Sitting down with a guitar, piano or empty sketchbook for hours feeling discouraged and uninspired is what many artists have faced since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.
The year 2020 was greatly anticipated by many and looked to be filled with hope, but life soon took a sharp turn toward feeling agonizing and exhausting.
Alonzo Jones Jr., San Jose State alumnus and aspiring TV show writer, said after pushing through tough days repeatedly trying to write, he was diagnosed with moderate-to-severe depression in September.
“I felt like I didn't really have an excuse,” Jones said in a Zoom interview. “I was trying to produce content before the pandemic happened. The ironic thing is the pandemic is the reason, literally why I couldn't write, you know . . . staring at a blank page isn’t going to give you an idea.”
For artists in every sphere including musicians, visual artists and directors, dreams were paused and challenges surfaced in the last year.
Expectations from fans for artists to rollout content put an immense amount of pressure on them.
People might assume they must produce large amounts of new content from the “endless amount of free time on their hands,” but for some artists this couldn’t be further from the truth.
Jones said missing in-person interactions took a toll on his work because writers produce content based on personal encounters.
For Gage Phillips, a radio,TV, and film senior and visual artist, things got worse everyday after his grandmother passed away from cancer last year
“I did feel that [pressure] especially towards the beginning of quarantine,” Phillips said in a Zoom call. “There was this weird pressure. . . feeling like I had to make something and I don't even know where it came from either because it's not like anyone was telling me to do that.”
Other students such as Ashley Mehta, a communications senior and musician, realized a break from her passion was the best option.
“There are so many different platforms right now like Instagram, TikTok and I think I would just scroll and see people literally tell the rest of the world like, ‘Oh, you need to take a break right now,’ like it's OK [to take a break],” Mehta said through Zoom.
Many of these artists have felt similarly despite different situations and have been haunted by feelings of lost opportunity.
Kristian Buenconsejo, mechanical engineering senior and beatmaker also known by the stage name YesYes, said he lost his internship during the initial lockdown.
“I actually had three potential internships and they all ghosted me and they all just dropped out of the world [and] stopped replying because COVID happened,” Buenconsejo in a Zoom interview
Besides losing out on internship opportunities, he said the pandemic has negatively affected his mental health and he’s had to reach out to close friends to combat it.
“I have conversations about mental health with a lot of my friends and I think that's a constantly moving target and it's week by week, day to day,” Buenconsejo said. ”Sometimes you just got to take baby steps.”
While mental health is a top priority, performing on stage for an audience is important to many artists and gathering restrictions have made it difficult to show fans new work.
Fred Cohen, director of the School of Music and Dance, said student artists and especially those graduating soon are hindered from fully experiencing on- stage performances.
“I feel there's a certain amount of guilt that I feel,” Cohen said. “I feel like we weren't able to deliver the kind of education that we want.”
He said artists already have stress and added anxiety from COVID-19 can be disrupting and demanding.
A combination of pressure and a lack of agency during the pandemic has become tiring for many creators.
Producing extraordinary content while feeling burned out or unambitious isn’t something fans should demand or expect from artists right now.
