Cracking Up / Collective Roar

Cracking Up / Collective Roar

Photograph by Ashford Marx 

An Exquisite Corpse by

Hilary Ayshford, Joyce Bingham, Zoë Davis, Delphine Gauthier-Georgakopoulos,

Megan Hanlon, Marie-Louise McGuinness, Nina Miller

Summers aren't supposed to be like this. Not in England. It last rained on June 27th. The ground has cracks wide enough to swallow a small child. Water that was meant for our taps is being used to control wildfires. Reservoirs are a patchwork of fractured earth. Fish flap about in the village pond, suffocating in shrinking pools of shallow water. Grass is brown and crispy, shrubs are shrivelling.

We aren't supposed to live like this – at least not the fair-haired, pale-skinned populations of northern climes. Roasting is what you do to a leg of lamb after church on Sunday, not to a middle-aged woman walking a dozen yards to put the rubbish out.

We aren't supposed to huddle in the dark all day with curtains drawn and windows closed to keep out the sun. We aren't supposed to be fractious through lack of sleep. We aren't supposed to be sitting in puddles of our own sweat, worried we'd be wasting water if we took a shower.

We aren't supposed to be praying for rain in August, or asking when this will be over, because the truth is that it may never be over and we have only ourselves to blame.

We spend our days bombarded by a visual and auditory overload of catastrophes and violence that keeps us awake at night. We’re swimming against the current, drowning as we watch our world crack and crumble and crash. Nature is powerful, but we’ve ignored her plight for too long at the risk of irreparably damaging our own environment. More fuel. More electricity. More water. We want more, always more. We want too much. Too fast.

We need to slow down and remember to enjoy the process, the self-discovery, the growth that comes as we work alongside nature and each other. Remember the joy of creating; using our brains, our hands to achieve something unique. Remember to appreciate ‌simple things: the gentle breeze playing with the leaves, the melody of a bird song, the aroma of petrichor, the resilience of weeds growing through asphalt.

Let’s take the time to breathe again and respect the nature we can’t afford to lose, can’t live without. Let’s rebuild the sense of community we need to thrive. Let's take a step back and relearn the difference between wants and needs.

Having navigated my fair share of rocky relationships, I knew this territory well. Each step back gave the growing fissure between us room to widen into a chasm, then eventually a canyon.

I was struggling to breathe. I echoed back, “Wants and needs.”

‘I want us to finish this mural, but I need to feel safe around you.” Their eyes shy away from mine. When did they become unreadable?

Safe? Electricity still sparked between us. Art was our lightning rod and the world was a forest of dry kindling. Together we were a storm. Or so I’d thought.

“I’ve never been safe. I thought that’s what drew you to me?” I asked, reaching out to touch paint-stained hands. They pulled away.

“I’m not that person anymore.” They wrapped their shawl tighter around their shoulders as if to buffer them from the emotions swirling about.

Anger crackled under my skin. Heat rose, and I realized the danger of lightning; it struck without warning.

“So that’s it. You hide who you are from me, and I’m the one to blame.” I wanted to scream, but stopped myself because I saw them flinch. Took five slow breaths and became the eye of my own storm.

“I want you in my life. What do you need to be safe?” I asked. Their shoulders relaxed, and they met my eyes.

Perhaps stepping back was not about giving us physical but emotional space to grow together.

On the shelf, slouched and curl-legged, the doll peeks out from behind empty-bellied picture frames and a mother of pearl jewellery box with its lock broken off. A spider web bruise stamps neglect on her forehead, radiating cracks dusty-dirty in once pink porcelain skin.

Her dress, at a time lush velvet and blood red, is worn thin to mud brown; only a patch of pale thread covers a dislocated shoulder.

She was a prize once, loved beyond measure by a girl who poured tea from a miniature china teapot into matching fine cups, who brushed her amber hair to fire with a large horse hair brush.

She does not forget.

Her eyes, the shade of a robin's egg beneath a silky film of dust, are turned in hopeful slant towards the double-fronted window of the charity shop. She watches young children rush by, pulled ever onwards in a haze of shopping bags towards other shops and busy cafes, where, without her knowing, flat screens snuff out their voices and turn them blind to the world.

She waits for the one who will see her, will take her down from the shelf to whisper secrets into her confidant’s ears; who will wash her face and return her hat, now perched on the head of a tailless black cat.

She thought the cat had spoken once. When the night was a weight too heavy to bear and rain struck the glass like marbles thrown into a mixing bowl. It had tilted its head and looked up at her, blinking through twin pools of amber.

“I see you,” she thought it said, “I know what you long for,” before it went back to licking a paw, dragging claws through midnight fur.

What did she long for?

Was it freedom? Was it love?

Could it be both? Could both even exist in any kind of harmony, as in her grim experience, that which disguised itself as love was, more often than not, a Russian doll of ever decreasing cages.

Harmony can be over-rated, used as a way to bring like-minded people together and fuelling their hatred of others. Do we need to look at the words we use and consider what they mean in this media-driven world? Do we want to reclaim words like harmony, nice and kind?

Whatever happened to basic kindness? Has nice gone out of fashion?

Nice and kind have been vilified. Never put them in your writing. They are boring. They are lazy words. Yes, the words may be, but the sentiment behind them is not and we make nice and kind our enemies at our peril. Someone falls over in the street, and there is usually a group of helping hands, but behind them are the people recording it on their phone and sniggering. Has this been learned in the school Playground?

Is this what we have become? Has empathy gone and left us?

On social media when you start to type, be nice, be kind should flash on the screen in welcoming letters. Of course, there will always be something you don’t like or object to, but you can be considerate in your response.

Have we lost the ability to put ourselves in others’ shoes and try to understand what they are feeling? Are their shoes so unbelievable and so alien we just can’t be nice and kind?

There will always be experiences different to our own. When people are frightened and worried, we should have some way of understanding this through the nowledge we gain in our own lives or the books we read. There is so much hounding of people on social media and it takes a lot to endure it. Some people are able to survive with inner strength, others with the help of family and friends.

If you don’t feel you have backup and you are lost in a world of vicious comments and your world falls apart, what do you do?

So many well-known people have left social media to get on with their lives. They have taken the option to be kind to themselves, making their days nicer with less angst. When I was at school, someone writing lies about you on the back of the toilet door was sickening, but the number of people who saw it before it was painted over were minimal. At the time it didn’t feel like that, especially when it was written with the tip of a compass and engraved into the wood.

Today the social media posts never go away, like the scratches in the toilet door, they remain forever. But we can regain some dignity by being nice and kind, you are welcome to use different words if you feel like opening a thesaurus. True harmony can be regained when we can embrace the joy of being nice and kind. Try it and see.

Or don’t try it, and instead come and see the cracks in my flower bed of hope. They’re as thick around as my middle finger and as deep as my despair. So deep, not even a deluge of water can reach the bottom to sew up discord anymore. The roses, sweet things who have to live among the cracks, have given up. They’re no longer asking for rain. Those fragile, fragrant blooms can see how close they are to losing the fight against spite and selfishness, and they’re tired of holding the ground together. Let the sawfly larva come, they say, let the blackspot and rose rust take over. What difference does it make if we stretch our new growth to the sky when such dark clouds loom in the distance night and day. Maybe our best chance lies what is so difficult to do—admit that the ground here is too dry and world-weary to be productive right now. Maybe we chop it down to the root and start anew after a good long rest.