SNOW BLOW BLUES
The Isolation Blues;
reflections during covid-19
“houlton coffeehouse…”
extended snow blow blues it’s april 4th and the snow is still falling it’s as if the club manager forgot to mention we weren’t taking any late season bookings now that it’s spring one last horn player on the stage blowing his notes like a storm you didn’t expect a thelonious angle on the keyboard a blue monk contemplating manual labor and a holy calling exhausted individual dreams and stale cigarettes crumpled in a glass tumbler left on the white tablecloth after the show white tablecloth of snow blow it hard blow it hard 04.05.08
So I’m sitting here at my kitchen table looking out the window and it’s snowing…almost seems like a lame April fools joke that we don’t need right now. Linda and I are still skiing in and out as part of our (limited) daily commute but as of midnight tonight Governor Janet Mills has ordered a statewide “stay-at-home” order. Our self isolation status is about to elevate to the next level.
I came across a poem I wrote years ago when just like this year, it was snowing in the first week of April. (That’s not so unusual for us here in the north woods.) After a “long enough” winter these spring snow storms are normally nothing more than an annoyance, but this time it feels different. With the current pandemic and the additional stressors that accompany it, our ability to just shrug it off is lessened. It’s hard to even imagine hanging out right now in the club scene described in the poem (it seems like such a distance memory), but the social energy, music, food and drink of the club moment that we’ve experienced so many times in the past still offers something essential during this time of isolation. It’s important to maintain our connection; connection to others, a connection to our most basic human aspirations and a connection to life’s amazing expressions of itself. Just take a walk outside for ten minutes and see what you can find that reinvigorates your soul. For me, just putting on a great jazz record can boost my mood instantly. We don’t know what’s going to happen next (do we ever?) but the determination to keep going forward and the creativity to find what inspires us are key to the process.
Blow it hard…
Blow it hard…
*
In the woods,
Dave