Category: Pandemic

THE WILL TO CHANGE IS THERE… BUT HOW DO WE BUILD ON IT?

angela findlay5 Comments

As I write this blog, I am holding in my thoughts and heart all who are suffering, grieving, lonely, lost, anxious, frightened, helping, serving, or dying and all the infinite shades of individual human experience that fall between.

Like for some, but unlike for so many more, my rural little Covid world of the past 5 weeks has been a haven of sun-filled peace. Such is the stillness that you can almost hear buds bursting into bouquets of blooms as Spring rustles through the land like a breeze. Woods carpeted in white and blue have become cathedrals for choirs of birds filling the daily Sunday silence with song. Time is no longer measured by clock hands and calendars, but by the gradual emptying of a fridge shelf or the clapping hands on the pavements that announce another week has passed. 

As if from another world, packages of numbers wrapped in the language of war drip-drip-drip-feed death, tragedy, fear and devastation into our days rippling the peace like a faulty tap. Are we at war with Covid-19? Is our sole purpose in the face of a cruel enemy that is attacking all we have come to know and value as “normal,” to defeat it? War requires strategies to target and vanquish an adversary through killing. But, as Angela Merkel said in her address to the nation on 18thMarch, the Covid-19 pandemic is a war without a human enemy.

I find it interesting and heart-warming that 99-year old Captain Tom Moore, an army veteran who fought in the world’s largest war, has become Britain’s inspiration and symbol for how to face the Coronavirus. In total contrast, both to armed conflict situations of war and the language used by several governments, he is not fighting to kill off something. By completing lengths of his back garden, he is walking to help our dedicated services save lives. 

I have to confess that there are moments when I almost dread the day Covid-19 is “sent packing,” as Boris Johnson blustered before the virus robbed him of his usual air, and things return to ‘normal’. Of course I want a rapid end to the huge and relentless suffering of so many. But I don’t want us to go “back to normal.” I don’t want the war metaphors to continue but now with triumphant declarations of victory. For Covid-19 has not just been a vile enemy and bringer of death and misery. It has also been a huge teacher, a creator of peace, a unifier of communities, a friend to nature, a highlighter of the fissures in our society and a persistent pointer to the most vulnerable, the most needed and the most brave. Covid-19 is a killer, yes, but as anyone who has been close to the death of a loved one will attest to, it is also guiding us to our hearts. 

Many people have said it much better than I can, either in this or my last blog. In my opinion, one of the most insightful and erudite writings on the subject is the essay The Coronation by Charles Eisenstein. In it he says: Covid-19 is showing us that when humanity is united in common cause, phenomenally rapid change is possible. None of the world’s problems are technically difficult to solve; they originate in human disagreement. In coherency, humanity’s creative powers are boundless… Covid demonstrates the power of our collective will when we agree on what is important.

I feel deeply and passionately that there is a much bigger picture to the close-up snapshots we are getting from around the world. We are standing before a phenomenal chance for change. A unique opportunity to not go back to the “normal,” which was neither just, nor sustainable, nor even working for the majority of the global population. As Charles Eisenstein asks: For years normality has been stretched nearly to its breaking point, a rope pulled tighter and tighter… Now that the rope has snapped, do we tie its ends back together, or shall we undo its dangling braids still further, to see what we might weave from them?

The Indian author, Arundhati Roy, says much the same in THE WAY AHEAD:

Arundhati Roy

The writing has been on the wall for a long time. I sincerely hope Covid-19 will make it impossible for these ways of thinking to be brushed aside and ignored as the domain of dippy-hippies, whacko scientists, alternative dropouts, idealists, artists or activists. I pray that during this prolonged pause enough of us can shift our values and priorities fully into the camp of those we are currently embracing, not just as individuals but also as a nation. As I have frustratingly learned from decades of campaigning for prison reform, the political impetus to change will only come from widespread public insistence and/or inspired and wise leadership. I don’t yet know what exactly I, what we as individuals, can do and I welcome all suggestions. But maybe a good starting point is to follow New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern’s encouragement to “Be strong, be kind.”

