I Looked Up From My Writing

 I was excited to see a notification yesterday from a blogger I've followed for years. Surely, I thought, this wise person will have something timely and relevant to say about our political crisis. I opened the post, and was immediately disappointed. It was mostly about the creative difficulties he is having with a sci-fi screenplay he's been working on. 

I confess I felt vaguely indignant. A sci-fi screenplay? That's what you're choosing to talk about? At a time like this? It felt somehow obscene. How could one write a blog—or anything else—right now, and not make it about the one big story: the political chaos of our times? 

I know that this is unfair. We're all entitled to pursue the side-interests that keep us sane. This is a marathon, not a sprint. If we all spent every waking second worrying about Trump—not only would that be giving that narcissistic fellow exactly what he wants in the first place; it would also deplete whatever lingering energy we might have left over to resist his efforts to dismantle our democracy long-term. 

But, nonetheless, I couldn't help my initial reaction. Such is the nature of our times. Unfortunately, we really are living in one of those political moments when—as Brecht put it—"To talk about trees seems almost a crime / Because it implies silence about so many horrors." And so to me, a blog post notification about something as inconsequential as a sci-fi screenplay seemed almost offensive—a dereliction of duty. 

Thomas Hardy once articulated a similar thought to Brecht's. In one of his anti-war poems—composed in opposition to the British-Boer conflict in South Africa—Hardy imagines the moon looking in on him from his window, while he works on one of his novels—and shaming him for concentrating at such a time on such a frivolous pastime, rather than the horror of war. He imagines that the moon is chiding him: 

And now I am curious to look
   Into the blinkered mind
Of one who wants to write a book
   In a world of such a kind.'

That was essentially my response to the blog post—a sci-fi screenplay? At such a time at this? What blinkered mind could be thinking of such a thing at such a moment. When innocent people lie "slain in brutish battle," as Hardy puts it—in Ukraine, in Israel, in Gaza? When children are going hungry in Gaza this night because they are being denied humanitarian aid as collective punishment for Hamas's crimes? 

When the administration is moving to criminally charge environmental NGOs for receiving climate-related grants? When they have disappeared someone to a detention facility in Louisiana in retaliation for his First Amendment–protected speech? When people around the world are dying of preventable diseases because the U.S. government pulled the plug on life-saving humanitarian aid without any warning? 

Who would write a sci-fi screenplay, in a world of such a kind? 

I too wish that I wasn't constantly distracted by Trump. I feel nostalgic for the days when I was capable of thinking about something other than him for a full day at a time. I think about how many other things I used to write about on this blog—autobiographical posts or movie reviews. Where are they now? I too wish that my brain wasn't constantly being hijacked by the latest horror from the news. But here we are. 

I guess I just tell myself that—this can't last forever. This is simply the fact of the brief historical moment we are living through. And I'd never forgive myself in retrospect if—knowing I'd lived through it—I did not in some way bear witness to it while it was happening. The sci-fi screenplays and autobiographical blog posts can wait. The time for them will come again. "But to-day, the struggle," as Auden put it. 

Auden's point in the poem was that for the times one is living through, one has to accept the political demands of the moment. The "bicycle races," as Auden put it, can be reserved until tomorrow—the hobbies and side-interests. Today, "the struggle" takes precedence. He had in mind the Spanish Civil War; but we could say the same today about the wars in Ukraine or Gaza and the rise of fascism in the U.S. 

There will be a time in the future—that is to say—in which one can turn back to one's creative projects. The sci-fi screenplays will be waiting for us on the other side, along with the bicycle races. But that is not the moment we are living through now. For today, I cannot bear the moon's shaming. I will not be one of those "blinkered minds" that writes a sci-fi screenplay, "in a world of such a kind."