I want to echo and expand on the urgent need expressed by writers and historians around the world for people to observe, write, record, document, and preserve the drama that we are all experiencing. This may be difficult while we feel submerged and isolated in lives centered on mundane things like, and you can’t make this up, toilet paper. But at least those of us who are not working around the clock saving lives owe it to the future to, at minimum, take some notes.
I started writing about the need to document this moment in history shortly after I began a self-imposed isolation, and suddenly I started seeing articles in the NY Times about it. Maybe there were others before and this was observational bias, but Paul Theroux’s recollection of his experience in Uganda during a violent regime change was the first I noticed. Theroux drew from this a lesson for today, writing that we must bear witness to this
“peculiarity that we are now experiencing, the nearest thing to a world war…. In times of crisis we should all be diarists and documentarians…[W]riting gives order to the day and helps inform history.”
(New York Times, March 30, 2020).
The next day, Lisa Abend filed a report focusing primarily on European efforts, and particularly highlighting those of the National Museum of Finland, to track “the events and implications of the crisis, even as it happens. Most of them [museum researchers] do not know exactly how or when their findings will be used, but they are confident that future generations of museum workers — and visitors — will want the information.
“It’s not just the Finns who are doing it. Museums in Denmark, Slovenia and Switzerland, among others, are busy documenting the crisis in various ways, from asking citizens to keep diaries of their daily lives under lockdown to acquiring objects that represent the moment.”
The Times started soliciting accounts from readers, and more on that soon.
Then on April 3, The New Yorker carried a piece by George Saunders, “A Letter to my Students as We Face the Pandemic.” “Are you keeping records of the e-mails and texts you’re getting, the thoughts you’re having, the way your hearts and minds are reacting to this strange new way of living? It’s all important.” Saunders continues, “what you’re able to write about it will depend on how much sharp attention you are paying now, and what records you keep.”
Another author, Ruth Franklin, provided the lede for an April 13 Times article, “Why You Should Start a Coronavirus Diary” in a March 16 tweet:
“Take a moment and make some notes about what’s happening. Call it your Coronavirus diary, your plague journal, whatever. It’s important. Later, you will want a record.”
On April 16, 2020 the Times kept driving the story, publishing an overview of professional and amateur documenting in the US, “What Historians Will See When They Look Back on the Covid-19 Pandemic of 2020” which reports that there are archives springing up around the world, that StoryCorps has gone online to collect Covid-19 stories, and there are over 1400 personal entries, including video, from 500 contributors around the world that have been filed with a consortium of some 20 universities virtually headquartered at Arizona State University. I am so glad to know this is happening.
But we can do more, and we should all try to respond to this call. We need to know what is going on. We need eyes on this amazing unfolding drama so that later, we can recall it and pass on the lore that is making itself up all around us. I trust there will be plenty of business for people like me to help give structure to memories, and I do look forward to that, but right now it is time to just gather it all in, as much as you can, and keep it from going down some Orwellian memory hole.
We need to pay attention. Important knowledge is being lost. This thing is just too big. It’s too fast. It’s all at once, everywhere, and there’s no way to keep up. We need lots of people to contribute.
What’s more, this could help us stay sane. We need to share our stories to remain focused on the fact that this is happening to all of us, and that collective consciousness is what may be most critical to our individual and common survival. Right now we need stories of the pain and the relief. We need stories to help us grieve, because guess what, you may not see it from your window, you may not get it from TV news very clearly, but people are dying all around us. And when the dying is over, when that blessed day comes, we will need stories of healing, of hope, and of memory.
Tom Newman, co-founder of Provenance Profiles LLC