Some further opinions:

Penguin is publishing essays about Covid-19 by their leading authors every Monday, like It’s all got to change by Philp Pullman and A New Normal by Malorie Blackman

The pandemic is a portal by Arundhati Roy

Covid-19 and the language of war by ADRIAN W J KUAH AND BERNARD F W LOO
Coronavirus and the language of war New Statesman

Coronavirus: How New Zealand relied on science and empathy BBC News

The Coronation by Charles Eisenstein as a podcast and as a PDF file

George Monbiot talks about Coronavirus

The Covid-19 pandemic – what else? But this time seen through an artist’s eyes

angela findlay6 Comments

Covid-19’s march across the world and into our daily lives scares, astonishes and negatively impacts me like everyone. I can’t comment on the daily shape-shiftings of scientific, economic and political strategies, for I know nothing about any of them. But as a visual artist largely working from the right side of my brain, I am used to stepping back to see the bigger picture and my eyes are trained to blur out details and see things in terms of shapes, colours and gestures. A quick way to experience this shift away from the logical thought of our left brain is to squint your eyes and look through your eyelashes. Or take a painting or photo and turn it upside down. Both methods filter out what we ‘know’ enabling us to see familiar things differently. Objects of importance might fade. A shadow, a colour, a form might stand out.

When I look in this way at what is happening around us, I of course see the total upheaval and devastation for so many. But I can also see something that gives me glimmers of hope where before I had none. For within the language of tragedy and loss – of lives, jobs, holidays and everything we consider ‘normal’ – are calls to pay attention to areas of society we normally neglect. Maybe you too can see that there is a bigger, more subtle picture as well as a huge opportunity behind the obvious reasons we are universally being told to ‘stop’?

Not all the symbols I see fit of course, and some people will dismiss them as coincidental. But what if this pandemic is actually a natural and inevitable effect of what decades of human behaviour have caused? Covid-19 primarily attacks the lungs and airways, leaving people starved of oxygen. If trees are the lungs of our planet producing the vital oxygen we need to live, haven’t decades of excessive, shortsighted, polluting and disposable lifestyles had the same impact on the world as that of heavy smoking on a person? 

As in cases of disease in the microcosm of any individual’s life, a massive pause button has been pressed grinding the cogs of contemporary life to a halt and forcing us to rest, reflect on and reconsider our lifestyle choices. In the constant pursuit of economic ‘growth’, we have been travelling at high speed down a cul-de-sac. What we are experiencing now is the slamming on of brakes and screeching to a halt before we hit the wall. We knew it was there but we did not listen or act. We now have to do both.   

Suddenly priorities have shifted into reverse and our full attention is turned to the protection of the elderly, the vulnerable, those on zero-hour contracts, single-parent families, nurses and medical staff. Suddenly the ‘invisible’ refuse collectors, hospital cleaners, shelf stackers and ambulance drivers become the vital heroes that will keep the last cogs of a groaning infrastructure moving. Suddenly the idea of locking people into tiny cells for up to 23 hours appears unacceptably inhumane and reducing the overcrowding of prisons becomes an obvious first step. 

Forced self-isolation will give many people a taste of the extreme solitude many people face each day, from those bereaved, unemployed or sick to artists and writers. It highlights the danger of ‘home’ for children of violent parents or domestically abused women. And as food shelves are stripped by panicked stock-piling, one has to think of those who can only afford to live from one day to the next and will be faced with empty shelves. 

While the language of the media is understandably dramatic and war references temptingly apposite, they are not necessarily helpful. We are not at war with anyone. Like war, this situation will probably bring out the best and worst ends of the spectrum of human nature. Unlike war, and yet like nothing we have faced previously, we are all in this together. All united in our shared desire to continue being able to breathe. 

Seeing the world’s beautiful cities and bays emptied of tourists, traffic and cruise ships, the skies emptied of planes is eerie (and economically catastrophic for many), but all this could inspire us to change our habits from endless consumption and movement to a greater appreciation of stillness, each other and simply being alive. So, while we are being collectively advised and forced to change our habits and embrace new priorities, why don’t we collectively work on changing them for good… in both senses of the word?

Keep well and safe, everybody. Spring is coming regardless.

Oh yes, and some really good news, which was going to be the theme of this month’s blog… I have signed a contract with Penguin Transworld to publish my book! I have a considerable amount of work still to do on it but will keep you posted.