James Turrell at Pace a few months ago, encapsulating the pulsating-but-static energy I've had during lockdown
Hi! Hello! It's me!
I keep wanting to write but have been violently incapable of it, so instead of a short story about a kapla castle (which I promise I'll finish!) or another instalment of the concierge story (which I know is long overdue), you have the one thing I had promised myself I wouldn't write: a coronavirus thought piece.
I know, I'm sorry. Honestly, I tried to stop myself, but I think that, beyond my general fickleness and inability to retain a routine for more than 3 weeks straight, the fact that we're in a lockdown and, you know, watching the world shit itself from afar is probably not completely coincidental to my inability to finish writing anything.
COVID-19 has done weird things to my creativity. I've already complained about how little I've been able to write, but I want to be specific: the one thing I've been incapable of writing is fiction, even though that's all I desperately crave, because god knows it would be nice to escape from this reality for a little while. What I have managed to write, however short, are photo captions for Facebook and Instagram that were little snippets of what I'm talking about here: my frustrations, my wants, my sadnesses. And, not coincidentally, that's almost all I've managed to read, too - Man Repeller's Quarantine Dispatches and thought pieces have felt like homes for my brain, places to go when I feel alone in my dealing with a situation that's bad-but-not-so-bad-I-mean-just-think-about-all-the-people-who-have-it-so-much-worse.
I've turned inward. I've found it hard to think about others, maybe because I haven't seen any of them in a while, and sometimes my brain has a moment when I wake up where it feels like only the things that are immediately there - Neil beside me, the food in our fridge, our bed, the window - are real.
It's made it hard to imagine new worlds, or to turn them into stories, because my imagination these days is immediate and mobilised for everything, meaning it feels just as imaginative to think about what my parents are doing in Paris at this moment as it does to think about whether or not the concierge will go on his next adventure.
That doesn't mean I haven't been creative: I've been painting, making clay earrings, reading, listening to music, dancing, and even (to everyone's great regret) occasionally singing. Last night, I took some aluminium foil, a bikini, some goggles and the fish slippers Pauline got me as a goodbye present from my first grown up job to turn myself into a makeshift mermaid. Granted, this led to Neil asking me if I was having a nervous breakdown - and who knows? Maybe when I reflect on this in a year, I’ll realise that I was. But honestly, it felt so good to entertain myself so completely, and for the 30 minutes it took me to get ready then show him what I had done I couldn't stop laughing - the kind of big, shaking laugh that completely engulfs you into your own happiness and makes you forget about everything but the fact that you’re wrapping your legs in tin foil and how much will Neil who has no warning about this whatsoever laugh once he sees it (for the record, he didn’t laugh at all, which I take as a mark of serious concern over my mental health rather than lack of humor in my invention).
Creativity in the time of the coronavirus is hard to come by, not because it isn't there, but because, at least in my own brain, it feels almost impossible to treat the extended isolation time as an opportunity to pursue the things you usually do. This isn't a normal time, so of course I can’t create normal things. But maybe letting creative habits slip was the key to finding my covid niche: I wrote absolutely nothing for a few weeks and now here I am, rambling to the internet like my usual self.
Far from me to be one of those assholes who tell you how to live your life. So what will follow is more something for me to go back to, to remember when I feel bad about my unproductive quarantine, when I’m bombarded with #getshitdone LinkedIn posts I definitely didn’t want to see.
Let the instinct take over: you want to paint? Get yourself some finger colors and a sheet of paper and have at it. You want to sing? Fuck the fact you're such a bad singer that your high school teacher put you on the piano so she wouldn't have to hear you. You want to do absolutely nothing for three days, lying on a couch and occasionally crying because you feel inexplicably fragile? Girl, not only have I been there, but I've come back, and letting all of my feelings take over was the most productive thing I did in a month. And once you feel wiped - and there's no rule to when that is, by the way, maybe it'll take an hour, a day, a month, don't rush it, let the things you can't formulate take space - once you feel wiped you'll sit down and there will be something left inside of you, and maybe it won't be the thing you were hoping to find but it might give you some sense of direction, electronics, internet rambles, sewing machines, nude paintings, whatever floats your creative boat.
So there you go. I'm sorry I haven't managed to write a good piece of fiction lately, or really any piece of fiction. But I'm getting there. I wrote - and that's already an achievement in itself, no?
Love,
Esther
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