“Is there any­one out there whose lives are not touched by the coro­na virus pan­dem­ic?”, Mus­cat based mag­a­zine «Black & White Oman» is ask­ing. They pub­lished an arti­cle fea­tur­ing Dust of Soul as part of their Coro­na Diaries in their online magazine. 

“Be it long or short, painful or ecsta­t­ic, seri­ous or fun… what­ev­er it may be, we are here to air your views on the pan­dem­ic”, Black & White intro­duces the sec­tion on their web­site. Every­one is affect­ed by the pan­dem­ic cri­sis. We all strug­gle by the chal­lenges we face. Shar­ing our sto­ries can help human­i­ty to stand this through. 

Every­one inter­est­ed in music might ask: What is an artist doing now? What does the future look like for music? Dust of Soul gives us a glimpse into their every­day coro­na life:

“It is gen­er­al­ly known that peo­ple are afraid when a sit­u­a­tion gets out of con­trol. When we are con­front­ed with bad news every day, we move back more and more – ‘social dis­tanc­ing’, as they say. But this can also have a pos­i­tive aspect.

Being thank­ful

Michael and I, we start our morn­ings being thank­ful for wak­ing up and feel­ing the life ener­gy. We then get up, open a win­dow, sense the wind on the skin, see the sun, this ful­fill us with pure joy.

Time to meditate

There­after each of us finds some time to med­i­tate. Ask­ing: what do I real­ly want in my life? Where is my focus? Towards growth, fear, sad­ness? Get­ting to know myself bet­ter? What tools can be valu­able for the future? Ask­ing myself how I can pos­i­tive­ly impact friends and fam­i­ly, and peo­ple  around me so they can get back the joy of life.
With these pos­i­tive thoughts, the med­i­ta­tion ses­sions are end­ed. Then we begin to mes­sage a few pos­i­tive words to our beloved ones. Seri­ous­ly meant attention.

Express feel­ings in lyrics and melodies

We focus on our work, writ­ing songs and cre­at­ing music. We try to express all our feel­ings in lyrics and melodies, all on one point. Sud­den­ly we notice mes­sages on our phones. Love­ly respons­es and grace­ful “thank yous” from friends say­ing we have made them hap­py and they have gained strength and hope. Despite social dis­tanc­ing, our hearts are always con­nect­ed. We are still able to help one anoth­er with­out phys­i­cal­ly meet­ing. Because real friend­ship will sur­vive a pan­dem­ic or even a glob­al crisis!

Life is about change

Dur­ing this cur­rent glob­al pan­dem­ic cri­sis we all meet our lim­its, all kinds of lim­its, if not emo­tion­al­ly and phys­i­cal­ly. Hap­pi­ly, only when we meet our lim­its, we start to change. Oth­er­wise we stay with­in our com­fort zones. In times like these we are remind­ed that life is all about change. This is how new life is born. Change may be scar­ing peo­ple. But what if change is the only and ulti­mate key to growth and devel­op­ment? And to achieve some­thing that has always been thought impos­si­ble? Each cri­sis unveils chances. And we should take the chance to grow.

Use this time to know yourself

Begin to use this time to get to know your­self bet­ter and right now in the present than lat­er. And keep mov­ing for­ward on your own path towards the future. Most impor­tant­ly, let us be grate­ful for what we have expe­ri­enced and for what we will expe­ri­ence in the future.”

Thank you to the Black & White Mag­a­zine for shar­ing this sto­ry on Dust of Soul. Read their coro­na diary here online.

• Title pho­tog­ra­phy by San­dra Eichmann
• Coro­na Diaries Logo by Black & White Oman
• Diary by Dust of Soul
• Text by Dust of Soul | Michael Odermatt