It is good to feel life starting to return to something recognisable as “normal”. This afternoon I sat in the sunshine with a friend who is also an artist, on a park bench across the road from his house. I was able to return the book he had loaned me some time ago, and we shared our reflections on it. Today the climbing wall re-opened, and tomorrow I expect to meet a group of my climbing buddies for a session together for the first time since I don’t know when (perhaps since last March). My wife was able to go to the hairdresser again. It all feels very good …. very reassuring.
Today brought another form of renewed acquaintance. Recently I came by accident across a picture I started more than a year ago. I had laid it aside in a sense of frustration. It didn’t really feel complete, but I was not able to put my finger on exactly why that should be. That deficiency has now become clear, and after working at it for a couple of hours again I really feel quite satisfied with it. It is in a rather tatty old frame, just to enable me to get some sense of how it might look, and I’m now sure that with a decent matt and a new frame it will justify exhibition. I have felt terribly “beached” recently, and it is reassuring to feel that artistic life might be returning too.
I had an email from another artist friend today, inviting me to see a new exhibition of her work opening next week. It is all terribly encouraging and very positive. Suddenly, however, they thought has struck me. Will there be aspects of the pre-pandemic life we will leave behind, having broken the connection of habit, and their abandonment will leave us feeling a greater freedom?