Finding Your Spark During Covid or Cue the Tambourine

Chapter 2 

When one door closes, another door opens.  I just didn’t expect that door to be under my feet.

I fell through the trap door, sliding into a depression that was foreign.  An isolation I’ve never experienced.  A time when it seemed like the forces of darkness were overwhelming the light.  Star Wars level stuff.

That’s how I felt when my second — and third — and fourth — and now back to first– quarter of business was wiped out by COVID-19.  Event Photography doesn’t happen when there are no events.

Some mornings I’d wake up feeling good.  I’d work out, pick up trash around the neighborhood, go for a walk in Patterson Park.  Other mornings, my eyes would pry open to an overwhelming feeling of doom.  It was all I could do to stumble downstairs and use my little rubber workout bands.  The couch beckoned.  Those days I’d go to bed believing the last 24 hours were pointless.

I felt like 22 in Disney’s Soul, wandering the great beyond searching for my spark.  Any spark.  Something to bring pointless days and pointless nights to a clarity of purpose.  Meaning.

I’d call my mom, my Aunt Jean, talk to Matthew.  They all said the same thing:  find something creative to do.  A project.

Whatever.  Projects are boring.

My mom drove me crazy coming up with relentless ideas the way moms do.  But they all seemed banal.  Busy work.  Bland.

The couch beckoned.  I could watch the Avengers movies.  In order.  I’ll call it research.

And then one afternoon on our near daily call my mom mumbled one word: “Podcast”.

“Wait, what was that?” I asked.  I’d missed what she said.  I was only half listening.  But now, like Scooby Do:  Whatwro!

Was that a spark?  More of a rock chinking against rock, quick as a blink.  A sudden teeny-tiney rush.  About the equivalent of winning $10 on a slot machine after putting in $5 worth of quarters.  Excuse me: “credits”.

“Why don’t you start a podcast?” She had asked.

And with that, my life during the pandemic changed.  The door under my feet suddenly morphed into a fire escape.  Quarters started pouring from the slot machine in my head and onto the floor.  “YOU WON 500 CREDITS!”  A siren wailed.  The casino minion came over and…

….

…..

that was that.  All faded.  Slot machine gone.

I bounced around for a month or two.  I ordered equipment (which was in as short of supply as toilet paper; apparently I’m not the only one thinking ‘Podcast’.)  But the back of my mind started working like it used too.  The upstairs green screen studio would be (temporarily) converted to a podcast studio.  I learned all about audio mixers.  I thought hard about what I wanted to talk about on the podcast.  I researched how podcasts are distributed.  I considered:  audio or video?  I ignored the digs on social media about all those podcasts no one can find.

When I was little, my mom would drag me to Catholic church.  However, being the good liberal she was, we attended the “folk mass” — a contemporary service where modern songs were sung instead of a traditional choir.  Think John Denver.  It was the only part of church I liked.  That and the candles.

One of the songs went:  “it only takes a spark, to get a fire going / and soon all those around will warm up in it’s glowing. / That’s how it is with God’s love, and once you’ve experienced it / blah blah blah / pass it on.”

That’s exactly how the song went, accompanied by a tambourine.   And maybe a guitar.  That part’s fuzzy.

My point is this:  the spark of creativity did ignite a fire.  I decided to launch a hyper-local podcast, bringing Baltimore neighborhood artists together during a time when art is being murdered by the pandemic.  I wanted to ask other creative people how they cope with the isolation.  How was COVID affecting their business?  I decided to distribute the episodes on our neighborhood Facebook pages.

I decided it was going to be a community project, and not something I wanted to monetize or leverage for anything other than giving voice to artists and neighborhood folk during a time of isolation.

When I started talking to my neighborhood artists, what I found shocked me.  It changed how I think about the isolation of COVID-19.  It literally shifted my perspective.  While I still have depressed days, they are fewer.  Even before the vaccines were announced, I could see a light at the end of the tunnel.

“This little light of mine / I’m gonna let it shine! / This little light of mine / I’m gonna let it shine! / Let it shine! Let it shine! Let it shine!”  I think that’s the whole song.

In the next chapter, I’ll pass it on.  (Sorry, back to the first song.  In case that was confusing.)

(cue the tambourine)

…To be continued.