How to Mend the Brokenness? Some Solace during COVID-19 Part I
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Graffiti in Hong Kong: Source Twitter
I reached out to friends, colleagues and put out a call to collect resources in an attempt to carry us through and beyond this time, because one thing is certain Corona has changed our world. Many structures that have not been working for a long time were suddenly revealed with pressing urgency.
This is part I of an unfolding mini-series tries to provide some starting points to reimagine futures, provide solace and at least start somewhere. If you want to contribute find the form here>
What Gave you some solace lately? Share books, poems, podcast episodes... share resources you found helpful and might help others
Adrienne Maree Brown came up with the idea of a collective writing group for the month of April:
Click on the image to see some of the BEAUTIFUL writing prompts in the replies <3
Follow Adrienne Maree Brown on Instagram to get the daily writing prompts for this “challenge”.
”Guidelines for Pandemic Wrimo1. Each day I will offer a prompt from myself or someone in the community (some are poly-sourced - my additions in parentheses). Respond to the prompt if it generates creativity in you. There's no length or form goal. You may find one prompt needs a few days of writing. Or leads you to another inner prompt. Cool - it's a spark, you're the fire.
2. The goal of this is to harness our imaginations to help us survive this pandemic and generate the world we dream on the other side of it. To that end, please stay focused on/around the pandemic.
3. I'm posting prompts designed for short fiction. If you aren't a writer, or words aren't what come, let other ways of creating move through you.
4. Use the hashtags #pandemicwrimo or #pandowrimo if you share what you create online. I'll share some of these on my story. Sharing is not required - exercising your imaginative muscle is the heart of this practice.”
I find the free app inside timer great for guided meditations, I’m particularly enjoying Tara Brach’s meditations.*
Gretta Louw: “I attended an online lecture by Naomi Klein (with Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and Astra Taylor) that definitely galvanised my outrage and helped shift me out of mourning paralysis, but I wouldn't say it provided solace.”
Pau Quintanajornet: “A mantra that has been a big part of my daily routine over the last years is: ‘Allow yourself to surrender to the moment’. I try to learn to listen more mindfully to my inner drum and to find a calm dialogue within me. We often forget that our souls need a break to overcome strong circumstances. We need to learn to breathe again and practice stillness. I think our society is in such a rush most of the time that we often forget that we are part of a much bigger picture - a huge piece of art that just can show its full beauty when we all work together. To do so we need to practice more consciousness with ourselves and one another - this includes to value Empathy - Solidarity and Humanity.”
This "pandemic tool kit" crowdsourced by the Death, Sex, & Money podcast team providing suggestions of things to do, listen to, watch, read, cook, be grateful for, and more.
What or who is helping you to cope during these times?
Yoga with Adrienne to seek out some space in all the tightness of my body and the poems of Mary Oliver.*
Gretta Louw: “Honestly, nothing I've read or listened to has helped. The only thing that has is sunshine and looking at plants, laughing with my nearest and dearest.“
Pau Quintanajornet:“My circle of beautiful human beings all around the world. Internet makes it easy to stay connected and reach out to check in with each other. Besidse that I try to create daily routines. I am an introvert so dealing with long periods of being by my own is not really a big issue for me - as long as I know my loved ones are ok”
What have you learned through this mess?
Gretta Louw: “How hard it is to break out of habitual models of behaviour, priority-setting, production etc and how those flow-on to measuring self-worth. How much better the world feels when there aren't dozens of planes flying overhead every hour. How much I long for a proper garden. How wildly interconnected and interdependent we all are.”
Pau Quintanajornet: “That our human race has to relearn Empathy and that we need to find a more mindful way to navigate trough life all together.”
“What a lesson to live through: to slow down the velocity of this world; to see the broken structures revealed that we've constantly built and relied on but that have not been working for a long time; to appreciate the ordinary we overlooked because we were focused on striving for the extraordinary. May we never confuse the ordinary for the irrelevant again, may we see the wonder of the mundane: the infinite pleasure to hug one another, the stroll through the neighborhood, crowded cafes…”*
How did this situation affect your work and what have you learned?
