How I Spent My Pandemic: Recent Episodes
John Seven
COVID-19 is one of the most sweeping shared disruptions in modern America. Whether you're terrified of the virus or refuse to wear a mask, your life has probably felt its impact. Author and journalist John Seven uncovers people’s personal stories about how they cope with the pandemic and lockdown. Uncertainty might reign but clarity can be found in the lives of real people when you leave the headlines and political agendas behind and ask people to talk about their own experiences in the pandemic.
johnseven.substack.com
Sheri Nault is an artist and activist in Canada. They’re of mixed Métis and European descent and very active in the Indigenous Two-Spirit community. Sheri speaks to John Seven about how they didn’t take the pandemic very seriously at first, but once they understood what was ahead worked to meet the challenges of continuing their creative work and activism in a form that was possible during a lockdown. How do you reach out while staying in?
Sheri Nault is an artist and activist in Canada. They’re of mixed Métis and European descent and very active in the Indigenous Two-Spirit community. Sheri speaks to John about how they didn’t take the pandemic very seriously at first, but once they understood what was ahead worked to meet the challenges of continuing their creative work and activism in a form that was possible during a lockdown. How do you reach out while staying in?
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnseven.substack.com/subscribe
A tribute to those we lost in 2020 - listen to it on Patreon or Mixcloud or the Almanack website.
Playlist:
1 Sean Connery - The Young Persons Guide to the Orchestra, op.34 - The Percussion
2 Trini Lopez - America
3 Mac Davis - Hey Monkey
4 Bent Fabric - pink elephant
5 Chad and Jeremy - Paxton Quigley’s Had the Course
6 Vera Lynn - The Fool on the Hill
7 Johnny Mandel - Harper
8 Annie Ross - Country Pie
9 The Emotions - Boss Love Maker
10 Viola Smith w/Frances Carroll & The Coquettes - Coquette/When I Swing My Stick/Jitterbug
11 Millie Small - White Boys
12 Bucky Pizarelli - Night Rider
13 Rush - Summertime Blues
14 Bay City Rollers - Mama Li
15 The Sweet - Teenage Rampage
16 The Stranglers - English Towns
17 Kraftwerk - The Model
18 Rupert Hine - The Curious Kind
19 Juliette Greco - Mon homme
20 Zizi Jeanmarie - Bloody Jack
21 Terry Jones - Forgive Me
22 Honor Blackman - I Wouldnt Walk Across The Street
23 Diana Rigg and Martin Vidnovic - Ooh La La (From Colette Collage)
24 Bonnie Pointer - Heaven Must Have Sent You
25 Helen Reddy - Hit the Road, Jack
26 Tami Lynn - Mojo Hannah
27 Betty Wright - Baby Sitter
28 Carl Mann - Im Walking The Dog
29 Ricky Valance - Dont Play Number Nine
30 Ennio Morricone - Splash
31 The New Vaudeville Band - I Was Lord Kitchener’s Valet
32 Edd “Kookie” Byrnes - You’re The Top
33 Emitt Rhodes - With My Face On The Floor
34 Little Richard - Brown Sugar
35 Was Not Was - Its An Attack
36 Lenny and the Squigtones - (If Only I Had Listened To) Mama
37 Billy Joe Shaver - I Been to Georgia on a Fast Train
38 Kenny and the First Edition - Tulsa Turnaround
39 Charley Pride - Mr. Joe Henrys Happy Hand-Clappin’ Open Air Rhythm Band
40 Kirk Douglas - And The Moon Grew Brighter And Brighter
41 Statler Brothers - Ruthless
42 Jerry Jeff Walker - Gertrude
43 KT Oslin - [Ill See You In] Cuba
44 Hal Sings 'The Fatal Glass Of Beer' While Ralph Honks
45 Ursula 1000 feat. Cristina - Urgent Anxious
46 Diane di Prima feat. CAZO - The Fire is Central
47 Ian Holm - Plague Lives
48 Psychic TV - Farewell
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnseven.substack.com/subscribe
Brian Walker is a singer/songwriter in Philadephia who performs as A Day Without Love. He’s also the host of the podcast Dreams Not Memes. Brian speaks to John Seven about his approach to living through lockdown, an outlook that taught him just because the world seemed to come to a halt that didn’t mean his own creative abilities had to do the same.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnseven.substack.com/subscribe
Want to fill your Christmas with seasonal music you haven't heard a million times?
Then here's the surprise Musical Thingarium 2020 Christmas party. Surprise! It's here.
