Tucson COVID Tales No. 6: A Letter from the Dampendic, by Howe Gelb

Hello Greg. 

Well. It’s about bedtime. 2:31 AM

And today is still Sunday. 

I have not forgotten your invitation to partake in taking part of the daily grind of covid.

I started to write it several times and it never really came out like what I had been doing. It read more like a call to arms. Which weirded me out. 

I’ve noticed there’s been a permanent patina of depression for around 6 months or so that I figured was just like what it’s like when we get this old and not have a bevy of diversions to remedy during pre-pandemia. 

So I chose to see it as a new allergy. Something ya learn to live with. Some days a little gets done. Other days not so much once summer hit. And the monsoons quit. And even back when the Catalinas had their fire time. It’s impossible to tell. 

Although I woke up yesterday and felt great again. My son has had to leave college and come home. Took up a job delivering for amazon. What other jobs are there? He and I went down to the covid test site for a father son date. When we self swabbed, it caused a barrage of rapid fire sneezing by us both inside the truck cab so that if one of us was a covid culprit, we had just bombarded each other. Hilarious. 

An hour later both results came back negative. (Walgreens on Valencia & 12th. )

So. We took the day. Got some take out and ambled about the roadway with windows down at 108 and it felt fine. We drove around all day. This and that. Eventually got more take out. And even when I was back in bed around midnight, the son felt like getting a burger at in and out. Which is where we go to then park and babble about life and any lack of. Earlier that day we also managed to get in some exclusive indoor court time for an hour. That was huge. He had not been privy to an indoors court for 6 months since his basketball world came crashing to a halt when his school and team shut down. 

The next morning I woke up with no depression. The old spirit had returned. 

Anyhow, just before the dampendic hit, I had made the decision to quit touring anyway. Something about it signaled it was time to stop. So. I figured out a way to do that and buy an abandoned house everyone thought was condemned because the walls were falling down. However, since I had been a renter there 27 years ago, I had some inside knowledge of what was really wrong with it. 

It’s the same place I lived in when the 90s began and held such promise before they went topsy turvy and impeded. The week it finally fell back into my care, the UK record label coincidentally was rereleasing the album that featured the home in its artwork.

Somehow the home and all its haunting memories impossibly called me back in.

The plan was to work on that house everyday instead of touring. Then touring shut down anyway all around us. That in itself is a sea change that doesn’t seem to generate the attention it deserves due to all the other sea changes occurring at the same time: social injustice unrest, unparalleled unemployment, disastrous pandemic handling resulting in tremendous death and despair, tragic global warming condition escalating and in general a grand lack of inspired leadership in these uncharted waters of sea change galore. 

For the music maker, the era of Spotify had stolen the back-end income of touring by gutting all royalties from recorded works. This forced all recordists to have to tour more in hopes of maintaining their livelihood. The more touring you do, the less your value expands because of the relative saturation of your availability. This slow motion train wreck is a recipe for home wrecking too. When pandemia hit, the wrecks weren’t even an option anymore. This dampendic has killed off more creative prowess than can be processed and in its place came a torrent of terribly lit and awful sounding bedroom iPhone concerts whereby every right handed player was portrayed as playing left handed now. What was left of the music world had literally turned sideways. 

I kept working on the house. Some days it’s monumental. Other days it’s just mental. But as hard as it’s been to tear down and rebuild walls, update wires, find new used parts & windows, score & plaster, plumb pipes, delegate a crew of one or two pandemically, accidentally destroy stuff trying to fix it and then paint endlessly  . . . it’s way easier than touring with jet lag. 

When the shutdown hit, the house was a steady gig. A job you have to pay to work at. 

It’s been like that now for 6 months while the world has cocooned. 

During this time many songs have come this way anyway. I have a simple screen-less home setup and have been recording hours of original piano songs I’ve never bothered to learn. Since they are as loud as a whisper  but seem to roar during this time of stillness, I’ve put them out on bandcamp and blatantly titled the album Cocoon. 

Also, my co-writer director and I have been working on finishing a film we were lucky to have shot just before pandemia forbade further production. It’s a western you don’t have to take acid to see because it’s already embedded into it. 

So maybe I’ve just finished your assignment here trying not to. 

All I know is I’ve always been suspicious of the man made clock and now I know why. It was never really real. The sacred clock is another matter however. It knows when is when and what is not. 

There is no man made time anymore. And when we think of how relentless and insane travel was before all this, it makes some sense that something had to give. To snap. To come crashing. 

For all the front liners and folks with sickened loved ones, and those themselves befallen with the virus, along with the torrent of visuals depicting brutal systematic killings and abusive protest responses, it’s all been an unbearable sadness to withstand. We are changed. We have been deprogrammed from the brainwashing of our previous existence. 

Back when the virus was headed this way, I’d begun a regime of natural immunity boosters and maybe it helped. There had been a coupla times when something invasive was attempting to pounce, but it didn’t take hold. 

I will end with some advice. Gargling with mezcal is an essential practice. It’s no joke. It’s actually mezidicinal. 

Love,

Howe
Howe Gelb has been making music in Tucson since the 1970s. Find his latest album, Cocoon, and other releases here.

Category: TUCSON COVID TALES