The days have settled into an easy rhythm–of coffee, meditation, work, and workouts, with healthy doses of cat-cuddling and cooking and eating. The stash in the fridge is starting to diminish as we use the produce we stuffed in there a week ago on our last grocery run. Not missing the half-hour commute to the office–time that has been transformed into writing time–writing for me, rather than for work.
The confusion and anger I felt initially has also given way. The gentle stretch of the day, with my time more under my own control seems to have reduced my anxiety. Since we are on a fixed income now, we don’t have the paycheck worries that so many others have.
I’ve reduced the amount of time I spend reading and watching news. We’ve got the tips on how best to avoid Covid-19; we’re hunkered down, staying in and away from others. I do check for the latest stats–our county now has 90 confirmed cases and Massachusetts has 2,417, as of this afternoon. However, I could not avoid reading the story reported by the Washington Post, that some hospitals are considering universal DNR (do not resuscitate) orders for coronavirus patients, a painful and alarming development for all, but especially for those in our age group. Media just increases my anxieties.
But that’s where exercise comes in. This afternoon, I got out for a run at the beach, where the air was dazzling and the waves sparkled over the sand and cobbles.
Forget the coronavirus for a few minutes, and come back with me…
I grew up in the Sixties, saw The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show, the night before my 10thbirthday, along with 73 million other people. I spent most of my early teenage years with my little transistor radio glued to my ear (it was about the size of my smart phone, but a little thicker). The Beatles went in their direction, and I wandered away. Married in my twenties, we lived briefly in California where I listened to a progressive rock radio station that introduced me to Elvis Costello, Patti Smith, Joan Jett, the Cars, but then we moved again, to northern Maine where the only radio station that appealed to me was public radio. I listened to classical music in the mornings every day, Morning Pro Musica with Robert J. Lurtsema. And then somewhere along the line, even that stopped.
So I was musicless until 2018. Never went to a concert of any type—well, Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops came to my hometown while I was in high school; Teresa Stratas, a star singer with the Metropolitan Opera also visited and my mother, desperate to hear her, took me along. And then there was Weird Al, maybe ten years ago, with my daughter. But that’s it. Nothing else. I recall sitting on the stairs in my father’s house, knowing the Monkees (or was it the Beatles? Hard to know, it was so long ago) were in Boston—but that was so far away, and when I was a kid, there was no money for such things.
Fast forward—it’s 2017, and my daughter, Kristin, is fascinated with a band—a Dutch band. The band hadn’t toured in 4 years, and she’d missed them that time, so she said, “Hey Mom, how about we go see Within Temptation? They’re touring again.” “Where?” “Europe”. This of course gave me pause, but life had changed over the last few years: my husband and I had been traveling a lot; I’d spent a few months in the Netherlands on my own; and a milestone birthday was approaching for my daughter. After some further thought, I agreed.
What had I done? I’m going to the Netherlands to see a symphonic metal band. I don’t even know what that is. My daughter insisted we buy tickets immediately—“They will sell out fast!” A few days later, “I also snagged VIP tickets,” she told me. Now I am not only going to a metal concert, but I am also going to meet the band. What have I done? Did I mention I was 64 years old at the time?
With the tickets bought so far ahead, I had time to do my homework, but procrastinator that I am, it was Fall 2018 before I got some CDs and started listening. My daughter had actually played some of the band’s music on a road trip to Maine a few years earlier, so a couple of songs were actually familiar. I asked her about mosh pits—were those a thing to worry about? Not with this band, she assured me. I knew metal music only from headlines and that whole Walmart-banning-explicit-lyrics-thing that happened a while back.
November arrives, and shortly after Thanksgiving, we arrive in Groningen, Netherlands. Our hotel is next to the venue, Martini Plaza. In the evening, we scope it out, make sure we know where to show up for the VIP thing.
On concert day, we appear in the venue lobby, and wait. A small group of others, mostly from around Europe, are also there, and we chat. Most have been following Within Temptation for years, like my daughter.
