The Unforeseeable Future | 2020 | found objects on panel
I finished this painting today, hoping that when this crisis is over, someone will appreciate artwork made from these scraps and bits and pieces that I put together. I started making it a few months ago, before the whole world changed. Its support is a framed cradled wood panel from Artists and Craftsman Supply on Wabash, which is now closed. Its background is made with very old white acrylic paint that smells like peanut butter for some reason. It took me months to finish because I've been away from my studio for so long. It was a struggle from beginning to end, but now it's done.
This month marks my tenth anniversary of having an art studio of my own. And this mood board is a compilation of all the things I wanted to put into my studio if money were no object. I am thankful I was able to acquire many of these pieces (or good knockoffs of them). The aesthetic I was going for is primary colors to entertain my inner child in sturdy industrial materials like powder-coated steel. And many pieces are on wheels so that they can be moved around the studio space when necessary. Utilitarian but still playful and chic.
So I decided to get into the mask-making business after all, but without having to sew anything. I am now selling them in 3 of my online print-on-demand stores. They are available in different sizes and you can customize them.
This week's color scheme is inspired by swimming pools and lush vegetation. The cool colors are visually refreshing. The rug, pillows, drinkware and dishes are all in harmonious shades of blue and green.
Since this blog is ostensibly about my artwork, I will start this post with a picture of a curious object I embellished: a Chicago Police Department riot helmet from 1968.
I asked my dad if I could have it for the 2012 NATO march. His suggestion was to decorate it with flowers so that I wouldn't get accused of impersonating an officer. At the time, the vinyl letter slogan I put on the back was "OCCUPY" and I put a "99%" on the front. As you can see, it now says "Black Lives Matter."
I keep thinking of my own privilege as a the daughter of a retired police officer. When I mention my father, police officers usually treat me differently.
"Where did you get that helmet?" A perplexed riot cop asked me at the NATO march.
"From my father." I replied.
He left me alone.
I will always refrain from saying "not all cops" in response to uprisings against police brutality. My father is a compassionate and caring man who chose a career in law enforcement because he wanted to help people. But I know this issue is bigger than him, that he is not representative of the whole entire Chicago Police Department, and that there are not enough officers like him on the force right now, unfortunately. It's a system of policing that is constantly producing "bad apples" that are rotten to the core and not doing anything about it because it doesn't have to. And I will never say "Blue Lives Matter" because I don't believe there are such things as "blue lives." Becoming a police officer is a choice. It's a job. They can quit. Co-opting the phrase "Black Lives Matter" to center law enforcement instead is extremely insulting. And every time I see that Blue Lives Matter flag, I want to burn it.
The Chicago Police Department put food on my table and clothes on my back. The Chicago Police Department put me through college. The Chicago Police department put 16 shots into Laquan McDonald and countless detainees into Homan Square to be tortured. These facts are hard to reconcile.
What can I possibly say about the murder of George Floyd that hasn't already been more eloquently stated by Ida B. Wells, Langston Hughes, Nikki Giovanni, James Baldwin, bell hooks, Dr. King, Malcolm X, Assata Shakur, Amiri Baraka, Public Enemy, Paul Laurence Dunbar, KRS-One, Angela Davis, Toni Cade Bambara, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robert Hayden, Melissa Harris-Perry, W.E.B. DuBois, Eve Ewing, Clint Smith, Kwame Toure, Audre Lorde, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Mikki Kendall, Cornel West, Audre Lorde, Saeed Jones, Gil Scott-Heron, Ann Petry, Huey P. Newton or Fred Hampton? It's been hard to condense my thoughts on what's happening now into a Facebook post or a Twitter thread or an Instagram story, which is why I have been sharing other people's articles and posts on social media as I try to process what's been happening. That's why it took me about a month to write this post.
The same week that the COVID-19 death toll in America surpassed
100,000 people, you would think that would mean that people were too sick or
busy grieving or collecting masks to act a fool... if you don't know
history. Too sick? Too busy? Too bereaved? Of course not. There is
always time for police brutality in America. Ironically, tragically, in the case of
George Floyd, he survived the virus only to be murdered by police.
I didn't go to the protests because I didn't want to get sick. I had a bad feeling about the use of force and mass arrests after the first big night of protests in Minneapolis and was afraid of getting sent to COVID Jail. I have been in a lot of protests and can say from experience that
nothing outrages the police doing crowd control more than Black Lives
Matter demonstrations. (Though the NATO march came pretty close.) Maybe they feel guilty and defensive. Add a mayor who is always trying to show everybody how tough she is on crime and that's a recipe for mass arrests. And what I was reading about the new best practices for protesting in a time of such far-reaching police surveillance—the necessity of getting a burner phone and wearing a disguise—made the prospect seem even more daunting.
