BY PUMA PERL | Sometimes it feels like a dream. The empty highways. The quiet streets. Except for the sirens and the seven o’clock clap. Alternate side parking rules suspended for months, no fares collected on buses, stores shuttered, senior hours at Trader Joe’s. People calling it the “new normal.” Nothing was normal.

Everything and everybody on hold, including the art and the music and the shows and the poetry. Before the pandemic, things were going great. I had a newly published poetry volume and tours and release parties planned. My quarterly show, Puma Perl’s Pandemonium, had entered its eighth successful year at the Bowery Electric and was booked through 2021; my upcoming April 2020 show included good friends flying in from the West Coast. My group, The Puma Perl Band, ended February 2020 with an epic gig at Café Bohemia, the legendary Barrow Street jazz venue; our next show was scheduled for March 15 at the Treehouse, where we’d been given the entire night so we could invite friends to join us. We had no idea that our next live show would not occur until April 26, 2021, or that the Treehouse would never reopen. As reality set in, we found new ways to continue, including venturing into new territories.

My most recent interview with artist/writer/photographer Michael Alago for this site took place in June of 2021 (click here to read it).

We were over a year into the pandemic. We’d been vaccinated, yet were still cautious about crowds and travel. Michael had worked diligently throughout the months of isolation, promoting his memoir, I Am Michael Alago: Breathing Music. Signing Metallica. Beating Death and the documentary about him, Who the F**k Is That Guy? The Fabulous Journey of Michael Alago, initiating innovative photo endeavors, and, most importantly, maintaining his sobriety and recovery one day at a time. 

Fast forward to 2024. We reconvened at one of our favorite spots, Veselka. The last time we met up there was before Russia had invaded Ukraine, adding to the feeling that the passage of time has become more and more difficult to grasp.

“As far as COVID,” Michael stated, “Thank God I’ve only had it the one time. I’ve had every booster available. I never really minded being at home when I had to because I like being by myself. I’d sit at my desk listening to Joni Mitchell and black metal, work on my collages—I made over 300 of them. I also worked on my upcoming book of 1990’s photos, Polaroid Encounters (1998-2006), and succeeded in getting a book deal with Shining Life Press [tentative release date, Summer, 2025].” 

Continued Michael, as we savored our borscht and pierogis, “I don’t know how not to be busy. The last eighteen months have been a time of more freedom. If there is any one thing that stands out for me because of the pandemic, I’ve learned how to be more patient so that I don’t ruin the things I’ve been waiting for. I’ve learned how to practice restraint of both pen and tongue. Some things don’t happen in my time; they happen in other people’s time.” And, just as we ended our last interview, that’s that!

I also revisited Gina Healy, a musician and singer. I had written about her and her family for this site in an article published January 31, 2020. We’d had no idea what was to come when we discussed her recent trip to Poland with her mother, Mindy Rinkewich, a poet and writer, and her adult offspring, Simone Wolff, also a writer and artist. Ms. Rinkewich died of non-COVID-related causes in August of 2021 at the age of 91. Simone has since been dedicated to archiving and translating her work, and to learning Yiddish. 

Gina related that she had played music and performed throughout the pandemic, mostly in outdoor venues, and had become active in a community garden in her East Village neighborhood, which she describes as a “godsend.” In the summer of 2020, they resumed gathering musicians together to jam and to entertain audiences hungry for live music.

“The 11th Street Garden has been great for me,” she continued. “I met so many new people and began playing with musicians who were new to me as well. Before that, I had just been doing my own thing with my band and thinking that was very important. I feel like by the time the lockdown ended I had let go of that definition of importance and had started thinking more about just working with other people and building community, which is what I’m doing now. I’m no longer tied to the idea that I must have my own band. It’s nicer for me. I show up looking good, knowing my music. I needed a break from the pressures of having my own band but if it ever makes sense to do it again, I will.” Since we spoke, she has formed The Gina Healy Band, and continues to make music with many different musicians she’s met along the way.

