Lemminkainen

NEW WRITING & COVID 19  

Matt Duggan's - LEMMINKAINEN - A NEW BEGINNING 

The last few months in lockdown have been very hard for everyone and we have all tried to adapt to the 'New Normal', with moving house from my hometown in Bristol to Newport, severe bouts of depression, losing my job, dealing with trolls on social media and then my dad being diagnosed with Charles Bonnet Syndrome (Rare Form of Dementia) a week before lock-down, it has really hit home followed by days of tiredness and feeling completely wiped out and useless, that all I could do was sleep, spending my time drinking, the odd barbecue, and walks down by the local pond but on the plus I have managed to decorate our new home (I'm now on first name terms with the staff at my local B & Q.).

I came down with all the symptoms of the virus, sore throat, feeling tired, fever, and cough, and its only now that I feel I'm back on the mend and in full recovery, I feel that I'm slowly starting to feel like my old self again. I'm not one to post about it on social media it's something that I don't like to do and not for me. Social Media during this crisis has been nothing but negative, with hurtful and spiteful ways people are using it for their own narcissistic, sociopathic, gratification that I've become very anti-facebook, in a way, I have always been, but it's become nothing more than a propaganda tool for the far right and far left to try and groom people for their own agenda. I do support and will continue to support #StopHateForProfit as FACEBOOK for me is complicit in the propagation of weaponized hatred when you see companies such as Walmart, Amazon, Microsoft, NY Times spending the most money in advertising with Facebook, its simple, if you are advertising with Facebook you are helping Mr Zuckerberg profit off hate, racism, and bigotry. I see so many people starting to boycott and asking Facebook to stop spreading racism and hate, and its refreshing to see more and more companies and people starting to boycott and cancel their accounts. Facebook has a major influence in the world and its damaging agenda can be seen everywhere, shouldn't we all be sending a message to Mr Zuckerberg that 'We Don't Fund Hate? for any political agenda.

During my House Arrest these last few months I've started to think back and reflect on my past and that's what the new book is all about, a new beginning for us a look into the past, it's a fresh start and a deep look at ourselves, how during isolation we have looked back into the past as if we had died and can visualise the people we once loved and lost. The story of resurrection and  new beginnings can be read in all Abrahamic religions and also in various myths such as Baldr in Norse mythology, Quetzalcoatl in Aztec and Izanami in Japanese myths, also, Osiris, Attis, Dionysus, and Adonis in Greek and Egyptian mythology. A new beginning into our new normal does enter into the realms of mythology but with only a contemporary vision as I feel that writing about myths has to be fresh, different, and exciting to read and not just another rehash of poems written four million times before. 

The new book which started out as a sequence of twelve poems does deal with our current pandemic titled 'Love is a Glass Window' but then over the months it slowly grew into something much bigger, longer, and much more bolder that I didn't just want yet another long sequence of observations or quotes, like a diary of events and thoughts on the virus that has been done so many times before, I wanted a lot more in detail and I wanted the poems to have more verve and to be more direct. Capturing the desperate feelings of life and people in 2020 from isolation, politics, reflection, angry, riots, into the past and into the present with the changing tide of political opinion. I wanted to write about the time before the outbreak and what life was like before our days were spent in lock-down and how our future and our new beginning might look like one day. 

We became more reflective about our own lives, our history, our responsibilities, and our children's futures, that maybe the world needed us to slow down. The book began taking shape at the beginning of the outbreak when it first hit China and ends as the BLACK LIVES MATTER protests begin, in the book, the poems expand into how we see ourselves during stressful times like wars and pandemics, but also how we treated our surroundings, our neighbours, our cities, our earth, our history, and those that are closest to us.

The time spent in lock-down writing this new book has been very reflective in tone and almost nostalgic for me, not only did I look at myself in much more critical detail but looked back at my childhood, my past relationships, what I'd achieved over the last five years or so with my writing. I remembered old friends some good and some bad and I believe that's what the book actually does, it offers us to look inside our mechanisms, it looks deeply at our altruistic side and how our selfish side can take over, its where we get to know who our true friends are and who our enemies really are. 

The days spent in isolation have brought out the best aspects in some and the worst possible behaviours in others, as the theme throughout the book does drop hints of a new beginning, a serious change, a positive outlook socially and politically from revelations to a new resurrection. We may ask, how can we better ourselves as citizens of the world? Will we ever learn from our brutal past? We can see a change in people's livelihood which gives us a whole new perspective into life, humility, hope, and the virtues of human nature. 

Matt Duggan - 27/06/20 

WONDERLAND | 2020 | MATT DUGGAN 
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