Before Lockdown – when everything was calm

During Lockdown – when my mind started to become crazy 

It was a few days after the end of the Songkran Festival.  People started to return to work in Bangkok. People began to get sick with the UK strain of COVID-19. The government announced the new lockdown restrictions after it was clear that they were unable to control the outbreak with other means. Slowly, local media began reporting on mismanagement and corruption in the government's vaccination distribution. Waiting on access to my first vaccination, I became paranoid.  I was unsure about the situation and slowly began to develop a feeling of anxiety and depression. 

Tears flowed from my eyes.  I felt a gamut of emotion during this period akin to grieving. I lamented the sharp increase in COVID-19 infection and the deaths caused. 

I had, within myself, a feeling of conflict so strong that it was like experiencing a tantrum. This was caused by bottling up my emotions. I had nowhere to turn, as I feared rejection should I confide in those close to me about my doubts and fears over the risks we were facing. The energy has changed, it is compounded, with not enough space for the conflicting colours which bounce around both works. This is a scary but powerful emotional state, one that, for some, can be their most decisive. 

I had diverse feelings, some days positive and others not. This is reflected in the shapes, sizes, cropping and compositing. The experience of highs and lows denotes a strange type of hope, as it is a result of trying to work around the problem, to understand the situation from differing perspectives. During this period I was attempting to reconcile the facts, the figures, the party line and the opinions on the street. 

After much soul-searching and reading, I was tipping into frustration. I was looking for forwarding motion and this set of images reflects that. Looking for a way through while not in the best frame of mind, how to move on towards a better situation when so much around you is unsettled. They are intense and focused. 

The Arrival of Delta Variant

More and more reports on the insufficient supply of COVID-19 vaccine, as well as more government corruption news, emerged. Finally, the COVID-19 Delta variant was identified in Thailand. I was furious, but could not put anything out on social media because I felt my family, all pro-government, would be angry if I put negative messages in a public sphere. I became more upset and depressed when I noticed that friends in Europe and America slowly resumed life and started to travel freely again.  They began to post pictures of their holidays. I couldn’t understand why people seemed not to care about our situation.  I was angry, depressed and wanted to keep my distance from everyone I knew. 

I was consumed with a depressive mood that was deep and, at times, raw. There is a velvety depth to some of these images and a lushness like that of a flickering flame. This was a point of intense emotion on the edge of shutdown. In a way, there is calm here because of the saturation of emotion. 

Vision, Open Stage

Each feeling is never in isolation and never has a neat start and end. This relates to Dr Paul Ekman’s ideas about the universal, biological lineage of our core emotions. Our emotions are deep-rooted and relational, which has been hard in the separation of lockdown and when confronted with differing perspectives around personal responsibility. Each of us, and society as a whole, is enduring and adapting. I have come through several stages and can emerge somewhat from the isolation of troubling internal thoughts, but those issues still remain. I am alert to concerns still relevant to our situation as emotional beings within a global emergency, we are not out of the pandemic yet.