{"id":11324,"date":"2024-03-09T22:40:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-10T03:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/?p=11324"},"modified":"2024-03-10T08:57:38","modified_gmt":"2024-03-10T12:57:38","slug":"singing-after-covid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/2024\/03\/singing-after-covid\/","title":{"rendered":"Singing after COVID"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The annual Western Massachusetts Sacred Harp singing convention is being held this weekend. The organizers are requiring a same-day COVID test for all singers, and with that public health protocol in place I decided I felt safe going to sing today (but not Sunday when I have to be at church).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These Sacred Harp conventions are a bit of an endurance test. The singing starts at 9:30 or 10, and continues to 3:30 or 4 with an hour for lunch. It’s a whole-body immersive experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before COVID, the Western Massachusetts convention reportedly got as many as 400 singers. COVID seems to have reduced the numbers somewhat. Today, I did a rough count and came up with about 175 singers in the room at one time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only about a dozen of us were wearing masks. I had my N-95 mask on the whole time. I skipped the potluck lunch because it would have meant sitting at close quarters with more than a hundred other people for most of an hour with my mask off. The post-COVID world is all about calculating the odds, and determining what risk you’re willing to tolerate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I enjoyed singing in the morning. But after lunch, I realized to my surprise that I was beginning to feel a little bit anxious. It was no problem to control my anxiety. But after about an hour I had a further realization: controlling my anxiety was taking enough of my attention that it wasn’t as much fun to sing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I left early.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
What it looked like from the back row of the bass section<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The annual Western Massachusetts Sacred Harp singing convention is being held this weekend. The organizers are requiring a same-day COVID test for all singers, and with that public health protocol in place I decided I felt safe going to sing today (but not Sunday when I have to be at church). These Sacred Harp conventions … Continue reading “Singing after COVID”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[739,72],"class_list":["post-11324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musical-arts","tag-covid-19","tag-sacred-harp-singing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11324"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11326,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11324\/revisions\/11326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}