Abstract

i was 76 when the pandemic began. I'm 78 now; I'll be 79 when, God willing, it officially ends. I was a practicing, practical, pragmatic musician; the pandemic forced the adoption of a new identity. And that identity was younger than the last.How can that be? At a superficial level, it came about because I was forced into modes of behavior that are commonplace among persons born after, say, 1980, but were utterly new to me. I activated a Twitter account, I started watching videos on YouTube, I listened to music online, and more. Previously, I had unwittingly endorsed a narrow definition of artistic experience—one that I had cultivated through many years of devoted attention to embodied...