Day 342…
CNN, this morning, has a story about President Biden’s daily routine.
It is a quiet enough news day, that talking about the fact that he likes to have fires in the Oval Office fireplace, hang out in there with the dogs and retire to the residence early seemed worth reporting.
He took his first trip as President aboard Air Force One and according to the article, read a newspaper for most of the way. When asked about it, he said, “It’s a great honor, but I didn’t think about it, to tell you the truth.”
It’s all a bit… boring.
In the midst of crisis, time flies by. Without bombs falling all around us, which is what the last few months have felt like, we are now, sitting in the silent and smoldering ruins wondering what to do next. Around us, some of what we thought was solid is now just rubble but some of it is just a bit cracked and in need of a new paint job. It is, however, a mess.
The loud and dramatic wave of war has seemingly passed over us and in its wake our government is knuckling down to the hard and largely silent work of actual governance. Now that we can, it falls upon us to consider how we are going to move forward with our lives. The temptation to just abdicate responsibility and check out comes at us in a constant and persistent mutter from one of the devils that have made our shoulders their home these last months.
In an article in Psychology Today titled, ‘Is Peace Boring?’, a doctor points out that it is far easier to bomb a building than it is to build one. Building one takes time, moves slowly, require a lot of effort and is, well, largely dull.
Construction of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, which sits a few blocks north of us on Amsterdam Avenue was begun in 1892. It’s still not done. Despite that, it was consecrated in 1911 and is fully operational.
After work had started and parts of it were complete, the church changed the original Byzantine revival plans to a Gothic Revival design. Because of budget shortfalls, though, there was a work stoppage, and the nave was not completed until 1941. Since then, more budget problems and a lack of qualified craftspeople have continued to delay its progress.
In the 1980’s an English Master Stone Mason was hired with the aim of completing the two western towers. A kind of school was opened that taught neighborhood kids the skill of stone masonry and gave them jobs. I remember, at the time, that there was a gift shop where they could sell their practice work - gargoyles and other decorations.
The work on the towers was meant to be completed by 2000 but by the early 1990’s, money had run out and the stone yard was closed. Some progress had been made on one of the towers, but that was it.
In 2001 a large fire damaged much of the building and the next few years were spent renovating and restoring it. Another fire in 2019 broke out in the crypt and destroyed or damaged much of the artwork being stored in there. The clean-up from that still continues.
Up in the top of the tower that’s there, firefighters who battled the 2001 blaze used their fingers to draw their names in the soot that had covered the windows. Later that year, some of them perished at the World Trade Center during 9/11. In their honor, the church decided to preserve the windows as they are, soot and all, with the names enshrined there forever.
La Sagrada Familia, the spectacular cathedral in Barcelona designed by Antoni Gaudi has, itself, been under construction since 1882. It, too, has suffered a multitude of delays and obstacles. Currently, it is hoped that construction of the steeples and the large majority of the building’s structure will be completed by 2026, the centennial anniversary of Gaudi’s death. The finishing touches should be in place by 2032.
I visited the cathedral about fifteen years ago and it was truly remarkable. It was not yet consecrated, that wouldn’t happen until 2010, but being able to walk through it and see what was being created was awe inspiring.
The push to complete La Sagrada Familia is concerted and definite. Funding for its completion is coming in from tourists who pay to visit it. At the moment, there isn’t a similar push behind the completion of St. John the Divine and its date of completion remains uncertain.
We are going to need a push to reconstruct our pre-pandemic lives. They won’t just start up again as quickly as they shut down. The bomb detonated - now we have to rebuild.
This weekend, a new state initiative called NY PopUps is going to start presenting 300 free performances over 100 days throughout the city. To prevent crowding, nothing will be announced beforehand - not what or when or where. The Governor has promised that there will be people like Hugh Jackman, Sarah Jessica Parker and Mandy Patinkin involved. The program is designed both to employ New York arts workers but also to begin to pave the way for more traditional and established venues to begin to reopen.
It is unlikely that anything on Broadway will reopen before September. If, as the federal government is promising, the majority of Americans could be vaccinated by midsummer, then that might actually happen. That doesn’t mean, however, that smaller venues couldn’t begin to open before that. Broadway relies on tourists, but not-for-profit Off-Broadway shows appeal more to New Yorkers. We are here. We are ready to watch some theatre in no matter how eccentric the venue.
It seems to me that the easiest actual theatre to reopen will be the open-air Delacorte Theatre in Central Park. I don’t know what the Public Theatre is planning, but a full summer season of Shakespeare in the Park would be an amazing way to lead us back to our full return.
As I was writing this, I was on the phone for a large part of the morning. As a result, I now have a vaccine appointment at the Javits Center here in the city at the end of next month. I canceled the one that I made up in Syracuse. For those in the city who are looking to schedule one of their own, I called 833-697-4829, put the phone on speaker and just waited. There are continual cancellations, and I was allowed to wait on hold in fifteen-minute chunks of time, while the extremely helpful person on the other end waited for one to pop up. After about only 30 minutes one did, and I had my slot.
I may be back at work before that, but, then again, all scheduling remains in total flux these days so I’m not counting on it.
Neither the Cathedral of St. John the Divine nor La Sagrada Familia are fully operational but that hasn’t stopped them from being open. Their being incomplete even with construction underway in Barcelona is part of their stories.
These next few months will see the beginning of our slow march forward towards reopening. There will, of course, be obstacles, setbacks and delays. What we end up with probably will not match what we had, but whatever it is, it will work.
Neither cathedral is ultimately going to look exactly as their original designers intended them to look, but, eventually, they will be completed, and they will function. People will forget that anything else was ever planned. Same with the theatrical industry. Some of it will be the same and some of it will, by necessity, be new.
The only reason that we are going to be able to make this initial push forward now is because the drama surrounding our lives has momentarily been somewhat dissipated. The work ahead is largely unnewsworthy and, for that, we have to be grateful. Time may not pass as quickly, but it will certainly pass more productively. The vaccine is probably the key to us getting anywhere and being able to stay there.
Embrace the lull, however stultifying, because it means that the real work is underway.
Now is likely a good time to get that big project done because once things start, we aren’t going to have this time. This break may seem endless now, but it isn’t.
As Sam says to Frodo when he is in deep despair in the middle of The Lord of the Rings, “How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.”
It may still be night, but it feels like we might be at that dark moment just before the first light of dawn appears on the horizon. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, but if I’m right, when it starts, it’s liable to come quickly.
Along the lines of outdoor theater, Ben and I took a drive to Sarasota yesterday to visit the Ringling Art Museum. But before we made our way in there Ben made his way into the Asolo Theatre which was not yet open. He managed to find a lovely young lady and got the skinny on two upcoming Productions. They have built an outdoor Theater there. The stage is at the top of the steps of the entrance into the theater building. They have rigged extensive stage lighting outside as well as building a tower where I would imagine the production crew will sit and do their thing. LOL... I'm just now realizing how inept I am with theater jargon and knowing who does what and where! Anyway, today we got 2 tix for Camelot in March. If they have to cancel due to inclement weather, we'll be able to reschedule. We are so looking forward to seeing a theatrical production in any form!
❤️I am envisioning you as Stage Manager of NY Pop Ups..... Happy Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, King Cakes...35 till Spring....🌸🤴🌼