OPINION: You and the Blight and the Music/Michael Colby

A note from NiteLife Exchange Publisher, Scott Barbarino, and editor, Marilyn Lester: for the last couple of years, this column, Ad Lib on NiteLife, has been a forum for in-house NLE opinion. In light of the events brought about by the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, with the future of the arts in question, we’re opening the column up to guest writers. We think it’s important to share ideas and thoughts about this state of affairs and where we may be headed. If you’d like to participate, this is your forum to communicate. Please send queries to us here.  

Our first guest columnist is librettist/lyricist, author and writer, Michael Colby (for more information, see www.michaelcolby.com):

YOU AND THE BLIGHT AND THE MUSIC
by Michael Colby

Quoting the dance-hall hostess in Sweet Charity, “There’s gotta be something better than this!”

In New York and elsewhere, the pandemic has turned our lives upside down in unimagined ways.  Expectations of the outcome vary as much as predictions during a winter of freak storms—or through a theatre season in which each incoming show endures a tumultuous tryout.

Yet some of us, perhaps Pollyannas, see a silver lining even to a mushroom cloud.

There’s an invigorating—stronger-than-ever—sense of kindness, generosity, and support in the Arts community. People are checking in with each other and performing virtual shows from home—without payment—for the sheer delight of keeping in practice while bringing pleasure and comfort.  There’s also much to learn and gain from this experience.   Perhaps when this is over, producers and Arts organizations will master novel Internet formats to present affordable hybrids of home entertainment, inspired by the creativity of these virtual shows.   What’s more, as the economics of theatre and the Arts recover—surmounting the high financial setbacks being experienced by artists and audiences alike—unions may allow us to proceed with scaled-back costs, salaries, and ticket prices; at least while we’re climbing our way back to normalcy.   This hiatus likewise provides an invaluable period for producers to reassess—and consider antidotes to—the skyrocketing economics of theatre production per se.

As well, there are crucial lessons to be observed beyond the Arts, though these lessons overlap the Arts too.   If there were ever a time when Nature seemed to hit home the warnings of science and climate change, it’s now.  Unlike political favors, the environment can never be cajoled or bribed to change its course.  So the truth about our environment becomes experientially incontestable.  Look at the startling climate benefits since the pandemic:  skies are bluer and cleaner in China; the environment has been revitalized in Italy, in no small part because its citizens have disciplined their lifestyles.  We would be fools not to take note.

Americans need to reevaluate such signposts in the wake of the natural disasters in Puerto Rico and California, along with each deadly example to which our government has given short shrift.  Likewise, when we vote in November, we must seriously consider how the White House’s many missteps may have facilitated these problems resulting in deaths.  Finally, I want to reiterate what I suspect a majority of you already know.  The current President has consistently taken actions that undercut—both culturally and financially—the worth of the Arts (not to mention the value of daily lives).

Rather than a Malthusian solution to an overpopulated world, I believe conditions have been a lesson on discipline and maximizing healthy life-styles.   They have reinforced a more humane appreciation of matters we’ve taken for granted, including positivity and respect for all mankind, regardless of gender, religion, age, ethnicity, or social status—as long as everyone is law-abiding. Recent political divisiveness has been tearing apart the country.  But, for the moment, that’s mostly turning around.  All 50 states are finally in some form of agreement to enforce protective measures against the pandemic.  On a personal note, most of my family—both Democrats and Republicans—are putting aside differences, to offer support to one another.  For example, the other day, I spoke to a family member who vehemently disagrees with me politically, but those stumbling blocks never came up;  we just wanted to make sure the other was doing well during this dire health emergency.

True, not all phone conversations are uplifting.  I also speak to friends, in the theatre and cabaret community, who feel tied-up in more knots than Houdini. During this holiday season, they’ve anguished about job loss, future revenue, and how they can stay afloat when—like at Passover—this plague finally passes.  Others spent Easter praying that business and society will, like Christ, rises again from the dead.

As for first-hand cases, many of us personally know someone, with middling to mild cases of Coronavirus; most of them have made full recoveries.  But there remains the specter of those who’ve died, including creative geniuses such as Terrence McNally, Jon Prine, Patricia Bosworth, Ellis Marsalis, and Bucky Pizzarrelli.

While we can never undo these tragedies, we can honor the memories of those lost, as we would in the aftermath of a war or natural calamity.  One of the best ways to boost morale —and inspire better days—is through music and entertainment.  As thye say, in good times and bad, music soothes the soul.

One of the blessings of this time, unlike others, is that we have so much modern technology—from the Internet to medical advances to telecommunications—to keep us remedied, informed, and amused, day after day.  That fact alone would make me believe there must be a God or spiritual entity looking over us—with a masterplan.

As history has proved again and again, through worse plagues that this, the world and its population have a knack to survive (even if, as Thornton Wilder would write, it’s by “The Skin of Our Teeth”).  And nothing lifts us spiritually like music and entertainment.  So hold on.  We need each other, one and all.