The theme of this week’s photographs is isolation. Turns out it’s rubbish for humans. Who knew? Well, now, after a year of restricted living, most of us. And yet there are many people who have suffered isolation’s negative effects way before Covid turned up and I hope we now make more efforts as individuals and as a society to connect to those who are alone since we’ve all now experienced how much it impacts on your mental wellbeing.
We have all been forced to separate and withdraw from each other. Taken out of the communities we were a part of, banished to our bubbles, denied contact from those we love. It has taken a toll and even after we are all allowed to interact once more, it might take sometime for us to heal the damage that has been done. We will have to unlearn our insular/unsocial ways altho hopefully it will be like riding the proverbial bike.
We were told ‘we are all in this together’ but the opposite was true. We were pulled apart and that clearly hasn’t been that great for anyone. So when this is all done and dusted, we are going to have to put ourselves back together again…just like Humpty Dumpty. Actually, maybe not like Humpty Dumpty. I don’t think he ever got put back together again, certainly not by the kings horses…I mean, how could a horse put back together an egg? They can’t even hold things let alone use shit like superglue which is really fucking fiddly..ok, forget about Humpty, bad eggsample, where was I? Oh yeah, isolation sucks but we’re gonna have to suck it up for a little while longer..
For now, we still have to hold tight. We must show restraint. We still need to stay the fuck away from each other for a little while longer. We must not blow all the progress we have made. We must make this the last lockdown. We cannot do this again. I know we are all lockdown weary but the next couple of months are crucial. The virus has not gone, it has just subsided. And it won’t stop replicating just because we have decided we’re over it. If we do not remain vigilant at this stage we would have all suffered this shit for nothing. I seem to remember saying all this after the last one. Well, that went well didn’t it? Could we really all be so dumb that we would just make the same mistakes all over again?
If you do want genuine freedom, which is not this halfway house masked up keep your distance bullshit, but unimpeded interaction, free of worry and fear, then you gonna have to still rein it in for now. Not because they told you to but because surely you want to? Just so we can get back to what we had. Isn’t that what we are all still striving for? There can’t be anyone on Earth who is actually happy with this type of existence? I wanna see people’s faces, I want to hug my friends, I want to talk to randoms again. I wanna be open not closed. Carefree not cautious. I just wanna be a human again.
I got vaxxed this week. I got the Vauxhall Astra Seneca. All went well altho did have a full on fever for 24 hours which was a little unpleasant but felt totally fine after that. The only thing is, and not sure if anyone else has experienced this but when it’s really quiet I can hear this voice which feels like it’s coming from inside my head…and it just keeps saying over and over again..buy microsoft, buy microsoft, buy microsoft…bit weird don’t you think?
Some days I wake up, have a cup of tea, bit of toast and then I go to Venezuela and visit the tallest waterfall in the world, or I go to a beach in thailand, or scuba diving inside the wreckage of a WW2 plane..and I even sometimes go into space. I actually go into space quite a lot. The first astronauts were obviously beyond excited at the thought of being amongst the stars but what they didn’t realise until they got up there was that the most breathtaking sight was not looking outwards but instead looking backwards and seeing our own planet. This life changing experience known as the ‘Overview effect’ is something I have done many many times over the last few months. How have I done all this? No, this has nothing to do with hallucinogenics. I have been inhabiting the wonderful world of virtual reality. I have been nowhere but have ‘visited’ more places than I have maybe done in my entire life.
The world is currently ‘closed for business’. Travel is off the menu. Being able to go to another country is virtually impossible at the moment but it is ‘virtually’ possible. And so whilst I wait for the real world to return I travel in VR. On the Occulus quest 2 (which is the headset we have) they have these 360 degrees immersive films and so at the click of a button you can suddenly be on the streets of Havana, swimming with sharks or skydiving over the alps. You feel like you are there because, just like in real life, you can look all around you. You are not fixed to one viewpoint. The other day I was in a panda enclosure in Japan just inches away from the adorable monochromatic bears and utterly immersed and then thought to look behind me and found a massive crowd of Japanese tourists taking pictures. And so I then started watching them. And that is exactly is what I would have done if I had been there . 360 gives you choice. 360 gives you peripheral vision just like IRL (in real life)
When I am at a gig I don’t always look at the band. I look around. I check out the crowd. I soak it all in and that is what you can do in VR. Unlike other visual mediums your viewpoint is not being dictated by someone else. The shots I have posted this week (screengrabs from the headset) do obviously not do justice to the experience whatsoever but here are a couple of clips just to give you a lil idea of what you can see, albeit within the confines of a frame that is not there if you watch in VR.
