Doris Lessing
In thinking about 'the unprecedented times we live in" I wonder how true these words will hold?
I oftentimes think that the stories we tell ourselves and others, are how we make sense of the world. During the pandemic it seems to me that as we look back we can begin to understand some things; and yet it is not necessarily easy to draw the links to things we are experiencing at this point in the pandemic.
Has there been some sort of unconscious collective agreement that - if we don't write about it, make shows and films about it; if we don't mention its name then perhaps we can all pretend it is over, or it never really happened, or it wasn't really that bad?
I don't really know
I am intrigued by how few movies, novels and theatre productions there are set in the times of the pandemic. I have read one novel by Jodi Picoult which was kind of fascinating; and yet others that purport to be about the issue stray quickly from any direct link to our lived experience. Are we too frightened to be reminded?
I think if the storytellers (with books and films and plays) could start telling stories about it, we could all perhaps process things differently. We could as Doris Lessing suggest recreate ourselves.
Poster by Barry, April 2020.
the inscrutable Braille behind fear and hope ... how storytelling helps to make sense of it all ... but it takes time to process the really big stuff (9/11 comes to mind)
ReplyDeleteI agree with the time it takes for things like 9/11 to be processed, but also I feel as if I recall good writing that included it far closer to the time? It may be that we are still too close and living through it still, but it seems that so many folk and structures and organisations really don't want to talk about the impacts of the pandemic in a creative way. Perhaps we are all just tired and weary.
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