In my head I have written at least a dozen posts during this lockdown hell. Words never made it to the screen. Days flooded with trillions of chores, urgent needs, giving, preparing, tidying, cleaning, holding, reassuring, videocalling, crying, working, crying, texting, organising, surviving, medicating, providing, pretending, entertaining, worrying, crying, clinging on.
Nothing much has changed. A few hours to work during the day rather than at night. Constantly upset children. The kind humans who kept me sane in so much trouble. The world pretending it’s all under control, setting deadlines, expecting meaning, silencing protests.
What words can I conjure up in all this? What for? What would they do? Other than appease my ego, and externalise my rage.
No words today. No words from me.
Instead, I lean into somebody else’s words. The closest thing to theatre I have witnessed since the world shut down. A superb Toby Schmitz giving voice and form to Will Eno’s monologue Thom Pain (based on nothing). Words on words, like a web, like they are things that poke, and tangle, and grate, and there, under my nose, paint the meaninglessness and the discomfort of being.
As we stay, locked, interrupted, muted.
#JustStoppedCaring 