With the headset on you are not just observing, you are actually in it. You know it’s not real but your brain doesn’t. It responds as if you are present in that environment. It fills in the gaps. It connects the dots. It also does this in real life. I have quoted this stat several times before (cos I find it so mind-blowing) but your brain only gets 10% of its information from the optic nerve in your eye, the other 90% it is builds on the inside from information it already has simply because its quicker. Your brain is so fucking fast you don’t even realise it is doing it but what it effectively means is we are already living in a virtual world of our own making. So seeing life through a headset really isn’t that different.
I would obviously much rather be experiencing these things IRL but in the absence of it, this is something. I tend to ‘go to’ places of natural beauty and tranquility because it is the opposite of city living but you can pretty much go anywhere on Earth. In doing so you are transported beyond the confines of the walls that surround you. You get to see places you would never have ever gone to without ever leaving the comfort of your own home. You don’t need luggage. You don’t need to go through the hassle of airport hell and you don’t need to spend any money whatsoever on accommodation. You don’t even need to get dressed if you don’t want to. I actually ‘virtually travel mostly’ in my dressing gown. Why? Because I can.
The pandemic has proven one thing, we can live local lives. We can communicate and work via video if needsbe. It is maybe not 100% desirable but it is doable. What this enforced pause proved is what they said couldn’t ever possibly happen, happened. We all ground to a halt and life carried on. Maybe there will be a time again when travel is ok again but in the meantime we must learn to stay put. Previous generations barely left the town let alone the country they lived in their whole lives. And now the Brexit portcullis has come down, trotting round Europe, which was where most of us in the U.K travelled to, just ain’t gonna be as easy it once was. And if staycations aren’t your bag, maybe a virtual holiday will do the trick.
The reason I actually got the headset in the first place was so that I could hang out in cyber space with my brother and my nephew who both have one too. In the app Bigscreen you can ‘meet’ in an environment of your choice (lush living room, drive in cinema, mars) and interact as avatars. Within moments you feel like you are both in a shared space chatting away as if you were in the same room. It is way more connective than a phone call or a vid chat. You really get this sense that you are hanging out together.
It’s kinda nuts but once more the brain readily accepts it and you forget almost immediately you aren’t speaking to the actual person. Obvs it is not the same as being together IRL but it’s pretty damn decent. And during this period of isolation and separation it has proved invaluable. I have always been against tech if it got in the way of real life interaction but in some ways, this is an improvement because if you are talking to someone with a headset on you have their undivided attention. They aren’t distracted, they can’t look at their phone. It’s actually better.
The weirdest thing is when you take off the headset you feel like you are leaving the real world not the other way round. It is a bit of a headfuck tbh as the constructed digital world feels like an alternate realm of existence so immersive that when you are inside it you never think for a nanosecond you are actually in an environment that is made up of 0s and 1s. The longer you are in it the weirder it is when you return to reality because it feels less somewhat less engaging than what you have left. And we are just at the forefront of this technology. It is still a bit ‘blocky’ and there is sometimes a lil lag on the frame rate which can give you a bit of motion sickness but its only going to get better and better.
I have been charting the battle between digital living and the real world for years since smartphones became ubiquitous in our lives. I have seen reality slowly then rapidly lose its dominance for people’s attention and have had to acknowledge that since the world was shut down by this pesky spiky virus, the war is over. Digi won. Reality lost. So if you cant beat em, guess you might as well join em. When the real world returns as it once was it might not be so desirable to be in VR but I can’t imagine I’m ever going to get bored being in space.
Having said all that I have always been, and will always be of the opinion that there is no experience in the digi world that even comes close to its real life counterpart but as we need to drastically scale back flying around the planet in order to reduce carbon emissions. We must do this. We just cannot continue as we have been and so, VR might just be our salvation. It could be just the thing to help us wean ourselves off jetting across the globe at the drop of a hat.
