Photo courtesy of Unsplash.
“We are social creatures, made anxious by our separateness.” This is what Peter D. Kramer wrote in the foreword of Erich Fromm’s 1956 novel The Art of Loving.
This is a statement that, to me, has held true since the very beginning stages of the pandemic, and one that only becomes more relevant as the pandemic trudges on. During the long months of restricted socialization and quarantine, journalists and social scientists observed mental health rates decline worldwide — “the anxiety of separation” from our fellow people — verifying Kramer’s proposition. Now, as the vaccine rollout continues to allow the loosening of restrictions, we begin the return to being “social creatures” once again.
The virologists who trickled through NPR were right; it certainly doesn’t happen all at once. Even now, with the Delta variant causing the recent jump in cases, the hesitation in returning to ‘normal’ is high. All over the U.S., though, vaccinated Americans had their first moments of freedom in over a year, little glimpses of the light at the end of the tunnel. One of these glimpses was the gradual appearance of storefront signs, informing shoppers: VACCINATED PEOPLE ARE NOT REQUIRED TO WEAR MASKS.
I remember the first time I laid eyes on one of these signs, and despite feeling somewhat thrilled, I registered a squirming discomfort in the pit of my stomach that I hadn’t expected. We had all become so used to the anonymity of wearing a mask, keeping our heads down while shopping, just getting in and getting out. It felt like a jarring new kind of social exposure, one that I hadn’t anticipated to hit me so hard.
At that moment, it did feel like it was happening all at once. I recall berating myself for my hesitation – isn’t this what I’d been longing to return to? – but couldn’t shake the feeling that I was about to step into unfamiliar territory. Wearing a mask had become more than just a way to protect from the virus. It was a safety, a shield that you could slip behind and cycle through every tiny jitter of that near-constant pandemic anxiety without anyone else knowing. I remember turning to my friend, and, after exchanging nervous grins, we whipped off our masks and walked idly into the store.
It was then, in a tiny convenience store in rural Maine, that I realized how deeply I had missed just seeing faces. Bumpy noses, furry conjoined eyebrows, lopsided lips, a dazzling chipped tooth smile…it was so strange what a difference it actually made to see faces free and uncovered, how expressive and animated and constantly changing a face is. Until that moment I had never really appreciated, or even noticed, how much I love the diversity of human features.
Strangers exchanging smiles must have exponentially increased since the mask mandate was changed, I remember thinking cheesily, as I entered the snack aisle and positively beamed at a middle aged man clutching hot Cheetos, who returned the favor.
We were deprived for so long of that fleeting human connection, that brief yet joyful acknowledgment of life lived together. Now, grinning at a stranger and the stranger grinning right back felt like a celebration, a little victory, like a “Yes! I see you! And you see me! How wonderful and simple is that!”
This tentative post-pandemic high seems to have spread to every inch of human activity. Public places teem with excitable, barely pent-up energy, where friends reconnect and celebrate, and families grieve over loss and gain.
Simply walking through a city, in itself, is exposure therapy, in which to begin to heal the mental damage done by months in quarantine. Cities now bear every sign of the social boom. Roller skaters swish by, street bands and buskers rump and bump as passersby actually stop to shimmy, nightclubs rumble and thrum with deep bass and hundreds of sweaty people.
As a friend and I basked in the raw liveliness of Burlington, Vermont, we stopped to chat with a few street artists selling their work. One artist, who requested not to be named, described how, to her, the 2020 pandemic was beginning to echo the Renaissance that took place in the art world following the Black Plague in Europe, admittedly to a much lesser extent, given the Plague lasted decades and was far deadlier than the coronavirus.
“It’s like a mini Renaissance! We’re getting rebooted!” she said to us excitedly, and then rolled her eyes in an animated sort of way. “The industry needed it. There were too many self-involved artists who were shitting out the same five things.”
This new era of art and music will serve a vital purpose in our journey back to being social creatures, as a tool for reconnecting with each other and the world around us. The silver lining of living through a year-long period of intermittent quarantine and isolation is that it forced a world of constant movement to slow to a stop. It’s only natural that fresh and cerebral changes would emerge from a time of such quietude.
Instead of relying on external stimuli for inspiration, artists had to draw on their own stream of consciousness and whatever they could find within their own homes. This reduced list of creative influences encouraged artists to dig deep for material. This particular phenomenon has been exhibited widely in the emerging works produced in the world of art and media.
