I had a quiet day today in almost every respect. I managed to get something approaching a reasonable sleep last night, my first for a couple of days. I’m not sure what the problem is but it’s more than likely suppressed anxiety. I keep thinking it’s dissipated, but it still lurks.
Apple
In the garden earlier I could hear birds in the trees and hedges, the big cats in the zoo, children playing in a garden somewhere down the street and the sound of a couple of people talking somewhere. The air smelled clean apart from a hint of fox. There was no traffic noise. There was no noise from the airport. I really liked it. I know that sooner or later the world will start up again, but part of me wishes it wouldn’t. I read a couple of things today pondering the world “after” and may write about them tomorrow night.
I watched the last episode of Star Trek : Picard. I was really looking forward to the series when it was announced, and it’s had its moments, but overall I’ve found it unsatisfying. The writing reminds me of Star Trek: TNG, but that was 30 years ago (!) and a lot has happened in TV since. In December 2017 I wrote:
The tenor of my criticisms of a lot of this stuff is that, in a golden age of television, including genre television, too many shows aren’t rising to the challenge and being all they could be. I would expect writers, producers and directors with ambition and talent to look at how genre TV has developed since Babylon 5, through Buffy, and The Wire, and in more recent times through Twin Peaks, Game of Thrones, Jessica Jones, The Deuce and Sense8, and raise their game accordingly…
That remains my view, and I’d add Legion, The Man in the High Castle and Westworld to that list. I hope season 2 of Picard, when it comes along, is substantially better.
Picard shares an actor, Alison Pill, with Devs., episode 5 of which is now available. Devs. continues to impress, delight and beguile. As usual, the online reviewers find it difficult to cope with anything that requires patience and thought.
Metaphor of the day
By spooky coincidence, this Devs. episode meshed perfectly with an article in this week’s New Scientist on quantum theory. New Scientist always has articles on quantum theory and I always do my best to at least get the gist of them, usually without a lot of success. In light of the present circumstances I’ve just taken out an annual subscription to avoid having to go to the shop to buy it. My other magazine subscription is Fortean Times, the new edition of which is waiting to be read.
Spooky walk
On my walk tonight I did something that I haven’t done in nearly 20 years of mobile phone ownership: I dropped my phone and it landed screen down. The screen itself did not shatter, I’m pleased to say, though there are chips, but the fingerprint sensor is no more. I’m discovering just how much I have come to rely on it, and am now going to have to go and find all the passcodes I’ve forgotten for banking apps, etc. More annoyingly, I’m due an upgrade in June and my plan was to stick with this device since it has been working perfectly. Since there is nowhere open to get it fixed, I’m going to have to change it when renewal time comes. A ‘first world problem’ I know, but a nuisance nonetheless.
No cycle today, but my evening walk, complete with spooky streetlights in the mist, was enjoyable, notwithstanding dropping my phone. Down on the main road I couldn’t work out what the sudden noise was until I realised it was 20.00 and there was a nationwide moment of applause for health and care workers. My contribution was to wave at a nurse getting onto a bus. Afterwards I worried that she hadn’t realised what it was and thought I was just some random guy waving at her. So it goes.
Temperature continues to be in my normal range–35.5°
I read a tweet earlier this afternoon that said ‘the virus is coming for all of us’. It’s a useful way into something I’ve been trying to write for a couple of days, about the way the Covid-19 virus is discussed using language that is anything but clinical and instead draws on other imagery. As I type this, the Prime Minister has just talked again about efforts to ‘defeat’ the virus and thanked those who are on ‘the front line of the fight against coronavirus’.
This is not confined to the UK, of course:
Now and ongoing in this space: COVID-19 Metaphor Watch. Over the weekend, Trump likened the efforts to contain the virus to a “war”; today, @washingtonpost characterized the virus itself as an “evil genius” https://t.co/Jx2OVS6Mv0
My introduction to thinking about the metaphors surrounding disease was Susan Sontag’s AIDS And It’s Metaphors. My UK Penguin paperback is a first impression, so that dates it to 1989. It follows her earlier Illness as Metaphor. Both books look primarily at the role of diseases themselves as metaphors, specifically TB, Cancer and AIDS (accepting that AIDS is a condition not a disease), but she also looks at the ways in which language frames diseases, notably the military metaphors often employed, for example by the Prime Minister 15 minutes ago. Both books, by the way, are short and easy to read, and one doesn’t find oneself bludgeoned by her articulacy as one might in some of her other essays.
