Walking composition

The extraordinary unlikeliness of us

I mentioned in my Saturday walking composition a video that my journalist friend— Bethany Bell, who works for the BBC—made back in March about lockdown in Rome. I couldn’t find it, so she sent it to me again (it’s something she did independently, not a BBC production, to be clear). The feelings in it, the strange shifts and concerns, are coming back like the turn of the tide. I asked her if I could share it for Election Day and she said of course, and that “it reflects the way my cameraman and I felt in March—and again now” as many parts of Europe roll back into lockdown.

I can’t think of more to say, nor more intelligently and compassionately, than Bethany does about humanity and its long, uncertain history in this short video: “It’s extraordinary that anything survives.

“But somehow, we have. And somehow, we will.”

Rome—Lockdown City, March 2020