Kristin in front of one of the band’s trailer trucks.
Then we enter the hall where we will first listen to sound check. The singer, Sharon den Adel, is there, soon joined by the other band members. She is dressed in jeans and a comfy jacket and leggings, and she’s tiny, and when she sings, her voice is pure, beautiful, but I understand she is not turning it all on right now, not yet. They come down from the stage, to chat and take pictures. It all feels so natural, strangely ordinary. Ruud Jolie, lead guitarist, says to me, “You’ve never been to a concert and you decide to come to Netherlands to see us as your first?” Yes, indeed!
(L to R) Mike Coolen, Ruud Jolie, Sharon den Adel, me, Stefan Helleblad, Jeroen van Veen, Martijn Spierenburg
Our selfie, but Sharon had to click the picture!
Following a tour of the backstage area, we take up our spots on the railing in the hall, and wait. Now the waiting is hard. My old feet are feeling it (we—perhaps foolishly—had walked into Groningen in the morning, not wanting to waste a minute.) Tech people are puttering around on the stage. Someone is tuning a guitar—“Is that one of them?” I ask my daughter. “No, just a techie.” Then the lights go down. A momentary hush.
Guitars scream, the bass pounds. Ego Kill Talent takes the stage, wild and crazy, leaping about, stomping, guitars driving, lights flashing from all angles. The music surges through me, like a tsunami, pounding, vibrating my body like I’ve never felt before. I am alive! I can feel it! I have never felt so alive!
Again the lights go up, again we wait, but now everyone is impatient, watching watches, checking phones. At last Within Temptation takes the stage—drummer, keyboardist, guitarists, and finally, Sharon emerges, and the crowd goes wild. Her voice is perfect, and she is radiant. I am teary-eyed. I cannot believe I am here.
I am so close to the stage that I can watch Ruud’s hands on his guitar, I can tell the notes he is playing. The lights are flashing, smoke is pouring from the stage like eruptions, jet blasts, contrails spraying from the floor. The drums—oh, the drums! The pounding is going right through me. I feel the music, and when Sharon sings the lyrical bit at end of Raise Your Banner, my heart is in my throat.
I knew from that moment there is no going back to silence.
Stefan Helleblad & Jeroen van Veen (Photo by Kristin Michel)
Sharon den Adel (Photo by Kristin Michel)
Sharon den Adel & Ruud Jolie (Photo by Kristin Michel)
Driving home from my office the other night, I was thinking about the coronavirus situation we’d all been talking about–events cancelled right and left, meetings moved to cyberspace, kids pulled out of activities, schools closing. Panic. Everywhere. Then I heard these words:
The coronavirus situation makes us feel confused, anxious, angry, panicked. But this song got me thinking–panic and control are opposites.
When we feel panicked, we feel out of control. We feel we suddenly have no control over our environment. Our feeling of power–the ability to control our environment and bring about change–evaporates. When things get out of control, we panic amid the chaos.
The chaos feels very real right now. Our war with the coronavirus is guerrilla warfare. We can’t see it, and without testing, we can’t track it in our corner of the world. It feels inexorable, unavoidable.And we feel helpless, that we can’t do anything about it. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been feeling pretty panicked and out of control.
But the song reminded me that I can act to take back control. Right now, simple acts like washing hands, carefully wiping surfaces are rebel acts–acts of defiance, insurgency. toward this invisible enemy. Doing these things allows us to take back control, take it into our own hands. We stand apart from others as an act of self-protection. As we take control in these simple ways, we protect ourselves, families, communities.
These small acts of control and defiance rebuild our sense of personal power in this guerrilla war against Covid-19.
I’ve begun–I’m working from home now; we’re planning our strategic trip to the grocery store, and we will be ok.
A few weeks ago, when I first began to pay attention to the coronavirus, now known as Covid19, I watched the expanding crisis in China, its slow beginning, first a single news story about this strange new virus that appeared probably in a market somewhere in Wuhan, I didn’t think much about it. Yet I continued to follow the stories–next a few more cases, then quarantines, and hospitals being built overnight. Wait–hospitals built in just days–what makes a country do that?
