We were reading last night from A Vast Horizon about Lee Miller’s 1937 photograph, Picnic (photo below – click to see it – it’s worth a look. I think the photo is copyrighted and I didn’t want to copy it myself). We read…
“That year everything was in flux, febrile. Life felt provisional and urgent. There was a sense of living on borrowed time… and then the Second World War smashed into their lives.”
For many years I’ve wondered what people felt and thought and did in those perilous times of the Great Depression, the dustbowl, the rise of Hitler and fascism, wars and rumors of wars, Kristallnacht. Around the world people were on the move, often with nowhere to go. Those were desperate times and then World War Two smashed into their lives.
I’ve wondered. And now it seems to me that we are in similar times. These times are not exactly like those times; but they aren’t that different either. The rich are getting grotesquely richer while many all over the world struggle to no avail, the (re)rise of antisemitism, wars and rumors of wars, artificial intelligence, totalitarianism and pre-fascism. These are desperate times.
I have sat and talked with refugees from around the world, people who have been tortured, who have been starved, who have been displaced, who have been hunted and bombed and shot at, who have lost everything. I never thought to ask, what was it like before the shit really went down? I never thought to ask, when did you know? What was it like, what were you thinking before Srebrenica? Before the fall? Before Year Zero? Before the famine? Did you know? Did you actively pretend like it’s okay or was it just like, maybe things will work out? Was it just like fate?
Did anyone imagine in 1937 that 60 – 75 million people were about to die?
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Last night you went to sleep first. I was thinking about these troubled times and I wanted to wake you and tell you that I’m glad we’re together now, but then you awoke and said, “What’s going on?” I tried to tell you, but I felt inarticulate. I still feel that way.
Goodnight, I love you.