The mainstream media, by its nature, tends to feature stories about celebs rather more than stories about the rest of us. Under the lockdown this division, like so much else, has sharpened dramatically. So we sit back and watch TV shows featuring people in some other world before social distancing, and we read about important and creative people who find - unlike our sad selves - that this whole lockdown business offers new and exciting opportunities for self-improvement.
In yesterday's Sunday Times Bryan Appleyard rang round some artists. How are they coping under lockdown? It's what we all want to know. So....
The Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, whose In Real Life exhibition at Tate Modern was a popular sensation, also welcomes immobility as a spiritual revelation. He is in lockdown in Berlin. “I honestly don’t recall when I last spent over a full month in the same spot,” he says. “This gives me a feeling of groundedness that I, amid the challenges that we experience these days, am very grateful for.”
Isn't that nice?..."immobility as a spiritual revelation". Eliasson now has a chance to take a break from his hectic international schedule, jetting around to tell people of the new responsible art of geopolitics and dealing with climate change, and can regain that important feeling of groundedness. Not that I was impressed by that Tate Modern show, but he is - no question - an artist for our times.
On the other hand, a comment tucked away elsewhere:
The industry I work in has collapsed leaving tens of thousands, including myself, at risk of redundancy and the loss of everything I have worked so hard for over so many years. I'm not sleeping. My health is suffering.
As compensation I get to be cooped up at home with small children all day long every single day. Small children who don't understand they may be living the last few months in the house they were born in.
This lockdown is a catastrophe of biblical proportions and not just for me, for everyone. We are saving some lives but the cost to other lives and livelihoods is almost unquantifiable.
And the rest of you who are not as badly affected as me, wipe that smile off your face. You will be paying more tax to subsidise my dole payments and housing benefit in very short order.
But that's not at all the kind of message we're interested in hearing right now. I mean, can't he appreciate his enforced immobility as a "spiritual revelation", and celebrate a new feeling of groundedness? What's wrong with some people?
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