The world is different these days. People—smart people anyway—are practicing social distancing and sheltering in place, isolating themselves in their homes in order to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and keep from getting the disease themselves. Some of us whose work depends on gathering in groups are trying to figure out what to do with ourselves. Others of us who teach find ourselves working harder and longer hours than we have in years, trying to figure out how to teach things online that would have been deemed impossible just a month ago. Still others of us who work essentially alone find little change in our lives other than perhaps the way we communicate with others and don’t socialize.

What is on our minds varies from person to person. Many of us are concerned for our personal safety and sanity. Others are concerned with the enormity of the situation. Still others are concerned with the politics that are evident as the US tries to deal with the crisis. Some of us seem totally unconcerned about what is going on and are continuing to live life as though there were nothing wrong while our neighbors are trying to adjust to working from home. Some are viewing the situation as an opportunity to catch up on projects they have not had time for. Others of us are completely panicked and hopeless, wondering how we are going to eat and pay the rent.

Still, there are those who take a philosophical approach to the situation. The number of articles available on the internet about how this global pandemic provides us an opportunity is expanding as rapidly as the virus itself. The type of opportunities pundits think are available are as numerous as the articles and range from self-introspection to transforming the way we live. Some, like David Suzuki think the virus represents an opportunity to make changes in our behavior that will benefit the planet.

This post falls more into this last category. As I was prepping for my first full online lecture on film noir, I ran across the statement that the notion returning to prewar America after World War II turned out to be a myth. It occurred to me that this situation is much the same. Never since World War II, has the nation, the world, been so completely absorbed by a crisis.  We cannot and will not return to a post-COVID-19 that will be the same as the pre-COVID-19 world in which we used to live. What we are now in is not the new normal, but rather the new interim. And it seems impossible to predict what the post-COVID-19 world will be like, how this virus and the crisis that it has engendered will have changed the country and our perceptions of nearly every aspect of reality.

And that’s the point. If we are still breathing, we have already been thinking about how this crisis has impacted our art. Some of us in the arts are wondering if or when we will work again. However, this is going to be over one day, and what I am suggesting is that we ought to turn our attention to what the situation might be after the pandemic. It is almost guaranteed that the world will be different—not just for artists, but for everyone. It has happened before. It is equally almost certain that what we have done before will likely not fit the new normal, whatever that turns out to be. The questions become how our art is going to fit into that new world, and how we are going to have to adapt what we do in order to be relevant in that future.

As Maureen McGovern’s The Morning After assures us, “there’s got to be a morning after.” Unfortunately, since we have no idea what the new world will look like, all we can do is stay adaptable. The time, however, to be thinking and preparing for that morning after in that new world is now.

The coronavirus pandemic has forced many of us into isolation. If you are an artist who usually works alone, a writer or painter perhaps, this is nothing new. You are used to spending the day mostly alone. For others of us in the arts, this a new and not necessarily welcome turn of events. Suddenly, many of us who are used to working with others are being forced into solitude.  This represents a significant disruption to our daily routine and requires some changes in thinking and doing. We are forced to, in the words of the Shaftoes, “display some adaptability.” Here are a few suggestions that may help you come to terms with your new reality.

