My hot take is that pop culture and art and music and fashion and snacks and puppies and drag queens and texting and stupid movies and memes and holding hands and dancing and expensive perfume and very high thread count Egyptian cotton sheets and fancy bath towels and shiny pretty things and tall boy bathtubs are all actually really important.
The pandemic is hard and endless and there’s no extra credit for suffering. It’s not shallow to want to surround yourself with life and beauty when there is death and sadness all around.
Say yes to all bread. Chase kindness. Buy whatever. Laugh about it. Cry about it. You’re doing great.
The reality is, for many disabled artists and bands with people who have pre-existing conditions or compromised immune systems, playing shows without pretty extreme Covid safety precautions is not on the table right now.
THE PANDEMIC IS NOT OVER.
I can’t stress enough how thankful I am to be signed to a label that supports its artists and prioritizes our wellness and safety.
Label and labelmate support aside, you would not believe how much grief I’ve gotten from all kinds of people for pulling out of our tour and SXSW.
I wouldn’t normally spend an entire week retweeting the posts of friends, artists, and colleagues who caught Covid at a festival, but SXSW balked at all of our attempts to create (and pay for out of pocket) an actually safe environment for my showcase to still happen this year. They said no to keeping me safe, and we told them to go screw.
LOL ABLEISM.
Anyway, I stand by everything I wrote HERE when we pulled out of the festival and I am so fucking glad we didn’t go.
And please, for the love of music, wear your masks when you go to a show. It’s not that fucking hard and you are literally going to kill folks like me if you don’t.
I can’t make you all care about other people — but I wish you would. Live music should be accessible. Full stop.
There’s a little over a week left in Mental Health Awareness Month and I just want to encourage you all to scream into the universe if that’s how you feel, eat a candy bar if you need one, watch TV until your eyes water when you can’t stop thinking about the pandemic, buy stuff you can’t afford as the prolonged isolation starts to really get to you, and give yourself a break from picturing your own death and the death of everyone you know for a day or two — but don’t stop being vigilant.
Social distancing is hard. Quarantine sucks. Being alone constantly is intense — and you’re doing great! Keep going. This won’t last forever, but right now it’s all we can do to keep each other safe.
I appreciate those of you who are taking this seriously. I see you. 💙
For those of you with loved ones who insist on being assholes during quarantine:
Anyone who is not a member of your household should not be coming over, visiting your home, interacting with you and your family in person, or coming inside your house. This includes your parents, siblings, grandparents, romantic partners, friends, fiancées, coworkers, and kids.
People who do not live with you at your address and insist on breaking stay-at-home orders are risking the safety of your immediate family members, and are being super selfish and reckless. It’s just fucking stupid.
Yes, this time apart sucks. It’s lonely and hard and we all miss our people right now — but the folks who are still doing this irresponsible shit risk extending this lockdown to months, not weeks, for all of us (at best) and risk literally killing other people (at worst).