Photo by Jim Wright
Greetings from Groundhog Day. There are some benefits to this quarantine life, assuming we and our loved ones stay healthy. This definitely has raised the bar for me since I find that out of simple mental health necessity, I have been the most disciplined I’ve ever been; in working out, in meditation, doing chores, trying to be present. Every day has its ups and downs but I can easily say the thing I’m most grateful for is all the time I’ve been given back with my 4-year-old daughter, time she would have been in school or I would have been away. Luckily I also get along very well with my wife. Getting along with your spouse seems to be a hot commodity these days. She’s the coolest gal I know and is a lover of post-apocalyptic books and films, so I feel like she’s been secretly prepared for this sort of situation and even thrives in it. I have reluctantly rediscovered my appreciation for simple housework, cleaning toilets and mopping. I got a blister from vacuuming on my guitar-chording hand. Not to worry. I love making beds and doing laundry and all the home cooking has been a treat. I try to make a meditation out of everything, from jumping rope to doing the dishes. It’s a strange existence in 2020. But there is a calming simplicity to it if you can find your rhythm. I really enjoy playing my guitar and singing songs via livestream for anyone who cares to listen. I pray for the people on the front lines and wish recovery to all the sick.
Some good news, my new song “The World” is out today. Although I previewed the song acoustically during one of my Instagram livestreams recently, the official studio recording (cut with Jackson Phillips at his house at the beginning of February) is now available with an accompanying video filled with faded images of my family that line a long narrow corridor that I pass through daily. I see the faces of people I love and younger images of them and myself. During this odd moment in time I have the choice to celebrate it or get mired in too heavy a nostalgia. Lately I’ve just been feeling appreciation. “The World” is a simple meditation on the fact that you gotta take the good with the bad. This world is filled with so much beauty and so much pain and things that work out perfectly and horrors that seem to make no sense at all. I had written this song a short time ago and was sitting on it, and then it resonated strongly with me after the Kobe Bryant tragedy. Then the COVID. And so this is the state that we find ourselves in today. 2020. The state of the world. But really these dramas, larger and smaller, have been playing out on Earth for a long, long time. Yes, the world is a beautiful place, even though I don’t like it sometimes. Keep on keepin’ on, or as some of my Texas friends like to say, just keep livin’. This too shall pass. And when it does, that will be yet another adjustment in itself.
— Peter Joseph Yorn, Palm Desert, California, April 17, 2020
