THE pop culture LANDSCAPE, 2020

LINDOKUHLE NKOSI, ARTS24

Firstly, how has your year been?

This year has been tricky at best. I think I, like many other people, channelled the majority of my energy into surviving ... into getting to the other side alive and unscathed. I’m not really thinking like that any more. I’ve lost friends. I’ve lost family. I’ve been in various stages of passive mourning and ambiguous loss.

I’m becoming more and more aware that there is no other side, no return to normal, no life like it was before. Everything we emerge into – those of us who will be lucky enough to – will be altered. So this year has been a difficult initiation, with many hard lessons. An initiation into what? I don’t know yet. All I know is that there is no other side, and there’s some