Hold on | The Press

The last few weeks have been particularly cruel, don’t you think? Looks like no one is doing well and everyone is grabbing Omicron.

But how can we be, when we had an even more gloomy holiday season than the year before, when every day we have the death count from COVID-19, when no one knows on what footing dance in this endless pandemic?

We see the laundry accumulating behind the parents surrounded and stressed in the meetings Zoom. We started to dress in slack again, not for comfort, but because we don’t care now. Sometimes, we have a sudden urge to cry just because we still get bored with our masks and our foggy glasses on the way back from the pharmacy where someone has freaked out in front of the cashier.

These days, I’m swinging between the big depression and the desire to freak tables screaming, like Michel Charette in the series Happiness. It must feel so good. I wouldn’t take it out on teenagers, I’d be more the type to yell: “Who are the adults in this mess? Who are the little bunnies who have bacon attacks just by seeing Safia Nolin or Hubert Lenoir on TV? Who is it, the fragile who are afraid for the future because young people mean “else” while the 10 richest men on the planet got richer during the pandemic while the rest of humanity is impoverished? »

In any case, it must be good if you are freaking out tables at the same time. But I don’t even have the energy to be mad about anything now.

But seriously, how do we do it? How are we holding up? For example, my colleagues and I, in the Arts and Being section, feel like we are in the obituary pages at times.

Added to the sudden deaths of artists are the cancellations of shows, the closing of restaurants and the distress of workers in the cultural industry. And all this is written each at home, interspersed with meetings Zoom.

What keeps us going is that we continue to get up in the morning wanting to make the best newspaper for our readers.

Nevertheless, the death of Karim Ouellet, it was a dirty trick. Like that of Jean-Marc Vallée recently. People without whom our sound and visual landscapes would not be the same, with whom we wanted our intimate and aesthetic transformations to continue.

We learned of the disappearance of Karim Ouellet the day after the third Monday in January, which is said to be the most depressing of the year; it is called “Blue Monday”. Stromae’s burning gaze came back to me on the TFI newscast, when he sang hell. The debate this created about the dangers of the infotainment did not erase the intense impression that remained to me of this unnatural pairing for journalistic standards, as if the evil (or the good, perhaps be) was already done. I discovered Karim Ouellet in show because he was the first parts of Stromae, a beast of the stage, and a monster of the scene. When he turns to the camera and begins to sing “I’m not alone in being alone, that’s already less in my head, and if I counted how many we are…”

And there, the dolly begins, and Stromae swings, with a lot of emotion in his voice, the truth: “a lot”.

It shook me. But in order not to give in to melancholy, which would bring me nothing more for the moment, I need riffs guitar and rhythm. I revisit The Black Keys albums and when I’m angry, I go back to old Ministry.

In the book The Big Killer – How the Spanish Flu Changed the World of Laura Spinney, we learn that at the end of the pandemic which had ravaged the planet, there was an epidemic of post-viral depressions. Whether this was a consequence of the virus or whether the world had been traumatized not only by a pandemic, but also by the First World War which had been a butchery, was never quite clear. But there has been, on the other hand, a rise in the birth rate and a deep temporal break: medicine, literature, art and music have never been the same since then.

In any case, there was a long flu, as there is now long COVID-19, and many people have lived with the aftermath of the Spanish flu for a very long time.

A friend sent me an illustration from the magazine Stylist, where we see a girl lying on the ground with this question: “Is this the most January January ever? In short, is this the worst month of January ever lived in memory? I wouldn’t go too far, February is coming which doesn’t give its place either.

How do I hold on? I cling to the smallest thing that makes me feel good. I make broths.

I buy bones – beef, chicken or lamb, it costs next to nothing. I grill them for ten minutes in the oven, and then I put them in a pan, with leeks, garlic, carrots, celery salt, coarse peppercorns and a bay leaf, I cover with water and simmer for hours. It perfumes the house, a smell that promises a fabulous soup. And a bone that my dog ​​chews happily. Eating one’s bones or chomping at the bit, that’s where we’ve come to.

Speaking of food, I still get emails from people looking for a recipe I posted almost two years ago when I wanted to provide some comfort food at the start of the pandemic. It must be a sign, and it made me want to prepare another little special for our Gourmet notebook, because I don’t know what to do to help a little at the moment.

But until then, I would like to know: what are your tricks for holding on until spring?