The books have their share of critics, but the criticisms I have seen don’t go to the root of Sontag’s arguments; rather, they go to the detail and appropriateness of some of her examples. The case for use of metaphor with relation to Covid-19 is unarguable, though. It’s coming for us all, said the Tweeter I mentioned, as though the virus were an invader with a single, insidious purpose. The virus probes our defences looking for a way in; it is Blofeld to our Bond, Moriarty to our Holmes. There’re more, and there’s an international list being compiled (see Prof. Brigitte Nerlich’s blog for more and links).
where metaphor and cliche meet
This is not to argue against the use of metaphor (or simile, imagery, analogy or, at a push, allegory); in this context, such language can explain things in simple and accessible ways, such as a practical grasp of what is meant by exponential growth, or, indeed, ‘flattening the curve’. Some metaphors are absorbed into language almost without our notice. London is ‘in standby mode’ writes Barney Ronay in the Guardian; we are in ‘lockdown’; the US is becoming the ‘Epicentre’ of the virus (when epicentre adds nothing to ‘centre’ other than faux ‘scientific’ pixie dust).
But our choice of metaphor, as well as illuminating underlying concepts, shapes our response, as do the stories that mould our understanding. I have seen news items reporting the deaths of patients ‘despite being young and in otherwise good health’. This is not far away from thinking that it would be preferable were that fate to fall on those who are not young or in good health, that the young are undeserving as though there were some moral algebra at play.
And we can see, playing out in front of us, the language used to describe the virus. The idea that it is a devious oriental thing feeds into barely disguised, sometimes undisguised, racism of people who think in terms of walls to keep undesireables out. Nor is coronavirus (actually a class of viruses, some of which are benign) ‘a metaphor for our vulnerability over Huawei‘.
The consensus view is that a virus cannot be described as being ‘alive’. A virus does not have sentience, objective or purpose. It no more probes for flaws in our bodies than rainwater probes for flaws in the roof. It is not devious and it is not coming for us. It is not an invader or a coloniser.
What is the point I’m groping for here? I think it is that the virus has no meaning. It is a physical thing (a subcellular genetic parasite) that leads to physical consequences once inside a human body (a body that is not a fortress). The aim is to ensure that our bodies do not encounter the virus, not least because death is one possible outcome of such an encounter, entirely free of any notion of young or old, deserving or undeserving. The virus is not ‘coming for us’ like Michael Myers or Freddy Krueger or the Red Menace or the Yellow Peril, and we must be careful that metaphors that play into apocalyptic scenarios don’t inadvertently become self-fulfilling prophecies.
Language matters.
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Today’s exercise bike cycle means that from a standing start on Sunday, I’ve gone from 15 minutes at a stately pace to 20 minutes at a faster pace and feel good for it. I’ll ‘rest’ tomorrow, then repeat today’s ride on Friday before notching up the resistance on the bike. Without, as my Mum would say, tempting fate, I’d like to come out of this in better shape than I went in.
This wasn’t the note I planned, I wanted to return to Susan Sontag and metaphors, but time has run out on me for the day, so you’re spared that.
iPod Shuffle
I found my old iPod Shuffle from my running days. Charged up, it still works perfectly, unlike my knees. The music on it is a 36 minute selection I put together for a 5k run goodness knows how many years ago. The tracks were selected either for their rhythm or to sing along to or both. I used to do 5ks in around 28 minutes (plodder, I know) and the music was designed to give me a final uplift (Springsteen) before an uptempo one to cross the line (Ramones). The last two tracks were celebratory then a wind down. The playlist is:
Madison Blues – George Thorogood Amerykahn Promise – Erykah Badu Don’t Fear the Reaper – Blue Oyster Cult Sharp Dressed Man – ZZ Top Immigrant Song – Led Zeppelin Pyjamarama – Roxy Music Radio Nowhere – Bruce Springsteen Rockaway Beach – The Ramones Sheila-na-gig – PJ Harvey Peace Train – Cat Stevens.
Tooons
Anyway, bored with Pink Floyd after only two days, I thought I’d use this on my cycle this morning. I’d forgotten how uptempo some of this stuff was 🙂 I rode 18 minutes (to the end of Sharp Dressed Man) at a faster pace than the last couple of days. It was great!
My walk was very quiet, as you’d expect. There were a few, but not many, people out walking their dogs or just taking the air. We all nodded and said hello even as we all gave each other a polite body swerve.
