Monday, May 25, 2020

Abundantly cautious, socially distant


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.


Image by The Good Liars


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.


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.






Everything I wanted to do is canceled.


 
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.


Quote by Jenny Jaffe. Art by Michael James Schneider


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.


Image by The Good Liars


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.


The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Season 4, Episode 25


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 alone feels so good, I'll only have you if you're sweeter than my solitude." by Warsan Shire

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. 


Art by Jenny Holzer


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.





Here are some good articles I've read lately:

















Flattening the Truth on Coronavirus

Open States. Lots of Guns. America is Paying a Heavy Price for Freedom

Captured Western Governments Are Failing the Coronavirus Test

This Is Trump’s Fault

The Plan Is to Save Capital and Let the People Die

Welcome to Zombieland

We Need a Riot of Empathy

Don’t Judge Me for How I’m Dealing With This Quarantine



There are 3 books I read a while ago that I have been thinking about a lot lately:

In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed
by Carl Honore

Dying for a Paycheck: How Modern Management Harms Employee Health and Company Performance—and What We Can Do About It
by Jeffrey Pfeffer

Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World
by Annie Lowrey


Here are some of the podcasts that have been keeping me informed:

Intersectionality Matters

Pitchfork Economics

Pandemic Economics

America Dissected

Gaslit Nation

The Chauncey De Vega Show


And finally, follow Faces of COVID if you're on Twitter to honor the dead.

Posted by at
Labels: , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)