The sense of moving beyond specific boundaries as to space and time also resonated with the members of SoulCake (Joff Wilson, Sara Fendley and Laura Sativa. SoulCake formed in 2018, and plays both acoustic and electric sets. They have deep East Village roots, although they travel often through the greater New York State area. Like Gina Healy, they performed throughout the pandemic, including on Chelsea Hotel and Clinton Street rooftops, travels to upstate New York, (which bassist Sara Fendley described as “a great leg stretch for the band”), parks, street corners, and pop-up flea markets.

Fendley, known as Sarafe, shared that the change she noticed most during this period was “the chance to pivot as a band. It’s not easy but it was also very freeing. I think collectively we knew that if we wanted to continue as a band we needed to look outside the box in many ways—the usual suspects [clubs and bars] just were not there anymore and weren’t able to accommodate us. So, we needed other—and, dare I say—more creative places, to play.” Also, like Healy, she developed “a new concept regarding space and ownership of space and the ability to create venues rather than waiting until opportunities were offered.”

Singer/songwriter/guitarist Joff Wilson leads SoulCake. I’ve always admired his ability to create a makeshift band or a jam under any conditions. He calls them his “add water and stir bands.” He is also known to wander the neighborhood with his guitar and play his songs as the mood strikes him. He seconded Fendley’s thoughts and added his unique experiences.

“In short,” Wilson said, “from my first guitar to my last, I have always and will always play anywhere. I had a very traumatic childhood and when I discovered the guitar at the age of twelve, playing music felt healing and comforting. It became a part of my soul, my best friend. I don’t need a people audience. I play for trees, birds, clouds, planets. Take me to the moon, I will get a jam going. I’ve played on porches, in back alleys, rooftops, parks, coffee houses, clubs, house parties, street corners, even a show put together in a laundromat. Anywhere. I would even walk onto a battlefield to play if it would bring about peace.”

Many poets, writers and visual artists have spread their creative wings in response to the pandemic. Jane Ormerod is an artist, writer, and co-founder and editor at great weather for MEDIA, an independent publisher focusing on poetry collections and an annual anthology. 

“For the twenty years pre-pandemic,” she said, “I wrote and performed poetry. When lockdown began, my imagination faltered. I found language no longer flowed. Words were coming from the television, the news, and social media, while the New York City streets were at first silent and then filled with protest. It was a time of not using words lightly, of holding back, observing, and listening to others. I concentrated on keeping the small publishing business alive with the help of the editorial team, and in supporting writers by continuing to design and produce books. It kept my creativity bubbling.” 

Although I have known Ormerod for years and was aware of her identity as a visual artist I had never before experienced seeing her at work in her studio until I visited her in Hudson. As she explains, “By 2021, I recognized I was moving towards visual art, in particular abstraction. I had been a painter while living in London in the nineties. The opportunity of working outside the city and having a studio made me pick up brushes again. Looking at my recent paintings, I see themes of distance, yearning, and memory. I believe the pandemic forced me out of an artistic rut. I still perform and write but feel less pressure in all artistic directions. It feels good to give words a rest, embrace the physicality and challenge of painting, and take down the barricades.”

Since our initial interview, Ormerod has begun curating and hosting a monthly poetry and performance series at the Park Theater in Hudson, titled The Galére of Poetic Autopsies, providing an opportunity for local and visiting artists to share their work. Her paintings have been exhibited in a number of group shows in the upstate New York area.

Kofi Fosu Forson is a multi-media artist with a background in rock and roll music, playwriting and theater directing, fine art exhibitions in galleries, video performance, and short story and poetry publishing. Like Ormerod, he refocused some of his creative energies, and, similar to others I interviewed, has developed a renewed appreciation for the importance of community.

