Back to school
Today is a fabulous day. The sun is bright, and flowers began to appear on the park’s trees, messages that despite the gloomy mood, the sickness and the deaths of an endless year, spring never forget to come, there will be a spring, after all, that is the pattern. And it’s been a hell of a year. That felt like a century. Last year at this exact time, I was in Greece, trying to end up with a much too long duty of mine. I can remember the cloud of uneasiness around, although nobody would expect what was coming. I hadn’t yet worn a mask. I remember drinking wine in bars with friends discussing everyday things and making short plans. I can remember enough to spot the irony, but it seems like it was decades ago. So strange for a year full of stillness and mostly nothing to seem so long.
But spring is coming, whatever we feel. And anyway, everything seems to get a little brighter, carry some hope despite the cold weather, some more weight and bad hair. It is the pattern, the natural circle, the way things go.
After all, schools are open at last here in London, and children are crazy happy that the long and boring homeschooling is finally over. They can have their friends again around and do even the most tiresome learning without losing the fun.
In October, when there was this brief opening of galleries and as I was walking around London to see some art, I stumbled upon Gary Hume’s Archipelago in Spruth Magers, I thought it was an exhibition about hope. About this spring phenomenon (spring is the way nature pronounces hope), the light after the dark, the flowers and the warmth.
It was only October, but we were living through the health crisis already for 7 months. The vivid colours invited me in. I really needed this joy that intense colours can produce. However, the show was not at all joyful. It was an exhibition about destroyed schools and lifejackets. About refugees, kids, cold seas and darkness. It was certainly talking about a crisis but not the current health one but the (current) long humanitarian.
(Of course, it is more than silly of me to believe that in only 7 months, there could be such a consistent body of artistic work about the covid crisis to compose a solo exhibition, it was my need for something hopeful and relevant that made me ignore the facts).
I had not a happy childhood. Especially outside school, I had no friends at all. My parents never cared about us being with kids of our age outside school. No playdates, no playing. In fact, I can’t remember anything fun outside school. The school was my whole socializing universe. It was there that I learned about human relations, dynamics and friendships. That is why I felt so much worried about my son when schools were closed. Not about the learning; that was going fine. He could not see his friends, and we didn’t even have the opportunity for a meeting with friends with kids of his age. I felt in my bones the misery of my childhood I had tried so hard not to let my son meet.
A destroyed school is the absolute image of loss. Children without education or violently deprived of it are children with no hope, with no opportunities, not knowing the world, no idea about socializing and no choices.
Archipelagos’ most hurtful aspect was those fragments of children drawings, full of colour and the natural bright joy of life of a fresh person. Hume had been gathering photos from schools and classes destroyed by the war, and among them, he noticed the children drawings on the walls and made the installation Destroyed School, a '‘wallpaper" consisting of 30 drawings that the children’s ones inspire.
In these drawings was hidden, the tragic irony —irony is such a harsh and serious word here, nothing to laugh at, all about awe— of the refugee crisis’ gloomy reality.
Last year in the refugee camps in Greece, psychologists talked about kids who had lost their will to live. Children 8 or 9 years old telling they want to die. Young persons trying to suicide. This year, things are even worse as they had no access to sanitation systems and health facilities during the pandemic situation.
The humanitarian crisis has been striking the west in uncountable ways. But creating circumstances that push young children, children who are supposed to be seeking the light, catching the beauty and feel like the world is their oyster, to such dark thoughts seems to me being the most mortal and indicative of a dark future. The most fatal for any notion of culture. A society that allows such a condition is far from healthy and Covid is the least evil here.
I am happy my son is back to school (although I have to admit, I miss him a bit). He is full of joy again though, talking about the silly things he is doing with his friends, even does his homework more cheerfully and our time together is funnier and brighter. He still makes funny colourful drawings and believes in beauty.
Hopefully, his generation will allow this bliss for children all around the world. Hopefully, his generation will bring the spring.