Eliminating discomfort is a matter of finding the right rhythm. If your immediate environment is getting beatific to some William Basinski, you’re not going to be able to harmonise with it when you’re headbanging to Angel Witch. I forgot this basic truth in the first two weeks of quarantine. I failed to slow down. I tried to maintain the same rhythm, the same work pace. My desperate desire to be productive every day became even more desperate. And though my system of coping - with writing, with large bouts of solitude interspersed with intensive face-to-face encounters, with the ever-present risk of embracing sedentary habits - was no longer there, I pretended like it was. And once I finally admitted defeat, I castigated myself for not being able to tough it out with the same degree of discipline that makes me sit at this desk every day and write thousands of words that (to an overwhelmingly large extent) nobody else will ever read.
Now that I’m in my fourth week of isolation, I’ve found a rhythm of sorts. It’s working for me. I've spoken to a total of three people face to face since the beginning of March, had my hair partially shaved off by one of them, polished my manuscript, and made some headway in translating a book on religion that I have to deliver by the end of this month. Oh, and five of the seven tracks on my band’s EP were added to Spotify/iTunes to zero fanfare. This is an equilibrium I can live with for the present.
Seeing as people have a little extra time on their hands now, it’s essential to sign this petition calling on the EU to resettle the refugees trapped on the Aegean islands in awful sub-human conditions. It only takes a second.
Essential quarantine reading for April:
Albert Camus - The Plague
Knut Hamsen - Hunger
Hubert Selby, Jr. - Requiem for a Dream
And the music. Always the music:
1 Four Tet - Baby
2 Lyra Pramuk - Mirror
3 JPEG MAFIA - BALD!
4 Portico Quartet - Trajectory
5 Danny Brown - Pac Blood
6 Mammal Hands - Three Good Things
7 Lana Del Ray - Venice Bitch
my little homage to leonard freed.