Instead of marching, I continued my quarantine at home and did my best to elevate the voices of the activists I follow on social media. I wanted to bear witness to what's happening on the ground. I learned from watching livestreams from Ferguson after the murder of Michael Brown that you can't rely on the version of events that you get from the news. There were so many factors in the amalgamation of violence that arose. It's not a single story. It's not a simple story. There is justified anger at the system. But there were also white kids having temper tantrums in public, seeing the protests as an opportunity to break as many windows as they can with their skateboards. And there were also white supremacists who wanted to start a race war. And the usual agent provocateur undercover police. And even worse, riot police escalating the tensions.
Compare and contrast how they responded to the heavily armed anti-quarantine protestors.
The frustrating thing about the NATO march was that all people remember
is the violence, not the impassioned speeches of the brave Iraq
and Afghanistan veterans who renounced those wars, their medals, and
the military. The frustrating thing about the George Floyd protests for me, at
first, was that the story of the looting was getting more attention than
the purpose of the protests. And over and over again, I kept seeing 2 perspectives from Black pundits about looters: that they were expressing a justified rage and that the stores could always be rebuilt and restocked, and that the looters were destroying their own communities, detracting from the cause, and making Black people look bad. There is no denying that the social contract is broken, as author Kimberly Jones so passionately told the world:
But at the same time, the reality is that many inner city neighborhoods struggled for decades to rebuild after the 1968 riots and the ones that weren't food deserts already are at risk of becoming food deserts once again. Some would dismiss the outrage expressed by statements like "why are we tearing up our own communities?" as respectability politics, but the sad reality is that this is literally what's happening. I will let my cousin and my friend tell you about it in their own words:
We should never forget how hard it was for so many neighborhoods to get good grocery stores, or encourage franchises of businesses (besides the usual suspects) to set up shop there and should empathize with the pain of communities who are witnessing signs of long-overdue progress succumb to destruction.
I had a lot of conflicting thoughts about this video of little Wynta-Amor:
She shouldn't have to protest, but it's so moving to see her participating. She reminds me of Ruby Bridges.
Norman Rockwell, "The Problem We all Live With"
While I admire her bravery, I also can't help but think about the "adultification" of Black children, and how little Black girls are seen as less innocent and historically have not been allowed to truly have a childhood. I think about the imagery of resistance movements, how Black artists use dark-skinned girls versus light-skinned girls and who is at the front lines in their pictures and who is not. I think about the Strong Black Woman archetype and how we are trained for this role from such young ages. I think about the stoicism that is expected of us. If the Strong Black Woman becomes the Angry Black Woman, then she's a threat. And America sees Black women's anger as unprofessional, déclassé, and stereotypical. But if Black children like Wynta-Amor are shielded from the reality of racism, they will only be blindsided by it later on because they will trust the wrong people. So my feelings about that are very complicated.
I think of Darnella Frazier, the 17-year-old girl who filmed the footage of George Floyd's murder, which documentarian Michael Moore calls the most important documentary of the year. The trauma she has endured and the death threats she has gotten are horrific. I hope she'll be okay.
And then there's the fact that as Black women organize behind the scenes and come out in droves to support marches demanding justice for slain Black men, when Black women are killed by the police, they don't get the same amount of support. While the whole world found out about George Floyd immediately, it took months for Breonna Taylor's death to get the attention it deserves. (And as I compose this post, her killers still haven't been arrested.)
And how many have ended up like Toyin Salau, who spoke passionately in support of justice George Floyd, only to be murdered shortly after the rally. In stark contrast to the cheers of the crowd around her, she had been left vulnerable and without support when the protest ended, with nowhere to sleep other than the home of the man who confessed to killing her.
And Louisville police killed David McAtee while he was protesting police violence!
Considering the onslaught of all these infuriating cases of police violence, in retrospect, I think that the protestors and even the looters exercised restraint. There was property damage, but not murder. To repeat what Kimberly Jones said, what's being sought is equality, not revenge.
Again and again, the police are showing everyone what they're capable of. They spent the early days of the protests making grand gestures of apparent solidarity, only to attack protestors later. At first I almost wanted to be moved by the videos, but part of me felt skeptical and now I feel nothing but contempt. Police taking a knee like Colin Kaepernick is a ridiculously belated gesture, and frankly creeps me out
considering it's the same position the officer assumed while
crushing the life out of George Floyd. It's an abuser tactic, and it adds insult to injury.
