You can’t quantify the effect of lockdown
by Elizabeth Oldfield, UnHerd:
Has there ever been a global emergency communicated with this much data? The numbers are vital for leaders making agonising decisions, and useful for the rest of us as we modify our behaviour. But most of us are drowning in a sea of deadening graphs, charts and figures. Data is not designed to engage our emotions or our senses, so it can have a numbing, even anaesthetic effect.
With prescient timing, a new album has reminded me that one antidote to this anaesthetic is aesthetic; we need art, beauty, creativity to also help us process what is happening. This week, the BBC released ‘Isolation, In your words,’ a song cycle, commissioned as part of the Culture in Quarantine series.
Based on interviews recorded in the first national lockdown — spanning a wide cross-section of the public, from children to cancer patients, medics to furloughed workers — it draws on jazz, rap, a cappella and musical theatre to create a lush and effecting soundscape of the UK’s 2020 experience.
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