Stranger things, and it happens all very quickly.
A dear friend of mine rang me shocked. Another friend who we’d worked on a project together had passed away. It seemed incomprehensible.
He appeared fit and for the short time I knew him, what a joie de vivre character! My dear friend mused in conversation, what if it’s absolute nothingness, on the other side?
It must have been that liminal thought that led me to one evening watching ‘Stranger Things”, see a scene and leap out off the Sofa. It’s when Eleven goes into her mind, that other world, to confront the monster. It’s so visceral a scene.
Two weeks plus ago in our family we would confront our own dark space. Several days on ICU. Tubes ( lines) everywhere connected to monitors. Over many days of ups and downs, our family member would pull through. The recovery is a methodical one. The tail end of this abyss has another family member and I getting Covid, unrelated to the former. I’ve managed to avoid getting it thus far, but it came from the unlikeliest of sources.
The symptoms are as people express, but I want to add my own. It’s as if I have malaria bar a few symptoms and I’ve had Malaria many times and it’s horrible. My mouth (taste buds) are like someone stuffed newspaper in them, and the aches have been alleviated by paracetamols.
Writing can be cathartic. In the small hours of the morning whole ideas form, yet and this is will be recognisable to many, the expression: “I don’t like sharing my bizness”. What is shareable and how much? It’s both nature and nurture, an individual’s disposition. I guess we all have our limits.
I also recall something Jude Kelly CBE said to me. Back then she was Artistic Director of the Southbank Centre and she’d recruited me as one of her artists in residence. Sitting opposite each other for coffee one morning at Le Pain Quotidien ( opposite the Southbank) she was expressing a sense of how the artist and with their agency can stand naked, and tell their story and not feel inhibited. The artist invariably and unknowingly then impacts others, often at their own expense, compromising the intimacy of their private life and some. It is its worth, its utility, and what you want to convey.
I guess in the future, with some distance and permissions, I may write a more detailed account of the past two weeks. It was too close a call. Time seems ever more precious. Hours have become seconds, days appear as flashbacks. Something inside us, me, seems to have changed; I’m not entirely sure what it is yet. But there’s a perspective and direction that has me in contemplative mood. It may possibly pass.
But for the meantime, perhaps the underlying theme of this post is please make yourself aware of the symptoms of Sepsis and Septic Shock. Another thing, what an incredible job Drs, nurses et al do.
