Celebration in the Time of the Corona Virus

In the time of Covid-19, celebration has to be re-invented. As I do my regular neighborhood walk, I pass signs on front yards marking this year’s graduates. On one block people congregate around the sidewalk in widely spaced groups wearing pointy hats. The sign near the curb says honk to say happy birthday. A car goes by with a half-dozen metallic balloons hanging out the window, part of a party parade. Elaborate sidewalk chalk drawings mark family events, but festivity is tinged with melancholy with the mandated distance between us. I share the graduate’s disappointment. Commencement is a celebration of actual achievement and it is a meaningful ceremony to witness, which we will still get to do remotely in June.

A recent experience showed me that occasions held through the screen can be more satisfying than you might expect. This year, winning the Baker Award, we had a zoom reception. As the Mary Sawyers Imboden Prize winner, I feel deeply honored to be among the wonderful artists who won awards this year, I’d been blown away by the finalists in all the categories this year, picked who I wanted in all the categories and was elated that three of them won. With all of them I admire their skillfulness and originality, how they demonstrate the values behind the awards. The Baker Foundation and Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance did a wonderful job putting together our celebration, a champagne toast, sending a gift bag with chocolates and cheese and champagne in advance. The zoom glimpse of the other winners made me want to meet them in person and delve more into their work. I was left with a celebratory and happy feeling that graduation may be able to do that too.

A friend through my blog called this the testing period. Having room to think may start with what we don’t have but ultimately, we’re forced into new territory, have to be creative about rituals that might have been perfunctory before. Finding new ways to apply day-to-day energies, my neighbor is learning classical guitar on zoom. There is pleasure acquiring any new skill. It’s what that brain is built for. Creativity is blooming all around us as people figure out how to adjust and look at life in new ways

       

 I have always believed that hard work matters, that sharpening skills and devoting the time to the work itself would lead somewhere, but that my job was to do the work. I’m deeply grateful for this affirmation of my faith by getting this award.

Though graduation represents the culmination of a course of study, the word, commencement refers to the next steps. The real excitement is in what happens next, how the accomplishment can be applied, put to use as a threshold of new projects and vistas of possibility.

I felt better after seeing people in the reception. Zoom may not be as good as in person but it’s better than just a voice or words in an email. Seeing is important. Now we are finding new ways to make our events visible. It‘s the seeing that makes it feel real.