Coronavirus: Art has a kind of magic. It’s helping to counteract feelings of separation and loneliness

As the virus spreads, art is synthesising new connections. Painting: Three Witches (scene from Macbeth) by William Rimmer. 

There they are, forced into isolation during a time of major upheaval. Recent reports say they can easily harm others, though in the past they were widely respected figures. They’ve been known to make spectacles expressing their imaginations. So in all this turbulence, they decide to make something happen.

The foreboding witches in Macbeth mightn’t seem an obvious source of comfort, but there is something in their witchcraft that speaks to the confusion of the current moment. In the strange world brought on by the viral pandemic, physically consoling loved ones can spread disease, while keeping distance is an act of affection. Fair is foul, and foul is fair. 

In Macbeth, the witches create a performance of magic from their deserted place. In the real world, performances from afar have become similarly transformative, as artists find themselves isolated from audiences.

There was a sense of defiance, for instance, listening to Liz Nolan’s arts radio show The Full Score on Thursday. “We’re here to try lift you out of the current situation with the world’s musical masterpieces,” she said, after an icy, beautiful choral arrangement by Stephen Barber. For classical music lovers, against the shutdown of concert halls and opera houses, the station broadcasting Nolan’s show, Lyric FM, may now resemble a kind of Radio Londres, communicating to the Resistance. 

Even as the nation adapted to the cold reality of self-isolation on St. Patrick’s Day, the compulsion to make art seemed to be everywhere. Videos of homespun pageantry, live music and dance, of families mounting their own parades, lit up screens across the land. 

Whether it is a virtual cinema club on Twitter tempting its members to share commentary, or footage of musicians playing generously to their quarantined neighbours, there is a sense that art is helping to counteract feelings of separation and loneliness. 

Meanwhile, for production companies alive to ephemerality, the release of video recordings, such as Dead Centre’s acclaimed avant-garde play Lippy and Irish National Opera’s sublime Orfeo ed Euridice, are an important means of continuing to reach audiences. Archival footage should keep the art in the ether. In a bold exploration of new digital forms of theatre, the Abbey Theatre has announced a conversion to online. 

As art synthesises these new connections, I am reminded of how mysterious art still is to me. It seems to be moving according to unknown laws of principle, as it copes with the crisis. 

Writing about the advent of Romantic poetry in 1800, the German critic Friedrich Schlegel described art as being in a constant state of fuzzy transition, never landing on one definitive reading, always capable of interrupting the culture and finding new resonances. It’s like a surge of electricity, constantly finding new outlets. 

It’s a reach, but Schlegel described art’s ability to transpose viewers into new, undiscovered ways of feeling as “der edelste Zweig der Magie”. 

The noblest branch of magic.