The Re-Invention of Solitude
The Art of Conversation, a painting by René Magritte
Five years ago I was in line at a Chance the Rapper concert in Charlotte with a bunch of white kids cracking jokes about Ebola. There were maybe two cases max in the entire country, and optimism was fairly high that the worst would surely pass. The US was led then by a President who was careful to mean the things he said, and to cultivate a sense of calm about the whole situation. I'd travelled across the world just weeks prior, terrified this disease was lingering in literally any trace of fluid, and with a whole ass will written up (mostly giving books away) in case my family never got to see me again. I don’t know what this recollection means or why it came to me today, as I processed all the second-hand smoke of an economy - Zambia’s, the global one - slowly resuming routine.
The thing that’s fascinated me most is the parallels between the behaviour of a society that’s been ravaged by COVID-19 (America’s), and one that’s somehow evaded having to bury its people or even hospitalise them (Zambia’s). I decried the use of the term ‘New Normal’ as the rallying cry of politicians who didn’t seem to have any bold ideas to throw at the economic fallout of it all. But soon enough, everybody else was down. It appears if you subdue people for long enough, whatever their nationality, they will talk themselves out of prevailing fact and reason, and back into normalcy: old normalcy, actually.
For all the talk of a new normal, I’m aghast at how quickly everybody’s moved on. Not only are people ready to come out again - granted - they’re ready to trade handshakes, forgo masks in public spaces, attend actual parties. I’ve been called paranoid, out of touch, delusional, for reading all the science there is about what this virus is capable of (it is terrifying) and just trying to maintain a healthy respect for my surroundings. Some of that science suggests genetics have spared certain populations the worst, even climate in a way, as have commendable control measures put in place by certain health authorities. (Kudos is due, to our very own Ministry of Health.)
Call me naive, but I also thought people were going to come out of things a little different. A little reverent for how nature has singlehandedly shrunk the size of the earth, if not our own little pockets of territory. All the death we’ve seen reported in so many different countries ... You know that period of time, I want to say April, when you thought it was only a matter of time before it came for you and someone (heck, everyone) you love? Remember that person you became? That suddenly recognised what mattered in life, that put aside all their personal goals to just preserve the right now, and maybe even lost the nerve to tweet mean shit? Or was that just me? I think people tweeted mean shit anyway.
I had hope that we would all come out a little different, as a species, and then as individuals; but it took another black man dying at the hands of American policemen to cause any real collective introspection anywhere. We’ve rushed our favorite athletes back onto the sports field, and I’m complicit ‘cause I’m tuning in. We’re back to spending money we shouldn’t on deals, for floral print jackets (I WANT IT SO BAD) and video games whose connotations of carnage gave me the heebie-jeebies just weeks ago. Am I the only one these things make go, Wow, nothing? Nothing about us actually changed?
I don’t know what the other side looks like, let alone the very idea of 2021 - of December, of August. I just know you’re going to travel this world, at the very least, and meet people who lost loved ones to COVID-19; lost dreams, lost incomes, lost homes, and even their own physical stability. I don’t know what to tell you besides I’m not sure it’s all been a cue to live harder than we ever did … Maybe we’re supposed to live different, and tear down all the shit, the dated statues within, that didn’t quite work before.
