A Ray of Light for the Doomscrollers.

Five thousand years ago, back in late March, when the first period of isolation was announced, my wife and I put our heads down and rallied. Her teaching and voice over work entitled her to JobKeeper payments, and I got lucky and did some “acting” in a TV ad; financially, we’d get ourselves across the line. It was up to us to make of isolation what we wanted. Having an elliptical machine at home, I exercised regularly and hard. I played guitar with my son, made art with my daughter, and slow-cooked joints for my wife. As a writer, I often work on a number of projects without a deadline. This, some say, is the death of motivation. It’s so much easier to bump around on the socials for half a day rather than map out a difficult scene for no one in particular. But, procrastination does not take a day off, and a pandemic is a great excuse to have one, so I pushed myself and wrote through a near perfect storm of data-fuelled, homeschooling distraction. (Without) wanting to brag, we cruised through the first isolation, and before we knew it, we emerged bleary eyed from our front door, dropped the kids back at school, and embarked on a post-Covid new normal (sigh).

I was on my way to the gym when I heard we were going in for a second six-week lockdown. I immediately turned the car around, and headed – pretty much as the crow flies – to the bottle shop. That night, after the kids went to bed, my wife and I opened a bottle of red and quietly discussed how best to move forward. It was a fatigued conversation, partly because of the topic, but mostly because we’d already had it. There was a distinct flavour to isolation number two, and it tasted like despair.

One day in, and my desire to achieve anything unrelated to cooking or eating hit an all-time low. The nightly glass of wine or two had turned into more please and gin. Given it was officially impossible to stand up, exercise was out, and I couldn’t be arsed responding to a text, let alone structuring a five-act farce. With no options before me, and all the time in the world, I jumped headfirst into the bin fire that is 2020. I doomscrolled, and I did it with fervour. I waved my fist at clips of shoppers aggressively refusing to wear masks. I was aghast at right-wing columnists turning on a. five cent piece (Has hypocrisy ever been more in your face than right now?). Deeper and deeper into the abyss I lurched, horrified at the selfishness being displayed by so many. I was absolutely furious at people who were furious, and the pull that had compelled me to write for as long as I can remember, had all but gone. Late into the night I scrolled. Outraged. Helpless. Uninspired.

Week four into second isolation and I had retired as a writer to take up a career in serial complaining. One night (see any given night), I was chewing through Twitter at the kitchen table, bemoaning to my wife that the ABC’s loss of funding (see indexation freeze) was essentially the bill for keeping the Biloela family detained on Christmas Island. Finally – and this was after almost a month of patiently listening – I broke my wife. ‘Well, what are you going to do about it?’ she asked pointedly. I was immediately caught off guard. This was not how our iso-nights worked. I cooked dinner, drank beer, and whinged, whilst she drank wine, and did the jigsaw. I needed a moment, so I stalled by repeating the question back to her. ‘What am I going to do about it?’ My wife treated my response like the useless rhetoric it was, and waited for an answer. ‘I’m keeping abreast of it,’ I said, rubbing my nose, ‘I’m holding the bastards accountable.’ ‘How are you holding them accountable?’ My wife asked. ‘What happened to the funny playwright, who used to ruminate on political and social issues in intelligent, interesting ways?’ ‘Where’s he gone? I quite liked him.’ With that, my wife shuffled out of the room. She would have preferred to storm out but, being in lockdown, she was wearing slippers. I closed my laptop and drank the rest of the wine in silence. She was right. For the first time in my adult life I had nothing creative to say.

