Honestly? For the last several weeks, I’ve been too heartsick to blog, too heartbroken to write. Mass death doesn’t care about words. Certainly not my words.

Personally, I’m OK. Compared to what’s going on, I have no right to complain about anything from my secure quarantine. (I’m no Ellen.) In fact, my micro-life is fine. I’m not sick or dead or hungry or desperate, unlike many of my fellow citizens.

As a writer, I’m accustomed to staying in one room for long periods of time. In fact, I like it. I also have a nice backyard to go out into at any time I want, and a friendly, safe, well-distanced neighborhood for walking my dog.

I have enough food and enough money. I’ve entered a world of Instacart. … Drizly. … Yep!WeCanDoThat (for Trader Joe’s) … even Omaha Steaks. Welcome to the new “delivery culture!”

And I’m quarantined with a person I love very, very much. Staying home with the Tiny Goddess is a pleasure -- even if she has me vacuuming, floor polishing, and wiping everything with bleach. No question: my trials are insignificant.

I look back on my last blog and, yes, I’m surviving just as I said I would. On yoga and reading and delivered food and good things on Netflix/YouTube/cable/webcasts and the love and support of my family. (And my responsibility to support them.)

I’m lucky. I have it good. But that doesn’t make me any less anxious or depressed or fearful about the future. Not really for me, but for my kids and grandkids.

I’ve been trying not to watch too much news, read too much, which is a real change for a news junkie like me. I still get my three newspapers a day; I’m just not mainlining CNN-MSNBC-FauxNews-RealClearPolitics-Politico-HuffPost-TalkingPointsMemo-etc,, etc. -- during all my conscious hours.

But I know what’s happening. And I have a bad suspicion what’s coming.

How are we going to surive eight more months of Trump & Co. in charge for another eight months?? Oh, the damage they will do, the lives lost and ruined, the country wasted. By the time this is “over,” there will be deaths in hundreds of thousands. So many of them, avoidable had we had a functioning, responsible federal response.

I repeat the same inner-rants all day, mumbling to myself like a Saul Bellow “hero.” (I wish!) Running my mind in circles like a hamster on a wheel of political grievances … round and round my mind goes every day: how much more could I hate what “he” did today? What “he” said today?

You know who I mean.

It’s no way to live. At least, no way to live happily. And I can’t inflict my negativity on my family. As Larry Ingber’s Dad repeats several times in WHAT IT WAS LIKE – “Don’t make things worse!”

But there is so much suffering in the country: lines at food banks for miles and miles -- everywhere. And so much more suffering to come in the years it will take to recover from this crisis. I almost feel guilty for my comfortable life. Things are going to get worse – faster than we think – and the gulf between the “haves” and the “have-nots” is going to get deeper and more critical. Some people get a chance at a decent life; some don’t.

I remember when you didn’t have to be rich in this country to have a decent life. I grew up “lower-middle-class.” That kid wouldn’t stand a chance these days. Or maybe today, I would force myself to love computers and money.

But while all this mega-worry and fatalism – and fighting fatalism – weighs down on me, I’ve had moments, hours and even days of pleasure during the quarantine.

THE POSITIVE SIDE

I’ve been struggling to find a positive in all this.

Maybe the huge dislocation/disruption/collapse of the economy will bring on the change that we’ve needed for many years … since the Republican party started working against the welfare of the majority of Americans, in favor of cultivating and empowering destructive cults (the super-rich/CEO/donor cult, the gun-nut cult, the ultra-religious cult, the white-supremacy cult, the free-market cult, the anti-science/ conspiracy/nutso/hate cult, etc.) to the detriment of the common good.

What will save me now – besides the TG – is what has saved me my whole life: the arts. Music. Literature. Movies. TV. Stories and sounds and images that entertain, instruct, distract, enchant, elevate, inspire – whatever you want to call it. I’ll try to keep consuming great stuff at such a high rate that it will bury all the bad feelings or keep them at bay. If great art can’t save me, at least it can distract and numb the pain.

And I’ll find a way to continue my work that makes any sense.

This is what’s keeping me going, day by day:

EVERYDAY MUSIC

My daily music stream guarantees that everyday I hear lots of Mozart (arias, chamber music) … Verdi … Maria Callas … Chopin … Van Morrison … Puccini … Jussi Bjoerling … Frank Sinatra … Renee Fleming … Elisabeth Schwarzkopf … Lucia Popp … Billie Holiday … Ray Charles … the Beatles … Emmylou Harris … Alison Krauss … Bob Dylan … and the hundreds of songs on my “Favorite Tracks” feed.

Pandora has started a “Calm” station. Maybe I’ll try that, too.

And Howard Stern is still live, three mornings a week, from his bunker in the Hamptons. (And finally talking a little anti-Trump to his audience.)

READING

We’ve been reading aloud, resurrecting an old, pre-kids pastime. The first book was Raymond Chandler’s FAREWELL, MY LOVELY. The perfect choice, especially for arriviste-Angelinos. I read it a long time ago, but out-loud made it new. Now we’re on Charles Portis’ TRUE GRIT. One of my all-time favorites, but the TG has never read it. The wise, occasionally wacky, determined voice of Maddie Ross is meant to be spoken. The book is a great dramatic monologue by a smart, young person who gets involved in a very complicated story (unashamedly an influence on WHAT IT WAS LIKE.)

And I’ve been reading some slangy, stinging Saul Bellow short stories. Was he too smart for his own good?

OPERA

What reliably makes me happy is watching (and listening) to the daily Metropolitan Opera HD webcasts. In other words, I think I’m turning into my grandfather Nathan Poreback, who threw away his marriage and family to claque for Giovanni Martinelli, Leonard Warren, and Rose Ponselle at the Metropolitan Opera, almost a hundred years ago. Only I won’t throw my family away.

