As Joan Didion wrote of personal tragedy, ‘life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant’ and that’s as true of unexpected deaths due to natural causes as it is of large scale atrocities or, even, natural disasters. Life changes, just like that. A switch is flicked by an external force, beyond your control and a question mark suddenly hangs over everything you thought you knew.
On Saturday night the third serious terror attack in three months took place in London Bridge. Once again, as we all struggle to comprehend the wilful and unnecessary violence, inflicting on innocent and unsuspecting people, a conversation is bubbling over about how, exactly, we should deal with the aftermath of an unspeakable act of terror.
I was having dinner close by but, thankfully, far enough away near Liverpool Street when it happened. I'll admit that I felt scared and worried. I then felt ashamed to have felt those feelings; I scolded myself for being 'ridiculous/selfish/weak'. The next day, I woke up and realised that feeling scared wasn't quite as much of an overreaction as I'd told myself it was the night before. It's highly unlikely, even as a Londoner, to be caught up in one of these attacks. It's not probable but, equally, it's always possible to be in the wrong place at the right time.
Public figures have, once again, divided into two camps: there are those who maintain that we should ‘keep calm and carry on as normal’ and then, there are those like Katie Hopkins and Nigel Farage who appear on Fox News hoping up and down like demented frogs hyped on hysteria and hyperbole. Fired by LBC, somehow Katie Hopkins is still being called upon to represent a country that doesn’t see itself reflected back in her. Ditto Farage who, I have to keep reminding myself, has never even managed to become an elected member of parliament. You can only look on and hope that nobody takes them seriously as representatives of our country.
When the emotional conversation is being dominated by the histrionics of Nigel Farage and Katie Hopkins and rebuffed by the stoical, ‘sensible’ and ‘strong and stable’ Prime Minister on the other, you can’t help but feel that there is nowhere to turn for those of us who want to carry on but feel we need some support.
It’s Ariana Grande’s fundraising concert in Manchester, and all the young women and LGBTQ people who attended it have offered us the closest thing to an alternative narrative. When Grande flew back to the United States after the attack at her concert, she was criticised for leaving the country by Piers Morgan (another histrionic, ageing right winger who uses hyperbole to stay relevant). This weekend she returned to put on a display of support and empathy which allowed for emotional vulnerability as well as defiance to take centre stage.
What Morgan missed in his criticism of her was this: it is possible to be simultaneously affected by these events and determined to overcome them.
Each attack on our society reveals the banality of evil and the ordinariness of horror and that, in and of itself, is what’s is so terrorising. The attacks we have seen in London and Manchester have not been spectacular, they have not been large scale or rigorously planned Hollywood blockbuster worthy plots. Everyday white vans have been hired to be used as weapons, regular rucksacks have been bought on the high street and familiar, everyday locations have been turned into dangerous places.
It’s no coincidence that these are the places being tactically targeted by terrorists. They are symbolic of so much: concert venues where we go dancing and lose ourselves for a while, pubs where we go to drink, celebrate Saturday nights and enjoy our freedom to live as we wish.
We cannot stop doing anything, and nor should we. We must continue to go out, have fun for its own sake, drink, dance and celebrate life just because. But, we must also find a language which allows us to admit that we are fearful, angry and troubled by what is becoming too normal. We need a way to articulate our resilience as well as our fallibility because these emotions are two sides of what it is to be human.
There is, however, a need to have a conversation about how we can develop a language for confronting this horror which provides an alternative to the likes of Farage, Hopkins, Trump and, even, Theresa May. Motivational memes are useful and important, they show that we are united and remind us that there is a collective consciousness in our society both online and off. But, their power is limited.
After the attack on Westminster earlier this year, journalist Simon Jenkins spoke to BBC Newsnightand said that ‘terrorism is just a means of getting publicity’. He also made the point that hysteria and panic, especially when perpetuated by politicians, is often then used as justification for ‘curtailing freedoms’. ‘The terrorists’ aim is not just to kill a few but to terrify a multitude’ he said, ‘for politicians and media to overreact would play into their hands’, and that’s definitely worth pause for thought.
Of course, we should not give into terror or to terrorists but the ‘business as usual’ mantra which we see rolled out every time an atrocious act of mass violence occurs somehow also falls short. It implies that there is no space for us to be sad, to be scared, to be worried or to be anxious. We must acknowledge that these, too, are valid responses.
Pop music, from Liam Gallagher, singing ‘I wanna be a Rock N Roll Star’ to Ariana Grande standing side by side with Miley Cyrus is offering us a template for this. Music allows different emotions to exist side by side, it can provide a conduit for celebration just as it can console us through difficult times. It can do more than a meme, shared momentarily on social media; so often these feel glib, tokenistic and self-congratulatory more than heartfelt.
Music, on the other hand, is able to convey love where other mediums fall short. It’s a feeling that can’t always be put into words, one which is comprised of joy as well as sadness, strength as well as weakness. Political debates about whether police cuts have made us less safe or whether suspending election campaigning is wrong or right, there is a pressing question that we all must ask ourselves: how do we reconcile our desire to get on with things with our instinctive reaction to feel fear or anxiety when awful things happen. There is no shame in feeling fear; our vulnerability, like our ability to feel hope and despair, is something we all have in common. Whether we like it or not, life can change in an ‘ordinary instant’ and finding a way to wrap our heads around that and carry on living is part of what it is to be alive.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.