One big change that took place during the pandemic, specifically in the music industry, was the resurgence of concept albums. Concept albums were most popular around the seventies and eighties, and were usually rock-based albums. A concept album is defined as a compilation of songs tied together by an overarching theme or message, often encouraged to be listened to in order.
Famous albums that tied their songs together with a particular idea include Pink Floyd’s The Wall, which tells the story of ‘Pink,’ a character based on the combination of bassist Roger Waters and Syd Barrett, who struggles and eventually succumbs to “the wall” of his own self-isolation.
David Bowie’s iconic concept album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars birthed his fiery-haired, sex-positive alien alter ego. Like The Wall, the album follows the story of a character, a rockstar from outer space, who Bowie uses to give commentary on societal restrictions of sex and of working in the music industry.
In 2021, concept albums reemerged with a vengeance, both inside and outside of mainstream culture. Doja Cat’s Planet Her and Taylor Swift’s folklore are two examples of concept albums that topped the charts this year. Folklore, in particular, echoes the sentiment of pandemic-driven self exploration, being a collection of songs based on fictitious tales that Swift dreamed up herself.
Doja Cat took a different and more visual direction with her album – the name Planet Her was chosen to describe Doja’s self-made planet in which “all species live in harmony.” Additionally, she created a library of alien species and characters that inhabit the planet with individualized histories and relationships. The music videos she released alongside her singles were also representations of different areas on the planet, and of the creatures that live there.
A lesser known concept album released this year was Manchester Orchestra’s The Million Masks of God, a work named after a line in GK Chesterson’s poem Gold Leaves, in which the narrator details their search for a higher power as a young person, and therefore experiences a shift in their relationship with God. The album explores similar abstractions about the search for meaning and extension of self, and is also said to be a celebration of the intimate friendship between two band members, Andy Hull and Robert McDowell.
The comeback of concept albums is important for two reasons; firstly, because it gives the opportunity for musicians to also become storytellers, and secondly, in doing so, allows for further expansion into other forms of media, like Doja Cat explored with her music videos, to embellish stories even further.
Perhaps the most veracious example of a piece deeply influenced by quarantine isolation and a lack of external influences, though, is the Netflix special that comedian Bo Burnham released earlier this year, aptly named Inside. I mentioned how artists were forced to rely on whatever they could find in their own spaces and their own stream of consciousness to inform their art. This production exemplifies that point perfectly.
In ninety minutes, Burnham covers artistic exhaustion, the all-consuming nature of the Internet, what purpose comedy has in a new world characterized by social change and isolation, and more. Even more appropriately, the entire production takes place in one room, which transforms from scene to scene as Burnham plays with a treasure trove of lighting fixtures, from disco balls and headlamps, to strobe lights and a singular, harrowing spotlight for his more serious interludes.
It’s not hard to see why Burnham’s creation took the Internet by storm following its release. Peppered with pop-culture references, such as a violently catchy number about the predictable nature of “a white woman’s Instagram,” Burnham jumps from one segment to the next with infectious verve and an authentic ability to self-deprecate, while still maintaining a funky, good-natured sense of humor. It is not an easy feat to document quarantine anxiety and the questioning of an artist’s existence in the place of things in a new and uncertain era without sounding resoundingly sad, but Burnham manages it. In doing so, he proves himself to be an evolving and adaptable comedian who excels in combining brutal honesty with perceptive witticism.
This new era of art and media that comes with phasing out of the pandemic is encouraging artists to readjust. Burnham is one of the lucky few who managed to solidify themselves as capable of creating content despite the challenges of quarantine. The art world is throwing out the old and bringing in the new, and with that transformation comes the age-old question: “what’s next?”
Marc Payot, president of Hauser & Wirth, a gallery based in Switzerland, described the artistic reboot in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, “We’re all facing down the same existential questions…what do we do now? What kind of art do we need?”
The idea that separation and a prolonged lack of connection cause anxiety is certainly true. Although, as hard times often do, that time apart paradoxically can give us more substantive creative fuel, and help us further understand and appreciate what being ‘social creatures’ actually means.
To me, the art we need, going forward, will be more about preserving what we learned in our time of separation, so that we can become more deeply social.
