I don’t know about you, but at some point in 2020 I lost much of my lewenslus, my joie de vivre, my ikigai — and I can’t quite seem to get it back.
It was mostly a Covid thing, I suppose: the disconnection and isolation of lockdowns, restrictions on social interaction, everything going online. So much has changed since then, but in many ways it still feels like we are living in the shadow of that period.
Never mind that the US seems to be on the edge of another Covid outbreak. Even though Joe Biden is president, Donald Trump remains a daily presence on our news feeds, creating a time warp that sends us back recursively to the days when he was touting hydroxychloroquine. As the journal Nature noted at the time, Trump “damaged science” (specifically, public faith in science) so badly that it might take decades to recover.
Disillusionment with one’s conspiracy-theory-duped fellow human beings blurs with despair about the ecological crisis we have collectively created. No wonder we want to keep each other at arms’ length, to limit direct interaction as much as possible.
Hence the appeal of the digital and the virtual. It’s convenient to have a Zoom meeting with a colleague on the other side of the world, but it’s tempting to do the same with a colleague down the corridor. Tech has enabled some human connections but profoundly disrupted others. The turn to AI has compounded this phenomenon.
Covid also combined with WhatsApp to teach us the art of always being ready to pivot, including the readiness simply to abandon things. Appointments, dates, shows: all are provisional, all can be rescheduled indefinitely until postponement becomes cancellation by mutual consent. It’s a strange thing, this provisionality. Almost every arrangement in our lives carries the stigma of precarity. We put off, we opt out, we shrink back.
There is a painful irony in all this. Impending climate catastrophe, along with news headlines about fire, warfare, disease and mortal threats of every kind, amount to a constant reminder of the precariousness of all life on Earth. You’d think it would push us into action — if not of the remedial kind, then at least of the carpe diem, “gather ye rosebuds while ye may” kind. The usual effect, however, is a low-key paralysis of indecision and deferral.
The arts sector has felt the impact of this malaise; the performing arts and live events in particular have battled to return to pre-Covid audience and participant numbers. Yet the sector has remained resilient, if not robust. A key component of this survival in SA has been arts festivals, the life rafts and buoys keeping artists afloat while government ineptitude, economic doldrums and a global pandemic have wrecked ship after ship.
Festivals offer the non-committal consumer a soft entry into arts patronage. Come for the leisure, stay for the art. And for us eager beavers who have, despite our arts appetite, fallen into the habit of saying “no” instead of “yes”, they offer a promise: you won’t regret going.
Last year I had the opportunity to attend the Plett Arts Festival, but declined. Something came up — you know how it is. But this year, dear reader, I am not going to make that mistake again. Festival director Cindy Wilson-Trollip proudly affirms that the organisers of this Plettenberg Bay event “haven’t missed a beat for 10 years, even through Covid”, and the programme has continued to expand.
In 2023, Plett Fest (which runs from September 29 to October 8) will again include what Wilson-Trollip calls the “old favourites”: Plett Food and Film, and the opening Twilight Meander through galleries, restaurants, bars and pop-up exhibition spaces on Main Street. It also incorporates the African Wave Arts Festival and the SPARK Land Art Route, numerous art workshops and exhibitions, theatre, music, dance and poetry.
Wilson-Trollip sees the festival as “a connector — of people, spaces, culture and business, working and playing for social change and cohesion.” This sounds like the poet’s creed: “Only connect.” It’s a rallying cry for an age of disconnection. So, at the end of September, look out Plettenberg Bay! Here comes an arts enthusiast with the bit between his teeth.
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