If it significantly cut down aviation then all we would then need to do is cut down meat consumption and cut out fossil fuels and we can ensure that future gens have a liveable planet. Life will not only go on without these things, it will go on…which is more than it will do for our species if we don’t make these adjustments. Remember, not saving the planet, saving ourselves..
P.S You can also be a jedi and shoot zombies on this thing. Like fa real. Just sayin’
P.P.S I should mention this is not a plug, I ain’t getting paid to say this shit. Sadly not on the Occulus payroll but I bloody well should be.
It is just short of a year since me and Mrs B got Covid and we are still suffering from it. Our bodies basically never returned to normal. Our energy levels never recovered. We are simply not the same people we were. And we have no idea when/if we will be again. And the jury is still very much out as to what exactly is going on. It’s still too new so they really just don’t know yet. It could be that it is lying dormant in our system and flares up when we get run down. It could be our auto immune system attacking our antibodies because it falsely thinks that the virus is still active. There is some consensus to suggest it might be do with a depletion of oxygen levels which causes inflammation but they still don’t know what is causing it or what might cure it. There are lots of theories but no answers at this stage. Only more questions. And you can drive yourself crazy thinking about it.
I am writing this to share my story. Not as a cry for help or to seek sympathy but so that others who are suffering (or who live with people who are) might read it and connect with what I have to say and feel less isolated in their experience. We were “lucky” that two people very close to us also developed Long Covid (L.C) at exact same time so we formed a little support group to share symptoms and to help remind ourselves that we weren’t going mad and something was actually desperately wrong.
We got it in the first wave and so we are essentially L.C Veterans but if you are one of those who got it in the 2nd wave over Xmas and are still symptomatic 2 months later and are desperately trying to work out what the fuck is going on, this is for you. They think anything from 10-30% of people will go on to develop L.C after the initial contagion which would mean anything up to half a million people in U.K might now have it to some degree which is a staggering amount.
This is also to help clarify to people who think it’s ‘just like the flu’ that it isn’t. Some people only get ‘flu like’ symptoms but that doesn’t mean it operates the same as the flu. Has anyone ever had flu for a year? No, so it’s not the same. I’m not even sure why people need it to be the same. And to be sure what it is when no-one actually knows yet seems a bizarrely committed conviction. It also bears a resemblance to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) but again it is not the same. It’s its own disease. It’s brand new and operates unlike anything else before it. And it seems to affect everyone differently which also makes it unique.
I am also writing this as a warning to those who have not yet got the virus that it is definitely not something you want. You might think you are healthy and fit and it won’t affect you badly but L.C has struck people across the board. There is zero correlation between former health and developing long term symptoms. It’s just a lottery but this is not absolutely not a game you want to play.
I would also have, at one point, maybe written this to try to convince the disbelievers that it was real and not a hoax but if it hasn’t gone in after a year’s worth of non-stop news coverage and over a 100,000 dead (U.K) then it’s not going to so I won’t waste my breath on you.
I can only talk from our own experience in terms of how it has affected us but from talking to others & reading other’s stories there is a consistency. And that consistency is ironically its utterly erratic nature. You do not go in a straight line. You do not go from worse to better and stay on that trajectory. We had it bad for the first few months then improved for a couple of months and then have had sporadic relapses ever since which varied in degrees of severity with little rhyme or reason to how much you were affected. And you can flit from fine to frazzled and back again on a daily basis.
We eventually worked out that any sort of over-exertion could set us off. Anything that gave us an accelerated heart rate. Exercise intolerance is one of the key components of L.C. If you try to build your strength & fitness back up you invariably get punished for it. In fact if you overdo it at all you get punished for it. I got caught in a storm in November and ran up a steep hill to get out the rain and that put me down for a month. We had a 10 minute dance in the living room last Wednesday and then became instantly run down for a few days.
