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| 3 rolls of TP and a Coronavirus meme |
Remember when the world shut down and all those folks panic-bought toilet paper like it was currency? Well, musicians noticed – and they didn’t miss a beat. (Puns in a humor column, be warned.)
Okay, okay, what follows isn’t really a chronicle. But the references to the repeated runs on toilet paper were a source of much musical and artistic mirth during COVID, with examples between March and June 2020.
First, a historical reminder of where we were (and also where we weren’t):
March 2020 marked the global realization that COVID-19 was not containable, leading to lockdowns, panic-buying (hello, toilet paper), and a sharp halt to public life. Even our local park was shuttered.
April and May brought a surreal new normal: stay-at-home orders, Zoom everything (sooooo much Zoom), homemade masks, and a flood of online creativity as people sought connection and levity amidst uncertainty.
By June 2020, public health messages competed with rising restlessness, cautious reopenings began in some places, and it became clear the pandemic wasn’t a sprint, but rather a marathon.
And in response? We did that very human thing, and drew on humor as a way of coping, critiquing, and commenting on the world around us.
Some of that humor was visual…
Next, we have the “ridiculous uses of toilet paper” category, with freelance cellist Rylie Corral of Austin, Texas, participating in the toilet paper challenge. I know about it from the news story, but by March 20, 2020, her facebook video of the unconventional performance of Saint-Saëns “The Swan” (from The Carnival of the Animals) had already drawn 700K views and generated its own hashtag.
If unconventional or extreme uses of toilet paper aren’t quite your thing, you could go for the whole toilet paper in a comedy sketch usage, this one dated March 19, 2020. The “queue the toilet rolls” remark comes in later, after the introduction of the premise – British conductor/comedian Rainer Hersch running a rehearsal of The Coronavirus Concerto (“which is due to be canceled in two days time”) – along with its follow up about the musicians getting paid (ha ha, no). A chipper upbeat string melody together with a variety of body noises (coughing, wheezing, spitting, and so on) are the lighthearted backdrop to our view of Hersch as conductor, pelted by toilet paper rolls at the 1:16 mark…
There’s the obsessively questioning “Where’s My Toilet Paper,” the minimalist contribution by Tokyo-based Zombi-Chang (the composer Meirin’s solo project). This contribution to the “please stay home!” narrative for Japan was offered up on April 6, 2020, and – implicitly – reminds the viewer that shopping is not worth dying for.
There are also laments for the losses, such as the amusingly named “Ode de Toillette” [sic] subtitled “The Great COVID19 Walmart Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020- Bagpipe Tribute.” (Happy, this is not a smell-track, the ode/eau de pun not withstanding). This amazing (see what I did there?) tribute of “Amazing Grace” performed to the empty shelves by The New Hampshire Police Association Pipes & Drums had me in stitches back in the day – the video was posted on March 13, 2020, the date of the U.S. declaration of a national emergency for COVID.
Irreverent? Yes. Funny? Also yes, both for incongruity, and through inversion of expectation. We *would* come to need those bagpipe bands, and too many of them, alas. But a moment of levity in an empty Walmart aisle doesn’t preclude the subsequent serious mourning of real and tangible losses in those early days of the pandemic. Both responses, levity and lament, speak to the human condition.
Sometimes, toilet paper is just part of the bigger picture, as with rapper Todrick Hall’s “Mask, Gloves, Soap, Scrubs” (Apr 29, 2020), that humorous parody of the oh-so-popular “Nails, Hair, Hips, Heels” of just one year before. In Corona times, the iterations of daily life are a bit different than they were in more sociable days-of-yore:
Left, right, left, right swiping on Tinder / What was life like? I can't remember / Need my haircut, somebody shave her / Where is all of the toilet paper?
Then there’s the incorporation of toilet paper as a focus of social dismay. “We’ve all seen the pictures of people online who seem to think they’re invincible,” starts the video by the technical death metal band Cattle Decapitation from April 1, 2020. “Well you’re not. Enough is enough. Go home and stay home.” And then the angry guitars start for “Bring Back the Plague.”
Here, toilet paper isn’t part of the lyrics, but it appears repeatedly as a visual signal of the “new normal” of extraordinary times – clutched on shopping sprees, rolling down the staircase, focus of a tug-of-war, an emptied roll in the bathroom. Bits and bobs of pandemic life are like the “where’s Waldo” of the COVID first wave. Tiger King and hand sanitizer, Spring break and lying on your couch with the TV remote: can you spot these details? Life was hard.
The energy and frustration at society’s glib and sometimes ridiculous responses – fighting over toilet paper packages, people, for real??? – brings the question of a lack of social accountability into juxtaposition with the unsettling idea that the “bacillus countless” are going to have their way with us whether we choose to accept that infectious reality or not.
Bring back the plague / Delete those that threaten a whole new
world
Start today / Dig their graves, they'll find a way
To rid the world of finding new tomorrows
If you aren’t part of the solution, suggests Cattle Decapitation you ARE the problem.
And perhaps the best of the best is the use of toilet paper rolls as found instruments. So I leave you with Netherlandish "designer and maker" Ruben Stelli’s June 2020 remake of the “Popcorn Song,” originally by Gershon Kingsley from his Music to Moog By album. You’ve heard it done by electronic instruments, now hear it performed by … toilet paper and its cardboard innards, used as found sounds.
Some days I think to myself, I just can’t make this stuff up; I’m not that creative!
Looking back, I actually think that these musical moments were more than just goofy distractions. Rather, these small acts of creativity in the midst of chaos made a claim to both artist and audience’s very own personal survivability. If you can laugh, you can cope. Whether through parody, protest, or bagpipe-laced lament, these songs and memes reminded us that we weren’t alone – even if the store shelves were empty.
Hope you got some joy from these samples from the past – and maybe a reminder for your next shopping list, just in case?
