(Paraphrased) "I left for five years to work on my mental health. And then in January 2020 i thought, maybe I'll start performing again. And then. The funniest thing happened"
This is the most gut-wrenching autobiographical work about the trauma of the COVID pandemic that I've ever seen. Every minute of it reflects the horrifying trauma my loved ones and i went through as we desperately searched for something to hold onto while the world shut down and forced us to adopt agoraphobia as our survival strategy.
I was curious whether in the two years since its release, whether it would have aged well, and I'm (happy?) to report that it has. If anything I think it might hit harder. Since 2021 we have moved into a world that is desperately trying to punish us for thinking about the ongoing disease's spread.
People talk as if referencing the pandemic is out-of-touch, gauche, cringe, and dated. Of course it's fucking dated, it's 3+ years of our lives that went completely off the rails, where our mental health was nuked for our collective safety, and instead of our society supporting us through it capitalism turned around and started feasting on our guts.
When I returned to my workplace in autumn 2022, when the board of directors finally restored forced in-office days, I was immediately greeted by a coworker who - in that chortled white woman voice - told me how wild it was that "even though the pandemic has been over for so long, it feels like it just ended". In another conversation, I overheard her talking about how the pandemic ended in late 2021. I felt that same horrified rage Bo gasps out in his final song: "How can you joke at a time like this?"
But what else can we do.