During the Covid crisis, if you don’t work on the front line, which is exhausting, dangerous work, and I have great respect and gratitude for those who do – but if you’re not working 14-hour shifts at the hospital, you are advised by health officials to sit on the couch and watch the latest series of Queer Eye. To prove we are all in this together and to save our state from losing tens of thousands of lives, we need to play Nintendo. In comparison to the Great Depression it is, literally, a cakewalk; from the kitchen to the couch. But as far as inspiring metaphorical social commentary… isolation is not a Dead Kennedy’s album I would want to listen to. The Clash got Margaret Thatcher, Arthur Miller got McCarthyism, and we got a pandemic and contactless Uber Eats. In no way am I making light of this global disaster, because it is truly that, but how do you create meaningful art in the atmosphere of Stage Four lockdown? That’s what I lay in bed thinking. Things needed to change. I had to find a way to start writing again.

The next morning I woke early, slightly dusty, and put my shorts on. Half frozen, I shivered my way to the garage and dusted off the elliptical machine. After (in my opinion) a brutal 20 minutes of solid cardio, I showered, dressed, went into my office with a cuppa, and turned the wifi off. And here I am now. Writing this. Getting back on the horse. Trying to put those lost weeks of doomscrolling to good use. Because it’s not just the couch and home-delivered Singapore noodles that are dampening our creative fires, it runs in conjunction with more than a whiff of philistinism from Parliament House. I don’t want to lambast the government too much (I so do!) but support for the arts – an industry that makes up 6% of our nation’s GDP – during the pandemic has been, quite frankly, appalling. Is that too strong a word? What’s worse though, is that it’s completely unsurprising. For the first time ever Australia is without a stand-alone cultural portfolio. That’s right, we’re now jostling with infrastructure and regional development in what some people are calling The Mega Arts Triumvirate (no one’s calling it that). I don’t think it’s a sinister move from our Government. I’m not a getting a Brave New World vibe here (at least that would be clever), but why do they keep ignoring us? And when they do mention the arts, why are they always sure to mention tradies in the same breath? Do they fear scrutiny? Do they not respect art? Or do they just not get it? As if art isn’t vital to millions of people’s well being… as if commentary and critical thinking aren’t crucial to molding the morality of society… as if Australia has a post-colonisation identity deeper than sport and war. Don’t @ me.

Art is created as a response to the world we live in, and garners empathy from those who view it. The best art doesn’t tell you what to think, it asks its viewer to think. On a surface level, art can entertain, and make us laugh. Any given moment you can throw on the telly and watch Friends episodes back to back. For those of us who live alone, or without family, light-hearted entertainment is a great comfort. A necessity especially whilst locked away. At the other end of the spectrum art challenges us. It confronts us with worldviews that might differ from our own. Art has us look within ourselves, and questions whether or not we like what we see. It’s an important question to ask any society. But especially one that – according to Google – takes 90 billion selfies a day.

Inside you, do you like what you see?

Doomscrolling has taught me that our nation is on the precipice of a precipice. Our short game has us dealing with a highly contagious virus. Our long game requires us to have the economic courage to overhaul fossil fuel based industries before our country burns. Aboriginal deaths in custody, and the clear health disparities between black and white Australians remains our number one social/health issue. We also jail refugees here. Domestic violence, sexual abuse, corruption, blowing up Juukan gorge, George Pell, anti-vaxxers, doubling the cost of an Arts degree, Scott Cam, Rupert Murdoch, sports-rorts, Ruby Dutton. Down and down you can scroll, til you get to the bottom, which is where you find Ruby-fricking-Dutton.

Would it be wild to say that artists have never been treated worse in this country than right now? By a government that refuses to be held accountable? And – I’m just posing questions here – but if the answer to either of these questions is yes, would that mean that artists in this country have never been more important? And that across all mediums, every stitch, every brush stroke, every damn word, should be pointed towards reminding Australians about what should be valued. Like the fact the oldest living culture on this earth walk on the same land as us. Isn’t that just remarkable to think that? Isn’t that just the best? Might the identity of our modern nation lie back there in ancient Australia? Stage Four lockdown started in hopelessness, but after wading through the detritus of 2020 it has brought me here, trying to unpack what it is to be Australian. If you’re in isolation, or just stuck at your screen waving a fist at a year that will not be remembered fondly, take it all in… and then create."