ON COPING: THE

The Final Wod with Senio Coespodent, Helena, U6 On Coping:

The Pandemic and Fear

There’s something deeply disconcerting about this time. Not knowing when or if I will go to university come autumn. Not knowing how long this lockdown will last or when the next time I will get to see friends or family will be. I will even have spent my 18 th birthday in lockdown. The lack of normality has got to me.

I have never really seen myself as a person who relies on a sense of routine but with the ever-changing chaos these are the things I have begun to cling to. Normality comes with reading, listening to music, walking through familiar parts of town that are no longer familiar because nobody is there. And that’s the problem. Even the things that should be normal are no longer normal. The city is silent, nobody’s around. It’s as much of a ghost town as the villages in the Westerns I love to watch. The silence is uncomfortable, the centre of Edinburgh is usually noisy and bustling; filled with people all pushing past each other to get where they need to go, but no more.

The only thing really getting me through this is music. Not the music I typically listen to but nostalgic tunes that I recognise from my younger childhood; reminding me of happier times when I wasn’t so stressed about finishing school, university plans and my grandmother in a care home. Pop music has made more of an appearance than usual but so has music from the 60’s and 70’s - the music my parents played that they remembered from their own childhood and the music I remember from mine. There is something about 60’s and 70’s music in particular that is so comforting and homely; even songs I don’t recognise still feel safe and warm because of the melodies and almost tinny quality of some of it.

In an attempt to escape the fears and anxieties that can be all-consuming in a period as fraught as this, I have rediscovered old favourites. I have reread some of my favourite books and revisited all the albums and musicals I listened to when I was first getting into music and musicals properly. I have found myself listening to the Newsies soundtrack too many times for it to be entirely normal and understanding the lyrics of Jason Isbell in a way that I could never before. This escapism has allowed me to leave the fear and anxiety behind even for a moment and find hope and an ability to carry on. I have gained a new appreciation for the music I have loved for so long and gained an ability to contextualise it within my life. Jason Isbell’s ‘24 Frames’ comes to mind here. Whilst previously ‘24 Frames’ seemed like it had no relevance in my life and was merely a reflection of the singer, it feels pertinent now that normal life has in effect gone ‘up in flames in 24 frames’. 1 Whilst Isbell is singing about the disintegration of his relationships due to life on the road, he also holds up a mirror to the listener forcing them to see the disintegration of their own relationships - a feat that is somewhat more present now due to being locked inside and only seeing each other at a two metre distance. Every time I hear it now, I feel a desire to call friends and family for a chat and to catch up - something that I never really felt before this pandemic. This has brought me great joy and again has acted as a means of escaping the emotions and fears that this pandemic has birthed inside of me.

I heard ‘24 Frames’ for the first time in two years just after we had been forced into lockdown and I started crying. I don’t know why but the song started playing and I broke into tears. Suddenly, the song felt all the more real and urgent. For the first time since I first heard Springsteen, it felt like somebody perfectly encapsulated the way I was feeling and the estrangement from society and normal life that was beginning to settle in, but also reassured me that this feeling was normal and that I was not alone in it.

When normality is restored, and we can finally see our friends and family again we may well feel as estranged from each other as Isbell feels in this song. But that is only a hypothetical and we may after all feel closer to each other and at one with the rest of humanity. The only thing I can guarantee is that my outlook on life will have shifted. How and to what extent is still to be determined, but I know that I will never see normal life in the same way. I doubt that I will take the ability to meet up with friends, to see live music, to go to the cinema for granted ever again. Nothing about ordinary life will feel normal but instead surreal and perhaps utopian. But this is not a bad thing, by being deprived of things we have taken for granted for so long we will be reminded of just how lucky we are to have them and to be able to access these services. Every trip shopping just for the sake of it, going to the cinema not because we particularly want to see the movie but because of the experience and even every trip to a cafe with friends for a coffee and a chat will feel special, and perhaps we may gain greater joy from just living in the moment and doing these seemingly mundane things than we ever have.

“This is how you make yourself vanish into nothing And this is how you make yourself worthy of the love that she Gave to you back when you didn’t own a beautiful thing

This is how you make yourself call your mother And this is how you make yourself closer to your brother And remember him back when he was small enough to help you sing

You thought God was an architect, now you know He’s something like a pipe bomb ready to blow And everything you built that’s all for show goes up in flames In 24 frames…”

When shops reopen and the city centre becomes busy once again, life will not return to what it was. It may return to a facsimile of it, but never again will it be exactly the same. We will all still inadvertently give everybody space; we will find ourselves observing some form of social distancing even when we no longer have to because it will have become ingrained in our brains and memories to do so.

This return to life outside of lockdown may be hard or it may be easy, but it will happen, and we will all be different. What we really need to do is be aware of this inevitability; not fear it but know it is happening and come to terms with what life will be when this stressful and uneasy time comes to an end. The uncertainty and unease we feel will pass and we will come out of this. And when we do, it will be an opportunity to do everything we dreamed about doing whilst in lockdown. One day, somewhere far down the road, we may even look back at this period as a time of great personal growth and a time in which we learned to cope when the world felt like it was falling down around us.