playlist: album 2020 by Bon Jovi (October 2020)
This morning, when I gave myself YouTube time in bed before I got up to start this first day after my birthday, I watched a video of the restoration of an army lighter, found on the beaches of Normandy.
I think my YouTube channel translated the title of the video, so I have no idea how the video is called where you live, but here it is:
UITERST Zeldzame lichtere restauratie Wereldoorlog 2 D-Day 1944
And watching the video made me so happy!
I had already had an amazing birthday, but to see how even this lighter which was in the poorest of shapes, could be brought back to a shiny, fully functioning lighter, with love, time, and skill?
That made my day.
It really was the icing on the cake, a reminder that even when things look really bad?
And with certainty beyond saving, beyond repair, beyond giving it any place in our living, breathing daily life because whatever this is or used to be?
It’s definitely useless now.
That even that one particular thing, that you were about to Marie Kondo out of your home, has just a good a chance of becoming the eye catcher of your collection, your turning point from when things went up, or the platform from where your life took off, as any other more shiny, more obvious object.
But I already knew that.
Knowing that you should not be too quick in your verdict, had been the main reason why my birthday had started off on such a high, and why I knew I had nothing to be ashamed off.
That despite that gnawing feeling that haunted me since the start of the pandemic, there were actually no real signs my 2020-2021 had indeed been one big failure.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
Because over the course of the last few weeks everything with regard to my Bon Jovi related blogs, YouTube channel, yoga plans, are coming back to life and are coming together as well!
I even feel inspired to pick up my Dutch yoga channel, and other projects or ideas that I started in 2020, but that I couldn’t bring into fruition or I dropped out of.
All ideas are coming back as shiny and new as that second world war lighter.
But the biggest shift in perspective has been when I started organizing my writing under an alterego, dusting off old diaries I stop-started, and articles I published when I thought I was having the worst year of my life.
When I felt so alone, so disconnected and angry with the rest of humanity who in my eyes were an untrustworthy bunch of motherfuckers who were not taking responsibility for every motherfucking thing they had created before Covid;
And now they were all just a little too keen to throw it all on the virus.
While Jon Bon Jovi was washing dishes for his charity organization, when the first chords of Do What You Can were written, and the band pulled back their 2020 March release of the album 2020, to review it, write more songs, and root it even deeper into being the topical, social conscious record it was already intended to be but that got to a whole new level now, obviously;
When all that constructive work was done by the band I admired, I was contemplating if it was possible to break up with humanity.
If I would become a bitcoin trader, would that mean I would never have to see anybody for my survival, on a day to day basis, ever again?
Was there a way I could stop contributing, stop creating?
And I never had to suppress the desire to destroy all my work as often as I have the past 16 months.
There is an African proverb:
“A child that is not embraced by the village, will burn it down to feel its warmth”
I didn’t need to burn the village, I could burn my own work and the only thing that kept me from it was knowing I would regret it in the future.
That ultimately, regardless of how my life would go, I would need a pen, a blog, a typewriter, SOMETHING! To let go, to express, and if it would all end up oxidized on a deserted beach I was as fine with that as anything.
I didn’t care.
But I did know not to burn the pen, the paper, the typewriter, and also not the old diaries and my old work which I ve learned are of value just for being there, or for being here in my filing cabinet.
They give off a reassuring, comforting glow.
But yes, it was an incredibly tough year, and my work under that alterego and here too, was a mess. I didn’t expect anything of use to come of it.
And then this week, with a big sigh, I dived in and started going through that work and I found a piece I had written two weeks into the pandemic, late March 2020.
And it blew me away….
Like a series of bombs, a sequence of hardcore raw, emotional, truth calling posts exploded in my head and I saw what I thought had been my absolute worst year, the 16 months of pandemic, which would soon include a whole year between birthdays, and a time in my life where for the very first time ever, I had absolutely nothing positive to say about it, from an artistic perspective;
That this work had a high chance of being the best I ever created.
And it could only have been written in that lonely, cut-offness from the world.
My agenda is filling up with dates again.
Summer 2021, and the new year of my life, is the moment when my life is returning to the way it was and added on top of that are new ways of communicating, new websites, new projects, new ways of artistic communication with the world.
All social nourishment which will mean the months ahead will not have the same energy as 2020-2021. I will not be able to recreate what I did then.
And that’s what I mean when I titled this post Too soon to tell.
I don’t mean that if you went through personal tragedy and hardship, it is too soon to tell that you had a horrible time.
You are allowed to grieve and give yourself time to process, recover and regroup.
But if you, like I did, have a bad feeling about 2020-2021 professionally? Artistically?
In the sense of what you have accomplished?
Or you have a bad feeling about it, psychologically?
Because you don’t feel like the pandemic has made you more resilient, nor agile, nor that you acquired or learned anything you will fall back on in the future?
Then trust me:
It is too soon to tell.
Maybe “tell” is not the right word. It is too soon to SEE.
Because I can tell you right now;
2020-2021 is not what you think it is, or was.
It might look like a green oxidized chunk of metal.
But after cleaning, polishing, and restoring it,
2020 can light a fire so bright, it will warm you for the rest of your life.
~Suzanne
Rock Star Writer
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