Life in lockdown: one day very much like the next, varied only by what one chooses to read, to watch or to write. Even the options for a quick, masked-up stroll set a 5 km limit to one’s perambulations. For me this means I can’t make it to the city or even to Centennial Park. If the Art Gallery of NSW were open I still couldn’t go there, nor to the Paddington galleries. Had I the urge to go wandering around the streets after 9 pm, this is verboten because of a curfew.
Asked about this beforehand I wouldn’t have been particularly perturbed, as I spend much of my time with a book or at the laptop. You only miss the chance to get out and about when it’s taken away. Then a strange lethargy takes hold. It’s like being in suspended animation.
Turn on the TV and there is a choice of two topics: the unfolding disaster in Afghanistan, or the unfolding COVID-19 debacle in Australia. I’m starting to wonder how much more Afghanistan I can take. Every day brings new horrors and – from the Australian perspective – new humiliations. This week we learned that by the time the United States had evacuated 59,000 people from Kabul, Australia had got out 750. We would allegedly make it to 4,000.
First there was the outrage of the Australian embassy security staff who were being refused visas because they were “contractors” rather than permanent employees. That bureacractic quibble might have been lost on Taliban fighters who came looking for these guards with machine guns. When the government responded to a public outcry and granted visas the security guards made their way to the airport but were turned back by ADF officers acting on DFAT’s instructions, who informed them that only hard copy visas would be accepted. “Great, I’ll just dash back past the Taliban roadblocks and print this out. It only took me 12 hours to get here.”
As the week progressed the Taliban were saying they didn’t want any more Afghans to travel to the airport and Scummo’s gang responded by saying we might pull out early. Bit of a shame for all our mates who will have to remain behind… We wish it were different. Trooly rooly. And then – boom! Two bombs exploded by an ISIS leftover that believe the Taliban are insufficiently extremist. Sixty people dead, and the Australian mission instantly ended.
Given the government’s miserable allowance of 3,000 extra refugee places, is there any other way to interpret their actions this week than as a deliberate attempt to prevent people from claiming asylum in Australia? These are the sort of spiteful decisions dressed up in the grey cloak of bureaucracy that will have cost people their lives. We’re continually told that Joe Biden has blood on his hands. This may be so, but the Americans have made a huge effort to ameliorate their blunders. The official Australian approach is: “Sorry mate, we’re only fellow travellers here. It’s not our fault, so we take responsibility.”
Not for the first time this government is rendering it shameful to be Australian.
My lockdown essays continue with a piece based on Henry James’s short story, The Real Thing (1893). It’s a profoundly insightful piece on the nature of art, written by one the most subtle psychologists ever to pick up a pen. Such topics are getting me into slightly more philosophical teritory and away from particular works of art, but I thought it was a worthwhile digression. One could devote an entire series to Henry James’s art fictions: The Aspern Papers, Roderick Hudson, The Tragic Muse, and so on. I’m conscious, though, that there are many readers who won’t share my Jamesian enthusiasms.
This leads me to the film column, which discusses the Hulu series, Nine Perfect Strangers, based on a book by Liane Moriarty, who seems to be more in tune with popular taste. Nicole Kidman stars as the owner of an exclusive health spa, who puts an all-star cast through a course of psycho-dramas on the way to wellness. It’s entertaining but shallow, which is a tolerable arrangement.
As it’s been confirmed the Art Gallery of NSW won’t be re-opening before the Hilma af Klint show closes, the review the Herald has been sitting on is now of purely academic interest. This week they ran a hybrid piece by Linda Morris that incorporated bits of my original article. Rather than direct you to that cut & paste affair, I’m running the review, as written, by way of an extra column this week. It’s rather a shame Sydney audiences have lost their chance to indulge in some Scandinavian cosmic abstraction. It might have been just the thing for coping with too much grim reality.