麻豆社

When a shock wave hits the world, how do artists respond? Public performance has all but halted, silence and solitude reigns in our performance spaces and places. But the virus cannot kill creativity. In a new five-part series, artists chronicle how they have responded to the crisis and the challenge of performance. Dare they dream and imagine what work might emerge out of the pandemic?

For Cornelius Eady, a leading Black American poet, playwright and musician, the virus struck just as he was about to go into a studio at Nashville to record with his regular music collaborators Lisa Liu and Charlie Rauh. By mid March the three were separated by the gulf of Covid 19, all gigs cancelled, a fearful city surging with infections. Eady had survived prostate cancer, had clapped and watched as the first-responders made their way to Ground Zero on 9/11, but now life was atomised, the enemy was unseen. What began as an attempt just to stave off the panic and worry gradually coalesced over the weeks and months into a pandemic folk song project, 'Don't Get Dead'. The three had to learn to collaborate remotely whilst Eady's work has had to encompass not just a pandemic but the impact of Trump's policies and upheaval of Black Lives Matter. Looking back now on his earliest songs in the spring of the pandemic feels almost like a different age for Cornelius as his project expanded to embrace the spiralling chaos and disaster. His latest song celebrates the actions of Officer Eugene Goodman during the mob insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. As he anxiously awaits the vaccine, he and his collaborators hone their latest song whilst reflecting on a terrible year and the possibilities ahead.

Producer: Mark Burman