In recent months, Cldwaterr has been slowly been building a reputation for himself as one of Chicago’s more compelling hip-hop artists. With a knack for fierce deliveries, deeply personal lyricism and an ear for old school instrumentals, he has taken the genre back to its roots in a way that is fresh and imaginative. On his new single, “Has-Been,” he continues to build on these trends.

Produced by Sekani, The instrumental has “classy” written all over it. The vocal sample is extremely soulful with a ghostly twang to it, and the grumbling base and rhythmic percussion serve as nice complimentary pieces. The strings are absolutely gorgeous as well.

Cldwaterr brings the braggadocio on here, but he backs it up by showing he’s in top form. There’s an undeniably smooth sense of charisma in his delivery, yet he sounds hungrier than ever. His wordplay is more sharp and his bars even more direct than usual, showing an immense amount of progression in just a short amount of time.

“Has-Been” is yet another example that Cldwaterr can appeal to hip-hop fans of all kinds. His old school beats and content-heavy rhymes are more than enough to appeal to a purist crowd, while his smooth sense of charisma should grab the ears of younger, more mainstream fans. With the universal appeal Cldwaterr has, he is definitely an artist who will be sticking around for a long time.

“Has-Been” is out now on all platforms. Stream it here: https://songwhip.com/song/cldwaterr/has-been

Follow Cldwaterr on Instagram @cldwaterr

SELF-ISOLATION, DAY 6

I am starting this the night before again. When I work my schedule is messed up.

Today was so different. The store was mildly busy until about 4 or 5pm, then it grew quieter and by about 6pm was nearly dead. The store management was there and gave us all sealed, hot meals. We will all receive a bonus. I began to feel more kindly to the store management and the administration of the grocery store chain in general. The managers are all there, working along side of us and exposed as much to the risk as any of us. We are not soldiers but the population depends on food stores, gas stations, pharmacies and medical personnel; transportation, police and fire department; there are so many people who make up the network of caring for this society. What if none of them came to work? What would we do?

Today I felt more mellow, perhaps because the work was not so intense and we were gradually trying to restock the shelves and make the store appear a bit more like normal. It is getting there, but in any case it is not a situation where people are starving because we are unable to keep up. There are certainly people who are in danger. Those who are already poor and now unemployed from a meager job and wondering where any money will come from. We really have to care about the rest of our society. If not, I believe we will truly fall apart as a society. I mean, really.

OK, beginning again/starting on Day 6, which I started last night. I am getting confused. I’m tired. Not sick, just tired.

So, this is Sunday, I went to work again and by the 3^rd day of weekend work I am pretty tired. The store was very quiet all day and by 6pm, an hour early, I was just looking for things to do to act busy, but tired and bored. So I asked for and received permission to leave an hour early. I don’t care about the lost 1 hour pay. In the morning we had quite a bit of various groceries to put on the shelves, still from the shipments the night before. Everyone not involved doing something else, like cashiers and baggers, and including all of management, and myself, were busy stocking the shelves, with customers threading their way between workers. Still though, most everyone in a good mood and polite with each other.

People are coping, adjusting. The church I occasionally attend is using live-streaming, and I met a female pastor of a nearby church, in the grocery line, who told me they are live-streaming services, and the Theosophical Society I mentioned, will start using ZOOM for our Wednesday evening discussion and meditation groups. So, these are some very positive aspects. The streets were quieter, regarding vehicular traffic, which is good. I hope people are really taking this seriously. I personally feel well. I have been through the H1N1 epidemic several years ago, and other flu epidemics. I always got my vaccine. This, of course, is a different animal. I don’t want my friends and relatives to die from this. I do not want to.

REMEMBER: Shelter in Place. It is not a joke. Stay home when you do not need to go out, except to walk, run, etc. Walk your dogs. Oh, it stopped raining! Today it is snowing. But this will also stop and the sun will again come out. Eat healthy, get fresh air in your home when weather permits. Fresh air and sunshine are healthy.

And, stay safe, be well, cooperate. Believe in the higher powers. March 22, 2020

SELF-ISOLATION, DAY 5

OK, I wasn’t going to complain, but… buying way more than you need, this is what is called

HOARDING.

I am cheating a little. This is the essay for tomorrow, March 21 but I came home from work and need to vent a little. So, please don’t tell anyone I am doing this.

Really, since humans are doing this and it happens frequently I am trying to understand this panic-hoarding people do. I suppose it is in some way understandable. It occurs when a previously unsuspected problem occurs, threatening a large portion of some particular area of the population. In this case, everyone is potentially affected.

