Refusing to be creative isn’t a good place to be in for the long term.
Did I mean refusing? I don’t think I did. Perhaps I was referring to external forces stifling my creativity, or making creative activity difficult, impractical. That’s always been the internal battle for me. I can’t imagine I would have ever actively refused to engage in creating at all. Maybe I was just finding the obstacles too great, feeling the end results were futile, that no one would see them, therefore they weren’t valid or worthwhile.
Walking is an at practise too. I go up to the river on my bike most days, record bits of video, think, come back, sometimes write words. Sometimes it feels like it’s forming into film essay/long form visual prose. Who can say? The film part is what keeps me going but actually it has become a burden, pushing it forwards constantly, without an end ever in sight. Another burden is the one to just hold on to hope and keep myself travelling to places whilst obeying some externally applied tedious rules. Rules can be useful, the traditional walking artists often used them to remove human choice from their practise, to allow for coincidence and chance to activate.
I wonder if the latest siege impostion (“tier 4 – nobody move”) was carefully planned to be sudden and intended to dislocate us with its surprise urgency. The people have been having fun trying to second guess the next move. We assumed lurching around in tiers would continue in its farcical, not-taken-seriously way, followed by a token punishment lockdown in January. Instead we have severe “ACT NOW” orders. Chaotic rushes to catch last trains, as if leaving Saigon. Ports and borders have all closed, trapping truck drivers from the mainland here, they’re now having to park up and wait all over Kent. Food shortages are rumoured and feared. I find it all surreal, and my response is to laugh hysterically. There’s no point in trying to care too much, it is out of our control. It is in no one’s control really, is it? When it’s over I’ll go somewhere else I think.
On Thursday evening everyone is supposed to ring bells. I can’t remember why. I’m not sure many people do it, apart from the more deranged patriotic types. I feel oddly calm at the moment. The present status seems stuck. Frantic but calm. Flat. This is what we are now. Is this what people mean when they invoke the Churchill/Blitz spirit? A state of numb obedience, decision making, self control and autonomy have been taken away, but we only noticed several months later, having been so overwhelmed by the newness, the change. I don’t think those people endured hardship, horror and destruction through any inflated self-righteous BRITISHness, people typically don’t enjoy heroics under duress, they just did it through conditioning and broken spirits, without the power to object, or the insight to think laterally and find an alternative. If you can’t see sideways or behind, the only way is forward.
I’ll go away eventually.
Andrew Stevenson 