The Pandemic – a view across the plateau

If the climb was strange, unexpected and life-changing, the plateau looks almost more so.  I can’t see live events being part of our lives again any time soon.  The weekly live event of clapping an invisible but fundamental heroic performance from our doorsteps whilst being essential, life-affirming and necessary, leaves me feeling I somehow missed the main show. And how I do miss my show and being on the road and all the wonderful people I met every weekend for the last however many, many seasons. Like almost everyone in the UK I met the initial challenges of isolation with two weeks of manic cleaning and tidying.  Putting my lorry in order.  I added shelves, delved into and purged murky cupboards, discovered props and magic books I had completely forgotten.  I made do and mended, some on the new old treadle Singer.  I added a rediscovered DAB digital radio to the lorry cell and now enjoy Classic FM in wonderful clarity as I write. I plan shopping expeditions into Older Person’s hour in Sainsbury’s and eke out provisions.  I bake. I listen to birdsong and love walks through my bluebell wood in the grounds of the Big House. I do daily yoga.  Somehow the climb to the top of the plateau has been worthwhile.  I’ve learned about what is essential.  Not just, in Saint-Exupéry’s words, is it ‘invisible to the eye’, but the essential has been below the surface and for so long hidden by the need to earn, to own, and to keep on… And wow has this re-learning curve been steep.  Painful.  Stoic. For me non-stop days of tidying, burning all the accumulated dead leaves, separating the hard from the ocean plastic.  Storing the latter in eco bricks for later inclusion in a wall somewhere. My wood-working neighbour at the yard went bankrupt just before all this and left a ton of detritus which I have separated and filed for future use appropriately. And in the workshop alongside, my stage is now resplendently established. Mr Alexander’s Youtube Studio.  Another learning curve in prospect as I watch ‘how to’ videos on editing, green screen lighting and titling.  And review my own complete inadequacy in front of a camera, as anyone watching my amateur efforts thus far will testify.  But they will improve.  It is hard, not having a director and having zero experience.  What I thought was genius turns out on screen to be crass idiocy.  How true of the attempts at a creative life is that!  But as Elisabeth Gilbert in her wonderful TED talk ‘Your elusive creative genius’, examines, the most important thing is that we ‘show up’ and get on with the job. And that is what I shall continue to do.  This new stage in my performing adventure will begin in earnest as I plot a path across the pandemic plateau (how I like a nice alliteration). I have a plan to use the studio not just as a performance space for mini shows to the strange invisible audience in my head, but also as a contemplation of the lifetime of a performer.  I think the two will be alternated in ‘a series of ind