It was like Bowie's 'Five Years' come to life

Looking back on the decade just past in the final Hot Press of 2019, I noted that a combination of factors - most prominent among them the international rise of the far right and the ongoing threat posed by climate change - had fed into a sense of collective unease as we moved towardo 2020.

Life being life, of course, the next disaster to confront us has happened quicker than anyone could have dreaded. It has also arrived somewhat from leftfield: a cluster of mysterious pneumonia, first acknowledged by the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control in China on December 31, has in less than three months become a global pandemic, wreaking unprecented social and economic havoc.

Those simple facts are, like much that has happened here in the past week, hard to assimilate. Less than a fortnight ago - it now feels like several months back - I was at The 1975's 3Arena gig, both to do a pre-show interview with singer Matty Healy and to review the concert. At that point, the most coronavirus intruded upon everyday conversation was as a sort of latent nusiance: perhaps a few events might be cancelled here or there as a precaution; perhaps some sporting occasions might be required to take place behind closed doors - far from ideal, but we'll manage.

Of course, the possible threats of Covid-19, to give the disease its swiftly adopted alias, were being hyped up in some corners of the media - but didn't they hype up everything? We'd ride out this one like we'd ridden out god-knows-how-many previous supposed threats to the social order.

Quickly Unfolded
Only this time, of course, it all came true. Among the many shocking elements of the Covid-19 saga to date has been how quickly it's all unfolded. As recently as last Monday week, I spent the evening watching Steven Soderbergh's 2011 medical disaster movie Contagion - I'd missed it at the time of its initial release, but there had been a widely noted spike in viewership since the coronavirus outbreak.

Retrospectively, the movie now looks like a masterpiece: the intense research that went into its making allowing it to chillingly anticipate virtually every facet of the current crisis, from the virus' origination in the Chinese meat trade, to its rapid spread across international borders, and the protocols adopted to try and limit its circulation (self-isolating, refraining from touching the face and shaking hands etc).

Last Wednesday, news of the mass cancellation of St. Patrick's Day parades inidcated concerts, sporting events and other mass gatherings were in the firing line. Still, the scale and speed of what occurred next were so severe as to leave most of us with heads still spinning.

From a personal standpoint, what I experienced from Thursday morning onwards played out like scenes from Contagion or a similar dystopian horror: the sudden prominence of facemasks around the streets of Dublin; the emergency address by the Taoiseach announcing an unprecedented two-week national shutdown; the social media hoaxes fanning hysteria; the panic-buying; the group of US interns saying goodbye as they leave to catch emergency flights; the widespread cancellation of entertainment events, culminating in the crisis editorial meeting.

Putting together a Lockdown Playlist for hotpress.com on Thursday afternoon, as the eerie organ started to rise on Scott Walker's 'Face On Breast' - possibly the scariest song I've ever heard - the clouds were darkening outside and, for a brief moment, it seemed like something unspeakable was around the corner.

Completing the effect, as I walked down to Heuston Station after work, the skies opened and it started to piss rain, prompting me to take cover under a Luas shelter. I couldn't help but think of David Bowie's end-times masterpiece 'Five Years', in which the narrator wanders the streets as society disintegrates around him ("And it was cold and it rained, so I felt like an actor / And I thought of Ma and I wanted to get back there...").

Apocalyptic Dread
The whole afternoon had induced in me a feeling of apocalyptic dread I hadn't experienced since 9/11, and which I honestly hoped I'd never encounter again in my lifetime. Over the weekend, I allowed myself some space - a sort of psychic Last Supper - not to read the news, knowing that over the next weeks and months, each batch of fresh headlines was going to be like a punch in the face.

Having braced myself as best possible, sure enough, come Monday, it was carnage: global cases continuing to mount as Europe became the centre of the pandemic; countries internationally ordering shutdowns and closing borders; somewhere in the region of 140,000 in Ireland expected to be made redundant.

It was only 9.30am and already I felt the need to retreat to bed for a fortnight. We are perhaps fortunate in Ireland that, after initial dithering, the goverment has acted in a quick, decisive and level-headed manner, with a national shutdown and the immediate settting up of a pandemic unemployment payment.

Our merciful avoidance of the alt.right at the ballox box has allowed us swerve that movement's more moronic behaviour during this crisis. In Britain, Boris Johnson has overseen the reckless holding of numerous mass gatherings, including Cheltenham and several concerts. In the US, meanwhile, Donald Trump has oscillated between outright cluelessness (initially downplaying coronavirus' potential dangers) and general disinterest (his most recent tweets focusing on - wait for it - Joe Biden's performance in the Democratic debates).

Getting Through
So in a moment when most of the stuff that gives us pleasure - gigs, movies, sport, socialising, dating - has been put on the backburner, how are any of us getting through? Personally, as I've acknowledged in text and social media interactions with friends, the routine streak of absurdity to life at present has been a source of some solace.

If someone had told me, for example, that in the middle of a global pandemic, I'd find myself doing a phoner with David Gray, I'd have found it hard to believe. Such was my journalistic duty on Friday afternoon (he, like many musicians at present, is taking a serious hit with tour cancellations). Then there was The Late Late Show that same night, taking place with no studio audience, which had unavoidable echoes of the Simpsons episode where Krusty the Clown commandeers Springfield's Emergency Broadcast Service and performs his show live from a shack in the desert.

Elsewhere, one takes heart from the sort of gestures of solidarity we are going to need to make it through this unprecented shit-show, like GAA clubs buying and delivering groceries to vulnerable members of the local community. If everybody embraces that sort of ethic, then - as Leo Varadkar concluded in his unexpectedly resonant Washington speech - we will prevail.