‘I’m fine, thank you and how are you?’: an innocuous, ubiquitous sentence in which so much of the tragedy and loneliness of our lives comes to rest. Because we’re not – of course – ever remotely fine, and nor is our questioner. We’re longing to speak about so much: the sorrows and confusions that torment us, the wrong turnings we have taken, the longings that haunt us, the love that eludes us, the mistakes we need to be forgiven for. It is typically also the greatest honour and relief to learn of the many ways in which they, too, are in pieces. It gives us a role; it makes us feel less ashamed. It liberates us from the punishing isolation of politeness.
One of the ways to think about what ‘art’ is – a medium that includes poems and novels, of course, but also YouTube films and blog posts – is as a forum in which creators and their audiences can finally commune over a range of secret, bitter truths: the private agonies for which daily life has no room. Here at last, there need be no more pretences; here at last, we can scream as much as we need to.
