All Things Connect

All Things Connect is a graphic memoir.

It is a true story of seeking meaning and agency in the face of devastating challenges, both global and personal, told very simply.

The narrative has two sections. First, The Rite of Spring, and second, The Dance of Death, which recount Andrew and Ise's responses to those challenges.

Ise and Andrew met 20 years ago, whilst living in Glasgow, where they bonded over environmental concerns and their love of Nature.

After building a carbon-neutral house in the Sottish Highlands, they enthusiastically joined Extinction Rebellion when it emerged in 2018. However, after two exhausting years, the rebellion had led to information overload and a lot more talk by politicians, but precious little effective action.

They finally began to see that they needed to accept the reality of a very precarious future, and to focus on taking responsibility for their own actions, however small scale, instead of letting their energies be consumed by anger, despair, and idealistic tilting at windmills.

COVID arrived, as their parents were reaching the end of their lives, and they had further cause to reflect on their mortality and the nature of death.

Then, as the pandemic was receding, Ise showed the first symptoms of what eventually proved to be Motor Neurone Disease (MND).

As her condition progressed along its brutal path, they did their best to accept our very fleeting place in the cosmos, and to embrace the joys and beauty of the life around them and of their time together. They also recognised that loss and death are an unavoidable part of that same life and that, once again, all we can control is how we respond.