{"id":4290,"date":"2020-04-14T14:19:03","date_gmt":"2020-04-14T14:19:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/?p=4290"},"modified":"2020-04-14T14:19:05","modified_gmt":"2020-04-14T14:19:05","slug":"life-during-lockdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidbelbin.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/life-during-lockdown\/","title":{"rendered":"Life during Lockdown"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Photo of Graham outside his house, taken last summer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The\nCoronavirus crisis poses existential questions for The Arts as for so much of\nsociety. Everyone at NUCoL is doing what we can to adapt to the new situation.\nOur mission remains the same, building a better world with words, chiefly by\nfostering literacy and well-being through creative writing. In particular,\nwe\u2019re supporting our young people and our city\u2019s writers, whose work was\nrecognised by Nottingham\u2019s UNESCO status. Reading and writing are crucial tools\nto help us through these times. I have three books on the go, a challenging novel,\na huge, fact-filled biography and, my bedtime comfort read, an omnibus of 60s\nnovels by the great US crime writer, Ross MacDonald. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most\nof the creative writers I know are, like me, not finding it easy to write much at\nthe moment. There will be fiction and drama set during the lockdown. There are\nalready some good poems. But for now the main thing I find myself writing are\nemails to friends around the country, and the world. How is it where you\nare?<\/em> Friends have never felt more remote, yet our experiences have never\nbeen more similar. Our world is a small place where, like it or not, everyone\nis connected to and affected by everyone else. After we do get through this, a\nlot of things have to change. I hope our being one of the 180 cities in the\nUNESCO Creative Cities Network will help us to make those changes, finding ways\nto collaborate in making the world a better, safer place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The kind of writing most suited to the current crisis is undoubtedly memoir. Emails, facebook posts, tweets and blog posts are often my most relevant reading. This week my friend, memoirist Graham Caveney, wrote to offer us a very interesting essay he\u2019d written for his agent\u2019s website<\/a>, thinking we might like to share it on the NUCoL site. We\u2019ve decided to make this the first in an occasional series, Life during Lockdown.<\/em> I\u2019ll curate the pieces and welcome contributions from other city authors (you can use the contact button above or email me at chair@nottmcityoflit.org). Read Graham’s piece here<\/a> and, below, hear the song by The Feelies after which he titled his debut memoir, The Boy with the Perpetual Nervousness. It’s the opening track of Crazy Rhythms<\/em>, their 1980 debut album on Stiff Records.<\/p>\n\n\n\n