Mirfat Abraham - When Sorrow Comes

The GAP and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford Upon Avon have joined forces to work on a project called ‘A Sea of Troubles’. The aim of this project is to use Shakespeare’s work/s to ‘capture the moment’ of 2020 in four digital artworks. The keywords of this project being ‘provocation’, ‘risk-taking’ and ‘bold’.

When I think about 2020, Shakespeare’s words ‘when sorrows come they come not single spies, but in battalions’ (Hamlet, Act 4 Scene 5) come to mind. So much happened in 2020, and it all happened so quickly. Because 2020 has been such a disjointed and surreal year, I have to look at pictures and diary entries just to remind myself of everything that happened. And my memories don’t even fully encapsulate the essence of 2020, as so much happened outside of my own lived experiences, so I often find myself googling ‘events that happened in 2020’. If I didn’t have pictures, diary entries and Google to refer to, it would be very easy to convince me that 2020 didn’t happen. My mind has to work so much harder to remember it. I wonder if in a few years’ time we will completely erase 2020 from our minds, I mean, most people have denounced it already.

Everything I am about to say has a strong undercurrent of privilege. I was fortunate enough not to lose my means of income as I was given the opportunity to work from home, and while my family and I did suffer from Covid-19 at one point, none of us lost our lives to it.

It would be a gross understatement to say that I was very stressed before lockdown. I had a lot of things on my mind, and I couldn’t imagine a future where I wouldn’t be stressed. It was that bad. Then lockdown happened, and suddenly I had all this time to do all the things that I wanted, and needed, to do. I even had time to do things I never thought I’d be able to do, like getting involved with this project.

‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves...’

Julius Caesar, Act 1 Scene 2

Ironically, I felt more in control of my life in 2020 than I ever did before. I felt like the scope of my imagination and dreams widened considerably, and I was actively able to look for and find opportunities to nourish my creative spirit. I think that this was down to the fact that I was working from home and events had moved online, so I was able to better balance my work and any extracurricular activities I wanted to get involved with.

Lockdown also forced me to do a lot of self-reflection. Heavy emphasis on the word forced. I was confronted with all of the thoughts and emotions I had been suppressing before lockdown. It was an overwhelming and uncomfortable experience to begin with, and I am still currently unpacking it all (I doubt I’ll ever be able to stop), but I am grateful that I was forced to experience all of that. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be who I am today.

‘Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be’

Hamlet, Act 4 Scene 5

I am not the same person I was when lockdown started. Lockdown gave me the opportunity to rediscover and redefine myself, and while this was quite distressing at first, I eventually found myself firmly grabbing this opportunity with both hands.