We've lived so well so long
Seven hundred and ninety-three people died in Italy yesterday. In a single day. In a country just a short flight from here. A country many of us have been to at least once and probably several times.
So you’d think we’d be doing everything we could to stop it happening here, wouldn’t you? Yet photographs on social media yesterday and today (today’s Sunday by the way - it actually feels like a Sunday - even though every day is kinda like Sunday these days) of masses of revellers – there’s that word again - up in Glendalough or in cafes around Dublin tell a different story. See, now that we’ve been told to stay home, apparently, everybody wants to climb a mountain. Hey - dipshits - the hills will be there when all this is over but you, or a parent, or a friend, or a colleague, may not. It blows my mind, literally does. What kills me is a lot of these people are the same ones who tutted about people singing Sweet Caroline (more on that later) in Temple Bar last weekend. Friends and colleagues who for years have been telling me they can’t get their kids heads out of screens are now posting pictures on Twitter and Instagram from their #selfisolationwalk in Howth or Roundwood. Hey - dipshits, it’s not #selfisolation if you’re driving to Wicklow, parking with a load of other people, climbing the Sugar Loaf with a load of other people and then buying a well-done-me coffee or ice cream in the car park with loads of other people.
We stayed in most of the weekend. Yesterday we distracted ourselves by hanging shelves, prints and artworks around the house. There’a a bit in John Mulaney’s latest stand-up special, Kid Gorgeous, where he talks about discovering a gazebo in Connecticut that was build during the Civil War. That during a time of intense fighting a community got together and built something as whimsical and non-essential as a gazebo. I’m not doing it justice - here he is doing it himself.
As we were looking through all the old prints that we had on walls in the old house before we remodelled the old house before we moved to the new house before we remodelled the new house (and boy, is all of that looking like a series of terrible decisions in the wake of Covid-19) a thought arrived. Is hanging art on a wall in 2020 like building a gazebo during the Civil War? Maybe that’s a bit dramatic, but it does seem like a somewhat jovial thing to do in the middle (God, we’re not even close to the middle yet) of a global pandemic. But I will say this - all the time we were doing it, we weren’t looking at phones or reading the news, so maybe that’s all the justification it needs.
And everyone’s still looking for something to do to distract themselves including beloved our musicians who are trapped in quarantine and looking to their own work for inspiration. Liam Gallagher was first out of the traps yesterday sharing what the papers would call ‘expletive-driven’ updated versions of Oasis songs, performed while washing his hands. So we had Wonderwash, Soapersonic, Champagne Soapernova and others. Not great but harmless I suppose.
Paul Simon was along shortly afterwards with his own ‘American Tune’ Standing against a wall and accompanied only by his guitar and the sweet tweeting of birds overhead, the song, sounding as much like a prayer as it ever has needed no further editing or updating.
And I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered
or driven to its knees
But it's all right, it's all right
We've lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road
we're traveling on
I wonder what went wrong
He could’ve written it yesterday.
From something that’s a little like a prayer to something that isn’t. Madonna, eager as ever, to get involved shared a video on Friday night, possible from her bathroom, of an updated version of her hit single ‘Vogue’ with lyrics about eating fried food because there’s no pasta. It’s bizarre and not very good. Almost as bad as the ‘Imagine video except well, it looks like she knocked it out after a couple of sherries as opposed to doing it with our utter, utter reverence. So the jury’s out on that one. Finally, Neil Diamond has emerged from his retirement to deliver a heartfelt and almost faithful version of his song ‘Sweet Caroline’ Unlike the clowns in Temple Bar last week, Neil’s got the message. “Hands, washing hands. Reaching Out, Don’t touch me, I won’t touch you” Bah dah daaaah….
All this levity, all those lols. It’s enough to make you think that we’re all going to get through this is a whizz.
Seven hundred and ninety-three people died in Italy yesterday.
