Crumbling pyramids - Anne Rooney

Rubble of the crumbled pyramid of Userkaf, founder of the Fifth Dynasty, Egypt

 

I was going to write about eyes in picture book illustration today, but instead I'll respond to Keren's post yesterday about her struggles working from home. We are all experiencing the pandemic in different circumstances, but what seems consistent among writers is the inability to write. Concentration is, as Keren, says gone. 

Keren has described the difficulty of finding time and space to write when there are too many demands on her time and too many people expecting things of her. For me, there have been too few demands on my time and too few people expecting things of me. It's hard to be locked in with four people you can't escape, however much you love them, for months. It's also hard to be locked in alone for months. I would have expected to be good at lockdown: I already technically lived alone (as of October last year) and I already worked from home — though in fact most days I chose to work in Cambridge University Library, and had my grand-daughter, MB, here about three nights a week as her parents both work shifts. With the library closed and MB locked down 2 km away, I had plenty of time and space. Deserts of time and space. A chance, it seemed, to catch up and then catch my breath, and then work on projects I really wanted to work on. 

But no. Projects were cancelled or suspended, so there was little work that needed doing. And it turns out those demands on time and attention — other people, and even chores like shopping for food — provide the structure in which creativity and concentration flourish. Even if normal life is a struggle, it's a known struggle, with its own patterns of difficulty and paths to resolution. Novelty is exhausting. It didn't help that I was already in state of reduced concentration as my mother died at the end of last year and MB and family had only just moved out. I still hadn't adjusted to daily solitude when it became absolute. I'm not sure it would have made much difference if the pandemic had come a year later, though: it's the disruption of the systems we have come to operate within that is the problem. We can concentrate on writing when we don''t have to re-invent the mechanisms of everyday life on an ongoing basis. 

Concentration, I think, has been destroyed by doubt and by the emotional energy it now takes to get through the day. There is the constant, overwhelming worry — about the virus, about relatives and friends who might be suffering mentally or physically, about crashing businesses and future prospects, about the world  and all its other problems — then there is the effort taken to manage things that we had systems for. We have to concentrate on getting food, on parcelling out space in the house or negotiating its emptiness, on managing problems that would normally be minor, such as getting a washing machine fixed or replaced, or seeing the doctor about a worrying symptom. 

I am lucky that I have had some commissioned work over the last months, though far less than usual. I thought I would be able to start new things on spec but I have neither the focus nor the confidence to do it. I have frittered away lockdown doing the garden and reading too much stuff on news sites and Facebook. No grand opus. Of the books I'd hope to write, one needs physical access to a library, so that's out. One needs selling to a publisher before I go further with it, but publishers are not very active. The one I could be working up into a decent outline, I'm not happy with. There is no spark to it, no vitality because there is no spark or vitality in me at the moment. It would be a dead book, a pandemic-scarred book. I'd rather leave it untouched and unsullied until it can be written better.

All the writers I have spoken to have found focus has gone and it makes writing impossible, or almost so. We just have to accept that these are strange times and that the way daily life demands our concentration means there is none left for creativity. It's not even the same as the personal difficulties and trauma that can spark creativity, because our focus is not spent on a big challenge, such as dealing with heartbreak or surviving cancer; for most of us, it is eroded by concentrating on getting food into the house, cleaning everything that comes in, marshalling masks and gloves and sanitiser for trips to the shop,  managing dwindling money supplies or caring for distant but shielding relatives. These gnaw away at our energy and concentration even if we seem to have too little to do rather than too much. Renegotiating the fabric of life leaves no space or energy for creativity.

We could look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs and see where it all goes wrong. This, if you're not familiar with it, is a (partially discredited) psychological model of motivation devised by Abraham Maslow in 1943. He proposed that people need to have basic needs met before they can achieve 'self-actualization'. 

 

Self-actualization is essentially becoming the person you want to become, focusing on the things that are important to you. That can be creative endeavour, such as writing or music or painting, or sporting achievement or being a great parent or a successful CEO, or a committed activist. We each define it for ourselves.  Maslow argued that we can't do this if certain needs (eg for food and safety) are not met. Most people in the world are never in a position to achieve self-actualization. He divided the foundational needs into 'basic' (the bottom two layers) and 'psychological'. It's a bit dodgy, as many great artists and activists have achieved much while living in danger of starvation or persecution, but for many of us, it's fairly true. Another valid criticism is that Maslow derived his pyramid of needs working from the historical biographies of people he considered self-actualized and, unsurprisingly for a male Jewish American in 1943, they were mostly white and male. But criticisms aside, if we look at it now, it seems that for many of us the pyramid has collapsed.

Speaking personally, I'd say only the bottom layer is anywhere near intact, and for a lot of people even that isn't secure any more. For all of us it is shaky. The very air is a virus-laden threat; food can be hard to come by, especially if you can't get out and can't get a delivery slot; our sleep may be shot to bits; if you can't pay your rent, shelter is not secure. Reproduction is probably not a good option right now, either. 

The next layer, safety needs, has crumbled entirely for the whole population — indeed, for the population of the entire world. Love and belonging are hard to maintain if you are completely separated from some people and/or forced into too much proximity with others, not allowed the space to be different or heal disputes. Esteem slides away because we aren't achieving and because it rests heavily on reflection of other's approval which we aren't getting because we aren't interacting with others, and everyone else is also too busy struggling with their own collapsed pyramid. Of course, we are supporting each other remotely as well as we can. But not being able to meet up with a friend or neighbour to give or receive a hug, a cup of coffee, a reassuring pep-talk, leaves only the thinnest strand of support here.

Self-actualization is lost somewhere in the rubble of the other layers — unless you happen to be an ICU worker, and then you probably don't have time to read this blog. This is why we can't concentrate, why we aren't writing, so we should stop beating ourselves up about it.

Perhaps we need to build a new pyramid, as this pandemic is not going away any time soon, whatever jollying-along politicians might say. Building a pyramid, as any Ancient Egyptian could tell you, is long and arduous process.

Source unknown, sorry; if it's your copyright get in touch and I'll add a credit or remove it

 

Anne Rooney

Occasional blog: The Shipwrecked Rhino

Currently writing: You Wouldn't Want to be in a Pandemic! (Salariya, 2020)