Today we added a small piece to an exibition marking the second coming of Donald Trump as president of the United States. An enterprising and thoughtful local couple had gathered a whole bunch of A4 artistic responses to this new moment of uncertainty for our Western civilisation, stringing them up in lines in their gallery. We were grateful to be part of it, as it seemed like a much saner way to mark our new normal…
In a room full of good people today, I found myself feeling strangely detatched. As I reflected on this feeling (which to be honest is not an unusual state for me) I realised that in part this was because I had been here before, in 2016, at Trumps first coming. Back then, I declared myself part of the resistance and began writing protest poetry, much of which is gathered in the first part of my book After The Apocalypse.
The thing is, this book has two more parts. Firstly, the great silence of the pandemic, our national and international pause to ponder, which I still think will be seen in hindsight as a pivot point in human history, no matter how irrelevant it seems to us at the moment – even in the light of backwards movement that Trump seems determined to bring about.
Then the last part concerned itself with a determination to look for goodness, meaning and even that most fickle of human emotions, hope. This is not the same thing as blind optimism. Nor does it arise from world wearyness with all the oppositional anger, which I certainly feel. Rather it is because I feel deep in my bones a sense that we are a civilisation whose time has come. Trump is a symptom not a cause. A symptom of a bitter process of coming apart driven by the logic of unsustainable consumption and rampant inequality.
The thing is, whatever we emerge into will require us to ask the same questions about what truth and beauty we want to carry forward. It will require enough of us to still value love and friendship above hate and vengence. It will need those who love the earth and want to plant trees.
It is not 2016 after all, it is 2025. Trump does not seem to be able to learn, but we can, surely?
This was the picture that Michaela made, using one of my poems for the exhibition.
Even this does not quite capture what I am trying to describe above. Yes, we need to unite and make conspiracies of kindness towards others and the world – more than ever we need this, but we also need to develop a different narrative for 2025, one that allows us to move beyond division and opposition and to seek instead those places where, despite all that we know and all that we fear, we choose to love.
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