Summer of Firsts
Have you caught yourself wistfully reminiscing about all things pre-COVID? Then wondering if life appears better now than it was then? The knee jerk reaction would undoubtedly be “of course it was better before – moron”, a sentiment that would be hard to argue with. But at times, that life felt like we were on a rocket ship to Mars, with no way off. The pandemic, like it or not, hit the pause button. For a millisecond, who didn’t wonder last March if this was the beginning of an extinction event? How else could you get over 8 million New Yorkers to stay indoors for so long? I made the mistake of watching the film Contagion days after New York shut down. That didn’t help alleviate that thought.
Fast forward eighteen months later and it’s hard to believe we all lived through this. As I begin to navigate through post pandemic life, or whatever this is, since the pandemic isn’t actually over, I had a chance to experience a series firsts, for the second time. And by that, I mean, I got a chance to experience something I’d already experienced a lifetime ago, but now got to do it again, but through a very different prism. Is it any different?
But before I get to answering that, I have another first. I made a documentary, called Outside In. I had to relive last Spring all over again while making this. For those that don’t know, I filmed hours and hours of an empty NYC during the shutdown. Some of which I chronicled and put up on my Youtube channel. The general gist of it is….an immigrant recounts how he and his family survived during NYC’s historic pandemic shutdown during the spring of 2020 when 8 million + people disappeared from its streets. A personal diary of an eerily empty & haunting metropolis captured while running through city streets, embalmed in a state of suspended animation. It’s a short doc and maybe someday becomes a historical look at how things were. Feel free to follow us on social media as we try and get it into festivals over the next twelve months. Our website. https://www.outsideindoc.com
You can watch the trailer here
Meanwhile, anyone who didn’t flee New York City last summer, will undoubtedly agree with Adam Sternbergh’s wonderful piece in the New York Times recently. I couldn’t agree more. It felt like village living within a massively empty metropolis. My family and I were tourists in awe.
Going to the cinema for the first time, in a vaccinated NYC, anything is possible. “A Quiet Place – part II” while good, (it wasn’t as good as the original), it brought back the magic of being inside a movie theatre. The big screen, the sounds, the collective gasps of an audience. All sharing the same experience. And for the right movie, you can get that Cinema Paradiso moment, transported to another world. Magic.
My first ever concert was seeing Queen in the RDS in Dublin in 1984. Which was a high bar to see one of the most enduringly famous front men strut their stuff. Freddie Mercury cursed a lot and I thought “now that’s rock n roll”. I got to go to my first indoor gig since pre-Covid. It was a mesmerizing moment. The joy of hearing live music, watching the band play their instruments, the audience swaying with a collective enthusiasm, feet taping to the beats. It was stripped down, no pyrotechnics, no hits songs but there was a simple joy in just listening to the music, watching the band do their thing and enjoying the moment. Just to be able to go up and order a drink, inside, with no mask required. Brilliant. Even better, I was supporting my friend Nick’s bar, Stitch Bar and Blues midtown. Go check it out it!
Since this blog started out with me running around an empty NYC, it’s only fitting that I mention my first official race since early 2020. A full year and a half since everything shut down. And while I won’t be making the running “Hall of Fame” anytime soon, I was thrilled to finish in the top 24% of the 3,600 runners who turned up last week to race. As I arrived at the start line, the sight of so many runners caught my breath. It was actually an emotional moment, which caught me by surprise….it was a reminder of how things were before the pandemic started. Looking out at the sea of runners was for a moment, looking out into my past. Then in an instant that feeling was gone. Now is the time to look toward to the future and a whole lot more firsts. Because what I have found with these new firsts, is the joy in simple things.
Meanwhile, according to Johns Hopkins, there are 33,953,628 confirmed cases and 608,167 deaths in the USA. 4,061,508 deaths worldwide. NYC feels like a bubble, but looking across the pond, we are not quite there yet. Where a large % of US adults shun getting a vaccine, people in the rest of the world would kill for one. Made all the move bizarre given that getting a vaccine in America is like getting milk at the store. Plentiful and available. Yet only 48.2% are fully vaccinated. We are in the upside down.
