Some thoughts about the arts. Treading carefully. Moon shots. And women’s issues.

Yesterday evening we watched Richard Thompson broadcasting live from his home in America, largely publicising his newly recorded album but also giving himself a chance to perform. It was funny to watch him setting up as he went “live” a few minutes before he started his performance. Views of the cushions on his sofa and occasional glimpses of the musician himself wandering to and fro, presumably making sure all the equipment he needed was in place. His new album is available to download but not yet in actual pick-up-and-buy-from-a-shop form. As he said, the places that produce CDs and vinyl records are not het back up and running.

In fact there’s a whole host of people employed by the arts industry suffering at the moment. Richard Thompson has said before now that he is fine, missing live performing and touring, but fine, and financially secure. It’s the up and coming performers who are missing out. And this applies across the arts. But it’s not just the artists of whatever kind they might be. It’s the whole range of support staff: the sound and lighting engineers, the people who organise travel and transport musicians and their equipment from place to place, the scene shifters, the front of house teams, the people who run the gift shops and cafes and restaurants in all the theatres and concert halls and the cleaners who keep it all sparkling. And money has now been made available but will it be enough?

And surely, if pubs and restaurants can be opened, there must be a way to manage theatres. They still need to work out how orchestras can manage to play together on stage again but there must be a way to sort it out. As for pop music concerts, well, that will need some serious thinking about. But just think how impoverished our lives would be if the music stopped now!

There is talk of open air theatre for the summer but pantomimes are unlikely to be around next Christmas. Think of all those little kids yelling “Look behind you!” at the top of their possibly germ-spreading lungs!

Don’t get me started on libraries and swimming pools. We need our children to be able to wander the bookshelves freely again and to learn to swim. Otherwise we’ll have a deprived generation.

However, we need to tread very careful as we work our way through opening our countries up again. I read that new local lockdown restrictions have had to be imposed in parts of Galicia and Catalonia in Spain. The new normal is not going to be an easy thing to establish.

But, to cheer us up, here is a photo I found in one of the newspapers online of the Rande Bridge in Vigo with a supermoon trapped in its cables.

And here’s an odd things that seems to have come put of lockdown and working from home. According to this article a whole lot of women have been going on about the freedom of not wearing a bra. Really!? Why? Is female underwear such an imposition? And today Gap sent me an advert for comfortable sports bras. Have I been missing put on a feminist issue here. I really though that bra-burning as part of women’s liberation was a thing of the past. If your bra is uncomfortable it’s probably because you are wearing the wrong size! And yet I have heard stand-up comedians (female ones) go on about it too. It’s odd but I have yet to hear a male stand-up comedian rant about having to wear Y-fronts!

And then there is this:-

“A museum in the United States has vowed to continue displaying the car from the Dukes of Hazzard television show that had the Confederate battle flag painted on its roof. The Dodge Charger car, known as the General Lee after the head of the southern forces during America’s civil war, is in the Volo Auto Museum about 50 miles (80km) north-west of Chicago.
But despite the toppling of Confederate-era statues around the country since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the museum’s owners have said the car that featured in the first season of the show “isn’t going anywhere”.”

Well, it seems that they have not had complaints or protests so far but I’me prepared to bet that now attention has been drawn to it, there might well be some raised voices!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!