I saw a blurred video of a prisoner of war being beheaded last week. I’ve seen many images of war over the last >1 year, and none have affected me quite like this one. I don’t go out actively looking for these things, but I read different news channels and you end up seeing some things. As I described to someone else earlier, I think it’s the sound that did it. I had trouble explaining what I meant exactly, so I figured writing out the explanation might set it straighter in my head.

It was something with hearing what was being said in the native tongue that no translation can fully convey. The English subtitles on the video were bad enough, but somehow in the original language (Russian) there was an additional undercurrent to the audio that can’t be properly translated even if you translate all the words correctly.

It made me realize that no matter how many translations or English subtitles one reads of these things, the reality of the sound is even worse. Maybe it’s something about the language itself? The same words in Russian can sound so much worse or so much better than the English translation, somehow just by nature of the language. In this video, it was worse. In all of these kinds of videos it’s been worse.

Since then, it’s sort of been always in the back of my mind. That video, but also the previous things I saw–pictures that come back that sort of just passed through before, that I haven’t thought about often after seeing them and feeling the initial anger. They come up with sound even if the original media had none.

I am hoping it will stop randomly popping up throughout the day or at night, but also kind of that it won’t. I guess I don’t want to forget, I just want it to not be as disruptive at seemingly random times. But maybe it should be? Maybe the least I can do, as someone lucky enough to be living in a safe country while all of this is happening just a couple of hours away, is be disrupted.

This weekend I realized that writing “helps”–more specifically brainstorming, not writing itself. I always make playlists for the books I’m working on to help get me in the mood of thinking about the story, and listen to them when walking to the train or showering or whatever. So I’ve been putting on the playlist for my current WIP and thinking through story elements and characters. I think it might just serve as a decent temporary distraction.