First the coronavirus, now the European Super League.
From the terrifying and tragic, to the merely outrageous and dispiriting, 2020/21 is certainly leaving it all on the pitch.
Still at least the pubs are open. Or more accurately, the beer gardens. In this, there is balm.
In a world of crushed dissent, the annihilation of inconvenient minorities, the gaoling of potential threats to power, the impunity of knee-happy killer cops, the rabid self-interest of politicians at home and self-absorption of football club owners in – wherever football club owners live, possibly some far-distant galaxy – it is hard to maintain any kind of perspective. All this, plus ordinary, human suffering as the pandemic grinds on. But the charge of nature is also in full flow, the energy of spring; the power of friendship and kindness has never been more apparent – and time is needed to contemplate these things.
The things that are most valuable now, are the things that slow us down.
The once-taken-for-granted right to nurse a pint of beer while complaining about the food and/or service, provides ideal opportunity to calm the soul. See also, a walk in the woods, or staring at something green and growing, or at something inexorable and permanent – the unfathomable swell of the sea.
The arts too provide chances for this, and I’m not just talking about poetry like the stuff on this site. Opportunities to experience music or theatre or painting or dance – live – have been sorely missed. Their role is not just to calm the soul, but to feed it too. Or maybe ‘exercise’ is the right word – to disturb us in a safe way, putting us in touch with thoughts and feelings, an appreciation of the lives of others which is otherwise beyond us – and occasionally, to make us laugh.
One such laugh-out-loud moment came for me this week during a rewatch of the Swedish-Danish TV crime noir, The Bridge.
‘We want to attract businesses and families to our region’, says a police chief, in the inevitable post-West Wing walk down a corridor, ‘It’s bad enough we’ve got homeless people, now they’re being killed…’
This is properly cynical writing; we laugh because we recognise an appalling truth is being skewered – the one thing no modern city can afford (or could afford, when cities were vibrant, edgy places on the make) is to scare the tourists. Homeless people on the streets are a ‘tell’ that a slick city – and its police force – are not working. And then the homeless make it even worse, by allowing themselves to become targets for a serial killer.
The counter to that cynicism in The Bridge is subtle and swift – and so unconnected to plot you might miss it; the laughter of Martin Rhode (played by the fantastic Kim Bodnia). Martin and his new partner are driving across the eponymous Bridge between the two countries. The look in Martin’s eye as he bursts into disbelieving laughter at the latest, gob-smacking response from his new, neurodivergent partner Saga Norén (Sofia Helin), is literally a thing of wonder. It’s a laugh not of dismissal, or ridicule. It is pure joy – the glee of a jaded life surprised by something new and incomprehensible. Soren’s is a mind, a way of thinking, that is delightfully norm-busting and confounding; Martin’s is a pleasure taken in the other – an unguarded pleasure, welling up from his boots – the valuing of a human as a human.
As the organisers of the European Supercup make their cold calculations – as they set about asset-stripping their way beyond a sporting structure founded on the idea that all can compete, that any club or player can progress or fall and possibly, one day, rise again – they would do well to catch Series 1 Episode 3 of The Bridge. True, they might see themselves in the terror that stalks the street, cruelly eliminating those ‘inadequate’ enough to be left behind. But they might also catch a glimpse of Martin Rhode’s laugh. It is, after all, humanity that matters.
There’s more to listen to this week in the Royal Literary Fund’s VOX series, in which writers talk about errr writing. Launched tomorrow Weds 21 April, my short recording of a piece called ‘Lost in Translation‘ – more musings about the Russian writer Andrey Platonov.
And a reminder that BLISS, the new play based on one of Platonov’s short stories is now on sale. Follow that link.
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Till next time.
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