Where are we? That’s where we are at the moment: right here.
A hundred years ago when I was a deejay at my university’s college radio station, I used to close out each show by saying the ever-derivative, “Wherever you go, there you are.” Why? What was I thinking? Such a twice-fried McNugget of cherry-picked philosophy from a 20-year-old, and there I was just trying to sound like answers came from my microphone. History certainly shows that I did not. Nor do I now. However, if this year of 2020 tells us anything at all, it’s that we need perspective, and right fast.
The bad moon has arisen, and it’s not setting for at least a few months. So what are you doing during this? Personally, I’m directing a short film. Haven’t ever done one before. It’s much different and more involving than writing a book, and is a welcomed challenge. I’m blessed that it’s time-consuming and requires more than just myself and a blank piece of paper to complete. To work with other creative people is a joy and the opposite of the quiet hell that comes with the long timeline that begins with a rancid brainfart and ends with hitting the enter button on the final draft, to send the thing off to my publisher.
So there’s that. But it’s still nothing in comparison to our frontline workers and medical professionals who have been at the front of this gargantuan mess from the beginning, never letting up one moment. Fred Rogers asked us years ago to look for the helpers when confusion and fear arose, and he wasn’t wrong. He basically crystallized a necessary truth as his own McNugget of what someone should do, and should be lauded for decades to come. Because I don’t know about you, but my anxiety-level is about where it was on September 13th, 2001. So I look to the helpers, who are our actual modern-day leaders. Politics, while playing a demonstrative role in the Coronavirus catastrophe, is second-fiddle to helping sick people get well, or at least treating them as much as is possible in this scourge.
We all want to go out and do things and be social. People are still having parties and weddings and gatherings with too many people. Disinformation has at least temporarily destroyed this country’s ability to pull together. Each trip I make to a gas station, there are people without masks either on or being properly worn over their nose and mouth. Unlikely to get changed at this point, a cold realization for certain. But who could persuade to do the right thing, anyway? There are leaders and helpers, and they do this continually. Drowning out the moronic voices in social media and actual life is about all anyone can do, as they’re full of the disinformation and bile that helps no one and only causes irreparable harm on the whole.
So we hunker down in the darkness. And we await the bad moon to set. It will set.
-Andrew Michael Flynn
4:53am Pacific Time