EDLINES

Let’s make the most of our enforced R&R.

The Editor finds he has nothing to do.

Idon’t have a lot of gaps in my life. Magazines don’t make themselves and expand to fill the time available, plus I’ve recently been working feverishly (though not, I should quickly clarify, with an actual temperature) on the Sydney hi-fi show which was to have taken place at the beginning of April — until it became clear that nothing of any magnitude was going to happen in April, not anywhere in the whole wide world.

It is, as we are all now saying on an hourly basis, what it is. I have no trouble working from home, much of it alone with the dog, while the missus works 12-hour shifts in essential veterinary services.

But as I came towards the end of work on this issue of Sound+Image, I encountered my first gap. This last Tuesday, I realised I didn’t have anything that really needed to be done. I could, if I chose, do nothing much that day. I walked the greyhound down to the local beach for the sunrise (still a good few people around, distancing reasonably well), and found myself walking more slowly than usual; I sat on a bench and watched the legally-separated surfers in the substantial swell; the greyhound even deigned to sit down by the bench and chill, for the first time ever, as if aware that we had entered a moment of mindfulness and rose-smelling and sunrise-watching. All was right with the world.

Except it wasn’t, of course; all was terribly wrong with the world, as the Fear TV News eagerly told me on our return. I made breakfast, during which I received an alert that fangradio, Neil Finn’s ad hoc streaming channel, was going live. I turned off the news to tune in via the Mixr app. He’s doing 30-60 minutes a day of requests and chat from his ‘bunker’ in LA (or from son Liam’s home studio nearby). This Tuesday he did a version of Taking the Rest of the Day Off, a song (and sentiment) I’ve always liked from his album One Nil. This selection seemed a cosmic coincidence confirming my previously-pondered path for the day. So I did.

And no TV, I decided. I spent the morning fighting the greyhound for couch space while streaming BBC radio documentaries. I lunched listening to Melvyn Bragg and panel discussing Laurence of Arabia and then, with a different panel, chaos theory, which I was excited to discover is no longer really considered chaos at all, just an unpredictable subset of complexity. In the afternoon I played some LPs recently passed to me at minimal cost from a friend packing up to leave our suburb for a new life up north. Which is a pity, as we enjoy a good beer together and he also likes his hi-fi. But at least I have three mint-condition early Elton John albums and a Fox compilation by which to remember him.

All this was played through kit under review for the wireless speaker group in this issue, but I had the time to focus on the songs rather than the working analysis of tones and test tracks and checking all the streaming options and file formats and tonal inconsistencies. Instead I could just let the music play.

I anticipate more such gaps in the months to come. You’ll likely face some too. They may come with anxiety about gaps in money as well as time, with fears for the future, and worse. It does occur to me, however, that our lives today have all too few such gaps, and that being homebound as we are, music and video entertainment will be of great solace to many of us. Even should the internet fail, I have my personal hoard of vinyl, of music files, of DVDs and Blu-rays stored in folders that will see me through many months. ‘See, all those discs you were keen for me to cull!’ I say triumphantly to the missus, as she gets up at 5am to drive through an empty Sydney for a 14-hour day saving animals while wearing full body protection. But tomorrow she’ll be home all day, and we can lazily binge Scandinoir drama all afternoon.

Crazy times (as we’re also all saying 10 times a day). Money, kids, isolation — there are many troubles facing many people; I wish you all the best possible during your enforced staycations. And of course positives are also emerging. Lower pollution. Helping one another more. Learning to slow down.

So when you do find yourself in a gap, try not to panic. Perhaps don’t turn on the telly either. Stay calm, and listen to vinyl. Or music documentaries on catch-up radio. Or podcasts and playlists and performances from all the artists that are putting out shows like Fangradio. And, of course, read magazines! If this is our ‘war’, let’s at least enjoy it when we can.

Cheers,

Jez Ford, Editor, Sound+Image