Citizens took to the streets to express their outrage and were met with police officers ready to hit them with sticks. They treated every protestor like an enemy combatant. They kettled protestors and arrested them en masse at curfew. They destroyed first aid stations and stashes of water and snacks. They attacked protest medics. They attacked journalists. They slashed tires of cars parked near protests. They used their horses to trample protestors. They drove into crowds with their police SUVs. And it seemed like they arrested everyone but looters. Maybe because they were taking a nap in Congressman Rush's office?
We are paying them through our tax dollars to attack us. This is why so many people curse the police. This is why some activists want them defunded. This is why some activists want them abolished.
Police violence has so many negative effects on everything, including city budgets. All the money that goes to settle court cases for murderous police could have gone to constructive services that would decrease the need for policing in the first place. It's the same problem we have at a federal level with all our military spending, but at a local level. Not to mention the military equipment they have.
How come every cop is outfitted like an Avenger but health care professionals are out there fighting COVID wearing barrels on suspenders
But what can you expect from a society that exalts its police and
soldiers above the rest of its citizens? What can you expect from a
country so infatuated with violence?
And this isn't a partisan issue. Democrats can be authoritarians, too. Chicago has been Lori Lightfoot's police state. She responds to every problem with policing. She told us when she was running for mayor that she would do this, so it shouldn't be surprising. That's why I didn't vote for her. (We had a better candidate for first Black woman mayor of Chicago, by the way. Her name is Amara Enyia.)
Chris Rock on "bad apples" in the police force
Maybe part of the problem is that we have all consumed too much "copaganda." Study fiction writing and you will learn that it's an exercise in emotional manipulation. Cop shows send viewers on a hero's journey with law enforcement. The storytelling compels you to identify with the protagonists, the police. The plot makes things like habeas corpus an obstacle to the heroes. The only way the story can advance is if they break all the rules. We are supposed to cheer them on as they search people's homes without a warrant. Any brutality is justified by the suspect's villainy. They are highly competent. Lieutenant Columbo always catches the killer and Law and Order SVU gives viewers a false sense of security about how many rape kits are actually tested. Even though my favorite police drama, Naked City, delves into the psyches of
characters who are often pushed to extremes that lead them to be in
conflict with the law, and is an interesting artifact of its time in
that regard, you will never see what the NYPD was
really like in the 1960s. Dragnet, the predecessor and trope codifier of all our modern copaganda, was actually a collaboration between the LAPD and Hollywood.
Police comedies get us to laugh at lovably incompetent Keystone Kops and Police Academy cadets, or my favorite, the amusing and affable officers of Brooklyn Nine Nine. I feel so much cognitive dissonance when I think of them now. Would Holt order riot police to tear gas peaceful protestors? Would Santiago shoot an unarmed man? Would Peralta kneel on a suspect's neck until he died? Would Boyle knock over an elderly man and leave him bleeding on the sidewalk? Would Diaz run protestors over with a squad car? Would Jeffords fire rubber bullets at journalists? Would Scully and Hitchcock pepper spray mourners at a vigil for a victim of police violence? After recoiling in horror at asking these questions, I am reassured that this would never happen because that's not how things work on television. Television police are like the Hamilton version of the founding fathers.
And then there's unscripted copaganda, which I am less familiar with. I don't watch reality TV to begin with and I've never seen the appeal of watching people get arrested. The First 48 got 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones killed.
art by Robert Byrd
Cops is canceled now. I think television will be better off without it.
All around the world, people are waking up. And the solidarity is so beautiful that it makes me cry. Maybe this awakening has happened because of the horrific video evidence of George Floyd being killed. Maybe it's happening because now we all can see the constant barrage of police violence against protestors who aren't bothering anyone. Maybe it's a result of the solitude and introspection of months of lockdowns. They
even seem to be finally realizing that racism is real, making it all
the more frustrating to deal with people who still don't get it. If you still
don't believe that racism exists after all this, maybe Elmo can explain
it to you like you're 4 years old because frankly, I no longer have the
patience. I am not in the mood to have "conversations about race" with
non-Black
people whose understanding of Black history, leadership, struggle, and
resistance comes from an elementary school bulletin board or a bumper
sticker or a meme or a public service announcement from 30 years ago.
They show up with their 3rd grade level understanding of the Civil
Rights Movement, Fox News talking points, and long-winded Reddit screed
like replies and it makes me weary to the core of my soul. I refuse.
It's not my ministry or my calling in life. (But I am happy to refer anyone who wants to learn more about racism to some Black educators I know who charge for this valuable service.)
If you're not Black and you want to support the movement, learn from the people in the pictures above. Be an accomplice. Be a friend.
