Over the past few months, art has of course been very different than it has been in the past, especially pertaining to performing artists. I think it has been so important to explore new ways to engage and create art. For me personally, I have been exploring ways to collaborate with other musicians with video recordings. In addition to music, I also really love acting, and have been working with other actors to perform via Zoom, as there is less dependency on timing for acting than there is for music. As far as engaging with art, I have found that I have been exposed to so many performances that I never could have seen otherwise, as things are being livestreamed and videotaped to be posted online. Having access to all this music, and all these wonderful performances has really inspired me as a musician.

Something that I consider to be powerful is the energy in area in the MacLaurin  Building where all the practice rooms are.  I find the sounds of everyone practicing as well as the general environment to be incredibly inspiring, and therefore powerful. I am in my first year at UVic, and I am sure that in past years, this sort of powerful energy has been even stronger, but even amidst social distancing protocols, I find that there is such power in students coming together in one place to learn and to simply make music. In fact, I think that the power is even stronger amidst COVID-19, as it is the power in perseverance.

While I haven’t been spending an incredibly large amount of time out in public settings recently, I have been noticing  dominant sounds that are consistently recurring, even in my own home. In this current climate where we are surrounded by technology in almost everything we do, I have noticed a tie between that and the sounds that are surrounding me. The two most dominant are the low buzzing hum of my refrigerator,  and the obnoxiously loud fan in my laptop. The sound of my laptop fan has a very fluttery sound, in which the sound is consistently flowing as long as my laptop is on, while my fridge produces a sort of low grumbly buzz which fluctuates in volume  and intensity. However, even though my laptop fan has a lighter sound, it is much louder than my fridge. While both of these sounds stem from electricity and have very technology-focused sounds,  they contrast in almost every way, and create a very interesting and almost harmonic blend of sounds.

I think that in a lot of ways, free time is something that we all take for granted. Especially recently, such as March and April a few months ago, it is something that so many people had, yet so many found it difficult to find productive ways to use it, myself included. I think that this is because when we simply have all this free time in front of us and nothing to do with it, it’s almost as if we have no free time at all, because it’s time that doesn’t mean anything. Sometimes we have to steal time in order to prioritize the things that are important, and for that free time to have meaning. Once our time has meaning, it will become productive.

Something that particularly stuck with me from the film was the concept of a “public living room”.  I think that so much of all art that we create relates to this concept, because as musicians, our job is to create music to be shared with public audiences. Creating art is one of the most personal things a person can do, as it is something that connects directly to our own ideas, even when we are performing works written by others. When we open ourselves up to be vulnerable and share music with a public audience, it is very similar to Laskey’s concept of his art gallery being a sort of public living room. For musicians, this living room could be a theatre, or a performance hall of sorts.