Day 6: Herd immunity and the Dothraki
We didn't work, but we still ate
They closed the parks today, which means the streets will be filled with doggie poo, though we haven’t left the house so there is no evidence yet. Our day was productive: we cleaned the kitchen, made brunch and I recorded one DJ mix. Just your average Saturday.
Since it’s Saturday night, we are also setting up a live DJ stream from our living room, for our friends in London who are turning their own living room into a club. What a time to be alive. It feels like my DJ career, which started off with bedroom djing and then advanced to nightclubs, has finally come full circle. It was all leading up to this moment.
I think when all of this is over I’ll be ready to have another go at the biggest challenge that any DJ has ever had to face: weddings. It may seem easy, but in reality, you have the taste of three different generations to satisfy, and it is important to remember that for some people, attending a family wedding is their only chance to go out after a period of drought that has lasted roughly thirty years. The single time I dared to play at a wedding, I was scarred for life by an opinionated middle-aged man with a moustache who entered the booth while I was playing something inoffensive like Danza Kuduro, and assertively told me: "Play us some music so we can dance, girl!” (here, I have to note that, despite the moustache, ‘girl’ was not said in the friendly, camp way one would expect, but more in a ‘you idiot’ kind of fashion).
I don’t know if you’ve ever been on a flight with many Italians, but they are probably the last, rare breed of humans that still clap when their plane lands, pleasantly surprised and ecstatic that the pilot didn’t just dive nose-first on the runway. All those years of practice culminated in a very heart-warming moment this afternoon. Everyone came out on their balconies or stood at their windows and started clapping together, as a sign of gratitude and support for all the medical staff in Italy who are fighting the enormous battle of looking after all the ill people that are flooding hospitals and clinics across the country. J.D. Salinger wrote “People always clap for the wrong reasons”, but this definitely felt right.
My new favourite thing in these bizarre times we live in is going through the tone-deaf marketing communications I receive in my email inbox. Who knew, all the shops may be closed, but with American Express, you can still shop small. Yay!
Out in the world, politicians are making less and less sense. Here’s a conspiracy theory for you: what if Coronavirus attacks the respiratory system of the common people and the brains of those in power? To me, the concept of herd immunity makes as much sense in terms of strategy as sending out the Dothraki to charge into the dark in the Battle of Winterfell in Game of Thrones.
For reference, this is what it looked like in the beginning:
Pretty epic, right? This is how it ended:
I feel you, Jaime Lannister.
If you are suffering from back pains due to the non-ergonomic set up of your home office, I have a solution for you: the massageshmina.
Creepy German lady not included, which is sad, because we could have done some great yodelling together.
Lunch: Brunch (I really hope when everything reopens the Milanese brunch chefs will have spent all this time at home learning how to poach eggs)
Song of the day: Live is Life