The Year of Staying In Doors

I had to go out last week. Chap I knew had come over from London to talk about doing a play. We spent a day in the Mac, going through texts and setting up a framework and drinking coffees. It was fine. I spent a surprising amount of money on nothing, but we got a small amount of work done. By day two though I was getting very stressed. We were in a crowded cafe. I was recovering from flu and was not a hundred per cent fit, and the news was full of creeping Covid19, which had now broken ground and was gathering hellish speed. My brain was fetid with contagion, the teeming spores of a week's worth of news reports where the virus was the only show in town. Sick and supine on the sofa the headlines strafed my addled consciousness like Gatling gun. I didn't enjoy it. No reflection on the company but I was unused to being out of the house. I didn't feel comfortable with the exposure, or the constant movement in my peripheral vision, or the ambient noise, the phone conversations buzzing about me, the clammy presence of other bodies pressing against me, the breath, the smell. The awful smell of humanity. This was a quiet cafe on Botanic and I was becoming increasingly distressed, and that was before the bill came.

I mean: I used to live in London. I used to use the tube at rush hour twice a day. I used to go out on New Years Eve for pleasure! Now I tut if I'm walking along a coastal path and see a cagouled couple on the horizon. Get your own fucking beach, boomer. Cramping my style and expecting me to say hello cheerily as you go past. And your shitty little dog too.

I like being at home. I used to write in cafes but I've weaned myself away from that as I can no longer afford the coffees and no longer tolerate Belfast customer service. Fuck you, Clements. Forgetting my order every time? C'mon, that's personal. I have a room at home. I looks out onto a garden. A robin sits on the fence-post sometimes. I can play Good Old Boys by Randy Newman. I can make tea. Why would I ever leave? This is very paradise.

So this social distancing lark we've been advised to do by our vague and squeamish government is not much of a stretch. I feel like I've been training for a marathon. While my friends and colleagues are bouncing off the walls, desperate for gossip and wine and social frotting, I feel like a zen frog perched cross-legged on my lily-pad.  Though I'm not sure the isolation is doing much for the relatability of my metaphors. Barring that two day sojourn into town I have been in the house for three weeks now. I have seen only Susan, a robin and, briefly, a friend who wanted to borrow some DVDs, which I left outside the house for her to picked up and drive off. We waved at each other through the glass. I felt like John Travolta in the film "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble", a film that you can easily get most of the plot from the title, which is helpful. I'm listening to the theme tune "What Would They Say" by Paul Williams as I'm writing this. Its not one of his best. I know Paul Williams from his Muppet songs, the soundtrack to The Phantom of the Paradise and the song Close to You which started life as a jingle for a bank. "What Would They Say" sounds like a weird combination of all of these. I have a strange need to exact furry, furious revenge on my bank manager. I can't of course. That would involve leaving the house. I know Robbie Coltrane did an advertising campaign advising us that "we're all bank managers now" but he's a liar and paid handsomely to tell that lie.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do now. Money had been dripping in from odd and occasional sources but all of the things I was going to be doing over the next six months have been completely wiped out, though I didn't think I'd actually earn any money from them. They were passion projects that were buoyed up by passion alone. But now even the notion of bringing disparate people together in the same public place has been completely quashed. The pubs are closed, the theatres are closed. Even site specific work can't happen.

I made a decision to stop working for free about two years ago but that was for my journalistic/reviewing and editorial work. It was around the time that I stopped getting any work at all. A coincidence I assure you - it was almost the exactly the time that funding was pulled from the arts generally. Now there is no local critical voice except for a few bloggers. It is not viable for a robust arts community to exist without interested examination of the work produced. But that's where we are.

I expect I'll carry on because I lack the wit to do anything else. A dog with a stick in his mouth and his head through railings. I apply for funding but I never get funding. So I'll continue creating useless art that no one wants, but that I think is good, and silently ploughing a lonely furrow, producing reams of unplayable, unwatchable nonsense. Perhaps there are lots of people like me. And perhaps there's a reason why you've never heard of us.

Anyway...

I was very sick about two weeks ago but, crucially, I never had any shortness of breath so I convinced myself I hadn't had Coronavirus. Had I? I dunno. If you've already had it are you immune from it? I dunno. How long will I have to stay in my house typing stuff that no one will ever read or hear or see? I dunno. Amazingly my big plan, the one I have been foolishly pinning all my hopes on does still seem to be viable. I am still having meetings. The e mails are still pinging. I never learn. Don't put all of your hopes in one hope-chest. And never write anything down - its the kiss of death. Has wise old Gypsy lore taught you NOTHING, John?