I sometimes make myself feel better, for about 10 seconds, by merely remaining in a thought exercise, where I am not in the daily grind.
The mental picture that I have is of the early weeks of the 2020 lockdown.
I was actually working. Because it was the lighter end of being an essential worker the hours were light. However, what gave me a sense of freedom was that ‘normal’ life, ‘the grind’, and its chains on social relations causing endemic anxious social comparison momentarily vanished.
I only mention all this because it now feels like a blip in ‘reality’.
This ‘Reality’ can happily accommodate war, genocide, and the worst of climate disasters, as we have seen in the (ever)aftermath.
What it can’t accommodate is the near total stoppage of ‘the grind’.
But it’s for trivial reasons that I bring this up.
I discovered a song I wrote in this period. And I totally lost the memory of making it, even though I got friends to collaborate on it over the internet (thanks Carys, although I forgot!).
Music haunts my contemporary creative life, as a shadow.
I wish I did more of it, but never quite felt good enough.
Things are complex aren’t they?
The grind squeezes and time and makes it scarce and competitive.
I clearly felt liberated from this in spring 2020.
John B Ledger 