05 May 2026 24 min read Books

Why Bother?

Andy Warhol Postcard

Earlier this year I joined Postcrossing, an online platform encouraging people to send postcards around the world. The idea behind it is that you send a postcard to someone that the website suggests and then you receive a postcard from someone else.

My first postcard arrived last week, and it made my day! The sender, Melissa, had obviously taken time to find out more about me, and sent me such a lovely message. And I love the card she chose, and the stickers on the back.

This is another fantastic example of human connection in a digital world, which, as you may have read in last week's blog post, is something I am pursuing.

Postcard of Andy Warhol rowing a boat in France in 1981

The back of the Andy Warhol postcard, with a handwritten message and colourful stickers

Why Bother?

Why We Keep Creating (Even When Everything Is Terrible)

2026 hasn’t been a great year. As many of you will know, Jo and I lost a dear friend to cancer recently, (and this was on the back of losing another friend towards the end of 2025). Then my mum died just a few weeks ago, aged ninety-one.

Alongside all that there’s the constant background noise of the wars in Iran and Ukraine, the looming climate crisis, the existential threat of AI.

Some times I wonder why I should keep writing, keep creating.

Like, Why bother? What’s the point?

On those days I find it helpful to pop my head above the trenches of my life and take a look around, see how others are coping with that question.

Here’s what I found:

In Kyiv, the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine is still playing. The orchestra is based at Kyiv’s Lysenko Column Concert Hall, where, during Russian bombardments, they perform by the light of battery lamps. Concert audiences are restricted to just 150 people so, when performances are interrupted by air raid sirens, the audience, orchestra members and building staff can move underground to the Hall’s 200-person air raid shelter.

“There are different forms of defiance and resistance,” adds orchestra manager Larysa Parkhomyuk. “For us, for Philharmonic people, it is a way to go on with life … This is our cultural front. We are fighting here.”

In Sudan, where a civil war has been raging since 2023, around 120 artists have gathered at the El-Rabat centre after fleeing fighting between the army and the Rapid Support Forces. Inside crowded classrooms, a singer rehearses beside a keyboardist, while outside in the courtyard, painters, actors and writers work under the sun.

What began as a place of refuge evolved into a shared cultural space. With few resources, artists pooled money to buy instruments and materials, forming collaborations across disciplines. Musician Assem Abdel Aziz said simply: “Here there are dreams… full of energy and experiences.”

As Viktor Ullmann said, and this is the man who composed twenty musical works while imprisoned at the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942, “We did not sit moaning at the Rivers of Babylon and our will to be creative was as strong as our will to live.”

Last Wednesday I attended my mother’s funeral.

I don’t think anybody enjoys a funeral, but the day was pretty much perfect. Everything went as planned, family and friends turned up to say goodbye, and the sun was shining.

In fact, Rossendale had never looked more beautiful.

A photo of Ken and his two boys in Rossendale. — Across this field was my route to primary school.

In the days that followed the funeral I’ve written, I’ve cleaned the sheep skull I found on the Isle of Harris, restored an old typewriter, and started planning a photography session with an old Brownie camera and a roll of Cinestill 800 film.

None of it has been essential, in the sense that it is urgent, important work.

And yet, in its own way, it is important.

Creativity is life. It sits at the heart of who we are, at the centre of our existence. Like the musicians of the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine in Kyiv, and those seeking refuge from war in Sudan, I will keep creating. I will use them as an example of how to live a life during trying times.