Over the past two years all of us have had to recalibrate our definition of “normal.” It used to be typical that we would see the trailer for a movie and expect it to be at the cinema within a few weeks. How remarkably frustrating it was, then, to have one’s appetite whetted by a preview for a film that looked especially appealing (and which promised to speak in some measure to one’s profession) only to have everything shut down immediately thereafter.
It’s been a raw time, subject to many shocks and episodes of heartbreak. Beloved friends have died, their passing hastened along by the novel coronavirus. Restaurants we dearly enjoyed and assumed would exist well into the future closed their doors forever. We were prevented from comforting each other physically and attending concerts of live music; all our endearments and enjoyments were conveyed through plexiglass, as via a prison telephone. We were starved first of affection, then, more cruelly, of empathy and compassion; we could only view and judge others at a remove, like a dog barking at a squirrel on television.
It was traversing this drear landscape, a journey more of time than of distance, noting each day as our basic humanity atrophied and our anger percolated, that I held out shards of hope for our healing and renewal. I looked forward to when we could dine out again, to when we could hear music played in public
