Another week into this Pandemic, another week of Zooming. There’s talk another, bigger, company’s tech will take over, but I suspect this collective box experience will still be called a Zoom. In any case, many happened this last week. Tuesday was Cinco de Mayo, and in celebration we had a bartender guest, Tony Delpino, and an Ask the Bartender session. We started with the history and joys of the the agave plant, the tequila and mezcal. We fast progressed to cocktails in general, preferred mixers, and of course the do-it-yourself adventures we were all enjoying in our at home efforts. My big aha moment was that we can make a pretty mean Old Fashioned with mezcal. That might be my new go-to fancy drink. Tony also just launched his own company producing a sort of egg nog with a kick, called coquito, which he of course calls Coquito Shop. One of our regulars became an instant customer.
This week we also had a couple PareaGrooves, a Thursday Happy Hour and a Saturday Hang, populated with both our regulars and some newbies. We get a lot of “maybes” on the Facebook invites, most of whom don’t come. This to me is fine as the point is for them to know there’s a place to go. However, as competing party Zooms proliferate this isn’t such an issue as it was when we began a month and half ago. Interestingly, one redeeming advantage of the Pandemic was a reduction of FOMO (“fear of missing out”) as parties were no longer happening. But now with all the Zooms FOMO has reared it’s unfriendly head.
The week was most notable to me with the several art-y Zooms I enjoyed. On Thursday the Theater of War production company did a Zoom performance of “Oedipus the King,” which, though written by Sophocles in 429 BC, was an appropriate choice. It was written just after Athens suffered three years of a devastating pestilence, and is set in Thebes, mid- plague and run by a narcissistic pissy king. It starred Oscar Isaac who, in addition to being a movie star, is an amazing classical actor, and boy did he tear it up in this. He costarred with John Turturro, Frances McDormand and Jeremy Wright, all amazing actors who gave stellar performances. To watch them act out of their Zoom boxes, alternating between the Gallery and Speaker views, was fantastic. It gave me hope for theater, it won’t go away, it will find a way.
I also attended another Zoom acting class, this one I joined because it had a guest coach from the UK who taught speech to the Royal Shakespeare Company. I got to sit in my living room and run the exercises with this gentleman working from London, along with fellow classmates Zooming in from all over the country and the world. The regular teacher took over after the guest and ran scenes and monologues with his students, and as an observer I got as much out of it as if the class were live. Incredible, how quickly art and education has adapted.
I also enjoyed another private Zoom-boxed concert in a regular weekly series, with young talented classical musicians taking turns playing exquisitely from their apartments in their shorts and flip-flops. As the weeks go on in this series the comfort level with the medium has increased for both the performers and the audiences, and in these moments we are collectively, live, enjoying art in the moment.
I also passed through a Zoom meditation, taught from Boston, where we all sat in our Zoom rooms with our eyes closed, a Zoom yoga, taught from New Mexico and a Zoom talk on where our economy is going.
We are starting to open slowly, NY probably slower than most. However, despite this I suspect these Zooming efforts will continue, and I suspect PareaGroove will as well.