But…listen to me, please (and I know probably very few people read my crap), there is enough food to go around. Food production has not stopped. Toilet paper production, I read in an online article, was being increased before the COVID-19 started to affect us, since manufacturers thought this might happen. I explained to a couple of stressed customers that there is enough of everything, that there is still a shortage of paper products because in the morning people come in and grab whatever came in during the night. One customer had a shopping cart overflowing and the bill was nearly $600! Judging by the amounts of various products she purchased, either she will be feeding an infantry company this weekend, or she is stockpiling for 3 months.

Some are bewildered. A gray-haired man, with an accent from maybe Eastern Europe, was trying to purchase the gallon jugs of water. He told me in broken English that his sister told him that the governor of this state said everything will close. He asked me 3 times if our store will stay open. And about gas stations. So, I explained as thoroughly as I could what the situation is and that we will stay open and that there is enough of everything. If everyone could somehow calm down and be willing to share, to let loose of the “death grip” on having more than enough so one does not have fear.

I looked in their faces and saw black, brown, tan, white; faces that smiled, were angry, were tired, were bewildered, were hopeful. I saw my ancestors in their faces. I saw America. Why can we not see this in each other and share the last loaf of bread?

Let us try all to do this together, to stay safe, be well, share.

March 21, 2020

There’s no doubt that coronavirus is deadly. We watch its body count rise daily with no certainty where it will stop. But as dangerous as that virus is to our bodies, doom and gloom is even more dangerous to our souls. And while most of us will avoid the least desirable outcome of coronavirus, our efforts to protect our bodies threaten to make none of us immune to doom and gloom.

It’s easy to get down. Even those of us who haven’t become sick can get mired in all that we’ve lost. Retirement funds. Jobs. Vacations. Baseball. That bar with the self-serve taps.

At some point – if it hasn’t already – the novelty of self-isolation and hours of Netflix will wear off. Humans are social creatures, and despite how we feel on rainy, cold mornings, we do better when we’re out in the world rather than holed up in our homes. We’re not moles.

How long do we have to keep this up? I’m not sure anyone knows, and those who might know are too wise to say.

When facing a worldwide pandemic, necessary isolation of an unknown duration, and loss of so many small things that bring us joy, what are we to do?

There’s only one thing to do: practice gratitude.

The current pandemic is scary. Even as we live through it, I find it hard to believe what we’re being asked to do. Kids can’t go to school? No concerts? Stay inside your house so you don’t catch a deadly disease or spread it to others?

This doesn’t even seem like real life.

But for today, this is real life. And tomorrow. And the day after that. And probably quite a few days after that.

Not all of us will make it through, but most of us will. Those of us who are healthy, relatively young, and have decent insurance have a better chance. One day life will return to normal for us.

And it’s that prospect of returning to normal where gratitude comes in.

What we’re experiencing now is an interlude. It’s that space between the life we were living and the life we’ll live in the future. And during this interlude we can mope, and worry, and fill ourselves with dread, and generally freak out, or we can use this break as a chance to take stock of our lives.

This pandemic is providing a chance for all of us to put things on hold. To do without. In America we’re being forced to do something that Americans hate to do: sacrifice.

But from that sacrifice may grow gratitude.

Life is so daily. It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day challenges, struggles, and monotony of life, and forget the many things for which we should be grateful. But now that so many of those things have been taken from us, perhaps we’ll appreciate them more when they return.

Having dinner at your favorite pizza place. Watching your daughter play soccer. Helping your son with his math homework. Buying toilet paper. A cold beer, a hot dog, and organ music at Wrigley Field. Riding public transportation. Field trips.

Some of those things are fun. Some are a chore. But now that we can’t do any of them, maybe we’ll realize that they’re the real stuff in life, and to simply let them pass by without gratitude is letting our lives pass by. And if we can’t experience gratitude for the small things in our life, then how will we ever know what the large things are?

Thousands of people have died, and thousands more will die. Many of us will get sick, and almost all of us will worry. It’s dreadful.

But it’s also a gift. It’s a forced pause button that gives us the opportunity to reflect on ourselves, our loved ones, our world, and our existence. If we’re lucky, we’ll get to spend a lot of time with those people we love the most. And we’ll also gain an appreciation for many other things that we had to lose in order to discover how important they are to us.

I read an article that said the world will never be the same after this. The writer was talking about health policy, and governmental programs. But if we take this time to think about what we’ve loved and what we’ve lost, then we’ll never be the same either.

And for that, we should be forever grateful.

