Author: Kayla Rush

My new guitar arrived today, corralled by cardboard, suffocated in styrofoam. This isn’t how it was supposed to go, you know.

I had a guitar lined up for my fieldwork. Had it lined up a year ago, a girly-pink Daisy Rock hanging on the wall of a friend’s studio. Not my colour, but the price was right. Instead, separated from the Daisy Rock by an ocean, I browsed a website. Disembodied. I realised how woefully unprepared I was for this task, with no one to guide me, no way to see the guitars in person. I nearly bought a left-handed model by accident – a close call. I somehow managed to bumble my way into a decent purchase; it has since been approved by my brother, the rock star.

I watched the UPS delivery tracker the same way I should have been watching the notifications for my flights: When will it get here? Will there be a delay?

If all had gone as planned, I would be flying to the US next week. Well, you know how that goes. I’m hardly the only person grounded by travel bans, answering questions about my fieldwork – my job – with a ‘delayed indefinitely’. It sucks though.

Fieldwork deferred, with no definite end date, feels like a bit of an identity crisis. I am, after all, an anthro-pologist. I do research with people. It’s one of the things I love about my job and my chosen career. While I fully believe in, and support, more social-distancing-friendly fieldwork – virtual research, online interviews – it is still deeply disappointing that my much-planned-for, in-person fieldwork, a project years in the making, has been put on hold. Ordering the guitar felt a bit like admitting defeat.

And so instead I am doing what everyone else is doing right now – learning online, alone, with an amp that plugs into a pair of headphones so as not to disturb my neighbours, or my long-suffering husband in the other room of our tiny apartment. Instead of being guided by a teacher, I am watching short videos of people I’ve never met – and never will meet – explaining string names and fret numbers to thousands of people they can’t see. Instead of rehearsing and performing with a band, I hum twenty-second pop song choruses under my breath to ensure my hand-washing is up to code. My chorus of choice is that to Queen’s ‘Save Me’ – a bit of black humour for days when humour is needed to get by.

This isn’t how it was supposed to go, but like everyone else right now, I am improvising.