In Quarantine, it hasn’t been easy to keep my attention focused in one direction. Even the simplest of class assignments become exhausting. “Analyze how Hitchcock uses point of view in ‘Rear Window’ to comment on the medium of television.” I think about making a cup of coffee and getting a bagel and bringing them over to my desk where I can eloquently just … spray my essay onto the page. I have all the time in the world, after all.

But that doesn’t happen. I’ll write a paragraph, or two if I’m lucky, and then my mind flips an internal switch and I’m onto something else. All that’s missing is the exaggerated cartoon sound effect. Zip! Wham! Hitchcock can wait. For now, I’ll try reading about the rise and fall of the Roman Empire.

Until recently I’d been working my way through the book Bringing Out the Dead by Joe Connelly, looking forward to catching up with the 1999 Martin Scorsese film it inspired. My mother walked past me while I was reading it the other day. She opened the front door with a cheery “Good morning, world!”

“The world is dying,” I replied, having just read Connelly’s line on page 119: “I was a grief mop, and much of my job was to remove, if even for a short time, the grief starter or the grief product, and mop up whatever I could.” The world could use a mop right about now. Quarantine has made me cynical. Sunlight sifted through screens. Filtered air. Vitamin-D deprivation. Easy things to fix if one only takes the time, but being in quarantine, with everything uncertain, keeps me inside after my run.

Still in pajama pants, I finally watched “Bringing Out the Dead” only to be surprised by how the overexertion in visual style underwhelmed me, along with the lack of emotional depth in character exploration, pacing and focus. For me, a longtime Scorsese fan, it felt as if he were asleep at the wheel this time. I imagine how let down Joe Connelly might’ve felt at the movie’s premiere. When it was over, I thought about my mother opening the front door, and the field I saw on my run, the dead high grass still swaying.

Bio: Hallin Burgan is a junior at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign where he studies film, creative writing, and philosophy. Outside of classes, he works in script editing and script coverage for Number 11 Entertainment. He is also pursuing a career in writing, his recent efforts earning him a finalist position in UIUC’s Undergraduate Fiction Awards.

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