Bob Moran and the power of sharing laughter
It's hard to get motivated to be social nowadays, but it's worth the effort.
If we were still in the UK, we’d definitely have attended last weekend’s
Live event in Bristol. I watched lots of the (>9 hour!) livestream and found it thoroughly grounded, amazingly positive and full of inspiringly creative ideas. ’s speech at the beginning is particularly powerful. Authenticity is the key to getting through this horror story, as many others have pointed out. It was also wonderful to witness the banter to and fro and hear all the laughter in the background during breaks: everyone was clearly having an enjoyable time together. As writes today about his (unplanned) MC’ing of this event, when ‘we’ [Team Sanity] meet together in person, something very special happens to our energy levels. Our spirits are lifted for a while; the weight of our enormous challenge, made lighter…
Across the oceans, we have our own regular ‘freedom movement’ events, local and national. Most notably perhaps, recently our annual NZ Doctors Speaking out with Science conference, another amazing energy-filled gathering, which I reviewed here:
NZDSOS Annual Conference: Auckland 2024
On Saturday, September 28th we travelled to Auckland’s Due Drop Centre for the second New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out with Science (NZDSOS) Conference.
Another event we would definitely have attended if we’d been in the UK would be Art Apocalypse by that wonderful cartoonist (and musician, we learned!) Bob Moran. We finally got around to watching the recorded event (1.2hrs) this weekend, which you can access via the above link on his website for free. Laugh and cry - it definitely gives some insight into his personal journey through the covid era and his motivations for speaking out. Genuine anecdotes that we can all connect with.
Satire is a really effective way of cutting through the programming and reaching people. We’ve all learned by now: Facts Don’t Work! A shout out here to UK-based David Charalambous’ team again and the excellent resources on reachingpeople.net that help friends and families reconnect (see my post above about the NZDSOS Conference for other links about this topic).
Bob Moran has recently published a book of all his sketches and cartoons from the covid period (and some earlier ones too). It’s a high quality, solid, thick encylopaedia of a volume and excellent value:
Buying Bob’s book for a gift is another excellent way to reach people - seeing cartoons ‘in the flesh’ as it were (like reading the printed word, or using handwriting) brings new cognitive connections within our brains. A shout out to
, who knows much more about this phenomena than me. But be we know instinctively, how, in hard copy, we literally understand things more deeply, remember things more easily, compared to that superficial, virtual world. And as Bob pointed out at his presentation at the Live event I mentioned above, there are so many cartoons in this book, covering so many topics, there will surely be one that a ‘normie’ will find funny.I bought one book for a present, and one signed copy as a ‘keepsake’. Because something tells me that books like these will be precious in the uncertain times ahead. Who knows. But I want to remember this craziness and how Bob helped us laugh out loud at it all…
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Thanks Ursula, Ahmad's speech is a great summary and ultimately positive: https://substack.com/home/post/p-150505645
Thanks for the prompt about Bob Moran's book, I too want to "remember this craziness and how Bob helped us laugh out loud at it all…" Just ordered some copies.
Thank you Ursula, beautiful article. Bob never disappoints. His takes are absolutely on point and the level of seething about his art is just glorious.