Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Surreal

An earthquake hit my home town destroying our central business district, destroying people's homes and killing people. I'm lucky, my house seems ok and I didn't have to go too long without power or water. I'm boiling all the water and using my backyard as a toilet. Yesterday I heard them fixing the rails near my house. The road near my house is a main vein and usually you can hear the constant hum of cars. On Tuesday when it hit all you could hear was the traffic as both lanes were stuck in gridlock traffic as everyone tried to get home. These last few days you can't hear anything. It is a bit too quiet. The news tells me to stay at home, but I wish I could do more, but what can I do? You get the feeling that everyone is in a state of unknown. A lot of people are thinking of leaving. If there are no jobs from them why would you stay. The fact that the city in which I walk around everyday is now, well, gone, is strange. The fact that people are dead confuses me more. I want to reach out and help and make people feel better. Can you really do that through art? Maybe. I want to stick around and start creating things to offset all the destruction, I want to bring more joy into a city that has been my home for the last 19 years, in a region I've lived my entire life. But right now that seems futile. Will it ever really help? Peoples reactions seem to vary to it. Some people left, some people just stayed not knowing what to do, I saw people lining up at petrol stations that were closed, I saw a woman pile up a supermarket trolly with all the bread she could at 11am, while another just brought three packs of cigarets, I saw a woman close to tears just walking around at night. What is Christchurch going to be now? I go to Auckland tomorrow to do a fringe show, and then to Dunedin soon after that coming back to Christchurch in between. Feel guilty for leaving. After that I want to help Christchurch rebuild and recover. But how? What is it that I can do? I guess I will find out soon. I hope I can do something. Anything.