I have been attempting to keep this blog as a “virus-free zone”. The trouble is that, whether we like it or not, this wretched disease is intruding into more and more of life …. either literally or metaphorically. Today it caught me in the latter sense.
The project on which I’m working at the moment is a series of drawings, accompanied by text, in which I explore aspects of English identity, drawing my inspiration from the ancient folk traditions represented by the “mummers’ plays”. I am probably approaching the end of the series, although I thought that to be so before I began the last one. You never know.
In one of the scenes in the traditional play Saint George (the patron saint of England) is slain, and the call is raised,
“Is there a doctor to be found/To cure him of his deadly wound?”
There is indeed; and the doctor comes forward to restore the hero to full health. In the initial version of my drawing the figure of the doctor was based upon the dottore della peste (the plague doctor) from the old Italian tradition of the Commedia dell’Arte. This is a figure I have used before in a very different context I was not satisfied with this fist version, however, for the principal reason that I didn’t like the pose adopted by the doctor, so I began again. To my surprise I found myself drawing a rather more modern doctor who, although wearing the traditional hat of the dottore, is now wearing a modern white coat. Perhaps, subconsciously, I have made him respond to a viral infection rather than a sword wound.
On reflection I rather like that. The current epidemic is more than a mere episode of disease, it will probably inflict a serious wound upon our culture and especially our politics, in which our identity is seriously tested.