Dani Garavelli: Thank you government for the gift of time to listen

Every couple of days, in the late afternoon, I download an album I have never properly listened to, tuck my earphones under my increasingly unruly hair, and set off on a long walk through my local cemetery.

The Glasgow Necropolis. Picture: John Devlin

This ritual, which pairs a familiar route with an unfamiliar soundtrack, has become my lockdown release; my therapy, if you like. Where, before the pandemic, I would have been shuttered in my office, oblivious to the shifting shades of weather, I am now out, sunshine or smirr, meandering down musical paths which, for some reason – my job, the kids, life with its many distractions – have previously gone untrodden.

And what an unexpected joy it has proved: to wander amongst the tumbledown graves as Kenny Anderson sings his bittersweet odes to ageing; to bask in Tacita Dean-worthy cloudscapes as Liz Fraser’s voice soars and dips with the magpies; or to stand at the highest point looking over rooftops and high-rises, towards Dumgoyne and Ben Lomond, while Paul Buchanan summons up the sounds and smells of city nights, now a distant memory.

I pick these albums at random; maybe they have featured on #Timstwitterlisteningparties; or maybe some offhand comment will spark a game of musical associations. The last few were prompted by a Top 10 of Scottish voices. But the pertinence of the lyrics often defies the potluck nature of the enterprise. It is hard to think of anything that better captures the plight of those separated from loved ones than the lines “I miss your soup and I miss your bread, and a letter in your writing doesn’t mean you’re not dead” from The Pixies’ Cactus, or anything more straight-forwardly consoling than King Creosote’s Bubble, with its promise of steadfast love.

And then there is this from Laura Marling’s Blow By Blow: “I don’t know what else to say / I think I’m doing fine / trying to figure out / what I will do with all my time.” Which is more or less where I am right now.

When lockdown became inevitable, I feared my mental health would plummet. For the last few years, in the face of sporadic bouts of depression, I have devised strategies; built a scaffold round my world. I took on as much work as I could secure, and filled my downtime with people and events; as if a single moment of idleness would allow a lifelong sense of inadequacy to encroach and bring the whole shaky structure crashing down. A quick look at what was happening in Spain and Italy told me that approach was no longer going to be an option; and no amount of checking my privilege, and appreciating my family, could stifle the dread of having those props snatched away.

Yet none of this has happened. Rather, having to accept my own limitations seems to suit me. If there’s less work, it’s not my fault; if I don’t meet people, it’s no reflection on my sociability; if my garden looks a mess, it’s because Nicola Sturgeon won’t let me buy weedkiller. I have a friend who reckons this is a good time for anxious people because at last their fears are rational.

But, for control freaks like me, it is more that it can be a relief to yield to forces you cannot marshal; to finally concede not everything is in your gift. And once you start relinquishing control, it takes on its own momentum: if there is no yeast, you cannot bake bread; if your teenager won’t read, that’s his prerogative; if Twitter trolls hate you, let them shout into a void.

I am lucky: my boys are home and of an age where they no longer fight. With no demands on us – no places to go, no friends to see – we can all just be in a way that has been impossible in the past. It has been lovely to watch them become good pals as well as brothers: playing poker, making TikToks, cutting each other’s hair. I imagine, in years to come, they will sit around talking about the old lockdown days. And for all their desire for it to be over, that conversation will carry notes of nostalgia.

Mostly though, it’s the way everything has slowed down. Time has taken on a new fluidity. Even though three out of five of us are working, the days are structureless, with morning, afternoon and evening,merging seamlessly into one another.

The only fixed point of reference is my walk, which I find myself anticipating from the moment I wake. I look on it as a gift from the government in the sense that, it being the only thing we are sanctioned to do, not doing it has become unthinkable. With or without my earphones in, it has provided stability and a form of mental cleansing. If we cannot connect with one another, we can at least reconnect with nature. We can pay attention to the little things: the way the crows perch, as if petrified, on top of tombstones, and how the ivy snakes its way round monuments as if they were living creatures, capable of having the breath squeezed out of them.

Poet Kathleen Jamie talks of noticing as an act of resistance. It’s a comforting thought when in the grips of a virus we cannot conquer and politicians we cannot trust: that simply by enjoying the birdsong – so much louder without the traffic; by inhaling petrichor and the scent of primroses, we might be making a contribution.

So where does music fit into this? It’s just that I have long regretted not making more space for it in my life and now – suddenly – there is the time to listen; to rediscover lost loves, or dip into this or that band or album that has hovered on the periphery of one’s vision. It’s the sheer pleasure of finding, in later life, something that excites you as much as when you were a teenager: a song that makes you cry or dance or rage. And to do it, not casually as a backdrop to domestic chores, but as the centre of your day: something you plan for and then savour, in the knowledge it is keeping you afloat.

As we move, albeit slowly, towards the easing of lockdown, I’m scared of losing this. Of course, I want it to end as soon as is safely possible, not only on behalf of the many people for whom it has been a sanity-destroying nightmare, but also for myself. I miss my friends and relatives, same as everyone else.

But I’m not sure I want to return to a life so busy it requires calendars and post-it notes and systems to keep it running; the kind of life that is set up to make you feel that you are constantly failing.

This must be why, on Friday, as I climbed the hill, a wild wind whipping my hair across my face, and Camera Obscura’s Tracyanne Campbellcrooning in my ear, I found myself thinking not: “Give me back my props and stanchions,” but: “There are worse ways to pass the hours than this.”