Most of the traffic seemed to be delivery vehicles. A Glasgow Express bus went past, empty except for the driver as far as I could tell. A local bus had only one passenger, an old fellow with a bag of shopping. At the bus stop at the foot of the hill there was only one person waiting, a nurse judging by her outfit. When the bus came she was the only passenger on it.
The cycling is obviously paying off even after only three days–I walked up the hill a whole minute faster than I was managing a couple of weeks ago.
Temperature this evening 36.2°, in my normal reptilian range.
Another spin on the bicycle this morning, though this time with added cushioning. Slightly longer than 15 minutes, though, because when Shine On You Crazy Diamond finished shuffle brought up All The Young Dudes–the version with Mott the Hoople playing but David Bowie on vocals. It would have been rude to turn it off.
Later this evening I went for a walk round our block which involves the steep-ish road up the hill we’re on. It seemed to be easier than usual, though maybe that’s my imagination. The streets were very quiet and the main road likewise. A couple of buses passed me, but one was empty and the other had maybe half a dozen people on it. Alas, no wildlife was out (I frequently see foxes and, more rarely, badgers).
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I knew that both the PM and First Minister had televised press conferences lined up for 8.30 and 8.45 respectively so it was no surprise to get home to find the country going into lockdown. After the TV pictures of my fellow countrymen over the weekend this was inevitable. I understand why they’ve put a time limit on for review, but given there’s a 14 day lag between action and measurable effect in the stats, a three-week review won’t be particularly useful, and in any event they’re worried about relaxing measures and the thing flaring up again. So I’ll stick with June as a minimum and September as more likely.
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I’ve been able to do some revision to some writing, updating a short story to make reference to Covid-19 and also typing revisions into the draft of the novel I finished last year. What I need to do now is to get back into the stalled sequel novel. I’m about 60,000 words in and I’ve written myself into a corner. Now is the ideal time to figure out how to unwind it and fix it 🙂
As for the one I finished, here’s the first few paragraphs (apologies for the formatting, I can’t get the HTML to behave itself):
Shadows held a slick life of their own in the wet gloom; odd pools of darkness twitched and shrugged, sheltering watchers only my subconscious could see. I pulled into a parking place above the road, a viewpoint over swirling grey nothingness. Red deer huddled under a crag to my right out of the force of the rain, black eyes marking me for a stranger.
I knew there’d be trouble. I knew it when the road climbed away from Loch Assynt and the black bulk of Quinag vanished into cloud. Sure enough, just across the Kylesku Bridge, the rain fell as though the Minch were scooped up by a giant hand and dropped on the road in front of me. Twice the car tried to aquaplane, tyres ungripping the sleek surface.
Suicidal campervans hissed by on the road below in blind pursuit of mythic northland. They’d come for a shortbread-tin Scotland where the winters are mild and the rain is soft, but the northern landscape is harsh. North of Ullapool the peat is stretched taut on ancient rock, a fragile epidermis over old bone and sinew. By Scourie and Rhiconich, any un-whitewashed crofts look like outcrops of gneiss in a moonscape. It’s a long way from my suburban parish and my flock.
As flocks go St. Joseph’s aren’t bad. There’s the usual mixture of the committed and the conformist, mostly ageing, desperate for reassurance in the face of mortality. They didn’t bother me much, except for the usual hatching, matching and despatching. I even liked some of them, especially Miss Boards, Betty to people she likes, with her surprisingly famous friends.
Every Sunday they all stand there staring into space, mouthing the words while I chassé the old soft-shoe shuffle at the altar. I read the words and wave my hands about with occult choreography: Strictly Come Liturgy. I instruct them to stand up, sit down, stand up, kneel, sing, pray, and all of them, obedient to their instructions, abasement hard wired into muscle memory, comply, waiting for the workaday magic of death and resurrection in a silver chalice.
Do this in remembrance of Me.
The words come and go, an oblation here, a touch of anamnesis there, and I barely notice when, somewhere along the way, probably while I’m thinking about being somewhere else, the sliver of ersatz ‘bread’ and the cheap communion wine become the body and blood of the poor sod nailed up on His cross.
I often wonder if they can tell that half the time I don’t give a shit.
*
Temperature tonight is 35.4° so we go into lockdown with no apparent symptoms. That’s a good thing.
Tonight’s music to relax to, Freddie Hubbard from 1971 with some tasty guitar from a young George Benson.
And after my ramblings yesterday about the changes in our food supply chain since the 1940s, up pops Prof. Tim Lang from the zeitgeist, or at least the Graun, saying something similar but better articulated: The Other Crisis–Our Food Supply. The article is general and only gets onto Covid-19 at the end.
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