Polarised solar corona during 2019 La Silla Total Solar Eclipse (Photo: ESA/CESAR/CC BY-SA 4.0)

In amongst all the anxiety and confusion, the relentless news cycle, the morbid hilarity, the gruelling, horrific inevitability of it all, I think I share with many a powerful feeling that what is happening in the world right now presents an unprecedented and wonderful opportunity.

As our doctors, nurses and caregivers work heroically at the front lines, and the venues and galleries are closed down and events cancelled, the artists and musicians and writers and poets must step up in their own way.

The world that we have known is falling apart, but we have a chance in this fleeting moment, as we teeter over this abyss, to take all the incredible human qualities that we’ve developed over the last decades, centuries and millennia – the skills, the wisdom, the knowledge, the humour, the technological prowess – and turn it all into something truly beautiful.

There has never before been a time when so many creative, brilliant souls have had the time, technology and purpose to be able to collaborate on this scale.

Shall we write a book together? Or an epic poem? Or produce a film? Or some sort of multi-disciplinary, multi-denominational, multi-dimensional magnum opus that could only ever be written at this time, in this place, as we watch our great human edifice of stories and systems and customs and beliefs faltering all about us?

We can, we must, and we will.

In astronomical terms, a “corona” is the circle of light that surrounds the dark centre of a solar eclipse, the visible evidence of our dear Sun, warm and bright even when all else seems shrouded in darkness.

Let’s respond to the darkness with our most dazzling light, enough to show us the way for many generations to come.

Who’s in?