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Everything we do has meaning. To the highest degree it has meaning to ourselves as individuals. To a lesser degree, meaning to our position within our family and social circles, and society. We are each individual cells in the great organism we’ve classified as the human species.

Isolation – a UK pensioner visiting his grandchild.

It is 6:18 am, Sunday morning, March 22nd.  I just woke up. I can hear birds singing outside my window.  It seems, somehow, incongruous to hear them. Like it’s a normal morning.

It’s most decidedly NOT a normal morning.  For the state of Illinois has been on lockdown since 5 pm last evening.  Not quite marshall law – not yet, anyway.

Coronavirus.  It’s getting to where I can’t bear to hear the word.  One tiny organism has completely changed the world in but a few short weeks. Last weekend came the shock of all bars and restaurants in the state having to close down.  This weekend, everyone in the entire state, save the “essential,” are being made to stay home for the next almost- three weeks.

What the hell will next weekend bring?

The U.S. currently counts almost 27,000 cases of COVID-19 (the incurable disease caused by the virus) and 350 dead.  Illinois’ contribution stands at 753 cases and 6 dead.

Entire countries are quarantined, and over 13,600 people have died world-wide as I write this.

This is, of course, to say nothing of the virus’s catastrophic effect on both the U.S. and global economies.

I am not a chickenshit person.  I’ve been through a lot in my life. But this – this thing – has me sore afraid.  I can’t concentrate.  I can’t sleep. Since I have several risk factors, all I can think of is getting the cursed virus and dying.  It has no vaccine and no cure.

Adding to my anxiety, and perhaps yours, is the open-ended-ness of this ordeal.  We simply have no idea when it will abate and we can return to whatever the hell “normal” will be by then.

Possible death, catastrophic job-loss, interruption of life as we knew it – these things aren’t going to go away like magic.  Or anytime soon.  The damage this virus has caused to the world economy alone will take months or even years to recover from.

I simply don’t know how to wrap my mind around this.  I am, basically, scared shitless.

I – we – can only hope and pray that sanity prevails, that all global citizens continue to act peaceably, and that someone, somewhere in this damaged world finds a cure for this scourge, or at least a vaccine.

When I woke up this morning,  I heard the birds and this song popped into my head:

Thank you for reading.  Comments to:  [email protected]

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  Hello, my babies! Here on Planet Michelle (Earth name: Michelle Babicz), you will find satire, song, sexy stuff and other musings from my little monkey brain. And of course, politics, given the Human Comb-Over currently occupying the Oval Office. / I live over by there, have a foreclosure cat named Lou and currently am between husbands. (Hopefully, not yours.) Enjoy your orbit!

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I hope you’re staying calm, cool and collected during these frightening, unconcern times. If you have any good coping skills, please share. We can all use them.

Truth: I’m not coping well at all. My anxiety level was high before the coronavirus pandemic started.

I won’t go into why that is right here, but just know I have insomnia and had an appointment with a sleep expert at Northwestern scheduled for next week. I had waited six months to get in. I canceled the appointment.

Thanks to this pandemic, my anxiety has really amped up. Just the idea of going into a grocery store makes my heart pound.

I won’t even talk about the economy and my personal financial worries. At the risk of sounding like a crazy loon (if the shoe fits, wear it), here are some of the things that run through my monkey mind:

How long is it going to be before the grocery store clerks and pharmacy techs get the virus? These poor souls should have access to masks. How many people will they unknowingly infect while bravely serving the rest of us?

Taking someone’s temperature before allowing them to work or go into certain places is a good idea, but what’s to prevent people who are asystematic from spreading the disease?

Is it safe to touch your mail? The food you pick out in the grocery store? Your credit card once it goes in the machine? The medicines which are handed to you at CVS or Walgreens?

If you’re a caregiver and get the virus, how are you supposed to care for that person and self-isolate?

Will people ever stop hoarding food, cleaning supplies and toilet paper? Will I ever see friends and family again? How long will touching them be a no-no?

How long does the virus live on surfaces? I’ve heard conflicting information. They say the virus might live in the air. Is that true and for how long?

Even if they come up with a vaccine–which we know is a long way off, what’s to prevent the next one and the next one?

I’ll stop here. But it doesn’t help my anxiety level knowing that our president thinks it’s a personal insult if a reporter asks a question about our fears. Did you see how Trump bashed a reporter for doing so?

I know you can read other opinion pieces with positive ideas about how to cope with this crisis. Please read them all.

My wish is that by publicly sharing my fears it will help you open up about yours and not beat yourself up if you are also having difficulty coping. Please comment. Think of this as a coronavirus support group. Maybe we can help each other.

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