Omicron Records // John Coltrane – Blue Train
On the Moh’s scale, I’m more chalk than diamond. What can I say about my bout of Covid that hasn’t already been said in 2020 – what value does it add for me to tell you what my symptoms are, or that I’m tremendously lucky to be have the freedom – and the space – to isolate myself. If I were made of sterner stuff, that’s where my focus would lie, not on the fact that I’m going to spend Christmas – and maybe even New Year’s indoors – alone, quarantined by a pandemic I believed was on its way out of our lives. I know this belief was never borne out by the facts; the facts, as they were, always painted a very different picture. But it’s the story I, like many others, told myself to pretend the world in which I lived was at least a little like the one in which I spent the first twenty-nine years of my life; a world in which the words and then the pandemic came belonged firmly in the realms of science fiction.
If I were made of sterner stuff, I would remind myself that it’s likely that the Omicron variant really is the mildest of the lot – that it’s postulated that the variant has developed to be so because it has mutated to be more effective in the upper respiratory tract, thereby increasing its transmissibility, but wildly dropping its seriousness (the bad stuff, they say, happens in the lower respiratory tract). That this seems to – per my ongoing experience with Covid – be true would be cause for immense gratitude. If I were made of sterner stuff, I would give thanks. I would pray that I, and others who might be caught in a position similar to mine, make it through ok. That the world makes it out fine, mostly unscathed, her lungs unbruised, her psyche intact, what-have-you. That’s what I would spend most of my day thinking about, if I was made of sterner stuff.
But I’ve got admit, I’ve mostly thought about how hard it is for me to look at a computer screen without feeling nauseous, which would be great for a guy who’s trying to build a healthier relationship with work, but quite terrible for a guy who’s trying to start writing and making music again. I’ve mostly thought about how if I were to write anything at all now, it would have to be entirely confessional, completely devoid of any fact-checking, research, anything involving looking at a screen for prolonged periods of time. This is great for confessional rambling to the sound of John Coltrane’s classic, Blue Train, but useless if anybody reading this actually wanted to know anything about Blue Train, other than the fact that it is among my favourite jazz records. All that would be fine if I could just write without worrying about whether what I’ve written is important, or poignant, or relevant, or whatever-else-have-you. But I wonder… I always wonder… would it matter if whatever maniac controlled this simulation selected all and pressed CMD-Del? Would any of what I’ve done matter? I would ask less self-involved questions if I were made of sterner stuff. But this is the stuff of which I’m made.
Let’s take it again. From the top.
