. The old man on the bench, legs crossed in an otherwise competent pose, appears to be sleeping. His mulatto face, a metaphor in its own right for the mixed stories of all human experience, tells us that this is a man with dignity who has suffered the social ills of society’s degradation. Opposite him, his black brother also sleeps…or not. Two servants of humanity, a priest with a rosary, a nurse with a stethoscope, have presumably bridged the distance from their world up the road to this social/economic neighborhood of both hope and despair. And here they literally reach out to ground zero of this pandemic 2020. An alcoholic musician gazes with a spark of faith at humanity’s best. A disabled man, perhaps an abandoned veteran, looks the musician’s way for rejuvenation. Even the stray dog wonders if some hopeful circumstance is at hand. This foreground scene, despite its stark display of society’s steepest moral failing, rises to a new high ground in the inward resilience of its victims and outward courage of its strongest – all hoping to bridge the distance to a better world.
. The music theatre district continues the connection. We may wonder who started the music – the trumpeter or tambourine man on the street or their music brethren in the balconies above. Again, an uplifting
scene celebrates the vitality of the human social spirit despite the literal social distancing that the pandemic imposes. Nor is this community by any stretch financially or socially secure – the gay or starving artist abound. On the central middle balcony, a mixed-race couple applaud the music, the life, and most certainly once again the foreground servants who put their lives on the line.
. In the distance the famous Brooklyn Bridge naturally serves as the central symbol of “Pandemic 2020: Bridging the Distance.” Set under the clear blue skies which it shares with the musicians, the homeless and the heroes of the foreground scenes, it represents that traditional welcome path upon which people of all different social strata may connect. Across the bridge, the clouds have formed and the rain descends on the money capital of the world. The vulnerable here are vulnerable not as much in body as in spirit, although the loss of their poorer brethren in the pandemic will assuredly destroy their material power as well. The rainbow stretches thru the clouds from Freedom Tower across Manhattan. Another familiar scene of Pandemic 2020, the phenomenon reminds us that all characteristic colors of people are needed and valued in a society coming out of the clouds. On the far horizon, however small, the Statue of Liberty speaks with quiet resolve: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” Here is “bridging the distance” at its finest for all of us.