Post-Covid Creativity

Some bloom emerging from the gloom

It's been a long time comin'
It's goin' to be a long time gone
~Crosby, Stills and Nash

I saw some green shoots on 15th Street. Shoots in a tree bed that will become flowers in the next few days, weeks and months.

I saw cherry blossoms on trees on various city streets.

Spring is springing up.

And it’s bigger than the season.

Covid seems to be over. Or at least completely vaporized from the news cycle.

Growth is emerging from Winter.

It’s a good metaphor for what I’m hearing and seeing from people.

Green shoots from the Pandemic are now among us.

We had a few years of Winter. Not just months. Years.

And it changed us.

But I feel over the next months we’re going to start to see the “fruit” of the Pandemic.

What didn’t kill us made us stronger.

And more creative.

And certainly different.

And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
~Counting Crows

A few cases in point.

I recently watched “A Sort of Homecoming.” The new U2 documentary. (Yes, another U2 reference. Apologies.) But Bono and the Edge spent the better part of the Pandemic re-writing some of their songs, re-arranging them and writing some good new ones.

A friend of mine wrote a movie during the Pandemic and is now casting and will begin filming in May.

I spoke with another friend who let her business die and just started a new one.

Another friend gave up life in NYC for a new life in the Hudson Valley. (Not during the Pandemic, but right now.)

I just saw three new stores open up on 18th Street — a UPS store, a nail salon, and a bank — from what once was, until quite recently, a squalid graffiti-ed waste of space.

A few new restaurants popped up over on Sixth, too.

Personally, I went back to school and started learning about psychology, neurology and coaching.

And I just have this feeling, this inkling, this prediction that we will emerge from this Pandemic with a tsunami of creativity.

They say the darkest hour
Is right before the dawn
~Bob Dylan

And we will start seeing green shoots and blossoming everywhere.

Not just in the flower beds.

But in art, TV shows, music, film, products, services, technology…everything, everywhere.

An explosion of creativity that had been gestating during the Covid Winter.

We’re at the beginning…the emergence…the birth of the next new thing.

Little darlin', it's been a long, cold, lonely winter
Little darlin', it feels like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun, doo-doo-doo-doo
Here comes the sun, and I say
It's alright
~George Harrison

(photo: @geriwithetc, Twitter)