Sphinx

A year ago, I was in London, coming to the end of an intensive week of workshops and rehearsals with the amazing group of actors and creative people with whom I was exploring the dramatic potential of Thucydides’ Melian Dialogue. Yes, long days with a bunch of people from different households in a room with the windows shut because the weather was so awful; lots of warm-up exercises with us all in a tight circle breathing at one another; breakfast and lunch in crowded cafes; evenings in restaurants, either solo or meeting friends. All leading up to a gathering on the final day of seventy or so people in a small theatre for the 45-minute performance and subsequent panel discussion. Another time, another country…

It was a strange experience this week, having to cast my mind back to that week in order to compose an interim report on the ResearchFish system – what was it that I thought it was all about? It’s just a provisional report – second phase of the project was dramatically delayed by the pandemic, and is now being developed as an online thing – so no need for lots of serious recollection; at some point I am going to have to revisit my detailed notes of the experience, and hope that I can somehow recover the feelings and ideas and energy of that week. What scares me is that I might not be able to.

This isn’t a problem with the duty of reporting results to the research funder, not really – I’m confident we will have done everything promised, and I can describe it all in the appropriate language. Rather, the problem is that I want to be that person again – energised, inspired, full of ideas for doing unusual and creative things and for new research projects and arguments – and I fear that it will never happen. I’m still not properly myself, ten months on from contracting a relatively mild and certainly non-life-threatening version of the plague; I hang onto the fact that I’m definitely better than I was in the autumn (when I had to try to get back to proper full-time work, with the teaching if not the writing, after taking things very easy over the summer), but there’s clearly something stuck in my system that breaks out whenever I get slightly tired or stressed, and brings back the brain fog, the sore throat, the headaches and the swollen glands. It is particularly unfortunate that this tends to be associated with my halting attempts at catching up with the various things I’m supposed to have written…

To be honest, this solipsism is what I mainly associate with the idea of a return to some sort of normality. Yes, it would be wonderful to engage with students face-to-face once again, but I don’t particularly miss shopping or pubs or dining out. In lots of ways, lockdown has been great, as I have exactly the sorts of privilege that make it bearable: decent-sized garden that has for the first time ever been properly under control (and we’re still eating home-grown veg), plenty of solitary hobbies and experience in homecraft, interest in wildlife and enough surplus income to buy a bat detector. And any ‘new normal’ will need to include more of this stuff than before the pandemic; gardening, brewing, jazz composition, just spending time at home.

And maybe this would be the healthiest option; not retirement, but a less obsessive dedication to academic and intellectual life, and a bit more balance, with the prospect of less frustration and thwarted ambition as a bonus. But I can’t quite forget last year’s intimation of a future path, a future self; not that I had infinite energy and capacity then (deranged insomniac cat was already being deranged and insomniac, and depression and lassitude are my life’s companions), but it seemed possible then to imagine hacking my way through the ‘to do’ list in six months and finding a new balance on the other side. Well, a lot of us had plans. George Zipp had plans.

(I was prompted to write this by the post by the ever-wonderful Maria Farrell over at Crooked Timber, but since her piece is vastly better than mine, as well as being a lot more positive and content, I’m putting the link down here at the bottom).