• Turn off the television—and your Twitter feed and any other news feed you have. It’s really easy to obsess over the news which tries to grab our attention 24/7. That’s too much. I’m not suggesting that you isolate yourself completely from all news (although that might not be a terrible idea), rather that you decide which news shows/feeds you will watch and when you will watch them and when that time is up, turn them off. It is not likely that you will need minute-by-minute coverage of the current situation. You can use the time for something productive or enjoyable or both, but only if you are able to tune out of the news. The following suggestions will be possible only if you do this one first.
• No matter your situation, it has been and will be stressful. Now that you have a little more time for yourself, use it to rest. Sleep in. Take a nap. Disengage. Allow your mind to settle. Only then can you deal realistically with your situation.
• Take some time for yourself. Along with resting, you can use some of this unexpected “free” time to do some of the things you haven’t had time to do. That time may involve doing nothing. It may involve relaxing in the sunshine. It may involve any number of things that you consider enjoyable that you just haven’t had time for. Now you have the time; use it for your benefit.
• Watch a movie. You know, the one that you have been meaning to watch, but couldn’t spare the time for. Streaming services are still working and will show you the movie that you’ve been wanting to see no matter the time of day or night.
• Listen to some music. Yes, most of us have music on in the background most of the time. But when was the last time you stopped and really listened to some music? Well, now you have the time. Do it. It will enrich you in ways you can’t even think about until you do it. It will make your day better.
• Pick a project from your list and do it. You have no excuse, so you might as well do that thing that has been on your list forever—or for a few days. Use the time that you find that you suddenly have on your hands.
• Go outside. Let the sun shine on you. Enjoy the grass and flowers and birds. It’s refreshing both physically and mentally, and probably something you don’t do often enough. Do it now.
• Get to that book. Whether it’s a book that you have promised yourself you would read or a book that you promised yourself you would write, now is the time to tackle it. You don’t have to do it all at once, but this is the perfect opportunity to begin.
• Make a schedule for yourself—build a routine. While some unstructured time can be a blessing, too much can be a curse. Most of us like to operate on a schedule whether we admit it or not, so faced with an indefinite amount of unstructured time, make yourself a schedule to give that time shape and form. Not a list, a schedule—what to do when. You will find that a schedule will allow you to more productively use your time. If you are a teaching artist, you might even simulate your school schedule since you are used to it. Having a schedule and developing a routine can make all the difference in whether your newly-found “spare” time is productive or not.

Certainly these are not the only suggestions for artists to survive our new socially isolated reality, but hopefully these will help if you are having difficulty adapting to the new, hopefully temporary, normal.

Several weeks ago, a photographer, a writer, and I were having a drink. (Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, doesn’t it?) We talked about this and that, and finally the photographer, who does a lot of floral images, said that he wanted all his images to be sensual, but was having trouble making that happen.

“What do you mean by sensual?” I asked. It turned out that he did not know exactly what he meant by the word; it was more one of those “you’ll know it when you see it” kinds of things. We batted it around for a while and mostly discovered, at least for him, what sensuality wasn’t. It was sort of this and sort of that and a little of the other thing. He said it was a feeling but couldn’t get much more concrete than that.

“Have you ever tried to really define it in words?” the writer finally asked.

“Well…not really.” was the response.

“Maybe you should try.” she said. And we moved on to other things.

It turned out that the writer’s advice struck the photographer, who has spoken to me about it several times since. First he asked me if I thought it was really a worthwhile pursuit. I told him that, in my opinion, if he did not know where he was going, he could get there only by accident, and went on to explain to him the principle of the “directorial image,” a concrete image that many stage directors use to encapsulate their interpretation and guide the play toward a specific audience reaction. I understand that he is talking about a body of work rather than a specific picture, but the principle to me seemed to be the same.

In our next conversation, he told me that he had been doing some research—mostly into the dictionary definitions. He had explored sensual (of course) and sensory and sexual and erotic and titillating and carnal and on and on. None of the definitions had fit exactly the response he was looking for, but he had decided that knowing where he was trying to go was more likely to yield results than striking out blindly, although it was far less romantic.

In our third conversation, he said that he was very close to having a definition but that it was currently “too many words” for his comfort and “not exactly right yet,” and that he was trying to refine it. “More important,” he said, “it’s already affecting what I’m doing. I think about shoots differently, and my work is consistently getting closer and closer to what I want it to be. It actually helps my creativity; it’s like having an abstract aiming point. This is really a worthwhile exercise.”

And that last conversation made me think that this story was worth sharing. Many of us who work in the arts have never actually defined what it is that we are striving to accomplish. We move from project to project trying to realize the potential of each individual project without stopping to define exactly what we are trying to do. We, like the photographer, may not find an exact definition for what we want to do, but just the attempt to define our artistic goals can help focus our work.