MY COVID-19 SOUNDTRACK, TRACK 8: THE TRUTH THAT PROVES IT'S BEAUTIFUL TO LIE

My daughter asked why I always say good things about the songs she writes. She'll be 18 soon, and she's rightfully expecting me to treat her like the adult she's becoming, even if that means introducing a new level of static into our lives. Mirren knows that adults who are in healthy relationships sometimes say hurtful things in service of honesty, just as adults might hide truths from children for the sake of self-esteem. I loathe conflict, and I often find myself walking a tightrope trying to be honest while not creating tension.

​I honestly haven't heard a song of Mirren's I didn't like, though. I think there are a few reasons for this. I'm not sure how she hears a finished song, but when Mirren plays me the rough cuts, they're in a style that I'm already partial to: just her and her guitar. I love the "three chords and the truth" vibe that comes through as opposed to this:

There's a purity in her rough drafts' lack of precision that's almost punk to me, and I hope it carries over should she ever do more with the songs. Mirren's also got a great sense of wordplay, and her lyrics often wrap themselves in and around a melody in ways that remind me of my favorite artists. Her words aren't just there to prop up the music, and vice-versa. Mirren's music and lyrics love each other. These songs are hers to share, but I mention them because I'm certain about how I feel about them, whereas I find myself wavering about how to close my soundtrack.

Stories have arcs because we are satisfied by the idea of resolution, and stories with unsatisfying endings don't find much of an audience, or leave those they do find scratching their heads, especially if "Don't Stop Believing" is playing in the background. When I started out this series of posts over a year ago, I set out to create a playlist that served as a soundtrack to my COVID story. This is the last post in that series, and while (I think) I have a suitable song to roll over the end credits my story doesn't have a neat ending. Our stories don't stop when the theater lights come up. As my COVID story ripples and vibrates into a future I can't predict or understand, this is the song that plays at the end:

"RESERVATIONS" - WILCO
"I've got reservations about so many things, but not about you."

"Reservations" closes Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco's fourth album. Though seen by many fans and critics as the band's masterpiece, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot almost didn't see the light of day. Reprise Records, Wilco's label at the time, found the album wanting and dropped the band prior to its release, despite having spent tens of thousands of dollars on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot's creation. The turmoil around making the album, the label's dissatisfaction with the finished product, and the record's ultimate triumph is brilliantly captured by Sam Jones' documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco. While "Reservations" reads as an intensely personal song, its title stands as an appropriate signifier for the band's life and times in that particular moment. Reprise had reservations about the commercial viability of the record and the long-term profitability of the band so they cut ties and losses. Jeff Tweedy, Wilco's principal songwriter and figurehead, had reservations about bandmate Jay Bennett's ability to engineer and mix the record, leading to Bennett's dismissal from the group. There's always a shadow of doubt attached to anyone's best foot forward, whether the stepper is a nervous kid playing a song for her father or a group of veteran professional musicians releasing a new album.

The same is true for me as I face this reopening world. As a teacher, I was excited by the prospect of having my students return to school full-time as the year ended. While I'm not sure that the pandemic has been the social-emotional apocalypse for kids many have made it out to be, the learning conditions students of all ages have faced this year have been far from optimal. Even as more students returned, they found their classrooms set up in rows; their teachers instructed to keep everyone facing forward. Exchanging materials carried risk, as did exchanging ideas through "turn and talk" activities teachers have long relied on as a method of engagement. We had visible barriers covering our mouths and noses just as invisible ones covered our exchanges. 

Many staunch advocates of a full return -- not just to school, but to life as it used to be -- attack measures like social distancing as "security theater" and perhaps they're right. But I’ve seen a lot of data and read too many “studies” drawing different conclusions. The very nature of the conditions in which many of these studies are being conducted is not conducive to the highest level of reliability and validity. We need look no further than the data the CDC used to amend its guidance on distancing in schools from 6 to 3 feet, which was based on a study from Massachusetts that relied on district self-reporting and community contact tracing measures that weren’t standardized, systematic, or reliable. Can we be sure that this study is any more valid and reliable than others that come to different conclusions? Probably not. But we’re living the scientific process in real time, relying on a system that’s stretched to its limits to find answers in an earthquake. It's not clear how new variants might impact school in the fall, but Massachusetts, where I live and teach, is planning for a full return to pre-COVID school, Delta be damned.

​Whatever nerves I feel about the fall, my reservations didn't stop me from going out on Derby Day with some friends. The last time my wife and I ate a meal in a restaurant it was with Jenn and Don at the beginning of the pandemic, so it was fitting that our return to live dining almost a year later was with them. Maybe it was the mint juleps, but I got emotional. They're hidden in this picture, but each of us had masks close at hand. That fact, along with the QR codes we scanned to access the menu served as evidence that the reservations I feel aren't unique to me, though it's not clear if what I feel is the result of such measures or if the measures exist because of what I feel. In this particular production of security theater, am I the writer, director, star, or extra? The answer doesn't matter as much as the people I'm sitting with. 

From left to right: not Karen, not Karen, not Karen, and not Karen.

Besides neat, satisfying endings, another constant we demand from stories is a dynamic protagonist. We need our main character to be changed by the things they experienced.

I am sorry. If anything, COVID-19 finds me static, even as emerging variants rise and challenge assumptions about who should mask and where almost as quickly as emerging conspiracy theories "challenge" the science behind masking full stop. The same goes for vaccines. Just as people who should ostensibly know better raise false flags about vaccines, people who do know better punch holes in my security with news that the Pfizer vaccine (the one my wife and I happen to have) is less effective against the mighty Delta variant. COVID has managed to have confusion make sense for everyone.
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When my first wife and I divorced, I used that trauma to grow and change. "Reservations" would've been a good song for that story's soundtrack, too ("how can I convince you it's me I don't like?"). But my separation and divorce was a more personal, visceral experience. Maybe COVID would have had a similar impact had it hit closer to me. As it stands, I am gratefully healthy and gainfully employed, as are the people close to me. This pandemic did nothing to change that. In light of this, the "film" I've been writing and scoring is a documentary filled with drama I can observe and have empathy for, but not own.

When I look at my previous entries in this soundtrack series, I know this to be true. I wrote essays about the environment, class, science, loneliness, equality, and belief through COVID's lens. The sides I took on each of these issues were the same ones I stood on pre-pandemic. A certainty that came with our slow return to "normalcy" is that any of these essays -- save maybe the one about the Rolling Stones -- could've been written without COVID happening at all. It's that certainty that gives me pause. But "I'm bound by these choices so hard to make" and while it raises doubts, it also amplifies the constants I crave and make choices for. In the end, "None of this is real enough to take me from you."

The author -- feeling more certain about those glasses than he should -- and his beautiful wife.