A Cross-Creative Quarantine: Re-finding Purpose in Strange Times

Apr 27

The memory of my first roller coaster ride has blurry edges. I don’t remember why I was at the Great Escape park, or who I was even with, but I do remember the Flashback - a 120-foot tall menace of loops and turns.

I remember that the red and orange ride flung me forward and then - true to its name - flung me all the way backward just as fast on the same track, back to safety in under three minutes.

I remember telling my mom all about it, trying to stifle the pride that I had crossed some unknown threshold in life.

I don’t remember the last roller coaster I was on. I can’t even ride roller coasters anymore without rotting in motion-sickness hell. But when anyone uses a roller coaster metaphor this is the day I think of, the warm sun reflecting off the red brick pavers and triumph filling my heart. It’s a bit of a comfortable really - a reminder that the ride stops, and that, when it does - triumph.

To say that the coronavirus has been a roller coaster ride is probably too generous right now. But I don’t have any stories about dumpster fires so I’m going to run with it.

When it all started, I was knee-deep in finishing out Season 1 of the show. I had two episodes left to finish out - a two-parter on food that was going to be GOOD. Maybe the best.

But as I tried to produce the final version, I couldn’t get it together. Anytime I willed myself to work, I was back on that Flashback ride. My forward progress was met at the top with a brief pause, then that tilt in the gut that told me we were headed backwards. A momentary free fall, and then just hope - that this dive would end with the roller coaster’s engine kicking in and pulling the cars back up the hill behind you. Back to safety.

When I work each podcast episode and ask about living in the past, I’ve always done it from the comfort of a modern life. I ask “what if…” knowing that it was o.k. to have a bad idea. Its a weird sort of privilege to ponder an internet-less world from my wireless smartphone. It’s the beauty of the idea really. Together, we’re exploring what could be without the inherent risk of archaic standards and out-of-date traditions. We’re trying to find the good, without taking on all of the bad that we hope our social progress has gotten us past. We’re trying to have it all.

But with the coronavirus, we were suddenly thrown back to the past without the lifeline of everyday comfort. Suddenly, I was asking “what if…” and finishing it with things like “…it stays like this forever.” “…the stores close.” “…everyone gets sick.”

Instead of thinking how cool it was that I could make my own soap just like Ma Ingalls, I was thankful that empty store shelves didn’t mean we would be soap-less. Instead of being excited to learn about sourdough, I was stressed that the flour shouldn’t be wasted to feed it. Instead of thinking of the joy in the past, my mind was visiting breadlines and work programs, not as part of a nostalgic look back, but as a point of information - a looming possibility, a form of foreshadowing 100 years in advance.

So I stepped away from the podcast two-thirds of the way into the season. I was SO CLOSE to done but my podcast brain just couldn’t get me there. My creative engine ran cold. I decided to embrace the free fall.

And at the bottom, I found that pull back up.

I found my fear of scarcity pulling me into the kitchen. I made potpies from leftovers and stocks and broths from all kinds of trimmings. I re-taught myself how to make sauces from almost nothing, I remembered how to live from a freezer like its the middle of winter, and I broke all the rules as if my family’s hunger depended on it, even though we weren’t really there at all. My creative engine warmed up, pistons fired, and in it I could hear the whine of my why, that question: “What if…” and then - triumph.

You may have noticed: I’ve been exercising my writing muscles quite a bit lately, and it’s because I’ve joined Illuminate, a writing program by The Kindred Voice. This month, myself and other amazing women are all writing on this very same topic - creativity!