It started with the Italians, whose arias
rose from the balconies. They were on lockdown, but their voices rang out down
empty moonlit streets. Ballads, the national anthem, improvised ditties over
the barking of dogs.
Cellphone footage of the
singing went viral, offering hope amid the horror.
“Italians are like their
opera characters: when they suffer, they sing instead of crying,” one YouTube
viewer quipped.
As the coronavirus
traveled the globe, pictures of other music-makers emerged. A man playing an
accordion on his balcony in Hungary. A husband-wife duet on their balcony in
Brazil, breathing their prayers for humanity through a flute and a bassoon — woodwinds
for the weary. In New York City, a group of habited nuns singing “Lean On Me,”
a brunette on the end clanging two spoons in syncopation.
“Spoon Nun’s on my
apocalypse team,” one New Yorker tweeted.
In the face of a pandemic, people of every color and creed have
responded the same way: by adding to the beauty. They perched teddy bears in
windows, hung Christmas lights and colored driveways. They drew images that
felt like an antidote to all the masks and morgues: hearts, butterflies,
rainbows. They tried to tilt the scales of the universe with tempera paint and
sidewalk chalk.
Mo Willems, creator of the award-winning “Elephant & Piggie”
series of children’s books, offered Lunch Doodles, free online drawing lessons
for kids in quarantine.
“You might be isolated, but you’re not alone,” Mo wrote. “You are
an art-maker. Let’s make some together.”
Meanwhile, The Okee Dokee Brothers, a family-friendly,
Grammy-winning bluegrass duo, released an album early to help put a spring into
social distancing. The first track, “Hope Machine,” was written a year ago but
feels tailored to our strange new reality: “Plan what you can plan, dance when
you can-can. … Keep that hope machine running strong.”
“Songs go where they are needed,” said the guitarist Joe
Mailander. “Families need a hopeful message about getting up and trying to find
some light right now.”
Quarantine has been a productive time for the award-winning
artist Brother Mickey O’Neill McGrath, a 63-year-old Oblate of St. Francis de
Sales who has been drawing in the second-story studio of a rowhouse in Camden,
N.J.
“I haven’t spent so much time here in years,” he said.
The sought-after speaker had developed the habit of drawing a
faith-based coloring page and sharing it in his e-newsletter once a week. But
the pandemic has compelled him to do so on a daily basis.
The response has been overwhelming. Newsletter subscribers say it
is calming to color each image and reflect on its meaning. “You’re keeping me
sane,” one woman told Brother Mickey.
Brother Mickey understands the impact of an artistic ministry.
“When we’re in the presence of beauty, we’re in the presence of God, so we pray
best before beauty,” he said. “It goes to a place deeper than words.”
The Catholic Church
has always led with beauty, drawing people in by building the world’s greatest
cathedrals, using gold leaf and stained glass to convey majesty and mystery.
Historically, we were patrons of the arts and teachers of the faith — two
functions that were intricately connected. The coronavirus has given that old
approach new meaning.
Pope Francis expressed it
on Palm Sunday, offering a message for Holy Week that continues to resonate:
“This is what we need today: the creativity of love.”
The
words struck Brother Mickey, who lettered them in neon green against a crimson
red, drawing palm branches in the center.
“It’s a human drive to create and to bring joy,” he said. “That’s
how I see art. We’re co-creating with God.”
Capecchi writes from Inver Grove Heights, Minn.