This is just to give you an idea of how little room for manoeuvre you have with this thing. It’s like there is this invisible barrier and you don’t know you’ve hit it until it’s too late. Now at least we are aware what sets us off and we make a decision whether to say fuck it or not. You basically have two choices with L.C – overdo it (which is almost any activity) & suffer the consequences or take it ridiculously easy and stay functional. It got so ridic as to how little could set us off we ended up making a joke of it so we could deal with it..taking the rubbish out? That’s two days in bed. Doing the laundry? A weeks’ relapse. Going to the shops? That’s a month in a coma. You get the gist. And the joke is, it actually helped. Humour always saves the day.
And you might read all that in horror but in the scheme of things we don’t actually have it too bad. We are extremely fortunate it never went to our lungs and our biggest symptom is feeling utterly wiped out a lot of the time. There are people who can’t get out of bed, who are constantly short of breath and suffering a multitude of other symptoms and who are all besides themselves with anxiety over it. One of our support group had a severe physical collapse a week or so ago and had to call an ambulance as unable to breathe properly with chronic chest pains which was obviously terrifying. But as terrifying as that sounds and was, they are one of the lucky ones as didn’t end up in hospital on a ventilator. They were able to get their breathing under control and are now in recovery. There is a possibility they got reinfected with Covid on top of Long Covid/Chronic fatigue and are now waiting on tests to try to ascertain exactly what exactly triggered such an episode after months of feeling fine and nearly a year after first contracting the virus.
At this stage any conclusions as to what is happening to us all are nothing more than supposition and as I said, you can lose your mind trying to work it out. You play detective constantly, analysing everything you have done to see if you can pinpoint what it was that made you take a turn for the worse. It makes you incredibly fearful of doing too much and even when you feel better it is sometimes worse because you still have to tip toe around to not risk setting it off again. But you just gotta get on with it. It is vital that you deal with it rather than let it define you. It’s all about managing it and not letting it break you mentally.
Maybe because we have had it for so long we have reached a level of acceptance about it which is crucial to be able to take the knocks when they come. For sanity’s sake you must reduce your expectation for improvement. If not, relapses become too demoralising and can seriously affect your mental health. Your mindset must be strong in order to cope with the back and forth. That is not to say you shouldn’t have hope for a recovery, you must, but you have to be realistic. We are a year in and it is still effectively ‘Day 1’ because I know, even though I feel reasonably okay at the mo, I could run round the block right now and that would do me in.
I think personally, we are also better equipped to deal with it because tbh we were not leading that healthy a lifestyle in the first place. We were always exhausted from our relentless lives and in recovery from big weekends so feeling sub par and wiped out is something we knew all too well and it has sort of helped us cope with L.C. I have nursed a splitting head from hangovers so many times during my adult life so it sort of prepared me for having what is pretty much a non-stop headache for the last year. We also ache like 80 year olds and every muscle in our body feels like it is permanently pulled. Again, as I suffered with a severe back condition for years so am used to high and constant levels of pain which has also helped me cope with this.
I think it is infinitely worse for the fitness lot as the drop off is much larger. What is tough for us personally is that we had a seemingly inexhaustible amount of energy. We were always on the go. Never stopped. We had a rep for it. If there was one phrase everyone uttered to us when we described what we’d been up to was “I don’t know how you do it”. Well, now we wait patiently until we can again but those energy levels might never return. And as depressing a thought as that is we are sill here. We live, we breathe. we exist. We are the lucky ones.
I should also point out that it isn’t just physical exertion that can wipe you out, its mental too. In the early days just a single phone call could make me have to lie down for a few hours to recover. There is also the dreaded ‘brain fog’ which zaps your mind into uselessness all the time. You just hit a wall and your cognitive function ceases completely. Before L.C I could always just ‘push on through’ if I was tired. But you cannot do that with this because you will be punished for it. This is my advice to those who are struggling…you have to give in to it. If your mind and body need rest give it to them. If you don’t it will only get worse. The key is to stop before you get tired so you don’t wipe out. Take lots of breaks. Give yourself massive amounts of leeway. Do not try to behave like you used to because if you push on through and wait till your wrecked you will get seriously slam dunked for it.