So
many of the statements of solidarity from big corporations seem hollow,
hypocritical, and late. I feel like some brands want to treat this
movement like it's a mood board. I'm not surprised because even a
cursory review of ads from the 1960s and 70s reveals how eager
advertisers were to adopt the words and aesthetic of the same
counter-culture they once despised so that they could
seem cool. I'm glad so many people are calling them out for their
hypocrisy.
You shouldn’t have more Black Lives Matter posts than you have Black employees.
— Matthew A. Cherry (@MatthewACherry) June 2, 2020
It's been amazing to witness the escalation to a more constructive sort of property damage, as monuments to racism are taken down. If you're familiar with my blog, you know how I feel about these kinds of monuments. The Robert E. Lee monument in Richmond, Virginia is too monumental for protestors to easily dismantle, so instead it has been repurposed as a site of protest.
I think that the projections and even the graffiti are a major improvement on a statue of no significant artistic merit. The symbolism of it, I think, is far more impactful than many of the statements from brands that might just equate Black lives with Black spending power. But to topple monuments that celebrate hateful human beings—colonizers, slave traders, Confederate leaders—statues that had been given pride of place as centerpieces of parks, to remove these focal points from public view, is to make a powerful statement to the powers that be. It is a physical dismantling for the world to see. It's what made the state of Mississippi finally remove that wretched Confederate flag from its state flag.
And it brings me great pleasure to see how much this rebellion angers the orange demon in the White House. To see him cower in a bunker with the lights turned off. To see the fence he put up transformed into a wall of protest art. To hear him and his minions rail about losing their country. It satisfies me. It's what they deserve. They can die mad about it for all I care.
After ordering protestors to be violently driven away from the White House so that he could walk down the street to stand in front of a church holding somebody else's Bible upside down and backwards for a photo op, it's amazing he hasn't been transformed into a pillar of salt.
*the scripture behind him was Photoshopped in
And to see the courage of the protestors to persist in their demands for justice despite his cruelty, despite his invocation of antiquated insurrection acts, despite the prison guards without badges patrolling the Washington streets... it all gives me hope that there will be resistance to whatever he tries to do to us in November or January. And it was amazing the see the speed with which so many local governments have moved towards rectifying the misdeeds of their police departments, when so little progress had been made before. And I was glad that the cause of the protests did not get overshadowed by the reporting on the looting. And I am relieved that so far the protests haven't led to mass outbreaks of COVID-19. And it was inspiring to see Black Lives Matter protests in towns where there aren't many (or any) Black people. And it was so beautiful to see young Black protestors showing up at the protests in their caps and gowns or on horseback looking so magnificent and powerful.
Deveonte Joseph
Brianna Noble
Maybe things will be different this time. Maybe now that more people have witnessed and experienced the disproportionate violence of American police departments, they'll stop making excuses for violence against unarmed civilians. Maybe more people finally understand that "Black Lives Matter" doesn't mean that nobody else's life matters. Maybe more people who are not Black will start to examine their own anti-Blackness. Maybe this country will finally begin to reckon with the horrible things it's done to us. Maybe more Black people will finally be able to breathe.
But I won't believe it until I see real, permanent changes. It's a long, hard fight. It's always been one. And why did it have to take so many deaths?
It took me a long time to write this because I had so much on my mind. It took me a long time to write this because I am so angry. It took me a long time to write this because I am so sad. I feel like I am mourning for people I have never met but really wish I could have known. And for the people who were maimed while protesting, including a writer I've been following for the past few years on Twitter who lost her eye to a rubber bullet. It took me a long time to write this because I felt bad for not being
out there protesting. It took me a long time to write this because the
pandemic has destroyed the meaning of time. It took me a long time to write this because I am still trying to figure out how I feel about the police and the criminal justice system. But now I think this post is complete, so I will end it with a chant I would have said if I'd been out there:
My open studios were never crowded. It was something I finally came to the point of using in a self-deprecatingly humorous way when promoting myself this year.
My open studios were never crowded, but maybe it was a blessing in disguise. Turns out that COVID-19 was quietly spreading around Chicago earlier than we thought or knew. If more people had come to my Fall in Love With Art Valentine's Day event in February, maybe I could have caught it. So though I was disappointed to spend so much on an event where I only earned $45, I'd prefer to lose money than sell a lot of artwork to huge crowds that could have exposed me and my guests to a life-threatening illness.
