Every night at 8 PM, whatever I’m doing is disrupted by the sound of applause from outside my window. People clapping, cheering, whistling, and sometimes even banging pots and pans together. This of course is accompanied by the visual effect of dining room lights being flashed on and off in rapid succession, flashlights bouncing all over buildings, and the occasional firework getting detonated in the distance. This is Barcelona. This… is lockdown.
Incidentally, “Livin’ in Lockdown” is the name of my British roommate and I’s streaming channel, which we’ve been using to stream video games. The first game we streamed was Mario Maker, which was my way of giving a special shoutout to Italy, who has things more fucked up than they are in Spain, if that’s even possible. But boredom breeds creativity, and some of the videos of balcony “concerts” that Italian DJ’s are doing is almost worth the entire price of this quarantine situation. I’m kidding of course, this blows. But it’s honestly a great opportunity to create.
As you may already know, I launched my Youtube channel, Explicit Explorers, earlier this week. Episode One, about the Tomatina festival in Spain, was the first long video I ever edited, and I did a pretty fucking good job if I’m being honest. It was the perfect storm: great footage, and a completely insane event, which made my job editing much easier. It was a long path getting to this point: La Tomatina was last August; I’d been sitting on that footage for awhile. I got a new computer for Christmas, and procured a totally-not-hacked version of Final Cut Pro X in January.
I spent a little over a month editing the vid. The real challenge was how to cut more than an hour of footage I loved down into just ten minutes.
The real test now is going to be the turnover rate on future episodes of Explicit Explorers; I’ll have no more than a week to edit each, as the goal will be releasing a new video every Sunday. Subscribe to the channel if you want the reminder. Otherwise just check the channel on Sundays for new episodes. Like the John Oliver show!
I just looked at a calendar and realized there’s 17 more days of lockdown in Spain. Fuck my ass.
It’s an odd style of living during these times. I generally leave the house once a day to do some grocery shopping. I’ve been frequenting the frutería downstairs, and a little chain store named Condis, which is always empty. Empty of people I mean, the store is well-stocked. The bigger grocery stores like Lidl and Mercadona have only been allowing like 10 people in the store at once. There’s always a big line outside these places, prompting me to walk by and smirk, wondering why these fuckheads don’t go to Condis.
During the Spanish lockdown, you’re not supposed to be out at all unless you’re grocery shopping, and even then you might get stopped by the po-po and you’d have to show them your receipt, or you could “theoretically” get fined. Only other reasons to be out are for work–if you still have a job–and to go to the bank or a bakery.
Aside from that, and the rousing applause every night, and the occasional person blasting Slayer and Rammstein from their balconies at noon, the lockdown ain’t no thang. It’s an opportunity. For introspection. For creation. For fun. We all need to remember that as we go through quarantine in our respective countries. We will likely never have another pandemic again. We may never have this opportunity again. How are we going to spend it? Killing time? Or learning/teaching/creating an art? The decision is yours.
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