“In the Autumn of 2019,” he said, “I finished the Artist’s Way workshop at the Episcopal Actors’ Guild. A few months into a second workshop, the pandemic hit the city. When the city went into lockdown, I, much like everyone else, was deep in shock; I felt confused and uninspired while experiencing the lockdown with my immediate family. Old anxieties and stresses sprang up, which made me a very difficult person. Somehow, knowing the rest of the world was going through the same thing gave me a chance to try and make art. Later in 2020, the EAG started another Artist’s Way workshop on Zoom. We began consecutive workshops dealing with other self-help books. Soon enough, I started painting portraits of friends from the art and poetry scene using social media photos as a way of rekindling lost friendships. This was a time when I regained an interest in my art practice, even using actors from the Artist’s Way workshop to co-produce a reading of my new play online.”

During this creative period, I met up with Forsun once, where he presented me with a portrait of myself and my late dog, Diva. It was beautifully framed. Like my experience with Jane Ormerod, I’d not had the honor, prior to the pandemic, of experiencing his work as a visual artist, although I was familiar with his writing.

“With all the mourning and honoring of the dead, I found a community online of likeminded people. Being away from localized art and poetry scenes, I felt trapped, like a rat in a cage. Life on Twitter [X] introduced me to scenes other than poetry and art. I found a calling with academics who dealt with anti-racist themes at a time when the streets were full of protests.” 

He also realized making art was a way of building community, rather than “winning favors from friends and followers.” It was about making art for the sole purpose of pursuing art. Forsun also expressed to me that being an artist requires a scene beyond New York City. To that end, he has reestablished longstanding collaborations with several British artists, including a project based on the theme of “Sentience” which inspired him to explore dance and movement on video as performance art.

“Over the several years since the pandemic,” he added, “I’ve learned that much like every dark season or moment in time, our best bet is to exorcise the demons from the experience, move beyond the limits and discover a newer life. I have found meaning in a spiritual community where I make new relationships instead of trying to live off older ones on social media. To keep my presence in the in the art community, I continue to meet with the Artist’s Way group, and I also guest-host Whitehot Magazine’s podcast Art World. His latest podcast can be heard by clicking here.

Nancy Mercado is an award-winning poet, writer, professor, and editor of two anthologies. She is a frequent conference panelist, based on her extensive background in the arts as well as in academia, and is the recipient of the 2017 American Book Award for Lifetime Achievement, presented by the Before Columbus Foundation. She was named among the Frederick Douglass 200 on the bicentennial of Douglass’ birth by the Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives and the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. While her creative movements were initially shut off by the lockdown, she, like the others, found ways to continue.

“I was on a roll before the pandemic started,” she told me. “I had a steady schedule of readings. My goals were to continue publishing in periodicals and anthologies as much as possible and to get my next book out.” As the lockdown unfolded, she relates that she was initially scared and shut herself down creatively, spending most of her time engrossed in the news.

“Due to the halt of everything,” she continued, “I could not do any more readings in person. I did not write any poetry for a while either.” When asked if she found new creative outlets she answered simply, “I could not focus on anything.” However, as time went on, she started participating in readings on Zoom.

“One of my best friends, Miguel Algarín, Nuyorican Poets Café founder, died in November of 2020 and I assembled a committee to hold a tribute to him. All of this was done via Zoom. I also wrote several poems about the pandemic.”

Post-pandemic, she says, “I’ve been trying to get back on my feet, trying to get my in-person reading schedule going, and my writing as well. I don’t believe things are back to ‘normal.’ There is still a feeling of trepidation in the air for me, having learned that at any moment life can radically change. Perhaps my ‘new take’ on my creative process or my confirmation about everything, is that nothing on Earth is eternal. Do what you can but concentrate on the important things in life; family, friends, and enjoying the natural world because no matter how many publications or how much ‘fame’ you amass, someday you will die, and you will not take any of it with you.”