I have now been social distancing for over 60 days and the only thing I've painted recently is my nails.
self-portrait of the artist's hand with throw pillow
The world outside my apartment feels like a foreign country to me. I feel like staying home and hiding from this virus is an act of self-defense. And the callous disregard too many people in power have about this whole situation has only strengthened my resolve to stay home for as long as it takes.
The stage of grief I have experienced most is anger. I am furious because I know things didn't have to be this way. The needless deaths make me incandescent with rage. But I have also felt great waves of sorrow come over me. I have been mourning for what could have been but now just cannot be. Not this year. I am grieving for the future because I know that things have changed forever. Most importantly, for the many thousands who have died, and will continue to die. A recurring feeling I've had the past few years is that so many good people are going to die. Every day it comes true. This was why I wept after the election. This was why it was insulting to be told that "he won't be that bad" and to "give him a chance." I knew in my soul that somehow he would end up with blood on his hands. I could tell from his speech at the Republican National Convention.
I watched Contagion 3 more times and now I'm jealous of the characters in that movie because they didn't run out of PPE and they didn't have a homicidal narcissistic wannabe dictator
president. I watched And the Band Played On for the first time since the 90s and while I now know there are some inaccuracies in the storytelling, the montage before the end credits of all the talented luminaries who died of AIDS in the 80s and 90s was absolutely heart-wrenching. So many good people died. So many of those in power saw their lives as disposable. They were blamed for their own deaths and seen as not being the right kinds of victims. I was just a kid in the 80s but I remember the things adults said about AIDS.
art by ACT UP
As Black politicians and activists advocated for a racial breakdown of COVID-19 death statistics, I was afraid that if it turned out that Black people were disproportionately affected by the disease, the powers that be would see it as less deadly. And now look at what's happening. None of this surprises me. We can't even say that our lives matter without being attacked for it.
I have no patience for anyone who wants to blame those who died of
coronavirus for their own deaths just because they had preexisting conditions. Take your "personal responsibility"
discussion somewhere else. Also, I can't help but notice that the main ones making the "personal
responsibility" argument tend to be particularly reckless and
irresponsible themselves. The "personal responsibility" argument is great for anyone who doesn't want to acknowledge structural issues. So many of the stories of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people's COVID-19 deaths involve medical racism. Yet even then, the "personal responsibility" zealots argue that the patients should have advocated better for themselves, which is hard to do when you are fatigued, feverish, in pain, delirious, and isolated from your family and friends. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, the "personal responsibility" hecklers scold, even if your lungs can barely function.
Armed protesters have
taken to the streets. Rather than agitating for better support systems
for those who have lost their jobs, or for
more support for small business owners who could lose everything, or for solidarity with the Asian-Americans who are being attacked right now, or for the meat-packing plants and farms to protect their workers from the virus, or for
hotels to give their vacant rooms to homeless people and those who need
to quarantine, or for the defense of those who are quarantined with their abusers, or for greedy big banks to stop charging
overdraft and late fees in the midst of a pandemic, or for fair distribution of the PPE that keeps getting pirated and diverted, or for access to overpriced lifesaving medications, or for universal healthcare and basic income, or for our worthless
president to resign, they defiantly display their paramilitary gear while they demand the right to be asymptomatic carriers and for service
industry workers to put themselves in harm's way for their comfort. They
were preparing for an apocalypse that would involve shooting to kill
and instead are living in one that requires staying home and looking out
for those who are more vulnerable. They are utterly lacking in the strength of character
that our current apocalypse requires of them. Rather than John Brown or Robin Hood, these armed vigilantes are nothing but camouflage-clad klansmen.Their use of the Confederate flag is fitting.
Imagine having an assault rifle and using it to demand to go back to work
I feel a strange survivor's guilt because the work I do is officially not essential. But I was never interested in doing the kind of work that is currently deemed essential. I'm too squeamish to work in a hospital or nursing home. As for the other types of essential work, I never felt inspired to pursue anything but art, interior design, and creative writing, which is why other careers were never on my radar. So I stay home as much as possible, but feel guilty for having the privilege to do so. So many people I know have that "I can't stay home. I'm an essential worker" badge on their Facebook profile pictures and I feel bad for them. Depending on the industry, they're probably not getting hazard pay. Like veterans, they are honored with words of praise that are rendered meaningless by the lack of material support they receive.
