By Terrence Thomas
Belen Cusi couldn’t sleep. Then again, that’s always been the case for her when it came to preparing to travel.
But this was different for Cusi, a former Churchill High School basketball player. The insomnia wasn’t a result of the common anxiety that came with taking a trip, such as deciding on the best driving route or making lodging accommodations.
The point of contention for this journey was the uncertainty.
Cusi left the New York City area for Florida on March 26, just as the former emerged as the epicenter of a coronavirus pandemic in the United States. To date, 318,134 people have tested positive and 24,035 have died from COVID-19 in NYC.
“The neighborhood was pretty active given the state of things,” Cusi recalled of the day she left. “Cars were on the road, sirens heard pretty often. I drove through NYC for the first time in two weeks and saw firsthand the empty streets. … That’s unheard of. It was an eerie sense of peace.”
It was a surreal moment for Cusi. The 2008 Churchill graduate’s decision to depart the nation’s most populated city, while varied, was jump-started when a roommate feared contact with someone who might have been exposed to the coronavirus. It was a false alarm.
But with chaos and panic about to take hold in the “Big Apple,” Cusi spoke with family and friends — some who lived through the 9/11 terrorist attack in NYC — and made a list of pros and cons for leaving and staying.
Cusi decided to leave, driving 16 straight hours from Brooklyn to her parents’ home in Gainesville, Fla., stopping only for gasoline.
“The situation in New York was already precipitating, getting pretty bad,” she said. “I thought extensively about how it would affect my safety and health, and my mental and emotional well-being. What tipped me over the ledge was the realization that artistically, leaving was the best choice, as I would have ample space and warmer weather in Florida that was much more conducive to my creative work than my apartment in NYC.
“Leaving home not knowing how long I would be gone was very interesting — it certainly made packing difficult, and it had an apocalyptic feeling to it,” she said. “I’m normally quite minimalist when packing, but because I didn’t know how long I’d be gone, I found myself wanting to take so many things, items to help me feel at home, to bring NY with me, in a sense.”
Cusi arrived in Florida at 1 a.m. on March 27 and immediately self-quarantined for two weeks as a precaution, making meals in a kitchenette in her room. Her parents purchased and left needed supplies outside her door.
While many have complained about stay-at-home orders, protesting by blocking streets and descending on a state capitol, Cusi embraced her refuge. She balanced her time between working remotely as a public relations consultant and being a rising Indie singer-songwriter who vocally has been compared to Norah Jones, Gloria Estefan, Joss Stone and Diana Krall.
In the last month, with her keyboard and melodica (a free-reed instrument that has a keyboard on top and a mouthpiece on the side and sounds like an accordion) as trusted friends, she wrote a half-dozen songs.
Cusi released her third single, “Me Has Liberado” on Oct. 18, 2019, and her second, “Estrella Fugaz,” on April 12, 2019. Her first single, “Closer,” launched on Aug. 17, 2018.
“It gives me a creative outlet, and I’ve been able to write around how I’m feeling about what happening and writing so that I can hopefully inspire and lift others up,” said Cusi, a classically trained pianist of Argentine descent who has also done modeling and acting. “It helps to cope and keeps me busy.”
Music has always provided an escape for Cusi. In 2013, she graduated from Boston University with a journalism degree. She worked in marketing, but was laid off from her job in April 2016. Cusi then worked as a waitress to pay bills, but music was never far away.
In July 2016, she landed her first paid music gig. Her voice soon became a familiar sound on the Boston-area music scene as she performed at the legendary Beehive, The Beat Brasserie, TOAD, Scoozi Boston and Tres Gatos. After nearly a decade in Boston, Cusi moved to New York City and found a similar place on the music landscape, even performing at Club Groove, a popular nightspot in Greenwich Village.
These days, though, Cusi is not sure when she will return home. She doesn’t know what NYC will be like when she does get back, and while hopeful it will resemble the vibrant city that drew her to chase her musical dream, she has concluded things likely will never be as they once were.
“I’m honestly in no rush to get back,” said Cusi, a 5-foot-5 guard on Churchill’s 2007-08 basketball team that included center Christine Flores, who was drafted by the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury in 2012, and entered the season as the defending Region IV-5A (now 6A) champion. “Until I have a solid reason I need to be in meetings or classes in NYC, I’ll be staying in Florida. Of course, at some point, everyone has to get back on the horse, so to speak, and make an attempt at resuming normal activities without fear of getting sick. But it’s going to be a long year of finding a new normal until we have a vaccine in hand and more certainty around ways to protect ourselves.
“I really hope this brings greater awareness to taking greater care of ourselves and our fellow humans,” she added. “Ultimately, I’m grateful to be healthy and safe now with my family, and focused on creating my music. I hope to write between 30-50 songs this year and if there’s ever a silver lining, this break has given me the opportunity to find a new sense of productivity in my songwriting.”