Asked about the difficulty of writing during the pandemic, David Lynch replied “If you have a habit pattern, the more conscious part of your mind can concentrate on your work … and the rest sort of takes care of itself in the background” (“David Lynch’s Industrious Pandemic” by Howard Fishman, The New Yorker, 02/21/2021). This observation was followed by a typical Lynchian example of a man who, hacked nearly to death during the night, gets up and proceeds with his morning routine until he finally bleeds out in the foyer after carrying in the newspaper. Minus the penchant for hemic anecdotes, my “pattern” is like Lynch’s. Being in the habit of writing every day, the pandemic is a backdrop to my daily routine. Asked if there are days when he might feel resistance to enacting his rituals, Lynch says he would write anyway out of “a sense of responsibility.” He was referring to the readers of his daily “weather report,” but I would say the responsibility is also to ourselves as writers. Having been given the gift of work I find satisfying, I feel an obligation to carry on. Writing doesn’t make the pandemic disappear, but it allows purposeful activity to coexist with it. More thoughts about writing in REFLECTIONS.
