The newsreader is crying.
Nothing on his autocue says anything about crying, but here he is, weeping, his body jerking with the sobs he can't control.
No one knows what to do.
The director is in two minds. Should she cut to an advertisement? Or let this extraordinary scene run, knowing it will be on YouTube within the hour, making her news service the most famous on Earth for a few hours. She can't decide.
The cameras roll on. Like everyone else, she is stunned by the depth of the pain the news reader is releasing. She knows there is more to this moment than a highlight for a bloopers show.
At home, the people in their lounge rooms know what is happening. They've all felt the same way, at least once. The news, so much news. The weight of all that information feels too heavy some days. It's not just the content of the news, the disasters, the violence, the horror, it's the constant avalanche of news.
Storm after storm.
Landslide after landslide of news. More and more news.
It's not that it's the common man like themselves who is always wearing the bullets and the bombs and the famine and the torture, it's that someone is shouting it in their ear, poking them in the chest and making them listen, like some mass media drunkard.
The newsreader has simply had enough.
His stiff upper lip wobbled.
His authoritative stare lost its nerve, glanced sideways, accidentally saw what his fellow human does to their fellows.
He just couldn't read another word. So here he is, head on the newsreader's desk, wailing, keening for humanity, a tear for every news story he has read, every night, for years.
Everyone feels the load lifted.
The newsreader is speaking for us all. Giving us redemption, offering his tears for all the world. We can all go on, now.
The newsreader has sacrificed himself, his all important career, shown us the way.
The news will go on, and on, we know we can’t change that, but now we know that how we feel is normal.
The newsreader is crying so we don’t have to.
Parkstreet
2 comments:
You have written so well. I can imagine I was there experiencing what you have described too.
Thank you!
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