Artist and curator Juan Duque
“In the midst of fast changes, how to think otherwise in relation to the immediacy of now? The interconnected nature of our world has become increasingly evident. Social, environmental, political, economic and technological structures are rapidly rearranging ideas, practices and meanings of identity, resistance, activism, togetherness and art. This moment demands from us a new vocabulary that gives new meanings to the word ‘crisis’.
What is the relevance of curating at this moment of sudden changes? Being cultural producers, what position are we taking? Which communities of care are we engaging with and supporting? What new specificities, strategies, formats are needed to be implemented? It becomes necessary to inquire into how collective cultural practices can foster inclusive, intersectional perspectives, encouraging new forms of solidarity and better social understandings of society and culture.”
My answer, Anabel Roque Rordríguez
"I wrote about this in my March newsletter. "Something I've been seeing right now, that I find incredibly heartwarming and problematic at the same time, is the rise of free content from colleagues. I'm not talking about institutions and people who are still employed by them (continue to share free and widely), I'm talking about freelance independent folks belonging to the creative economy. We all give away free labor for certain reasons: access, inclusion and it's a way to remain visible. It's how we live solidarity through our actions and it's our contribution to the creative ecosystem. I know it's hard to talk about money right now but I'm afraid many are going to learn the hard way that visibility will not necessarily translate into financial stability. It worries me that it won't be sustainable for many, and more people are going to leave the field. Money shame is one of the broken patterns that guilts people to do more in hopes that it will reward them in the future. Meritocracy promises that hard work will be met with a just reward but forgets to mention that success is shaped through class, race and gender. Meritocracy is a broken promise.
This message goes out to every museum worker, artist and creative who doesn't come from wealth and really took a risk going into this profession. I see your panic, I see your anger, I see your shame connected to asking for help. We need collective solutions for systemic problems and we need you. You are not alone!
If you have to change the format of your practice and you don't want to charge yet, try at least to include a way to collect tips. I know it's so hard right now because everything feels greedy and there is so much pain. But people are in different financial positions right now. Asking is something many of us need to relearn.
If you are employed or in a financial stabile position and like the circulation of the free content you see right now, help to keep it alive. Donate, pay, and help in the redistribution of resources.”
Artist and curator Gretta Louw
“Everything stopped. Things are cancelled months and months in advance. Complete uncertainty about the future is crippling. We are all even more precarious than we thought we were.”
Seema Rao shared this in her blog post Museum Work Today: All the Feels All the Time:
“The best guidance I’ve seen is often "small act" guidance. It’s the person who answers your question about zoom or the person who passes on their work at home policy.
Our reserved sector is just telling truths these days. And that’s a form of guidance. It’s the way that people share their real feelings on social. I’ve seen a number of these, like a tweet reminding us it might be hard to fully pivot to digital while mourning the loss of society as we know it. Damn straight, it is. And another person stopping to share tough things on some crazy thread about movies. It’s pretty tough to speak up for your truth to the world and 48 people you don’t know. That’s the kind of ordinary bravery that will help us survive. And to the others who engaged with her, and didn’t ignore the feelings, that’s also bravery. Also, to all the people in that thread having some fun, that is another form of bravery. There are many ways we’ll survive this. And at the start, there is no need to say one is wrong or not. They’re probably all important.
Our collective has given me comfort, though it is interesting, our field hasn’t necessarily. Like so many in this work, I’ve seen the bootstrap to wedding rental dichotomy of budgeting. The last ten years saw our work move toward the service sector as rentals become a very real part of our business model. As with the service sector, so our fate. It was the choice we made with the best intentions. Diversifying income streams made sense, on a level. But that choice also exacerbated our situation. But hindsight and time turners are not useful now. What's useful is to keep going.
I’ve been thinking recently about a very late evening in grad school when a friend and I were arguing about the Renaissance that could have been if it were not for the Black Death. Sure, there could have been an earlier Renassaince. Sure, it could have looked different. We've morphed ourselves into an alternate history. The future of our past was something we will never know. We need to stand tall in this present and get to another future. The hypothetical is for graduate school; the actual is for now. I hope we are not in the Black Death, but our society will be fundamentally transformed, if not due to the economic factors alone. Eventually, we need to say to ourselves as a field, 'what is the Renaissance you’re planning?'