Until they have any genuine answers or solutions we all need to just stay calm and get through it as best we can. We are now taking a variety of supplements (happy to divulge if anyone’s interested) that we think might aid our immune systems to recover and to boost our energy levels. Maybe they are helping & maybe they aren’t. There is no real way of knowing as there are too many variables to work out what is working and in all honesty it doesn’t really matter. You have to feel like you are doing something. Regardless of what you administer as a treatment you still have to will yourself better. The mind and body are one system. They are not separates and feed off each other, the wellbeing of one affecting the other and vice versa. So to have any chance of recovery you have to believe improvements can be made. Scientists have proven that the placebo effect is present in all medicine no matter what. Belief won’t get you there alone but it is an integral component to all treatment.
The one thing that has undoubtedly helped throughout is meditation (which we do twice and day) as it makes you calmer which helps with the stress and anxiety of having an ongoing illness and it also gives you much needed energy when you have none. I cannot imagine how we would have got through it without it. We did a course at the London Meditation Centre but again, if anyone wants to know more about that please get in touch.
I am obvs hopeful we will get fully better at some point but am also realistic it might be a while. My heart goes out to everyone who is dealing with this and if anyone wants to get in touch to discuss please do. Unfortunately, if you have not been through it is difficult to understand how it feels which is why I felt it was important to flag all this shit up in the first place. If you are suffering and your immediates are telling you it’s all in your head, politely tell them to go fuck themselves and go and talk to people who are able to relate to what you are telling them.
I will leave those who are suffering with a positive..as this is the global number one health topic at this moment in time and for the foreseeable future there is consequently going to be a relentless amount of research being conducted by the medical world and this is cause for hope. Give ’em a bit of time and they’ll no doubt get to the bottom of it and hopefully be able to prescribe something that will be able to tackle it. Hang in there people, help is on the way…and in the meantime you must learn to help yourself. Learn how to function in dysfunction. Learn how to not lose your shit over it. Learn how to beat it by not giving in to it. Laugh in its face. Don’t forget, you are a human being. You are powerful, resilient and extremely adaptable. You will not be beaten by it. End of.
P.s Please share to anyone you know who is dealing with this.
Parties? Yup, been to one or two of those. Clubs? Definitely. Know what they are. Beanfeast? Umm, hang on, let me think..nope, I got nuthin’…what the fuck is a beanfeast?? Is it just me? Has anyone heard of a beanfeast? I mean, I get it’s somit do with celebrating beans but this is a new one on me. And what exactly would you cater for a beanfest? I’m thinkin’ beans…whadya reck?
Okay, so this week’s selections were all designed primarily to amuse. Think we have to remind ourselves that however much doom and gloom seems to be dominating our lives we don’t have to succumb to its depressing effects. In fact, it is imperative for our survival and our sanity that we don’t. Yup, I know, easier said than done sometimes, we’re all feelin’ it but we cannot forget to find the funny. Life is ludicrous at the moment so it shouldn’t really be too hard. The professions that meet the most horror on a daily basis have always used a “gallows” humour as a coping mechanism and now so must all of us if we want to get through this.
Danger! Danger! High voltage sausages!
Laughter is still the best medicine around although I should stipulate it will NOT protect you from COVID. All I’m sayin is if we do not retain our sense of humour we will get stuck in the quicksand of misery and possibly go under. If you are now taking vitamin D and ginger to boost your immune system you should also administer a chuckle at least once a day. As the Joker so wisely said (for an insane psychopath): Why so serious?
If you can’t quite muster up the gags yourself we live in a multiverse of meme manufacturers working round the clock to do exactly that. They might seem slight & inappropriate at times but they are, in fact, providing a vital social function so find someone that tickles your funny bone and they will help you through your day. (@lady.like.shiv) is my current go to if you’re lookin’ for one) I will also do my best to swing a bit of comedy your way whenever I can.
I have resorted to humour as a salvation from the abyss my whole life and it has always stood me in good stead. That and obviously copious amounts of intoxicants which will also, as it happens, put a big smile on your face. Do em together and you are laughing..like literally.
Please spare a thought for all the stormtroopers who have been furloughed from the Empire..its not been easy for them. They need structure in their life. Left to their own devices they are forced to reflect on their evil actions, turning to alcohol to stifle the screams of Ewoks that echo in their ears.
Breaking news! Two headed bird spotted in Hyde Park!
Could Covid be responsible for this avian mutation? Fearing an outbreak Government has elected a panel of quacks to look into this strange & unnatural phenomena.
