MY VOICE FROM THE LOCKDOWN
The lockdown in Athens began to really take effect in mid-March when all cafes, restaurants, theatres and so on were closed. In late March the lockdown became even stricter with a permit needed every time a person leaves their home – which is discouraged as much as possible.
It has happened so quickly it barely seems real and I can’t remember any other global event having had such a profound influence on me. I was enraged by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I was shocked by the events of 9/11 and have lived through the anxiety and stress of the global financial crash, which was particularly bad in Greece, not forgetting the ‘hair cut’ in Cyprus. But nothing I have ever lived through or experienced compares to this. This has been so all-encompassing, so overwhelming that it is hard to compute. I feel as though I am living in a parallel universe because the sheer vulnerability and fragility of mankind has suddenly come into sharp focus. And I don’t know that I could have ever really imagined what a moment like this would ever look like (although everyone with their eyes open knew it was coming). We are mortal, we are extinguishable, humans are no less mortal than dinosaurs were. It is real, we could be gone, and it could happen in an instant.
Yes, the world has suffered pandemics before and survived, but we are living in a much more dangerous world than ever before. The danger being the greed of mankind, that doesn’t seem to cease its persistence. Somewhere along the way, man stopped worshipping the land and all the miracles of nature we were gifted with, and began to worship money. This greed, this worship of money, has literally poisoned our planet, our societies and our purpose of existence. Mother nature has retaliated, as we knew she would, and we are all under house arrest for our crimes, because the only true God I believe in, is the very fabric of our world that brings us life as we know it. We have all abused her, we have abused her animals, and now she is demanding we stop the abuse, we are being dragged into compliance kicking and screaming, if we never learn, we will be gone, it is that simple.
I can’t even begin to think about how this affects me moving forward, how this restructures me and my life. We are in the process of having our brains, our everything, rewired. We are switching into a new gear, perhaps a gear we’ve never been in. So, until that happens, I cannot start to fathom where I go creatively from here. Right now, I am still reeling and processing this new world that is coming to be, which is transforming drastically, daily.
