Just a little addendum to that otherwise perfect post I reblogged about liveblogging the apocalypse.
We know as much as we do about the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius that buried Pompeii and Herculaneum because Pliny the Younger wrote about it in letters to his friends – the “liveblogging” of his day. We know as much as we do about the Great Fire of London in 1666 because Samuel Pepys wrote down what he did and observed as it was happening. Chidiock Tichbourne sat down and wrote a poem about how facing death felt the night before his execution, and it’s still taught in English literature courses – as much for the context as the content. And I know I don’t have to explain the historical and cultural significance of diaries like that of Anne Frank.
What were some of the most widely shared and moving quotes in the wake of the deaths of Leonard Nimoy and Terry Pratchett this past month? Their final tweets: Pratchett’s lines about walking with Death and Nimoy’s reflection about life as a garden.
It is such a very human impulse, in the face of disaster, in the face of death, to try and express what we’re experiencing and feeling, and to reach out with those words. Scratched on a cell wall. Graffitted in a bomb shelter. Sealed into a final letter. Recorded in a diary. It’s just one of the things humanity does, has done since we developed written language.
And I side-eye anyone who derides it because the technology isn’t what they’re used to.