Letters from Home
Danika Lorèn
SOPRANO/COMPOSER
How I am feeling through all of this changes by the minute! There is so much to deal with and digest in this situation, and very little to distract from it. Each feeling seems to have layers of other emotions attached to it. It’s like thinking you’re biting into angel food cake, but winding up with a mouthful of Schichttorte (shoutout to all the stress bakers out there).
All of my contracts for the foreseeable future have been postponed. Now, postponing instead of cancelling may seem like a ray of sunshine, but it is actually preventing me from getting financial aid since nothing was technically cancelled and on paper it doesn’t read as a loss of work. The situation, however, is changing day by day; the recent changes to CERB will help me out a lot, so I consider myself very lucky.
From my experience, I do feel the government has done well to help artists. I also hope they will help arts organizations as we transition from the pandemic. The struggles of most arts organizations in Canada were very real before all of this started, and I can’t even imagine what it will be like for them afterwards. We will all need live arts when the time comes to process this experience. I know I am aching for the day when I will perform again live. It has been my entire life’s ambition to be a performer, and there is no equal substitution for it.
It’s not really my style to post home-studio recordings on social media, but a lot of performers have been expressing themselves that way lately. It doesn’t bother me and I don’t see it as something undermining the industry in any way. I think people who are complaining about this are misplacing their frustrations. YouTube has been full of self-tape performances since it began! As artists who depend
