Isolation 101: Auckland Musician Merk On His Lockdown Distractions

By Sarah Downs
Viva
Mark Perkins, a.k.a musician Merk. Photo / Supplied

What I'm reading...
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. It's a future dystopian novel published in 1932 that is strangely on the money.

What I'm watching...
Lots of Instagram live music performances. They are super fun and you feel very connected to the artist performing in a different way to how it is when you go to a concert. Many artists have had tour plans cancelled, and although not quite the same thing these live streams are some sort of consolation and special in their own way.

What I'm listening to...
Current favourite song is Altadore 'All That Weight', I heard on the Danger Mouse Jukebox on Spotify. It's really my sort of thing: good songwriting and crispy sounds, yum! Also really loving the latest Porches album Ricky Music. Big love to all the musicians releasing music amid this craziness.

The hobby I've taken up...
Many, many, many Zoom calls. I'm part of a social netball team, and obviously we can't gather weekly at the moment, so we are finding plenty of other ways to stay healthy and connected. We've been doing video call workouts, movie nights, and we even have a non-pub-pub-quiz coming up this week.

The thing that made me laugh this week...
Playing a board game with my flatmates. It was the end of a stressful day trying to process the magnitude of what's happening at the moment. But we just sat on our couches and played some dumb games by candlelight. We laughed a lot that night!

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