By: Morgan Topol
During the pandemic, as I’m sure we can all recall, there wasn’t a lot to do on a day-to-day basis. Businesses weren’t open (for good reason), and I was stuck in Chapel Hill while most of my close friends from college were scattered around the rest of North Carolina, which meant I had a lot of free time on my hands.
A couple positives that came out of this situation, however, were the various ways I was able to reconnect with music because of how severely altered our lives became.
After UNC sent everyone home during my sophomore year, I had to quickly move out of my dorm and into an off-campus apartment. I technically shared the apartment with another person, but there were times when I was by myself, which eventually prompted me to ask my father to bring up the keyboard I hadn’t played since childhood.
After my father graciously set up my keyboard in my apartment, my days became filled with sound and color. I would sit at the bench for hours, re-teaching myself how to play. It was a great way to kill time, and before I knew it, I was playing and singing my favorite songs at the same time, which is something I was never able to do while playing the flute.
Whenever I wanted to get out of the apartment, however, I obviously couldn’t take my keyboard with me. But I still had my voice, and a lot of free time. Nothing was open, but that didn’t stop me from taking long drives, sometimes for hours, with no destination in mind.
Our new normal provided me with an opportunity to create what has become my own personal meditation: what I call “car concerts.” During these car concerts, I would take my long drives, and I’d belt my favorite songs while doing it. No one could hear me, unless they had their windows rolled down, which meant I was performing for no one but myself. And that was the type of solitude I could really get behind.
When I say these drives had no destination, I mean it literally. During the pandemic especially, I would start driving, in any direction, until I eventually got sick of it and would map myself back home. Not only did it give me an opportunity to de-stress and intensively practice singing, but it also gave me a way to better appreciate natural and man-made surroundings I’d never seen before, albeit from a distance.
For anyone who enjoys singing and is looking for a way to de-stress, I highly recommend you put on your own car concert for yourself if you haven’t done so. Even in the midst of the pandemic, which wasn’t enjoyable for a lot of us, these car concerts helped me find a little bit of joy in days that seemed nearly joyless.
Putting the pandemic aside, when you spend most of your time on or near a college campus, the world seems so small. Earth’s radius alone is 3,958.8 mi, which means there’s so much of the world both you and I have yet to explore. If you’re not comfortable putting on a car concert for yourself, or you don’t want to spend the gas money (completely understandable), I still encourage you to find a way to remind yourself of how big the world is – and in doing so, how lucky we are to be in it.
