Things are weird at the moment- it goes without saying really- but despite now having got into a routine during the lockdown period and the weekly events becoming ways to mark the passing of time (weekends free of virtual and online/video work, Tuesday putting the bins out, Thursday night clapping) there are moments when the sheer otherness and scale of what is happening hit home. The community that is being fostered, especially on streets like ours where people live close to each other and while the sun has been shining people have been socially distancing in their front gardens, talking to each other across walls and hedges, is a definite feature of 2020. But there are times when it's all a bit much. The silence outside. The absence of the people you'd expect to see every day. The strange atmosphere in supermarkets. The crossing the road to avoid people when out for a walk. The new normal seems normal and then something happens that makes you remember how un-normal this all is, how far from normal we are.
As I type this a hearse with a coffin in it and just two cars following has driven past my window.
I've seen several links to newspaper articles about people experiencing more vivid or more lucid dreams during the lockdown and I have found myself waking up suddenly, in a jolt, from some very vivid dreams. I don't think the dreams themselves are especially strange- often they seem to be work dreams- but they do seem to be very real.
In May 1991 Creation's dance act Hypnotone remixed The Lilac Time. Hypnotone remixed other Creation artists, memorably Primal Scream and Sheer Taft and had several great records at the time themselves. The remix of Dreaming is a lovely piece of dance pop, warm and open, ambient and bleepy, and the voice repeating 'all the people on this earth... I am talking to you'. A record totally in tune with the shift that had taken place at that time.
Dreaming (Hypnowah Mix)
Have been wondering how much the future normal will look like the normal of the past. Similar but different, like being shunted sideways into a parallel universe. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteAlso loved the version of Dreaming on the Lilac Time's album Astronauts, but it stood out a mile as thr rest of the album is the band's normal pastoral folkishness. Also great, but a completely different feel.
ReplyDeleteWhilst I have enjoyed the general slowing down of life at present, I'd completely concur with how weird it feels outside. On a mid evening walk last night, in the rain, it felt silent and eerie, as you could hear the gentle sound of mild drizzle on the road and path. This is in the over populated, noisy, suburban south-east. Weird was the word.
Hearing the drizzle- that in itself is weird.
ReplyDeleteThe general slowing down of life isn't all bad, as you say Nick.
I had an especially vivid dream last week in which I was part of a team that discovered a new fraction, a Bowieith. Sadly I can't recall how large or small the denomination this fraction was in the dream, but I do remember a heated discussion about whether the word should be spelt with or without an 'E' in the middle, Bowieith or Bowith. I obviously pushed heavily for the 'E' spelling.
ReplyDeleteHa. Standards are important Swede.
ReplyDeleteThere are studies being done on the psychological impact of all this. I think we may see the effects playing out long after the coronavirus is (hopefully) just a bad memory.
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