It’s been maybe 6 weeks (what day is today, Monday? Tuesday?) since I packed my bags full of clothes, an *ahem* illegal blender, a minifridge, a pink cowboy hat, and anything else that might have been floating around in FT’s room 5413. I ate one last brunch with my friends in Portola with buckwheat parfaits and cinnamon toast crunch and said goodbye to my freshman year of college.
While I can’t say that I’ll miss waking up for 8am sections, running to the bus stop only to watch it drive off without a second glance--or biking in the cold after deciding I probably should show up to the last lecture before finals--I will miss staying up until 3 am in the Fiesta room with my friends, giving them fake sharpie tattoos and laughing so hard we cried, uber-ing five blocks away in a van with disco lights blasting Roxanne, and lime-ing to Mojo’s for boba 15 minutes before closing.
Moving home hasn’t been the easiest: especially because I haven’t been able to see my friends every day (and can anyone else relate to Trevor Wallace’s video?), 8ams are SO much harder online, and this whole social distancing thing means I can’t even see my high school friends--who are at most 15 miles away!
The quarantine has also wreaked havoc on the UCSB art world: seniors won’t get to dance in their last concert, actors who’ve spent hours upon days building sets, rehearsing scenes, and memorizing choreography have had their performances canceled, musicians who learned pages upon pages of sheet music have nowhere to perform, and painters, sculptors, and photographers who carefully handpicked each piece for their very first exhibition might never see it come to life.
Olivia Consterdine, a senior at UCSB majoring in math with a minor in art, says that she’s "grateful for the art classes I’m taking [through UCSB] right now, and how they provide me with structure and direction and community.” However, despite her love for the cello, "I just can’t bring myself to practice. My mind feels stressed right now and I can’t quiet it enough to play. "
With all the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 and the world around us, there’s no doubt that our ability to find creativity and motivation has taken a toll. However, while social distancing has meant disaster for a lot of artists, I think it’s especially important to look for the silver linings--the little things that give us hope and can even create just the tiniest bit of escapism. UCSB A&L’s guest Pico Iyer argues that:
“So many of us have been crying out for a pause, a time of inwardness, a chance to collect ourselves, the opportunity for reflection – and now circumstances have, for once, obliged.”
For many people, this quarantine means also a new time to create, experiment with different mediums, and re-focus on things that we neglected in our fast-paced lives...things that made us happy or artistic release.
For senior dance major, Colson Lynn, “being a dance major comes with its own set of responsibilities as our whole major is done in the studio or in a theater, neither which we have access to anymore...I feel like we all are learning to adjust to the space we have available,” and while the circumstances are less than ideal, Colson has come to “really appreciate the space that I had before, and delve deeper into my own body to get a more fruitful experience out of dance.” For him, leaving school “has cut short processes that I was working on, dance performances. However, it has let me pick up old forms of art that I never had the time to maintain or spend time working on...makes the pain of having lost so much performance time almost bearable.”
Art has been a constant in my life since I can remember; I grew up banging away on a piano with oil paint streaked through my hair and on my hands and face. But, when I left for college, I left behind my music and art supplies. Hydro flasks became my canvases, sneaking into the Linda Vista Room became the only time I played piano, and I forgot the only 3 chords I learned on guitar over the summer.
So for me, moving back home meant bringing out my old canvases and painting. I started learning guitar again, and I even found my mom’s old film camera and tried my hand at photography.
Most of my recent inspiration has honestly come from TikTok (I’m ashamed to admit that I spent more time on TikTok this past week than I’ve spent sleeping…), but while my friends make fun of the fact that I spend so much time on an app that’s (to quote my friend) “just a bunch of people who waste time and thirst trap,” I’d argue that it’s also a platform for people to express their interests in a viral, quick way. For me, a 60-second video is probably the longest that could hold my attention before I get distracted by the puppy walking past my window or the glitter in the tiny jar that I may or may not have opened and spilled all over my carpeted floor….But regardless, seeing all these TikTok artists show off their work and try new things (did you know you could take amazing photos through facetime? Me neither) has inspired me to dust off my old canvases and open up that camera bag.
So I say keep making those TikTok POVs, recreating famous paintings, and finding your form of creativity--whether it’s tye-dying all your hoodies and embroidering your jeans, signing up for Skillshare’s online art classes, or taking an Instagram live dance class--because, while we might not be able to create art in the same way we used to, we now have this unique opportunity--that comes from albeit terrible circumstances--to self-reflect and create art.