Cassandra Cammarata Photo
“Turns out this was a pretty big bite … but I’ll be bored when it’s done,” said Alex Burnet, singer and guitarist for Laundry Day, the Proud Flesh and others, of In This Day And Age, a solo EP he spontaneously decided to record over the past week. We spoke as Burnet was putting the finishing touches on his self-recorded and self-produced album, conceived of and put to tape entirely over the week since he was furloughed (of sorts) from his day job, cooking for Next Door on Humphrey Street.
Burnet was mulling over of the album’s artwork, one of the finishing touches, to be contributed by New London-based Illustrator Karli Hendrickson. He intimated that he was hoping, after the last few overcast mornings, that the album’s graphic design would feature a photo Burnet sees in his mind’s eye — himself, sun dappled, casually lounging around his apartment in splinters of morning light. But he was rubbing up against a self-imposed deadline and though we were just texting back and forth at the moment, he was about to head back into his home studio for what he hoped would be the last slog of instrumental tracking. He records with his phone on airplane mode, slinging up a prayer for enough silence from the pets and passing cars. We would talk again in a couple hours.
Burnet’s next text came an hour or so later. “I think I’m going to call it ‘I Wish I Had a Rubik’s Cube,’” it said.
The title struck me as a bit nostalgic and frighteningly timely. At once, the ultimate in endless distraction and dead-end frustration. Researched enough, the rules and underlying strategies could supposedly be learned pretty quickly, though there almost seemed to be a little cheating in that approach.
“Have you ever finished one before?” I asked Burnet.
“Nah, and I’m actually hoping I don’t have time to, I hope I don’t even have time to get around to buying one to try to finish it before this is all over.” Burnet dreamed aloud. “But I would like to have one.”
Burnet and artists of every ilk are trying to adapt to an invisible future. He seemed to be enjoying the quiet domestic routine he, his partner and his terrier have been sharing, but he knew it was tenuous and undergirded by an almost inconceivable explosion of pain and tragedy. The phrase “earth-shattering” came up more than once as we talked.
Speculation abounded. How might conditions change over the coming weeks? Bars, clubs, record stores, even DIY venues were all closed. But Burnet was confident about the farther future, “Music has been around since before the written word. Music is gonna be fine. Don’t worry about music,” he texted. But he was worried about the present, cutting in with a sobering side thought: “…then again if the internet goes out…”
It was a notion I hadn’t contemplated much until he mentioned it, and maybe it felt a tad far-fetched. But it was pretty clear — from both our conversations and experiences of the past week — that our social connections and any remaining income had only the tensile strength of the ethernet cables connecting our routers. Just about everything short of toilet paper, face masks and ventilators seemed to rely on the internet at the moment. Shows big and small were being broadcast over feed, no live audience needed. Albums were still selling for the fortunate, as fans did their best to preserve their uncertain income streams while supporting their favorite artists. Bandcamp made a buzz last Friday when the site waived its cut of album sales, in a nod to the needs of the artists that keep the site relevant. No media are as democratized and pervasive as those on which we currently rely; those media have never felt so indispensable.
Our conversations meandered from gratitude, to humor, to small silences that skimmed across the surface of fear as we tried to keep them from sinking under. These are uncertain times for all. Burnet went off the record sharing some ideas that he has had to slide to the back burner for the time being, with no music scene to speak of at the moment. In his need to keep those cards close to his chest, I couldn’t help but feel a distant confidence that eventually, he’ll play them. At some point we will all meet at a venue on the other side of all this.
