I wasn’t sure whether I should take the children downtown to witness something of the inauguration today. None of us support Trump, or anything he stands for, but we have, slightly surprisingly, found ourselves living in Washington DC, after moving here from rural Oxfordshire 18 months ago. Right now, the place we call home is where the eyes of the world have turned, and that feels surreal, while also, oddly, completely normal. After all, my version of normal life has gone on all weekend, making lasagne for the kids, forcing Dash to start a project due tomorrow that he’s had all winter to work on, sorting socks, walking Pablo and shovelling snow from the sidewalk by our house again, emptying the dishwasher for the nineteenth time, at the same time that the world’s most powerful people, mostly men, because, Trump, y’know, are descending, about a mile up the road.
So I had wondered if I should take the kids downtown, to witness history happening. I decided against it, for lots of reasons like possible violence, possible moral corruption, the certainty of their whining and the very real sub zero temperatures. But I was also curious about what was going on, and instead Jimmy and I spent two hours walking through the streets around the Capital Arena, blocks from the White House, because we wanted to see what it felt like, sense the feeling of the mood, and possibly witness a defining moment in history. Or maybe not, who knows? As we walked back to the car, we chatted about the fact that we might look back and say, it wasn’t so bad, and then he was voted out 4 years later. Then again, we might look back and say, something changed that day. I know that I look back on 9/11 and see it as a moment during which something profound shifted. None of us know if this will happen again.
This video isn’t a hot take, and nor is it political analysis of what’s happening now, but instead is my interpretation of what I feel, living in DC right now. This evening, the images of what I saw downtown today are running through my head. The weird t-shirts, the misogynistic messages, the latent aggression. And then Musk’s salute. I feel slightly sick. It feels very dark.
For the past few weeks, I’ve felt something shifting in the atmosphere in DC, a Democrat heavy city, where the population voted approximately 92% in favour of Harris. A despondency. Anger too. Immediately after the election, I spoke to a lot of people about what the result meant to them. I went to Texas, too, to see some of my oldest and dearest friends, some of whom were delighted by the result, and speaking to people of all political persuasions has been something I’ve really tried to do in the past couple of months. Rather than a long piece of writing, I hope you enjoy this video, with my thoughts and observations on DC today, and how it’s felt over the past few weeks, which I recorded as soon as Jimmy and I got home.
I am a visitor to this city, and to this country too. I talk a bit in this video about what it means to feel increasingly settled here, as I do now, 18 months since moving here. And below there are more snaps of what Jimmy and I witnessed in the city this afternoon. And as ever, I’m interested to hear from YOU. How are you feeling about life right not? What has been your interpretation of the events of the last few weeks, and today? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.
