All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it’s up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences.
Albert Camus, The Plague
So here we are. Day whatever-the-fuck of the new normal that isn’t normal at all. Just you, me, and that statue staring at nothing in particular, same as everyone else behind their windows, wondering if this is real or if we collectively mainlined some bad batch of reality.
Camus knew. The French always know about this shit, about how quickly the carnival shuts down, how fast the lights go out, how we’re all just stumbling around looking for meaning in the dark while pretending we’re not terrified.
Two weeks ago we were invincible. Immortal. Going about our little errands, our coffee runs, our meaningless meetings, our performances at BAMPFA. Then someone flipped the switch and suddenly we’re all plague-town extras in some dystopian film we never auditioned for. The streets empty like someone called last call on civilization itself.
And you can feel it, can’t you? That weird electricity in the air. Part terror, part relief. Like maybe we’d been waiting for permission to stop. To just… stop. Stop performing. Stop pretending. Stop moving. The machine finally seized up and we’re all standing around it like mechanics with no manual, no tools, just our bare fucking hands and this creeping realization that we never really knew how any of this worked in the first place.
The statue doesn’t care. Never did. It’ll stand there long after we’ve either figured this out or haven’t. That’s the thing about monuments, they’re built to outlast the people who built them, to witness their builders turn to dust, to mark time that doesn’t give a shit about any of us.
Pestilences and victims, Camus said. But here’s what he didn’t tell you: in between, there’s just this vast ocean of waiting. Of staring at walls. Of wondering if the people you love are okay. Of rationing your sanity like it’s toilet paper. Of realizing how much of your life was just motion for motion’s sake.
The plague doesn’t care about your plans, your ambitions, your carefully constructed identity. It just is. And we just are. And somewhere in that terrifying simplicity is something almost… pure? No. That’s not the word. Honest. Brutally, nakedly honest.