My husband and I went to a comedy club with friends a few weeks ago. I was afraid to go – would the comedians be funny? Or would we be sitting there awkwardly for a couple hours, nursing our two-drinks while trying to ignore the obvious?

Fortunately, the comedians were funny, everyone in the club came to laugh, and fun was had by all. So after laughing our @sses off in public for the first time in years, I remembered Covid. Since we hadn’t (knowingly) had Covid, would we get it? The place was packed, not a mask in sight. And my husband, like so many in my circle, suffered from mystery illnesses that were not Covid, but would certainly be exacerbated by it. It would take a couple weeks to tell.

But somehow I felt that we’d be fine, that going out was the most healing thing we had done since the pandemic had started.

Why would that be? In a time where “other people” are almost certain vectors of disease? When we are told to mask for our own good, and the good of others, when we are on buses or trains, even after we have had Covid and recovered?

Yes, laughing for two hours was healing. But more than that, the packed room of laughing people was a needed infusion of human energy. And that’s when I knew for sure: the lockdowns hadn’t just impacted my financial economy. They shut down the Energy Economy in my life, and now I want it back.

What We Lost

Even before the shutdowns happened in 2020, I knew my job was toast. I was re-establishing my makeup work after a few years sidelining in Silicon Valley Tech, and there was no way that my commercial clients were going to do business as usual. I complained as little as I could – we had a little house in the country to escape to, plus I had other people to worry for.

But I still worried about the human interaction aspect of this. As I watched the nursing homes get locked down, with no visitors or caregivers allowed, I remembered how much extra care and attention my Mom needed when she was in rehab. As I heard about churches and support groups being shut down, I knew that people who relied on these to stay centered, sober, and sane would suffer.

But it’s not just the “help” that people give each other that was missing. I suspected there was an entire energetic circulation that was being short-circuited. But I couldn’t articulate it.

During the summer of 2020, while visiting with a friend at her lake house rental, I noticed her husband, who “loved” working from home, approaching me again and again, chewing my ear about lots of little things. I’d seen this dynamic before, working with actors who’d been sitting at home just a little too long without work. Hell, I’d done it myself. Freelancers spend a LOT of time waiting for the phone to ring. It’s a strange kind of loneliness.

But in 2020 they did it to everyone. And there we were, watching TV, doom scrolling, only seeing each other through masks.

Covering Faces is Not a Neutral Act

I’m a makeup artist. I LOVE faces. It’s a big part of why I do makeup.

I worry about what happens when we cover our faces. I always have. When the Taliban or Isis rampage through a population, forcing women to cover their faces, it’s not just their version of “proper Islam”. It’s a control mechanism. Not seeing women’s faces creates a less empathetic world, where psychopaths can more easily ply their trade. No Moms’ or Aunties’ disapproval to get in the way.

Yes, it’s obvious that faces communicate emotions. But I think there’s more – way more – to the damage shutting down and masking has done to us.

Faces Have Healing Energy

Faces also emit infrared light. It’s why night vision cameras work so well. And infrared light is healing. Those red-light panels you see at health conferences? We all emit a little bit of that energy, through our faces and our hands. Even if we’re not trained or even aware of it.

So, when you go to that staff meeting, seeing your coworkers in person is actually good for you, and them (assuming you like them well enough). Seeing them through a screen? Not so much. (And there are many who attest that it’s quite bad for your health!)

Yes, I’ve done some Zoom meetings, which I LOVE when it means I can socialize for a couple hours without having to fly somewhere. But the energetic exchange is definitely more limited. So when we are doing it all the time, instead of ANYTHING in person, it’s going to affect us.

Socializing is Energy Exchange

Part of the continuing Branch Covidianism is the denial that human interactions are important.
“Oh, we can do everything on Zoom,” they say. Or, “Kids are fine being masked”, without any proof that either of these things are true, good for us, or even neutral. In the early days of Covid, it made sense. We didn’t know what to do about this virus, it seemed quite dangerous, so let’s try all this technology we have.

But we forgot about what we gain from human interaction. It’s easy to take for granted. We’re human, we talk to each other, we exchange energy. Have you stopped to feel it? Maybe not before Covid, but when you’re getting out after isolation, you might feel a little weird. If you pay attention, you can feel the energy exchanged. Or given, or taken, depending on the personalities involved.

Shutting down society shunted the flow of all this energy, from all of us. So it’s not just our work lives, our money flow that we need to restart, it’s our energetic and social flow as well. Media isn’t talking about this, if they know I’m not sure they want us to get our energy back. I suspect they like their hold on us.

Screens Will Not Sustain Us

At first, the decline of health and sanity in several people close to me was a mystery. Yes, I knew that we were depressed and anxious because we had lost a lot of work. But there was more: many of my friends were getting sick without diagnoses, and others getting obsessed with divisive politics. (I still don’t know anyone who died from Covid. Even my 80-something Mom survived it and died from other causes.) Others still wear masks everywhere (even after Covid recovery.) And still others don’t do eye contact anymore.

And then I get invited to an all-ages show by one of my hardcore-scene friends, where everyone’s almost normal. We hang out, we socialize, and while I worry slightly that my sore throat from shouting in the club will turn into Covid, it doesn’t. And I am more healed.

Those months – no, YEARS, now – of even semi-isolation has affected us for the worse. The screens we spent our time on don’t give us the real human energy we need. They can broadcast, but they can’t transmit. Or something. I’m not a scientist, so I can’t tell you WHAT, exactly, is wrong with them. I can only share my conclusion from the multi-year experiment in virtual living: it won’t work. Not for humans. Not for me.