Fragments of time: art for lockdown

Prospect Cottage in Dungeness, Derek Jarman's old home.

There’s a research thing about Covid that I take part in and every month they ask you to fill in a questionnaire about how you’re feeling. I like doing it because there’s a question about how much you trust the government to manage Covid and I can put the biggest tick ever next to “not at all” (or as big as you can when it’s an online check box).

Anyway, this month there was a question about what things you are missing. And I wanted to put the biggest tick ever next to “everything”. People. Travel. Going for a coffee or a drink. And the one that said “art and culture”. I wanted to put a big tick on that, because I grieve for it. 

Last year, in the first lockdown, everyone said they found it difficult to read, and I felt the same. We couldn’t focus on books. Now, it’s different. I’m reading every day. I’m buying books because there’s nothing else to spend money on, and it cheers me up when the post comes. Just like when I was young and post was something exciting and not just adverts for pizza and estate agents.

I asked for books and book tokens for Christmas, as I always do, and since then I’ve been hungry for books. I think it’s because I am hungry for company and hearing different voices. So I am hearing some voices that are a bit like mine, and some that are not, and it all helps.

I’ve found I like reading memoir, because everyone’s story is different in a way that every novel isn’t.

I’ve just finished I Found My Tribe by Ruth Fitzmaurice. Published in 2017, it feels like a book for these times, and not just because there’s bereavement in it.

One chapter starts with these words: “We live our lives in fragments and that’s just the way it is. Clocks circling time have little meaning for me. From days and months to moments, fragments of time swing solely between good and bad. I never dare presume, beyond a hunch, what is coming next.”

When I was inside the book, I thought I was reading fragments. It’s beautifully written, but every chapter feels the same: Ruth’s five children do cute things, Ruth’s husband talks through an eye gaze computer (he has motor neurone disease), Ruth goes cold-water swimming with her tribe.

It was only at the end that I realised that the story was actually being told chronologically: along with the repetition, each fragment contains tiny changes and small steps onward. It feels, to continue the swimming theme, like treading water. But there’s a current, too. It’s quite a feat, artistically, to recreate that experience through the actual structure of the book. 

And it feels like now.

Then there’s music. I’m trying to avoid advice about “resilience” but I recently saw an article about working from home that said “Start and end the day with music instead of the news.”

This sounded like a good idea, but I didn’t know what music to go for. Unexpected bursts of rock’n’roll lift my spirits – every time the Ramones turn up on the TV, I break into a smile of delight – but I don’t seek them out. I don’t want music that reminds me of the past, and I don’t know what else there is. 

I decided I needed to listen more widely, so I made a resolution that I’d take more notice of my friend’s recommendations on social media. To make it more random, I was going to click on the first song that came up on my Facebook feed. 

It was the Doobie Brothers. 

That wasn’t in the plan but I clicked on it anyway and was transported back to my teenage years, when I still thought it was hilarious that the NME captioned a photo of the smoke-machine shrouded band with the words: “I told you not to leave that joint on the amp.” 

I enjoyed the song as much as I did in the 70s, ie not at all. And the consequence was that next time I went on Facebook I got an advert for an “old hippies listening to classic rock” group.

That’ll teach me for thinking Facebook was the answer to anything. Next stop, Twitter. This was better. Harry Sword is plugging his new book Monolithic Undertow and there’s a piece in the Guardian which includes actual music. 

The book’s about “the drone”, or – more enticingly – “the joy of hypnotic immersion”. I clicked on the first link, which was Kyema by Éliane Radigue, and it was exactly what I needed to hear: slow, spacious, minimalist.  Music without baggage (for me, at least). No connotations, no memories, no need for opinions. It’s been so tiring, throughout the pandemic, to keep having opinions. It’s nice to just stop.

“Hypnotic immersion” is a good description, too, of slow TV.  Someone invented the concept a few  years ago, and films turned up on BBC Four of unfolding, uneventful journeys, with minimal words, that let you focus on the small things.  

I thought of this a few weeks ago, when Derek Jarman’s film The Garden turned up on Film 4. I watched it because I like his films, and I’ve been to “Derek Jarman’s garden”, that isn’t really his any more, and because I love Dungeness.

It unfolded its images – fragments, again – and it didn’t tell you what to think about them. It was beautiful, strange and almost boring. It was just what I needed.

You didn’t know what’s going to happen next, or if anything much was going to happen at all, or how it was going to end. A bit like lockdown.