Daily drawing 19-4-2020: Driftwood. Ink & brush

Drawn less than a month into first lockdown. Maybe there had been a storm, to throw these huge logs up? (Yes— on the 15th of April.)

Here in Aotearoa we had strict lockdowns that kept the country Covid-free for about two years longer than the rest of the world. Lockdown was an extremely strange time. From our safe little island, we watched the rest of the world going to shit. We wiped our groceries down. We cooked up big pots of bolognese. We drank boysenberry wine. We had driftwood fires on the beach, and sat by them singing apocalypse-songs to the accordion. (This one: youtube.com/watch?v=LYz… But also this one: youtube.com/watch?v=2tw…) Looking at this drawing now, it conveys a sense of social distancing.

I found the suspension of ‘normality’ exhilarating, and I was hopeful that the unprecedented times would make people see— in the words of Ursula K. Le Guin— “that the way things are is not permanent, not universal, not necessary.” I was still a secret optimist, I guess; it seems decades ago.