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Yesterday I read Professor of History at La Trobe University, Clare Wright's essay in "Meanjin" - How the Dark Gets In. I cried.
The fear of looking in my own mirror and our national mirror during this time has finally caught up with me.
It's the stories of this pandemic that interest me. The stories of all pandemics.
Stories. History. So I'm here.
Clare Wright says in her essay:
"I know that the stories we tell about ourselves matter. And that the stories that nations tell about themselves rarely reflect the truth of what actually happened in the past."
"Deep-rooted structural inequality is coming back to bite us"
I am striving to finish a PhD for a university system that is on the edge of collapse which makes writing seem pointless, and makes me angry that our government doesn't want anyone to be able to analyse, research or construct a future, let alone a past.
I am here writing late at night because my performance job as a classical musician does not exist at the moment - not a stage in the country with a live performance and audience (and yet football and racing is still going ahead).
I'm also an instrumental teacher in a private school, and yet not in the public one I used to teach in pre-pandemic. The kids in the public one are so close to the Sydney covid clusters I wonder every minute what may be happening.
My university music students are frightened of being on campus, and yet the government says we must go back. What truths are they being told?
Will the stories told here in these diaries by ordinary people reflect the truth? The truths of this time and place.
We're all scared.
The fear of looking in my own mirror and our national mirror during this time has finally caught up with me.
It's the stories of this pandemic that interest me. The stories of all pandemics.
Stories. History. So I'm here.
Clare Wright says in her essay:
"I know that the stories we tell about ourselves matter. And that the stories that nations tell about themselves rarely reflect the truth of what actually happened in the past."
"Deep-rooted structural inequality is coming back to bite us"
I am striving to finish a PhD for a university system that is on the edge of collapse which makes writing seem pointless, and makes me angry that our government doesn't want anyone to be able to analyse, research or construct a future, let alone a past.
I am here writing late at night because my performance job as a classical musician does not exist at the moment - not a stage in the country with a live performance and audience (and yet football and racing is still going ahead).
I'm also an instrumental teacher in a private school, and yet not in the public one I used to teach in pre-pandemic. The kids in the public one are so close to the Sydney covid clusters I wonder every minute what may be happening.
My university music students are frightened of being on campus, and yet the government says we must go back. What truths are they being told?
Will the stories told here in these diaries by ordinary people reflect the truth? The truths of this time and place.
We're all scared.