social, physical, and spiritual — are sort of like the grease in the wheels that keep we humans going. Without it, we can carry on for a little while, but it won’t be long before we grind to a halt and possibly burst into flames.
Connection is especially important to creative people — it’s the sustenance we crave to keep creating. It’s the reason why there are so many new YouTube videos are being made right now; why so many artists and musicians are sitting in their living rooms or garages singing to us; why talk show hosts are bravely doing their monologues from home — complete with strangely flat jokes — knowing that none of it’s the same without us in the room with them. They — we — are all trying to connect with one another during this strange time.
It’s sort of like together we’re all creating a 21st century version of Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year. Why Defoe’s “historical fiction”, and not Pepys’ diary, (a contemporary account based on his actual experiences)? Because even though Daniel Defoe was only 5 years old in 1665, the year of the Great Plague in London, his Journal was a combination of his uncle’s personal experience, research and systematic detail. In other words, Defoe tried to paint the bigger picture while still grounding the event in the personal.
Which is kind of what we’re all doing, on a subconscious level.
So here’s my message in a bottle.
Someday it will be found and added to the 2020 edition of the Journal, making some OCD historian very happy as she/he/they pastes my little scrap of humanity in it’s proper place on the Covid19 timeline.
gwendalyncope.com 