Transcript:
In Emily St John Mandel’s 2014 novel, Station Eleven, Krysten Raymonde is an eight year old child actor when on stage one night, Arthur Leander - playing King Lear - collapses and dies in a theatre in Toronto. That night, the deadly Georgia Flu spreads, sparking a full blown pandemic, leading to what becomes known as the Collapse. Society and everything we know - and hold dear - disappears.
Twenty years later, only small pockets of communities survive, one of which is a travelling Symphony group who alternate between playing music and performing Shakespeare to any ragged settlements they pass through. Why do they drag their instruments around in caravans pulled by horses? Why perform Shakespeare’s plays? Because just surviving is not enough. There needs to be more.
Krysten is part of the travelling Symphony. She somehow survived. She continues to survive. When she can, she scavenges abandoned homes for props but also for old celebratory magazines containing paparazzi pictures of Arthur, who was a big deal of an actor before his untimely death as Lear.
Come the end - and I’ll try not give too much away - Kirsten is given hope that civilization may well thrive again. She is shown something that suggests there is hope. She has survived and is vindicated in believing that these IS more to life than just surviving. It won’t be pretty, but it is enough for her to keep on travelling, to keep on performing Shakespeare, to keep on playing music, because this is what she does.
Ryan Yates joined Forest youth academy in 2005. Like Krysten Raymonde, he was eight years old too. He has been loaned out to Barrow, Shrewsbury, Notts County and Scunthorpe - and has survived to make over 200 appearances for the club. He has played under around 12 Forest managers, and survived. He has been deemed not good enough more times than he has bought free kicks, and survived. Like Krysten Raymonde, he has been battling to survive since he was eight years sold. And he continues to do so.
You would have to have a heart of Sheffield steel not to smile broadly - maybe even shed a tear of joy - at Yates lashing home at Bramall Lane to bag his first Premier League goal and at the same time, nudge Forest a little closer to survival. Leathered, lashed, hammered, thwacked, larruped… whatever verb you go with, this is what Yates did to that football - and it was beautiful.
Maybe this win tells us more about how dreadful Sheffield United are at football this season than whether or not Forest will survive. Perhaps. But it looks better than it did - not good enough to be hollering from the rooftops. Yet. But better.
Even if our karmic deficit is in the toilet, like Krysten Raymonde and her group of travelling performers, we cling on to life.
Why? Because we must.
But for now, survival IS enough.
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