Sophie spangles herself in sequins, wearing sleek dresses heavy with feathers and faux furs. Beneath a glittering disco ball she dances and twirls like the glamorous, posh pop goddess she is, all the while surrounded by the disorder of her three children (is it three? They run around so much that sometimes it seems like a hundred) and the prosaic disarray of her tiny kitchen. She’ll spin to her propulsive disco hit, “Murder on the Dancefloor,” while in the background two of her boys roughhouse and leap up and down on the window seat like their personal trampoline; she’ll change the lyrics to her hit cover of Cher’s “Take Me Home” to “Stay at Home,” crooning the entire song into a microphone in her right hand, while bouncing her toddler in her left arm.
She’ll take a moment to wander into the garden and attempt an artsy pose against a trellis while singing one of her ballads, only to have to interrupt her gentle serenade to bellow at the boys in a tone that every child recognizes to mind the dog. Then she’ll bop around in the kitchen once more to sing a cover of Kim Wilde’s “Kids in America” while trying not accidentally to kick the baby as it scoots around on the floor. (Spoiler: sometimes she accidentally kicks the baby.)
I love Sophie Ellis Bextor’s Kitchen Discos. I love how she’s hauling out elegant ball gowns from the depths of her closets to show them off surrounded by the everyday clutter and disarray of the kitchen of any mom with three young kids. I love how she hands the microphone over to her two oldest boys so they can rap for the audience at home. They rap about as well as any ten-year-olds, which is to say, horribly—but the segment gives Sophie a chance to scuttle off to a nearby alcove, where we can audibly hear her unzipping one silver concert dress and changing into an extremely short sheath of canary yellow silk. “Costume change!” she’ll announce with equal measures of excitement and exhaustion both, as she’ll trip back on her stilettos to resume the show.
As much as I need and look forward to that Friday afternoon respite as I lie on my living room sofa, phone in hand, peering at the screen as the Kitchen Disco proceeds, I suspect it’s important for Sophie Ellis Bextor as well. It’s obvious she looks forward to changing out of her mom clothes and into something glamorous, to perform for her online audience, just as it’s clear her kids relish the chance to goof around with their mom. They’ll pretend to be backup singers and dancers one moment, squabble with each other the next, then chase each other like maniacs around their mother, as kids do, while she tries not to laugh too much. It’s chaos, and comfort, rolled into one sparkling mirror ball of a half hour.
Other entertainers have been streaming from their homes during the last month as well. Ever since Broadway diva Patti LuPone sang a song or two during her appearance in her basement on a Rosie O’Donnell streaming special, giving those watching a startling view of the enormous jukebox in one corner and, more improbably, the racks of cassette tapes on her walls (Patti LuPone still listens to cassettes?), she’s popped up from time to time to give tours of the basement and entertain viewers with her frank LuPone-isms. Comedians have been doing live sets on Instagram Live; drag queens have been streaming their shows on YouTube. Another of my favorite musicians, Rod Thomas of Bright Light, Bright Light, has moved his weekly Romy & Michelle’s Saturday Afternoon Tea Dance from the cramped confines of Club Cumming to Facebook, where he DJs from his apartment and takes requests from viewers in the chat window.
For over a month now I’ve been isolated in my home. My days here don’t vary much. Meals are the milestones of my weeks; the evenings pass by in half-hour or hour chunks, depending on what TV show I’m watching. Watching livestreams from real people in other places—familiar or famous faces even—as they dance or sing or show off their perfectly ordinary basements littered with cassette tapes reminds me that I’m not the only person or family whose days have a perimeter of a few rooms. So I come away smiling after each Sophie’s Kitchen Disco, or each Romy & Michelle Tea Dance, feeling almost as if I’ve been gamboling, or crushed with no social distancing at a concert, happy for a few minutes to have forgotten our world’s troubles. In a week in which mass graves are being dug for the deceased, and in which uncertainty still reigns, there’s more than a little comfort in reinforcing the notion that we’re all in this together.
This essay has been written as part of the Mass Observation: COVID-19 writing project. If you'd like to join our volunteer writers, visit our Call for Volunteers at https://bit.ly/3aes2AQ .
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