Amid the bevy of opinions regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, the qualifier ‘unprecedented’ seems to be one of the few descriptors we’re all in agreement on. It appears that not a single sphere of modern life has evaded the reach of sweeping measures put in place to mitigate contagion and suffering. From the effects of broad economic shutdown on virtually every industry and the bravery of medical professionals still working on the front lines as I type, to a newfound appreciation for essential workers and many a stressed out IT guy trying to navigate small businesses as they grapple with going totally remote, our generation has certainly never seen something like this before—especially despite a perceived security afforded us by medical advancement’s ever-groundbreaking strides.
As with the rest of our society, creatives of every discipline have been impacted as well. Concerts are postponed and festivals pushed off another year, resulting in struggling times for musicians and artists who rely on performances and trade shows to make their living. Film sets are shut down, studio doors are locked, and classrooms have all gone the way of Zoom. Couple this with the fact that many creatives also make ends meet in the service industry, closed restaurants, bars, and stores make for arid bank accounts. But while the struggle is verifiably real, artists are familiar with adapting to and creating from adversity. Creators are the storytellers of every discipline, and COVID-19 is one heck of a story.
In an attempt to map such effects, I reached out to a couple local creatives to share their stories. Though each of them create via different mediums and disciplines, I was pleasantly surprised to find a common theme threading throughout each of their contributions. One would be hard-pressed to deny that this global pandemic is all-encompassing, and yet the formidable circumstance that cleared schedules, cut funds, and laid people off has created a new sort of focus. Which of us hasn’t asserted that, if we just had more time or no day job, we’d spend all our energy on our creative work?
As you’ll read below, sometimes our creativity does rise to the occasion in the form of a new project that ties together a community or creates a legacy. Sometimes it’s a refamiliarization of one’s environment that kickstarts new-found inspiration. And sometimes it’s clearing off your desk of content in order to start turning spiritual thought into spiritual action.
At their core, these perspectives possess the same foundation: attention. In her essay Attention and Will, Simone Weil writes that “Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.” If you, like me, seem to possess the average American’s attention span proverbially matching that of a goldfish, you know successfully fixed attention is a grueling uphill battle. If a silver lining in this pandemic is even a slight restructuring to that end, surely it has the potential for profound spiritual implications as well as creative ones. Though it seems, for better and worse, we’ve been forced to slow down, we can trust that “for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).
As our chief Creator, we can trust Him.
Moriah Spencer: Artist, Writer
Quarantine has allowed me to be more inspired. Before COVID, I was busy (like most of us are) and would ignore my surroundings. I was so focused on what I had to do that I missed out on encouraging creativity by what's around me. Since life has slowed down, I find myself more available and engaged with my environment. I admire the flowers in my garden, look at pictures in my house, or rearrange my trinkets in my room.
Essentially, I am more aware of what is around me and the beauty I have access to, and then, use it. I have concluded that when I am open to what is going on in my environment, I am more apt to react to it. As a result, my response to quarantine has been to create by exploring your tiny part of this earth that you live in. Engage in your world and it will engage your creativity.
Chris Evan Carter: Mathematician & Writer
No doubt the manner of our current circumstance has raised the necessity of coping with the curse of living in interesting times. As I fought off the pangs of loneliness with physical labor, strength training, and writing, lockdown arrested my mind in order to realize what I would never have come to understand if the outbreak had been properly mitigated. True reflection, the kind which changes a man’s soul, must be exercised in complete clarity, so that the heart may be wrought and forged as iron is; Lord knows we are stubborn and misshapen beings, and a dose of heartbreak is often the medicine we need.
It is one thing to attempt reflection of our own volition; to read, to study, and to discuss the words of our Lord in an academic manner when He says, "I am the vine, and my Father is the keeper of the vineyard. He cuts off every branch in Me that bears no fruit, and every branch that does bear fruit, He prunes to make it even more fruitful." No doubt this is the work which must be done, but it is quite another thing to ponder and treasure these words organically, and another yet still to act upon the words, as He commands us to do. A strong and pure devotion to academic endeavors can be a great benefit to anyone, but more often, such devotion is a mere pattern of behavior which erroneously flaunts itself as fruitful pragmatism.
