The strangest things happen in a pandemic. People start busting out their dusty guitars and forgotten flutes. They step out onto balconies and perform their best Pavarotti imitation. All of a sudden, we’re noticing all these little free concerts going on everywhere in the world.

Part of the noticing is that we have the time to notice right now. Scrolling through our feeds, reading the articles that we get linked to, maybe even stepping out onto our front steps and balconies, we see people engaged in art like never before.

But is it so strange? So unusual? Maybe art is the thing that goes unnoticed during our regularly scheduled lives but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening. However, I do propose that art IS happening more during these times of enforced leisure, downtime and boredom. This week I read about the connection between the Bubonic Plague and William Shakespeare. His most prolific periods? When the Plague was acting up and his acting troop had to go into quarantine.

Boredom can be a good thing if the by-product is impromptu balcony concerts. But that’s not the only thing that’s happening. Parents who are schooling at home find they are relying on those keep-em-busy-tricks they used when their kids were preschoolers: art supplies, play dough, coloring pages downloaded off the internet, dress-up clothes, blankets over tables and living rooms transformed into stages. And maybe some parents are joining in right now and finding they are able to forget themselves – and the pandemic – for a little while as the coloring page or the living room karaoke engages them.

Okay, maybe coloring pictures of superheroes and singing along to the soundtrack of Frozen 2 for the umpteeth time is not your jam. But how about that jam? There’s a lot of cooking going on right now – making homemade jam is probably one of them as freezers are being plumbed of their last summer’s stores. And the reason there’s no flour and no yeast on the shelves? It’s not just their daily bread people are making, they’re making art.

No, it’s not, you say. That’s just food. But why can’t it be food and art? Creativity begins with the head and the heart but it is executed by the hands. And even if it’s just the soothingly rhythmic chore of chopping up vegetables for soup or spicing up your mac-n-cheese with some dill and fancy mustard and putting in a pretty bowl, you are, in your own way, making your Pandemic world a more tolerable and maybe even a more beautiful place. And like comfort food, art soothes as anxiety works its way out through the hands and relief pours back into the head and heart.

The cool thing I have found about art and creativity in general, is that it begets other art. And not just in the same form. I am not musical. I play no instruments – save for drumming pencils on the backs of couches. And although I am fond of singing loudly in my car – alone – I care not to step on any balcony and sing for the public. (Think: cat concert.) But I have found that there is a funny thing that goes on when I am able to listen and watch live music being performed, especially if it is my own children playing and singing. It makes me want to write.

Huh, weird.

I first recognized this phenomenon a couple of years ago when I watched my then 5-year-old niece Penny sing a solo at her year end music concert. Although at times very shy, Penny did not shy of the microphone. She confidently sang her selection and – here’s what I really loved – tapped her toe the whole time in perfect syncopation to her accompaniment. I felt a restlessness inside of me, but not a longing to get up on stage and sing. It was the need to express my own art, even if it was just recording for posterity in my journal how watching Penny sing made me feel.

Feelings. Expressions. Outbursts. They’re probably pretty common right now as we are finding our corners in the house too cramped right now. Or we’re feeling hemmed in by our limits: no work to go to, no classes, no “fun” shopping, no playgrounds. There has to be a constructive way to express our energy, our frustrations, our personalities. Maybe: art?

I don’t want to look back at this time and think I wasted it – because time in all its iterations is a gift. But art does not have to be productive to do its work. It doesn’t even have to be permanent – think sidewalk chalk drawings or all the balcony concerts that aren’t being recorded – for it to BE ART. Art can even look unsuccessful in the eyes of the world but it can be transformative and transcending to its practitioner.

One of the origins of the word art? To be. Maybe it’s more important than we even realize. We need to do art in order to be.

Maybe it’s time to dust off the violin, the Skilsaw, the pasta machine, the 1970s macrame kit, the sewing machine, the paint, the great Canadian novel, the seed packages, the microphone, the website, the podcast idea, the Photoshop program, and because it’s almost Easter – the paska and hot cross bun recipes.

Go do art. Go be. Go!