About three weeks into Wisconsin’s "Safer At Home" order I started to feel sick. Real sick. Then I got a fever. And a serious headache. I panicked. My wife got practical. I was quarantined into the basement. No contact with the kids or her other than a tray for food delivered to the top of the stairs. The fever and headache continued for three days. My neighbor is a doctor and she checked in on me from time to time.
Then it lifted, as fast as it came.
Then the worst part started – quarantined for another seven days but not feeling sick. I was bored and restless and annoyed.
I have messed around in the past year and a half with playing drone synths. I have five of them. They are strange and hard to play and often sound like that noise you hear when a truck passes you on the highway – just longer and louder. They happen to all be on a card table in my basement.
Yes, that same basement.
I got out a notebook, plugged them all in, and got serious. It was thrilling. But then a structure emerged, like the sound of an earthquake just seconds before our ear grasps the sound. By the end of the seven days I had an outline of an album. I am now spending a few nights a week recording and editing it.
For many, the pain and suffering isn’t done yet. But this pandemic has taught me I can be creative and focused and true to a vision. And sooner rather than later I hope to share my album with my friends and family, in person.
–Charles