The Long Way Home
Last Saturday I cycled into Brighton from Portslade. It’s a journey of only 4 miles and I’d say I cried — I mean really sobbed — for 3.5 of them. It wasn’t sorrow, grief or joy but a strangled intermingling of all three. I challenge anyone to listen to Both Sides Now whilst peddling along Brighton seafront in the winter sun not to shed a tear (I suggest you play the song to get my point).
It was the sight of ordinary things made beautiful by art. The transformation before my eyes of throwing a ball or flying a kite against the backdrop of this year…. the terrifying TV statistics, the graphs of death, the invisible enemy seemingly everywhere.
‘It’s life’s illusions that I recall. I really don’t know life at all…’
This emotion, this outpouring is how I feel quite often now. For every silly conspiracy theory or nonsense fear mongering tactic, there are hundreds of these moments — glorious testaments to resilience that make me happy to be human. Happy to be alive. Proud of our unquenchable thirst for peace, beauty and equanimity.
‘Oh, but now old friends they’re acting strange
And they shake their heads, they say I’ve changed
Well something’s lost, but something’s gained
In living every day’
My own small family, a unit of three have managed incredibly well under the circumstances. I mean, not just the day to day logistical juggle of lockdowns and tiers, zooms and endless TV dinners but the deep, difficult struggle of Long Covid, lasting now for a whole year for me. This other struggle has been a very private one. One of the strange advantages of seeing so few people, is that I have been able to hide my Long Covid from almost everyone. Now I want to talk about it but I find writing about it surprisingly difficult.
Part of the problem is explaining to people who are healthy the strange experience of losing your health for a year. I worry about complaining when others have lost so much more. How do we know what to share, what to edit out?
In the end, I have decided this is my story and others have theirs too. I want to hear them. I worry that the casualties of this crisis will be swept away in the euphoria of freedom. When everyone else is running off on holidays and having fun, there will be millions who are sick or grief stricken who may not move on. When lockdown finally ends and this is all over, I want those stories to be known.
But I have to admit to the vulnerability of illness? The sense of weakness and frailty…short tempers, gasping, overwhelming exhaustion? There’s no way to dress it up. It has been Long. I feel I have aged ten years in one.
But what I really want to share is how this illness has also forced positive change upon me. I have learnt lessons that have eluded me for a lifetime. For example
- How to be quiet (I can’t talk the way I used to)
- How to say no (I never could before)
- How to rest (rest was for boring people)
- How to stop as soon as it’s too much (ending a lifetime habit of overdoing it)
- How to let go of everything if only for a day (a day is long enough sometimes)
- How to live in the present (Yes we’ve all got better at that)
- How to stay hopeful
When I was sick — self isolating alone for a week, I thought a great deal about my life, my work and the point of it all. I think for many, the first week of the first lockdown was a strange and surreal time. For me this was amplified by actually having the dreaded virus and the progressively worsening experience of breathlessness.
But in this dark place, when everything fell away to nothing…in those days of stillness and thought, my work appeared to me as utterly valid, perhaps for the first time ever, I experienced an absence of doubt. Finally I saw the validity of Art. Its point.
And, I realised what a great blessing it is to make art and improve the world by doing so? My imagination is a place I can go to where I am always free to wander. Art is a land where we are free without constraints and this must surely be the reason why I chose such a ludicrous ‘profession’.
Or perhaps I chose art because it was the one subject I was never actually ‘taught’? I have great admiration for Mr Troutan, our art teacher who, instead of teaching us art (which as he pointed out, was pointless and impossible), allowed us to listen to his collection of Talking heads albums. Such was the freedom of secondary education in Coventry circa 1988….thankyou Mr Troutan, wherever you are….
So, to Long Covid….in forcing me to sit still, breathe and be quiet, I learnt to listen. I found my way back to where I have always belonged, this time without doubt, in complete peace. I am forever grateful for the lessons I have learnt and the work I have made as a result. I don’t feel confident speaking for others but for myself, I have entered a new era of listening and hearing better, waiting and resting more, valuing what I do and and staying hopeful.
Now back to Talking Heads….
