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3:AM in Lockdown 6: Fernando Sdrigotti

We Are All in This Alone
By Fernando Sdrigotti.

I
A sticker to be added after the final stop of every book: AND THEN COVID-19 HAPPENED AND ALL OF THIS DIDN’T MATTER ANY MORE.

II
Days in which writing feels useless. Or it risks becoming a cave, a place where to hide from the cataclysm. The worst possible people are in charge at the worst possible time. If my writing isn’t leading the right heads to the guillotine it is worthless.

III
“There is no such a thing as society” — Maggie Thatcher, 1987.
So go for a walk in a farmer’s market. Take your family to the park and make sure you cough on that granny’s face — she’s lived long enough (and probably votes Tory anyway). Enjoy the great outdoors and fuck the vulnerable because your self-diagnosed anxiety disorder demands you do so. Take your prostatic dog for a walk three times a day. It is about your WELLBEING, as your favourite neoliberal self-help guru will very likely agree. Make sure to loot the supermarket aisles on the way home. Fuck everyone — we are all in this alone.

IV
Avalanche of memoirs answering the question “What can the mass extermination of others tell me about myself”. Autofictions by arty landlords (and landladies) — in the making, more likely than not, and they shall be celebrated, as long as they tick the right boxes. A new book by the Slav academic of the thousand ticks — the same book he has been writing for the past fifteen years, but with the word PANDEMIC on the cover. The intellectually anaemic pieces by op-ed writers. Libertarians spouting their nonsense in the wild — may they die gasping for air in an overstretched ICU. The bad poetry written by balding intellectual slash part-time heirs with pop-philosophy schools where they charge for a tailor-made reading list. All reasons to lock oneself up and never leave the house. Ever again.

V
The world might change radically. We might not recognise the world to come. Things will never be the same again. Fine. For the worst possible outcome is for the world to continue as if nothing had happened. If writing can’t change the world right now it should get itself in the bin.

AND THEN COVID-19 HAPPENED AND ALL OF THIS DIDN’T MATTER ANY MORE.

@f_sd

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