In the last year, Mercado has gotten back into the swing of things. having presented her work at Lincoln Center and the Whitney Museum, among other venues. She was also nominated for a prestigious Pushcart Award and in December, 2024. Additionally, one of her pieces was selected by the Academy of American Poets and published in the widely circulated Poem of the Day.

Finally, I spoke with songwriter/musician, Joe Sztabnik. He is a founding member of New York Junk and recently started a new band, Dragon Redux. He also performs as a solo artist and plays with The Puma Perl Band. During the pandemic, he spent many hours working on his production skills and upgrading his recording equipment. He live streamed many shows solo and with this writer, not only to entertain but to bring our community of friends together. 

Reflecting on the recent past, he told me, “After all the years of losing parts of my life, from the loss of time during the pandemic to the negativity in the world, New York City finally seems to be turning the corner and becoming what I call the ‘now’.  There are new bands, new clubs, new events and a new feeling. New York has that spark in its step that it always had, but now it’s the place to be again.”

Following a period of contemplation, Sztabnik began to approach his life as a musician and songwriter with new energy. He has not only played several well-received local gigs with his new band, Dragon Redux, he has taken them to Prague where they played for a large, enthusiastic audience and recorded songs at Hive Studios. His efforts in rebuilding his studio led to the production and release of a new album with this writer, Under Tenement Skies, available on Bandcamp in vinyl, CD, and digital download formats.

As he explains, “The pandemic put some people to sleep and it was like living under a cloud but I’ve finally come out of it. I’m waking up. I put a new band together because now is the right time to be doing new stuff. I’ve been in bands since the CBGB and Max’s days—we’ve all done things in the past but we live in the present and the now is the now. That cloud has lifted and the world is ready and looking forward to a new NOW.”

A primary takeaway from these interviews is the commonality of finding new ways to build community during the pandemic, expanding traditional concepts of space, and, for most, focusing more strongly on collective efforts. Many of the respondents rediscovered or created new outlets for their artistic endeavors. Personal loss was not emphasized in our interviews, but I would be remiss to overlook the fact that we have all experienced it. I dedicate this piece to someone who was known to all the of the participants, either individually or by reputation. 

Musician/Songwriter Alan Merrill was felled by COVID on March 29, 2020, one of the early losses in New York City. His song, I Love Rock n Roll, was popularized by Joan Jett and is considered a rock anthem. He was among the first American superstars in Japan, had been a member of historic groups including The Arrows and The Left Banke, and had a vibrant solo career. Despite his fame, he loved playing in all kinds of venues, giving his all to small clubs throughout the city. Says Joff Wilson, who often played on bills with him and booked him regularly at his 6th and B Community Garden shows, “I shared a mic with him at his last show [March 14, 2020.] We all got dreadfully ill. Alan died and I lived. I’m still broken up about that. He is ever missed.” I dedicate this piece about art and the pandemic to the eternal spirit of Alan Merrill and to everyone we have lost. 

Upcoming Events:

March 23, 3pm at Wilmer Jennings Gallery, Kenkelaba House (219 East Second Street, free admission) | Nancy Mercado and Quincy Troupe will headline the celebration of the launching of a new cultural journal, “Tar Baby.” The cover story is Mercado’s interview with Felipe Luciano. 

March 27, 7pm-12am at Parkside Lounge (317 East Houston Street) | The Puma Perl Band, including Joe Sztabnik and Joff Wilson, and SoulCake (Wilson, Sarafe and Laura Sativa) are both on the bill for a benefit, ‘Funky Yet Chic: Remembering David Johansen.” $20 suggested donations with all profits going directly to Sweet Relief in Johansen’s name.

March 29, 8pm-11:45pm at Freddy’s Bar (627 Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn, NY, no cover or admission) |The Gina Healy Band is on the bill 

April 5th, 8pm at Parkside Lounge (317 East Houston Street) | Joe Sztabnik’s band, Dragon Redux, will play, with several other bands on the bill. Advance $18, door $20. 

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