Content overload

Remaining open and curious during a shit storm

I’m trying to get round to some creative work and go downstairs for a quick snack. Slabs of feta and haloumi in the fridge that never seem to go off, and also, why don’t we get round to eating them? Sorting the cheese by date suddenly becomes the most urgent task.

I didn’t do dry January. I needed the fortification. And I didn’t read the news – I was assaulted by the news. Information beaming urgently into the little light-box in my hand. The constant push-pull of staying informed, of being present to the pain, and all of that smashing right up against my ability to make any meaningful change.

How to create and move forward lightly when surrounded by fear. Guilt also that the fear is so much sharper for those on the multiple front lines.

I attempt at being selectively porous, mentally stand the news on a sidebar while building a psychic wall against that which I can’t control; shutter my enquiry as you would board up windows in a storm, ration my reading supplies, lick grey water from the taps of inspiration. Tiptoe about my mind like a ghost.

I’m reminded of Mark Rylance’s character in Don’t Look Up. Every time something terrifying happens, he watches a video of a cute chicken on his iPad. My social feeds are full of cats falling into bathtubs and dogs in bonnets. We are living in the age of distraction.

Or maybe it’s just winter, that period we’re supposed to have reinvented ourselves in a New Year’s Ta Dah! way, when all I want is to hibernate.

During the First World War, while recovering from a breakdown, Virginia Woolf retreated to the Sussex countryside to convalesce. The sound of the guns echoed across the sea from France. She wrote in her diary, ‘How does one continue living in the midst of horror but by focussing one’s attention on nearer things. The garden, dogs, things noticed in Lewes or Firle.’

My son and husband call me into the telly room during one of their Lord of the Rings viewing marathons. They’ve reached the scene when the Orcs are marching on Helm’s Deep. The exhausted population is trapped, their numbers dwindling. We call it the Arming of the children scene; little boys forced to don oversized armour and instructed how to hold a spear. I have to leave the room and my teasing family, go bury my head in one of the cats’ furry tummies.

Everyone I know says they’re swerving the news at the moment. The more I prune and ingest only what’s necessary, the more I get to languish in my thoughts, but the cost is also a drift from newness and wonder. It’s an irony that to be in the conversation, to have the bandwidth to reach conclusions, you have to be both aware of the conversation and able to shut out the noise.

In the old days it was just Ceefax, or I’d have the morning hours until I’d walked to the Tube to buy my Guardian before filling my brain with information on the journey to work. Now, I allow the entire world, with all its miracles and problems, to greet me before I’ve even left the bed.

A few of my relations have retreated from life. They’ve become a little unit against the world with their own habits, jokes and comforts, their own micro-gated community. And within that they’ve become suspicious of both the ideas and people they believe will harm them. They’re easily persuaded by the twaddle the algorithm pushes in their direction because they have so little interaction with the outside world. They know they’re living a half-life but see it as necessary protection.

Like the time me and my husband could only listen to Witchi Tai To by Harpers Bazaar, or Neil Young’s Ambulance Blues. Nothing else worked. We’d ossified in the retro-comfort of assuredly good music.

I open my emails to an avalanche of content and opinion, all of us floating around in this brainy soupy zeitgeist, fishing for nuggets of wisdom to share with the world. I’m amazed at the capacity of twenty-six letters to re-arrange themselves into ever new and astounding ideas. Then why can it seem there are no stories left to tell? And is there any need for me to add to the pot? This writing lark can feel like delivering a product, and I’m very tired of needing to be a brand. So many platforms, so little time. I considered calling this piece, I love you, but your feet smell to see if that got more attention.

Might it be worthier to go and grow vegetables instead of earning money to pay someone else to grow my food. Although the bigger issue seems to be that some people think stories should be free because they come from your brain, whereas a turnip is financially quantifiable by its mass.

I oscillate between thinking no art is worth pursuing when there’s far more serious stuff to be dealing with, to understanding it’s never been more important to create; to have a voice, to work towards good. Stuck and low. That’s how they want you. That’s how they get to do all the bad stuff when you’re not looking.

I try reading a book but after only a paragraph, Google those sneakers I’ve been coveting to see if they’ve gone on sale yet. Maybe the book wasn’t very good. Perhaps those sneakers will be the wardrobe upgrade I need. Who am I kidding?

Mum used to call it grasshopper brain. My kids were newly minted then, and my every sentence was interrupted by a poo or a fall or hungry mouth. Coherent thought was no longer accessible to me. Was that the start of the rot? Not long after their babyness though, I got my first smart phone. I remember rushing to get the kids into bed, then sitting on the sofa all night looking at photos I’d taken of them during the day. To be fair, when they were awake, they were very noisy.

Out for a walk and waiting to cross at traffic lights, I’m so conscious of not taking my phone from my pocket to check the messages, it hurts. I’ve purposely left my headphones at home and continue on without music or a podcast: the sky, a few trees, random dogs sniffing my hand, a pigeon pecking last night’s evacuated curry. One foot in front of the other in front of the other until I’m back home again. It’s a bit boring. Other times though, it’s been mindful, and on occasion, an amazing line falls into my head. If I hadn’t cleared space for it, it would never have arrived.

And when it does arrive, the tussle becomes between unchecked honesty and the awareness that words need to be read to become real. That is their magic. And their excruciating power of exposure. A Schrödinger’s box of creativity; I have both the freedom to say whatever I like and the need to make it palatable.

I walk on, trying not to crush the new crocuses – oh, blessed forerunners of hope. Baby spears of purple and yellow poke through exhausted lawns. In these bleakest of months, none of the plants have died, they’ve simply been resting.

Back at home, I return to my desk after a really great cheese toasty: onions, mayo, mustard – the works. I make a pact to leave my phone in another room while I’m writing, but probably won’t keep to it. I probably won’t do many things differently, but I’ll try. I’ll absorb the world when I have the energy and turn away when I need to regroup. I’ll be woolly and unfocussed, but I’ll also be kind. And I’ll probably procrastinate again by writing about doubt, overwhelm and procrastination. The answer is nearly always somewhere in the middle of the muddle, and even then, it’s likely to change.

And so, I begin.