HOUSE ARREST DIARY: IN PRAISE OF SMALL THINGS
It’s strange to be inside an apartment when you can’t leave. I think Tolstoy said that you can be sitting perfectly at ease but if you’re told you can’t move then it’s suddenly uncomfortable. I’m a little embarrassed to admit that in many ways I’m a naturally quarantinable person—I like being at home. I can read, write, watch the Criterion Channel. But with no prospect of going out other than a walk at a safe distance along the West Side Parkway the walls can feel like they’re closing in. When you’re constricted your mind naturally wanders elsewhere.
Where does it go? To beloved places. It goes to Florence, it goes to Kyoto, it goes to fly fishing streams in the Catskills. I think of people I care about and why I miss them. And of course I think about their health. I think of people who are sick or struggling or have had their lives inverted, rearranged or forever altered. I also think about what I love and miss about the culture.
For some reason I’ve been thinking about the opera, about getting dressed up and going to Lincoln Center and walking through the lobby with other people and taking seats and the lights going down. Maybe because it’s something grand and communal, both of which we’re missing. It might be a sense of escape, since opera is the least realistic art form in the history of the world (though the emotions are very real). I think about fine things, white table cloths in good restaurants, ornate frames on master paintings, the way they perfectly wrap presents in Japanese department stores. These thoughts are variously grandiose and sentimental.
Then I think of mundane things, simple rituals, walking past the neon Village Vanguard sign, looking in the window of Three Lives bookstore, buying stamps from the well-dressed man at the newsstand. I look forward to seeing the doves that come to the fire escape making their little dove sounds. I waste time. On eBay I wonder why anybody would name their store “Hipsters Avenue.” I wonder why I’m looking for the perfect jacket for Montana, which now feels like it exists in an alternate world about 100 years ago. More escapism, I guess.
These shifts are strange. We want connections and meaning. Then we want something frivolous to restore a sense of balance that doesn’t come. There’s a flow of days, enough now that Sundays don’t feel like Sundays. When will time have its shape again? I think about what life will be like after all of this. After a tragic time, will there be a return to a more earnest, understated sensibility? Or will people gravitate toward dramatic self expression because life feels fragile? I don’t know.
I miss people who could help us understand this time. I wish Glenn O’Brien and Dave Berman were still with us. But of course they are and it’s wonderful to read Glenn’s work or listen to Silver Jews songs, which both seem right for the moment. I’ve been watching Kenneth Clark’s series “Civilisation” which is reassuring in its way. I’ve been listening to old devotional music, somehow songs from around 1600 are soothing to me.
Am I experimenting with a mustache? I am. Is it going well? It is not. But I suggest you try one. It’s a little vacation from yourself and probably a little vacation from good taste. It’s good to have those every now and then and probably better to do that in isolation anyway. Though I was looking at a white and yellow (repeat: yellow) herringbone jacket on eBay and that was a good taste vacation too far. Use your time to your sartorial advantage. Break in any shoes hiding in the back of your closet. And break in anything else that you have doubts about. Wear a burgundy dinner jacket while you read an old issue of The Paris Review. I want to hear about dressing up for quarantine not dressing down. Remember: Now and always, sweatpants are the first step toward defeat.
Open a good bottle you’ve been saving, wine or scotch. Now’s the time. Raise a glass to better times ahead even if we can’t see that far ahead just yet.