Also here if you prefer.
Plus you can follow these links to previous Christmas Thingariums:
2016
2017 Part 1
2017 Part 2
2019
PLUS the 2016 This But Not This radio show Christmas edition
More Christmas music than you can safely handle!
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnseven.substack.com/subscribe
Whit Taylor is an Ignatz Award-winning cartoonist and contributing editor at The Nib, but in 2020 she added another role to her repertoire — mother. John Seven talks with Whit Taylor about her experience of not only giving birth during the original height of the pandemic in the spring, but how raising a newborn during the pandemic has been very different from what we think of as normal, and has also presented challenges to her creative life.
Here in the west, the exact pandemic situation in Russia isn’t always clear, but Angelina Lucento, assistant professor of history and art history at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow, has had a ringside seat to the response in her city as well as Ukraine, where Lucento was on a research trip when the pandemic began. Lucento got much closer to COVID-19 than she ever expected and she talks to John Seven about that experience and more, offering insight into the pandemic response in Moscow.
HISMP Ep 7 - Angelina Lucento.mp3
Here in the west, the exact pandemic situation in Russia isn’t always clear, but Angelina Lucento, assistant professor of history and art history at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow, has had a ringside seat to the response in her city as well as Ukraine, where Lucento was on a research trip when the pandemic began. Lucento got much closer to COVID-19 than she ever expected and she talks to John Seven about that experience and more, offering insight to pandemic response in Moscow.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnseven.substack.com/subscribe
When filmmaker/videographer Joe Aidonidis saw the pandemic disrupt plans and obstruct opportunities, he pursued another course — continuing his work documenting the opioid crisis as it existed in his home in Berkshire County in Western Massachusetts. Making a documentary during the pandemic offered its own particular challenges and Aidonidis speaks to John Seven about jumping those hurdles and the state of life for people with an opioid addiction during COVID-19.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnseven.substack.com/subscribe
Master sommelier, beverage director for Chef Jose Andres’ ThinkFoodGroup, and connoisseur of metal Andy Myers had some pretty big plans for 2020, but when the pandemic hit and Washington D.C. went into lockdown, it became obvious that the year was not going to be what he thought. And so adjustments happened that ended up creating memories that were different from expected, but still special. Myers talks to John Seven about one memorable night in particular as well as working at Andres’ community kitchen during the pandemic and how he looks forward and into the uncertainty from ground zero in Trumpland.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnseven.substack.com/subscribe
When the pandemic hit and the writing was on the wall, cartoonist Joe Ollmann found himself trapped in his home in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. And that was pretty okay. The author of graphic novels like Mid-Life, Happy Stories About Well-Adjusted People, and The Abominable Mr. Seabrook talks to John Seven about working on his upcoming graphic novel during lockdown, bonding with his teenage son, and encounters with chatty Americans. Find Joe Ollmann online at wagpress.net.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnseven.substack.com/subscribe
Toronto-based filmmaker and artist Emily McMehen’s travel-based creative lifestyle had already been disrupted before the pandemic hit when she found herself struggling to rebuild after a brain injury. McMehen speaks to John Seven about how the work she had to do because of that injury and the restrictions of the lockdown combined together in unexpected, symbiotic ways. Find Emily McMehen online at cargocollective.com/emilymcmehen.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnseven.substack.com/subscribe
Author Ali Benjamin was as surprised as anyone when The Thing About Jellyfish, her 2015 novel for children, became a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the National Book Award. Five years later, she found herself contending with a pandemic while working on a novel for adults, juggling family life with concerns of getting her book done by the deadline, as well as facing new, unpredictable roadblocks to her political activism. In this episode, Benjamin talks about how she found a balance during an unprecedented worldwide event. Find Ali Benjamin online at alibenjamin.com.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnseven.substack.com/subscribe
Experimental musician Paul de Jong is known for his work as one-half of The Books, which presented de Jong’s compositional work and complex cello playing within an aural landscape of spoken audio collage and other sounds that nearly nine years after the band’s final album still stand as a body of work like no other. Since then, de Jong has released three solo records that take the aesthetic of The Books and expands on it into other often darker territories. In this episode, de Jong speaks with John Seven about how his creative life in many ways transitioned seamlessly into lockdown life during the pandemic, how he’s prepared his kids for circumstances just like these, and how he looks forward creatively into an unknown tomorrow. Find Paul de Jong online at dejongpaul.com.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnseven.substack.com/subscribe