Tell the truth: was it as hard for you as it was for me to rise Monday in this state of self-isolation, facing this uncertain future.
Next time you feel that way my advice is to conjure up a triple espresso as I did, then log onto your phone or laptop.
Head first to anything posted by The Chronicle Herald and SaltWire, which is essential reading, but otherwise, give short shrift to your Twitter feed these days where frightening things wait.
Instead, navigate your way onto Facebook and something called Ultimate Online Nova Scotia Kitchen Party (COVID-19 Edition).
Trust me, even if just momentarily, the clouds will part.
You will know that, even if confined to a room beyond the touch of another human being, you are not alone.
When I looked Monday this online party, celebrating a province of less than one million residents, had more than 172,000 participants, residing in 99 different countries.
Not bad for something that only started when Heather Cameron Thomson, who works in residential care in New Glasgow, sat down with her morning coffee on March 19, “feeling stressed and anxious about everything going on in the world” and started scrolling through Facebook.
Thomson came across a song that a musician friend, Jason Brushett, had recorded to share with those in COVID-19 isolation. That raised her spirits, as did scrolling a little further and finding another recording that musician friends posted for the same reason.
“I thought this was exactly what I need,” she told me Monday via — what else — Facebook.
Thomson began asking her musician pals to share their music and “flood our Facebook timelines with joy rather than all of the fear and negativity that is out there right now.”
As of Monday the site has more than 76,000 posts, which works out to about 6,900 each of the 11 days the community has been in existence.
As a veteran viewer — well I first heard about it last week — I can honestly say the diversity is something.
Monday for example, there was Melinda Naugler performing her bouncy version of Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow, and Leslie Nicole, “showing my Springhill roots,” singing and strumming Snowbird, made famous by the coal town’s own Anne Murray.
A guy from Bridgewater named Steven Saunders picked out a tune on his guitar that sounded like it could have been Segovia, but turned out to be Pink Floyd.
A hip hopper named Jordan MacKie was freestyling. A folkie named Andrew Davidson played the penny whistle and sang his original composition the Kitchen Party Song.
People covered Elton John and Lady Gaga, Great Big Sea and John Denver. I heard fiddles, bagpipes, a harp, and lots and lots of guitars.
Many of the performers seemed like they had done this many times. But some said they had never made a recording before, that their wife or girlfriend had talked them into it, that they just felt compelled, under the circumstances, to be a part of it.
There were oldtimers like Medley MacBeth singing the Jim Reeves chestnut, Put your Sweet Lips a little Closer to the Phone, from a chair in the Vet’s Unit at Fishermen’s Memorial Hospital in Lunenburg where the 95-year-old resides.
And there was also five-year-old William McCarthy, from Souris, P.E.I., performing his favourite tune, The Hockey Song, while stamping on a board, just like his idol Stompin’ Tom Connors.
Monday you couldn’t forget that we were in the midst of a pandemic. I heard many versions of tunes made famous by Joe Diffie, who had died from COVID-19 complications, and even more homages to John Prine, now critically ill with COVID symptoms.
I found it hard to watch the deeply felt recording of their wedding song that a man named Mark had made for his nurse wife who was stuck at the hospital “all day yesterday fighting this thing.”
But it did the heart good to see a video of Rodney MacDonald washing some dishes, pouring himself a cup of coffee, and letting out a contented “ahhh.” And then to see the 26th premier of Nova Scotia open his oven, pull out a violin, and fiddle away as he dexterously performed a little step dance.
It seemed a privilege to hear Sheri Power’s dad — in a video from some long-ago Christmas — sing something called A Little Guy Named Joe.
I liked hearing a version of The Beatles’ Dear Prudence by Ryan Horne, formerly of Elmsdale, N.S., but now living in a town called Bicester in Oxfordshire, U.K., where, he told me, he is on lockdown and teaching his elementary school students online.
I also liked listening to a young man named Brendan Croskerry play and sing a medley of songs that ranged from Happy Birthday to The Weight.
Croskerry lives and performs in Los Angeles these days. “Being in quarantine in a city with 4 million people within 4 square miles didn’t sound appealing,” he told me Monday, again via Facebook.
So two weeks ago the Bedford-born musician flew home to Glen Haven where he’s been self-isolating ever since.
The video he posted Monday was more than two-and-a-half hours long, which would have even impressed his grandfather, Jack Bone, the fabled piano player at The Split Crow Pub in downtown Halifax during the late-70s-early-80s.
Not everybody who joins the kitchen party is like that, said Thomson. Proficiency isn’t really the point, anyway.
Music brings people together, she says. When the videos are streamed into nursing homes and long-term care facilities throughout the province where residents aren’t able to see friends and families the old songs are company. They make people feel less alone.
Log on and have a look, you’ll see what she means.