Then one day, it occurred to me, this is not going away soon. And more recently I’ve begun to feel that this virus will be the new “common cold”. This is the future, the new normal. And it brought to mind other memories from my childhood–duck and cover drills, bomb shelters, my mother hushing us because “The President is going to tell us if we’re going to war.“
I wrote the above paragraph only to discover a few minutes later that the present President would also address the nation about a crisis, as Kennedy had–a new crisis–a new kind of crisis. A crisis that will test us as a country, but more importantly, it will test each of us in ways the Bay of Pigs never did.
Massachusetts today declared a state of emergency. More cases will appear tomorrow. The prestigious New Bedford Half Marathon has been cancelled. What’s next?
“When I compose a first draft I just let everything I feel and think spill out raw and chaotically on the page. I let it be a mess. I trust my instincts. I just let my ideas and feelings flow until I run out of words. It’s fine for an early draft to be a disaster area. I don’t censor myself. When I have this raw copy, I can then decide if this idea is worth putting more effort into.”
–Charles Johnson, The Way of the Writer: Reflections on the Art and Craft of Storytelling
“Often, creativity is blocked by our falling in with other people’s plans for us. We want to set aside time for our creative work, but we feel we should do something else instead. As blocked creatives, we focus not on our responsibilities to ourselves, but on our responsibilities to others. We tend to think such behavior makes us good people. It doesn’t. It makes us frustrated people.”
–Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity
So says Daenerys Targaryen as she and her team survey the map table in preparation for the siege of King’s Landing.
She says it authoritatively, less a question—far more a command. A demand. This is what she’s been working toward, planning for, suffering for. And now it’s upon her.
The launch of anything can be daunting. The idea of commitment to a plan, a cause, taking a risk, a leap of faith that a thing will work, succeed. The risk is frightening. When we begin, we put ourselves out there. We say, This is the start of something, something that matters and I am committing to it.
We all experience many beginnings—our own lives, at birth; marriage; embarking on a career. I remember clearly the day I filed papers for the nonprofit I started 8 years ago. The trepidation—the feeling of “let’s forget this—I can’t do it.” But I took the leap, I did it, and it’s been pretty satisfying.
Now I am beginning this blog. Launching myself into the ether, so to speak. Putting my words out there for anyone—or no one—to read.
I wrote the first post weeks ago, as yet unposted. I got stuck when I decided to upload my photos to the cloud so that I could work on the blog wherever I was, another daunting act since I am no techie. I have 12,000+ photos from all over the world, and I had no idea how long the upload would take. Two weeks in, and it’s still in process, and I can’t seem to get at my pictures. I’d committed to begin, but this wall arose, stopping me. To be frustrated in this way led to “oh what the hell—give it up” thinking.
But a new understanding emerged. That instead of a wall, this waiting is an opportunity–to prepare, to get ready. No giving in to the pre-event jitters, the pre-performance nerves. It’s time to get to the real work.
“Things outside ourselves will always beg us to conform, but they aren’t the real challenge. They are just an excuse or an out when we can’t face that inertia inside us, that resistance and boredom that arise as soon as we make an effort toward something we deeply want.”
—Natalie Goldberg, Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life
So it’s a new year—2020—and a good time to start sharing my journey. Where will this year take me? Not really sure, but I know it will be pivotal.
I set up this website to share my journey through books, music, the world—the things I enjoy most—but there will be other stuff along the way.
I am embracing minimalism at last, so I will be de-cluttering my house and my life. Getting rid of the detritus. Streamlining. Focusing on what is important.
And I am making my health a priority—so I will get moving and keep moving.
So much to share–impressions and photos from recent trips to Switzerland, Germany & Japan, plus my musical journey, and my humble opinions on this and that. I hope you’ll check back! Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.
Linnea Arold Michel 