Let the record show this post is actually going up on Thursday the 22nd, the day after President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the US Senate. I've been meaning to post something about March for a while, to catch up on the run-down of the year, and Zelensky's address has proved a good incentive, so here are more old photos.
Again, a lot of scenery,
including a reminder that a giant mound had been dismantled outside
Marble Arch, serving as the reminder it had ever gone up. It looked better
stripped of turf.
March appears to have seen no real change to my routine. I'd use my time walking, and photograph where I walked. Local parks. Local galleries.
I put off buying stuff for the room. We still wore masks at the Crystal Maze. The weather was changing though, behaving itself to begin with, showing no signs for example that in April this would all be snow...
Then, just as it seemed it had been decided the pandemic was over now, and "things" should be getting back to "normal", we suddenly remembered the possibility of nuclear annihilation.
Down the hill from me, outside Holland Park, flowers and signs of support started appearing at the feet of the statue of the Ukrainian Saint Volodymyr. Russia had invaded the Ukraine on February the 24th. I looked it up.
Just up the hill from me, outside Kensington Gardens, fences were erected to protect the walls erected to protect the Russian Embassy from graffiti, and across the road from them, more fences, often peopled by protestors, but I'm normally too shy to take photos of people.
The fences are still there today.
And the signs.
A search for "Zelensky" conducted at the beginning of this invasion reminded me he'd been a popular television comedian before coming to office, and the extraordinary speech he gave in Russian on the day of the invasion reminded me how powerfully a comedian can communicate.
Remarkable speech. Addressed to the Russian people, it should also be heard everywhere. pic.twitter.com/RkrDGSYUYq
— Piotr Zalewski (@p_zalewski) February 25, 2022
On one walk, I then bumped into the friend who'd invited me to that concert where the orchestra were all masked. She'd grown up in Yugoslavia, and outlived it, still holidaying as a teenager in what was becoming Croatia while living the rest of the time in what was becoming Serbia (Is that right? Have I got that right? I should look it up.) Anyway, she lived in a war.
"Vladimir Putin is an absolute fucking genocidal dictator," she explained over a pint in the Windsor Castle. "But –"
"America doesn't give a fuck about Europe either. The Cold War's been over for thirty years, why is there still NATO? Putin didn't do this without reason. I cannot believe this propaganda. News should be History. Nothing is being explained. We're not enemies. These are people! They're going to have to discuss! It's exactly like Yugoslavia... I'm sorry."
And now I'm thinking of that "Stalin Attacks Churchill" headline from 1946, in the copy of the Daily Mail we use as a prop in Love Goddess. It's a good prop. You can see the beginnings of the Cold War in the story beneath, as "Generalissimo Stalin" warns of an English-Speaking assumption of World Domination. The power of that narrative's still there today too.
I didn't grow up in the former Yugoslavia, but I did grow up listening to the news about the conflict there. There was a lot of coverage of the history, both ancient and post-Cold War, to give context to and understanding of the current events. This absolutely does not happen anymore. I can't understand why, as surely it's so much easier (and cheaper!) research it and present it now than it was in the 90s. But the news seems to prefer to call in a small panel of think tank reps to prognosticate on the future, rather than educate about the past. And it's not just in Britain – NPR, which taught me so much about the Balkans, had turned completely into 'human interest' mush by the 2010s. I don't understand why this should be; it's not like people are less interested or dumber than they used to be. It has to be an editorial decision, but why?
ReplyDeleteNo idea. If I had an idea it would be that everyone, and I mean everyone, is now more fragile than they realise, and people find strength in taking sides.
ReplyDelete