The other day I was listening to a live stream conversation between four very famous conductors discussing the future of live music in a mid/post Covid-19 world. These were some of the most powerful people in classical music, wildly successful titans in the arts, and surely they would have fancier crystal balls than those of us in the rank and file.  Will we start back playing live concerts in September? Will we be able to salvage our 20/21 concert seasons? Will orchestras still tour and engage international guest artists? I sat back and listened, confident that by the end of the hour they would reveal the answers to these questions, allowing me to go ahead and plan my life accordingly.  I, like all of us, am tired of this rollercoaster—it’s slow and not very fun and I’m ready to get off.

As a cellist, I’ve come to rely on playing concerts not only as my primary source of income, but also as a bulwark against insanity. I’ve managed to walk through some pretty tough things successfully because the one place I could always go and be still and centered in the midst of pain and loss was “work”.  I know, I realize that sounds insane. Who feels that way about their job? But to me, there is no more healing place on the planet than in a chair on a stage, surrounded by 80 other souls holding their “lovies”(their instruments), collectively speaking yet ANOTHER soul’s (the composer)’s deepest, darkest secrets.  (Incidentally, that is what most music is.  It’s the stuff so deep and dark and sometimes hideously true that it can’t be spoken.  Things can be too beautiful and too terrible to be said out loud, but the same things can be expressed “in code”–with sound.)   It’s magical actually. And it is my personal belief that it is also God. But beyond being a sacred experience for me, it also serves a practical purpose. It keeps my hands, eyes, ears and soul happily contented, distracting them from the unproductive mischief they might indulge in otherwise. You know what they say—idle hands do the devil’s work? So in many regards, society is safer when I am playing cello because it keeps me off the streets and out of my own head. Music is “essential” to me and my well-being, and thereby indirectly essential to everyone around me.  I cite every August as evidence of that. Every summer, usually in August, symphony orchestras “go dark”, which means they take a break from performing concerts.  I predictably end up having a conversation with my close friend, who is also a musician, about why I’m feeling “off”.  This conversation inevitably arrives at the fact that “it’s August and you get this way every August, Chrissy”.   Well, I’m here to tell you, this has been the longest August of my life.

Back to the conductor conversation. It was fascinating. Turns out there are no adults in the room and we’ve all been left home alone without a babysitter. These people were as scared and without insight as I was. All the talent in the world could not give these people any more answers than I already had. While I was comforted by the fact that we are indeed all in the same boat, it was also alarming to hear that they had no bloody idea what was coming down the pike either. How will the arts survive? Will we be forgotten or deemed unnecessary as the world emerges from this? Will Chrissy have to resort to a life of crime?

One of the conductors must have been reading my mind, because he offered the following thought:

“(Musicians and artists) ARE essential workers. We are the garbage collectors of the soul.”

Yes. Yes. Yes. I knew it. This was what I came for.  The comforting words I had hoped to hear.

Think of it this way—I have insanely high cholesterol. It’s been steadily going up for the last 10 years. A year ago, after reading my lab results, my doctor said “I have never seen cholesterol this high”, and I now take statin drugs that have brought my numbers into the normal range. For those of you who are curious, at its highest, my total cholesterol was 393. Yeah. That’s stoke/heart attack territory. The “good news” is that my “good cholesterol” is also high, which is why we didn’t treat it for a long time, as I have other mitigating factors that lower my heart disease risk (non-smoker, female, healthy weight and blood pressure). What I learned in this whole journey is that “good cholesterol”, the HDL, acts as a garbage collector for the bad cholesterol, the LDL. It scoops up the bad stuff and takes it to the liver so it can be flushed out of the body. My “good cholesterol” was a garbage collector that kept me alive all these years. It protected me. But the one thing the “good cholesterol” cannot do is eliminate the bad cholesterol. It cannot make it go away. It can only follow behind and clean it up. Kind of like I do my kids…

Art, music, dance—–they protect us. They allow us to process the pain and joy that we ourselves may not have the vocabulary to express, so that we can be healthy, so that we can move forward. Bad things happen. Grief happens. Loss happens. We can’t prevent life from unfolding in all its chaos and mercurial ways. And sadly, there is no way to fully insulate ourselves from the brutalities of the human experience. But “art” is our HDL, it Helps (us) Digest Life. It cleanses us, sweeps through us, flushing out our psyches and restoring us to functionality. It holds our hand and takes us on the emotional journey that we desperately need but don’t always know how to start. And it reminds us that no matter how misunderstood we may feel, we are not unknowable.

Artists and musicians, we are in the emotional sanitation business.  We haul away the pain with our bows and our breath and our bodies.  What could possibly be more “essential”?  It may take some time to sort it all out,  and it may not look like it once did. But garbage always piles up if you don’t take it out, and when it does, we will be there, ready to dance and play and sing and restore you.  And restore ourselves in the process.