Art Heals: Alone Together

As everyone does, I scour the news reports for some good news in the barrage of predictions, statistics, data and advice with which we are inundated. This makes me think about  the words affect and effect.

(As you probably have noticed by now, my thought patterns do not  proceed in a straight line.)

According to the dictionary, “Affect is usually a verb, and it means to impact or change.”

“Effect is usually a noun, an effect is the result of a change, ‘something brought about by a cause’; ‘a result’; ‘the way in which something acts on something else’."

Seems simple. But wait, these words are the Ginsu knives of language. 

Affect can be a noun:  It means ‘a feeling or emotion, as distinguished from cognition, thought or action; a strong feeling, having active consequences’. Effect can be a verb: It means ‘to bring about’; ‘to cause to occur’; ‘to produce as a result’.

I find everything about our present situation contradictory.  In order to do something, we are asked to do nothing.  In order for the statistics to get better, they must get worse.  Verbs become nouns, and nouns become verbs.  I want to affect change, but my affect is still one of a powerless person.  I want the effect of  my  actions to have a result, but that is too passive for me.  I want to effect change, meaning I want to DO something, to act, not to sit back and watch.

We are asked to be alone together.  We need to physically separate ourselves from our  friends and loved ones, yet  for our mental health, we need to reach out to as many as possible.  We are  told to depend on our screens for work, and education and entertainment, when just weeks before we were told that too much screen time is bad for our health.  We are asked to avoid contact, yet we want to find ways to help those in need.  We are asked to physically distance, and wear masks, but we want to go out for runs and strolls and dog walks, without viewing every oncoming pedestrian as a potential instrument of our destruction.  And  I, as an urbanite, long for the definition of “the city” to be associated again with the energy of the crowd,  the vitality I feel while passing, and yes, bumping into people all hurrying toward a job, a meal, a meeting, a love, and not with the  present definition of a vector for disease.  I yearn for the time when the sounds of traffic energize me, rather than sadden me when I hear only the sirens. 

I listened to Queen Elizabeth’s speech  the other day.  She quoted an old  World War II song, that my late father used to sing when I was a child ( he was in  the British army).  It made me happy.  I hope it does you too.

 We'll meet again

Don't know where

Don't know when

But I know we'll meet again some sunny day

Keep smiling through

Just like you always do

'Till the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away

Here is one of my favorite evocations of “the city” all cosy together in symbiotic support.  This is Once Upon A Time” by  Najwa Al Amin.  Art Heals.