Losing Venice

(but can we save the world?)

Photo by Dylan Freedom on Unsplash

Every day brings a new warning of disaster.

Massive suffering awaits so many of us this coming winter.

I wrote these words 37 years ago in happier times.

They come from my LOSING VENICE which opened in the Traverse in 1985.

It’s a strangely prescient play, perhaps, that as ell as foretelling the present crisis seems to foresee the coming of the world wide web.

Another way of understanding it is to see it as a metaphor for the English identity crisis: as being the portrait of a country that has lost its empire and no longer has any understanding of its place in the world.

And to judge from the grotesque fantasies of the present contest to see who will become our next prime minister this crisis never got resolved.

And we are all still tangled up in the middle of it…

I was aware then of the profound temptation to fall into despair, and how reactionary an emotional place that would be.

I am still so aware of it now. Our NOT SO UGLY DUCKLING opens tomorrow.

I hope that it, too, gives hope.

Because hope is revolutionary in dark times…

“Don’t begrudge us our little celebration.

You must allow us our little festivals.

You remember the story our teacher told.

Of the wise man who built his house upon

the rock and the foolish one who built

his on the sand?  We built ours on the mud.

We compromised.

And now we are sinking.

Year by year the tide water rises.

Already it has flooded our cellars;

Soon it will beat against our doors.

Then the waves will come and wash us

from the face of the earth.

The clouds gather.  The storm is rising.

And it will come.  Nothing can stop it.

We know.  We laugh when we can;

We live, as we must.

Fear eats away our hearts.  Will it spare us,

We wonder, will it spare or children?

Yet what can we do?  Tear down our city?

Label the stones and move them, stone by stone,

Rebuild them on the higher ground?

All our energy is taken up with living.

Besides, is there any mountain high enough

to hide us,

Is there depth enough in any cave?

I doubt it.  Crying is easy, Quevedo,

Laughter requires a little more strength.”

https://www.nickhernbooks.co.uk/losing-venice

https://scottishstorytellingcentre.online.red61.co.uk/event/913:4336/