This week, an unexpected episode of a podcast that means a lot to me popped up in Overcast.
The Stubborn Light of Things
The Stubborn Light of Things made a weird summer more bearable. It reminded me that there was a world beyond covid 19 and lockdowns. That nature continued even when everything else had ground to a halt. It was a weekly appointment to reflect on what the world around me was doing; which flowers had bloomed, which birds had arrived, and which had disappeared.
To some extent, nothing changed for me during those couple of years. The company I work for operates in a field where they could deem our work “essential”, so it was business as usual. Day in, day out, cycling to work to carry on regardless, and while I didn’t lose any pay, I lost something of myself.
It feels strange to write this down, to try to make some sense of where my head was at at that time, to try to build some context around why I cried at the end of the last episode of The Stubborn Light of Things. Because outwardly, I was fine. My grandmother hadn’t died yet (that was to come in February of the following year), and while my brother, his wife, and their two kids had all got covid early on, they had all fully recovered with no apparent lasting effects. I was still going to work, and it’s not like my wife and I had much of an outdoor life even then, so evenings were spent as usual, watching TV, playing video games.
But I was bitter, and I don’t think I’ve really recovered from that.
I was bitter at the government for their half-hearted response and shameful choices, and I was bitter at my company for dragging their heels on offering furlough payments to colleagues who had to self-isolate. But mostly I was bitter that other people got to spend that long, hot summer of 2020 in their gardens, or in their nearest park, enjoying the sunshine and working on what they wanted to do. Podcasts were launched, music was made, books were written, while I had to keep dragging myself to work to weld up shit that didn’t matter. It didn’t matter to me then that these podcasts wouldn’t make a dent in the world, that the music would go unheard, that it takes more than a good idea to become a success, and that you have to keep on working at it, even after the initial flurry has worn off. As someone with a deep, unfulfilled yearning to make radio for a living, it was killing me that I was being robbed of time that I could have spent trying to make that happen.
And Stubborn Light was an oasis from that.
Melissa would chat calmly into her microphone, telling me what she could see from her vantage point on a river bank, or wandering around the outside of a meadow, thick with flowers and insects, while Peter Rogers blissful music played. Guest authors would read pieces that were apropos to that time of year, and I’d hear excerpts from the diaries of Gilbert White, an 18th century naturalist. During that weekly half hour, none of the other stuff existed. It was just me, riding my bike to work along deserted streets, and blissful calm.
But the series, as with summer, had to come to an end. There are no doubt things to highlight during the dark, cold winter months, but not enough to hang a weekly podcast from. And there would be little point in trying to recreate the magic the following year, because what the Stubborn Light needed to be had been. The world had moved on a few notches, it had opened back up to some degree.
And I cried while riding my bike. Wept for the ending of a weekly ritual that had helped to keep me anchored for the past few months, but mostly for the ending of the summer, and the darkening of the days as the light in the northern hemisphere shrank back, giving way to long, cold months of dead-looking trees, and empty flower beds. Those quiet, mournful months of winter where no bees buzzed, and no bats flapped.
Summer would come again, but it felt at that moment like it never would.
As I said, I don’t think I’ve ever really sat with my thoughts from that time. I’ve not done the work of coming to terms with just how much those couple of years destabilised me, and left me where I currently am; feeling ineffectual and bitter. Because why would I? I kept my health, I kept my job, where millions of others lost both. I was lucky. What did I have to complain about?
Go and listen to The Stubborn Light of Things. Perhaps listen to it weekly from now until summer returns, to remind yourself that it will return, that the days will once again be long, and warm, and vibrant even when it feels like the cold is all we’ve ever known.