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, and it's even worse in a pandemic. Now there are peculiar new ethics as Twitter pundits have taken it upon themselves to declare that everyone must tip 40% on takeout orders and at least $30 for
each grocery delivery, while criticizing people for trying to learn how to
bake bread, and accusing people of hoarding because they're stocking up
on food and household supplies in order to limit trips to the store. I can't take their constant scolding anymore. Yes, I still have my job but it's not like I was making a ton of money before all this happened. Money was tight before the pandemic, and I can't afford to waste it now. Sorry, but I just can't afford to pay my hairdresser not to do my hair right now, as much as I wish I could. I could barely afford it before all this happened! The self-appointed pandemic etiquette experts' weird new rules just add to the burden of what we're already going through by placing the expectation on us that we drain our bank accounts to create a safety net for others that our tax dollars should have paid for. Instead of masks and higher wages for essential workers, they paid for war planes.
Dr. Bill Miller on flying Blue Jets across cities in support of healthcare workers
"They cost 450,000 per flight over a city. You want to help healthcare workers? Get us equipment, PPEs, n95 masks, get us tests for everybody..take that same money and feed people in inner cities" pic.twitter.com/L1ij1Dg0xw
So many of the events that used to happen in person are happening online now, and although I was already living a lot of my life online, I just don't feel like participating in most of these things. Online art shows just aren't the same. Galleries are bragging about their new "online viewing rooms" like they just invented showing art online. I've been displaying my work online since 1997 and know from experience just how overrated it is. It's a nice first step, an introduction, but photography will never do justice to art that is textured and painted with metallic, iridescent, and fluorescent pigments. You have to see it in person. You have to see the way the light hits it from different angles, and the variety of shadows it casts on itself and on the wall. It has to be experienced. To me, an art website is just a business card.
There are also some social distancing art shows being planned around Chicago. One involves putting your artwork in your windows at home and then posting about it online so people know where to look. First of all, I can't put my artwork in my windows because my building frowns upon that sort of thing. Secondly, I don't want strangers knowing where I live. That option might work for some people, but it doesn't work for me.
Really, I get more than I give online. I rely on the numerous news
outlets I follow on Twitter to stay updated on current events, I love listening to podcasts, and I have been attending church virtually for years, but I
don't consider myself "very online" when it comes to how much of myself I
put out there. Live-streaming while painting is another thing a lot of artists are doing nowadays. Personally, I
don't enjoy live painting for an audience. I never felt the desire to
invite other people into my creative process in that way. Does everything
have to be a social event? Can't I have anything that's just mine and
mine alone? I get that the impulse to socialize growing is stronger for some now that we are forced to stay apart, but that hasn't changed the way I feel about making art. Though, as I mentioned before, I haven't been making much artwork lately. I can't get to my studio while still observing proper social distancing and I don't want to paint at home. I was planning to work on some other things but I feel guilty about ordering supplies online because it means warehouse workers and delivery people have to put themselves at risk for my frivolous whims. It just doesn't seem fair. And I don't feel right about sending out emails asking people to purchase things from me "in these uncertain times."
Workaholics obliviously chastise everyone about pandemic productivity and not wearing sweatpants (personally, I prefer caftans and sleeveless harem jumpsuits) because they supposedly aren't conducive to getting work done. Self-proclaimed online small business experts have taken a break from their usual plagiarizing to tell us stories of entrepreneurs who defied the odds during the 2008 recession, as if that's relevant to the economic ruin that the global pandemic is causing right now. No doubt, there were many ripple effects from what happened to the housing market. It's the reason my interior design career has been so stunted, thanks to the timing of when I graduated from design school. It's why I chose the day job I have now. But even as horrible as that recession was, this is far worse and is hurting so many more people. Savings are being exhausted. Dreams are being destroyed. Jobs are being obliterated. There are some industries that may never recover after this. Worst of all, people are dying! And you're not going to pressure me to start a new business or take your useless webinar course right now. What am I training for, a job that will never come back? New skills to entice non-existent clients? Oh, the the hubris of making predictions when this crisis is still ongoing. We don't know when or how it will end. For once, just say that you don't know.
I suppose now is a good time to get into the mask making business. I know how to sew, but the idea of creating handmade masks makes me so angry because nobody should have to! Our federal government, thanks to our good-for-nothing president and his minions, has deprived us of the protective gear we should have had. I ran out of the masks I bought for my studio. Now I'm making them from ponytail holders, a bandana, and a safety pin. I just can't bring myself to actually take the time to sew one knowing that it shouldn't be necessary. I'm so mad that I'd probably just end up repeatedly stabbing my fingertips with sewing needles if I tried.
As for other business, I took down all my eBay listings and all my non-digital Etsy products under $250 because I don't want to leave my house for any sale for less than that amount. I'm also offering to work remotely with interior design clients if anyone is inclined, though I don't expect many people to take me up on that offer in the current economic climate. My little micro-business doesn't qualify for support from the Paycheck Protection Program and as always, there is not enough money for artists. I'm so jealous of artists in other countries who are actually getting support.