I’ve seen some extraordinary work on these HD webcasts, in operas I know well and operas I don’t know at all. I’m going to have to break down and buy a regular subscription – as if I need more distractions from work in my life. (Hey, maybe I do.)

www.metopera.org

It’s been fun – and a bit of a payback – introducing some friends who don’t know opera to this great art form … just as someone introduced me to opera forty years ago.

GOOD TV

We’ve been watching Ricky Gervais’ excellent AFTER LIFE and the Michael Jordan documentary THE LAST DANCE. Both highly recommended.

YOU TUBE

I’ve been escaping into YouTube Land. It’s free, instant entertainment (though I have been giving to some good causes promoted by the Met In-Home Gala, the Sondheim 90th Birthday Gala, Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires from the Ryman, and Erin Morley’s living room concert for the Neighborhood Music School in New Haven.)

I also watched a fantastic, entertaining Zoom fundraiser for The Crossroads School in Santa Monica where my son teaches studio art and art history. Hosted by Gynneth Paltrow and Maya Rudolph, it raised money for the school’s scholarship fund and featured contributions by Crossroads parents like Trent Reznor, Kate Hudson, Weird Al Yankovic, Laura Dern, etc. It was so professional and funny and well-done that it make be proud that we’re “related” to this fine school.

There’s also a live webcam from the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur, where we used to go. One of the nicest places on the planet. At least, the nicest I’ve ever seen.

https://postranchinn.com/webcam/

Who can’t use a little Big Sur for a few minutes in their daily lives?

LOTS OF STEPHEN SONDHEIM – “I was younger then/I saw everything”

PACIFIC OVERTURES

The original Broadway production of PACIFIC OVERTURES – as shown on Japanese TV – was a fabulous discovery for me. – At 1:14:47 is “Somewhere In A Tree” – Sondheim’s personal favorite from his spectacular career

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ546PASgHI

SONDHEIM 90TH BIRTHDAY GALA

If you didn’t see it – lots of outstanding contributions: Meryl, Bernadette, etc. And they didn’t sing many of his most popular songs: nothing from WEST SIDE STORY or GYPSY. No “Being Alive” or “Losing My Mind.” No patter songs, no ensemble songs. What a genius!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A92wZIvEUAw

BALLET

I’ve been checking into – and donating to – the New York City Ballet

They’ve been giving away huge chunks of old masters (Balanchine and Robbins) and new masters (Justin Peck!!!)

www.nycb.com

This week, “Diamonds” from JEWELS. Tchaikovsky + Balanchine = Magic. One of those “as good as it gets” works.

NANCI GRIFFITH

I’ve been listening to a lot of Nanci Griffith’s music lately. An old comfort. (In fact, I used the name “Nanci’ for a major character in WHAT IT WAS LIKE. It seemed right – Nancy with an ‘i” – for a person who wanted to be different.)

Nanci Griffith and the Blue Moon Orchestra at Austin City Limits from 1989 – an outstanding set with some of her best songs like “Gulf Coast Highway,” “Love at the 5 & 10,” and her original and still-best “From A Distance”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reZpbkE8o_M

Nanci Griffith at the Strawberry Festival from 1986 – with just Danny Flowers on guitar – but still choice early Nanci

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WDPs0x4K-M

And – as long as found it –

A great set by my go-to popular artist EMMYLOU HARRIS with a late edition of the Hot Band – from New Zealand TV in 1984

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzcNhx5HwNk

ZOOM LIFE

Better Zoom than nothing. Zoom yoga is saving me.

I’ve been having some other interesting life on Zoom. Zoom cocktail parties. Zoom play readings. Even a Zoom summer camp reunion.

Someone arranged a reunion for campers and counselors from the 1960s and 70s from CAMP STARLIGHT in Starlight, Pennsylvania, in the beautiful Pocono Mountains. This is the camp that most of WHAT IT WAS LIKE was based on. Of course I took liberties, but it’s nice to know that the real thing is still there.

Amazingly, more than seventy people got onto Zoom, trading memories and news. Someone even stayed awake in London until the middle of the night to participate.

https://www.campstarlight.com/

The place looks fabulous. What opportunities for rich young kids! (My brother and I only went to Starlight because our mother worked there and bartered her labor for two tuitions.) Now they have – in addition to all the regular sports and activities -- kitchens for the kids and organic gardens, music studios and sports broadcasting facilities, dance and gymnastics studios, candlemaking and crafts, coding. I couldn’t believe how transformed and modernized it was.

Maybe no Starlight this year. In fact, definitely not this year. But I hope that summer camps will be back. Those that survive.

“The world is in deep shit.”

What to do with this bottled-up rage?

Tens of thousands of people are hungry – right now. Today. And tomorrow. And the next day. That should be the headline on every paper, every news show, every day. We are having a human emergency right now, and no one seems to care all that much.

And who will help the helpless? Not Trump & Co. – that’s for sure. They’ll save Wall Street before they save Main Street, not knowing the two are inextricably tied. Dummies!!

Mass unemployment leads to less spending leads to mass bankruptcies across many businesses which leads to…mass unemployment.

I don’t know what to do. Write angry? Angrier? Will that solve anything? Will it make me feel better – or worse? I thought I went to some dark places in WHEN I GOT OUT. Imagine if Larry Ingber were being released into Coronaland today. Imagine if he were still in prison with the virus running wild.

I’ve lived such a happy, fortunate, “privileged” life. I just can’t believe how my country’s being ruined by the people I’ve always hated, whom I’ve always known to be evil/incompetent. I guess that’s what’s called Fate.

I guess the answer is to find happiness wherever you can. In the future, it might be in short supply.

(And, oh yeah, work like hell until November to try to save what’s left of a decent America.)

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