The ingestion of another book, or another sermon, or another podcast, has a way of coddling the mind to believe that it is engaging in real obedience. Too often I am rich in knowledge, but I must beg for holy living. Knowledge may be received in a multitude of ways, but the reception of holy living which often begins with sorrow. It is to the end of obedience to the Law of the Gospel that Jesus told us His sermons and his parables; the Word of God is not to be treated as a series of lectures whose intended audience is a consortium of academics, or a book club, or a Bible study. Rather, He did so with the lives of His people in mind, foreknowing that one day in the late spring, I would be working the farm, sheltering from the upheaval which has overtaken my nation, caught up in the mundaneness of my afternoon chores, and the gentle snip of the pruners at the stalks of some dead raspberry bushes would soothe my burdened mind to comprehend what it means to be a fruitful branch of the true Vine: that fruitful branches are pleasing to the Keeper of the vineyard, who delights in the gentle care and flourishing of His crops. He did this so that I would rest for a brief moment from my striving and begin to understand something of eternity, to the end that I would listen and obey Him.
Eli Hackett: Photographer & Engineer
My name is Eli, and I don't know anything about film photography. Well, almost nothing at least. I know how to dial in the settings on my Cannon AE-1, how to load and unload the film and to point it in the right direction. My love of film and photography as a whole is still very new, with only several months and a dozen or so rolls under my belt. This love for film is new, but is really just an extension of an older love of mine: the love of storytelling. I love to tell stories and I love to get myself into the kind of situations that make for good stories. It was an extended motorcycle trip around the country, the longest story I can tell (just ask anyone who's been the victim of its retelling) that really set me on this path. I had the adventure of a lifetime, but only my phone camera to document it. Some things are better told than seen but sometimes words just can't do sights justice.
In the middle of March of this year I found myself in what I knew would be a story someday; a story nearly every human on earth was going to have a part of. Covid-19 made it's entrance and the world seemed to slow to a halt. Not many events are felt by everyone on Earth. It seemed to me that however this all shook out, it would be a reference point in history. Things across the world will be considered relative to this moment in time. In thirty years people will likely talk about how it impacted them, how they graduated from highschool before 2020 or met their spouse after 2020. "You were born in 2020? What a year to be born."
That's when I saw someone post a picture to Instagram of a family they knew while on their morning run. The family was gathered on their front step keeping proper precautionary distancing. It struck me as both an opportunity to document an entire family at once and an opportunity to record a personal perspective of an event in world history. All across the world there were families and friends gathered in their homes and if no one took their photo it would only be a story of words. It was then that I had the idea to use my film camera to take pictures of families and roommates and individuals in front of the places where they lived during this time.
My inexperience would help me create the authentic and timeless look of that old family photo of your grandparents. The unceremonious, unedited, unskilled capture of people standing in front of a house. It couldn't feel contrived, because I'm not skilled enough to contrive it.
Beyond playing my own miniscule part in recording and documenting this time in history, I was able to give others a keepsake from this time and, during a time of everything they ever planned being cancelled, it gave people the ability to schedule something and to truly anticipate something for the first time in weeks.
The project seems to have come to a stand still for the time being. My camera developed a light leak that only grew worse as time went on. I opened the camera up with the intention of fixing it but life, as it often does, got in the way. I hope that the prints people received as part of this project live on, that in better times in the future they'll be a fond reminder of a weird time and not a painful reminder of the uncertainty we lived through.
Someday perhaps, someone's grand kid will say "I didn't know grandma and grandpa lived in that house." "Yeah this was their first house, where your aunt and I were born, I think this was in 2020." They'll flip it over to find the address and date, signed by some guy they've never heard of. A guy who couldn't have known much about photography.
Forefront is committed to fostering a robust conversation on the intersection of Christian faith and the arts by publishing a wide range of voices and opinions. The views expressed here reflect those of the author.
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