As an artist, I am accustomed to uncertainty and disappointment and long dry spells where nothing seems to happen. As a Xennial, I am more familiar than I ever wanted to be with economic decline and downturns and downward mobility. I am accustomed to opportunities and businesses and industries vanishing before I could partake in them. And because of that, I have so much sympathy for everyone in the Class of 2020, now thrust into an abyss as they graduate into a void. The future they thought they were preparing for is disappearing right before their eyes.
Our familiar way of life is dying, and who knows if, when, or how it will ever return. What lengths should we go to in order to save it? I refuse to be led like a lamb to the slaughter by greedy politicians and their corporate cronies who are too miserly to provide universal basic income and healthcare even just for the limited duration of the pandemic.
How insulting to even suggest that I should die to save an economy that has never once done anything for me but screw me over. There is a part of me that always knew it would come to this, under the auspices of this so-called president, in a country overtaken by evil corporate empires, where the only hope comes from the occasional benevolence of bosses, mayors, and governors who would rather not have blood on their hands and wrongful death class action lawsuits to contend with.
I keep thinking of everything I never got to do before the pandemic and
wondering when or if I will ever have the chance and feeling a justified
resentment as "all the best people" revel in their ill-gotten power and
newfound opportunities to ruin our lives.
Since a vaccine is probably years away, I wish there was a Tamiflu-like treatment that you could take as soon as you get sick so you could shorten the length of the illness and lessen the symptoms. I wish there was a way to find out if you are more susceptible to the worst outcomes of the disease (maybe a gene?) or if you would end up asymptomatic. I wish there were more tests that work, and that they were free, and that people could take them at home. I really don't want to catch COVID-19. I don't know what it would do to me. It seems like a Swiss Army Knife of suffering, with unique attacks for every organ. Not to mention the long-term effects, which are still unknown. Could it be like polio? Could it be like what happened to the patients in Awakenings?
This concerns me because I have already experienced so many delays and interruptions in my creative career, and I don't want to succumb to an illness that could have chronic, lasting effects while living in a country that is so hostile to people with disabilities. There is so much discrimination, not to mention the medical bills. It's reckless to just shrug the virus off as something inconsequential. I'm trying to be as cautious as possible by staying home. But sometimes I feel trapped.
self-portrait of the artist, feeling trapped
I miss my studio. I miss going to art shows, trade shows, and protest marches. I miss being downtown. I miss walking to stores. I miss doing yoga in interesting places. I think I even miss the weather at this point, even when it's bad. I don't have a balcony or a patio or my own yard to escape to. My only escapes come from television and the internet and my own imagination.
My current obsession is playing Dr. Mario on my phone. Killing the viruses is cathartic for me. I play while I listen to podcasts. I find a new TV show to lose myself in for a while. I treat myself to movies occasionally. I entertain my inner child with kids' cartoons. I give myself permission to fall down various Wikipedia and TV Tropes rabbit holes because now I have nothing but time. I work out with videos. I try new recipes and refine old ones. I have spent more than 60 days cloistered in my own personal bell jar. Sometimes I almost forget that the reason I have so much time for these distracting pursuits is that we're in a global pandemic. And then the reality rushes back into my consciousness.
I catch up on the news and learn of what the new death toll is for the world, for the country, for the state, for the city. I hear dire economic predictions. I hear investigative reports that expose just how much was known about the virus ages ago but not acted upon. I am reminded that I am staying home in order to buy time for everyone to get their act together but they still haven't done their jobs. And I feel like America is a dysfunctional family with an abusive patriarch who wants to keep us from getting help from anyone outside our home and now that he has found out we can die from our new illness he's fine with leaving us unconscious on the floor and not bothering to call 911 so that he can collect our life insurance money. I feel like we are all locked in a house with a serial killer who has cut the phone and power lines. I feel like we are driving in an ice storm on an unsalted road in a car that has had its brake lines cut and tires slashed by a murderer. I feel like we are trapped in a burning building and there aren't enough firefighters and they don't have enough equipment to put the fire out or enough gear to protect themselves while they do their job because their budget was cut since there hadn't been any fires in a while and the arsonist who started the fire is still on the loose. I feel like we are locked in a mall with a mass shooter with nowhere to hide and the security guards are in on it, the police aren't coming, and the store managers want us to just keep on shopping in the midst of the carnage like everything is normal. I feel like we are on a plane and the pilot is blackout drunk, the co-pilot has a death wish, the autopilot isn't working, the closest air traffic control tower only has one person working in it and they are relying on an old paper map instead of computers, there's something about to explode in the cargo hold, there's a hole in the fuselage and passengers and flight attendants are getting sucked out of it, the seats cannot be used as flotation devices, the wings are covered in ice and one of them is about to come off anyway, there are no oxygen masks, and the landing gear doesn't work. And no, we are not all in this nightmare together because some people have absconded on private jets with their private doctors to their private islands and private bunkers and now the rest of us are left to endure the chaos. It almost makes me wish that being cryogenically frozen until 2022 was an option. That's the year that some epidemiologists estimate this crisis will finally be over.
Right now I'm spending much of my time trying to prepare for whatever is about to happen next. Sometimes I feel like I am tightening
my seatbelt, putting a wet towel in the crack under the door to block
the smoke, bracing for the plane crash, sheltering in place behind a
makeshift barricade with makeshift weapons to defend myself. And sometimes I feel like I am staying home and watching helplessly as the whole world comes undone. What will remain when it's finally safe for all of us to emerge from the wreckage and ruins?
As overwhelming as everything has been, I have been enjoying my peace and solitude. I get to decide who to interact with and when. Being alone has given me time to reevaluate every relationship.
My nerves are so frayed and my spirit is so troubled that I no longer have the emotional bandwidth for certain interactions. My soul is too weary to let anyone drain me any further than the world already has. This long period of isolation also makes me even more painfully aware of how important it is to tell everyone I care about that I love them because I don't know if or when I will ever see them in person again.
I feel bad for all the social media personalities whose personal brands
are so invested in "positivity" that they can't allow themselves to
grieve in public right now. I wonder if people expect me to be relentlessly optimistic because I like bright colors. Anyway, I'm not. I hate false hope. I hate bland moral platitudes. I hate cliches. Don't ask me to lie about how I really feel. Don't tell me I have to "fake it" until I "make it." Don't expect me to find common ground and feign friendship with people who want me dead. Don't assume that I will ever waste my love on a country that will never love me in return. And don't tell me how I am supposed to feel about any of this.
I feel the cold comfort of vindication as it finally, belatedly, starts
to dawn on the pundits that yes, he is a misanthrope and no, he doesn't
care who dies. The brutality of depraved indifference and deliberate neglect feel
familiar because this is the way this country has always treated people
like me.
Abuse of power is all you can expect from an aspiring autocrat whose reign of terror is more like an opportunistic infection than a presidency. He tries to disguise his malice as incompetence. He has assembled an administration that is as sleazy as all of Chicago's worst aldermen combined, too saturated with nepotism and corruption to function for anyone but himself.
The pandemic has exposed how many things in our society were broken on purpose. They don't want to fix them. The will of the people has been thwarted, undermined and disregarded because
the will of corporations and lobbyists is the only thing that matters in America. Our uprisings have been infiltrated, discredited, and suppressed. Big businesses and our government have conspired to make serious illnesses a fate worse than death. One of the greatest obstacles are those who would rather turn on fellow citizens than cooperate. They
are so racist that they would rather die while standing in the way of
progress than witness the equitable distribution of public goods to
everyone, including people who aren't white. The result of their selfishness is a collective punishment that we all suffer. All of us are mere collateral damage and cannon fodder in this war against a virus. America will squander this opportunity to make things better than they were before. It will stubbornly refuse to learn from what other countries have done right because of its foolish belief in its own myths of exceptionalism.
We are being offered 2 bad choices:
go back to work
and risk catching COVID-19, risk permanent health problems and even
death, risk transmitting the disease to our loved ones (and not be
allowed to sue our employers if that happens),
or
stay
home, lose our jobs and health insurance, lose our homes, cars, and
businesses, default on all our debts, and starve to death. There is a
third option that not enough people are talking about: more stimulus
money.
I want to go scream at everyone on Capitol Hill, "Give the people money, you cowards!" I'm so angry that there is money for a border wall and a Space Force but not enough to save the citizens from a terrible, terrible fate. While it's true that a virus doesn't care about the net worth of its host, consider the way it proliferated. Wealthy
people brought it back from their travels abroad to people who can't even afford a domestic flight. Everything about this pandemic just further exacerbates preexisting power imbalances.
And now, on Memorial Day, we are close to reaching a tragic and avoidable milestone:
100,000 souls. 100,000 people who had plans for 2020. 100,000 empty seats at dinner tables all across America. 100,000 gone with all their unfinished business. And somehow, that's acceptable in this country so long as it fuels the engine of capitalism. Somehow that's a reasonable sacrifice for the Dow Jones, the NASDAQ, and the S&P 500. Another American holiday, another American celebration of hypocrisy.