Maybe that’s not the question for today though. Because to go back to comfort, I’d say let that question wait for a few days. Let the tough days be. The days when you learn of loss. The days when an original future disappears. Let the anger and frustration come out. Attend to the loneliness and helplessness. Confront new emotions and situations. Make part of your work and life be about existing in the now and taking care of yourself. Be kind to yourself and to each other. Assume everyone is living in a blender of emotions. Expect they've had a challenge. Allow for their emotions. Listen and care. Be as human and humane as you can. Get to the real, because it's all we have.”
Visit Seema’s whole post, where she shares some helpful resources>
Independent feminist scholar and writer Sara Ahmed wrote in her blog post Complaint and Survival:
“If we lose our anchors, we don’t always know what will help us get through. For me, working as an independent scholar, writing is a handle that gives me something to hold onto; I know that is not true for everyone. I don’t write to be productive or because I think what I have to say is important. It is not; it is what it is. Continuing with my own projects such as my project on complaint, keeping myself going by keeping them going, is not about “carrying on” or “staying calm” or any of the other truisms that seem to circulate as national nostalgia for a time that never was. For me, writing is about holding on; how I stay in touch with myself as well as with others because some of my other handles are broken. It won’t necessarily always be that way. For me, now, writing is a lead, leading me to others; writing as hearing from others.
We are readers before we are writers. I find myself picking up Audre Lorde, again; her words again, guide me through. I think of Audre Lorde and I think of those moments when a life-line is thrown out to you. A life line: it can be a fragile rope, worn and tethered from the harshness of weather, but it is enough, just enough, to bear your weight, to pull you out, to help you survive a shattering experience.”
Artist and Artivist Pau Quintanajornet/ Project Wallflowers/ Stay with humanity
“Right now I am stranded in the United States until the end of April - my two art projects were postponed indefinitely. Luckily, I have a strong community here in Bethlehem, PA that are taking very good care of me. It is a bit challenging but we found a way to keep working on the mural project. As it is on parachute cloth I was able to take the supplies to anther spot were I can keep painting and engage with the teachers and students online. I feel that especially now a daily routine helps so much to stay in a creative workflow. As an Artivista its an interesting situation to experience this moment in a different country. I consider myself a world citizen so learning how other people around the world are dealing with our status quo is very inspiring and teaches you about vulnerability.”
What have you been learning about community?
There is transformational power in understanding that it’s an illusion that we are alone in our particular suffering and relate it to the wider systemic circumstances.*
Gretta Louw: “That I really care whether my colleagues, friends and strangers in my community are doing well, receiving the acknowledgement and opportunities that they need, that I worry endlessly for them.”
Pau Quintanajornet: “Community is Everything.”
Nina Simone wrote thoughtfully about “How Can I Contribute? Four Steps I’m Taking to Figure it Out”:
“Here are the steps I’m taking to find a better answer to the question of how I can contribute.
If you’re like me, holding privilege and wondering how you can be of service (whether as an individual or on behalf of your organization), I offer this process to you.
1. SELECT A COMMUNITY OF FOCUS.
You can’t help everyone. So ask yourself: what community especially matters to you right now? Who do you care about who might be particularly vulnerable or at risk? Maybe it’s elderly people in your neighborhood. Maybe it’s immigrants without a safety net. Maybe it’s nurses. I believe in targeted, community-centric approaches — and that starts with identifying specific communities to support.
2. LISTEN TO THAT COMMUNITY.
If you take a blind guess as to what a particular community might care most about, there’s a good chance you’ll guess wrong. But there’s an easy alternative: listen to them. Find ways to hear and learn directly from individuals and community organizations. You can search for information online. You can follow community leaders and activists on social media. Try to learn as much as possible by observation and listening (as opposed to asking people to give you their time) so you don’t add to burdens that struggling folks are already facing.
3. MAP YOUR SKILLS AND ASSETS.
At the same time as you learn what matters most to the communities you care most about, try to learn more about yourself. What can you uniquely offer? What existing assets and skills do you have that might be relevant? If you’re exploring this as an individual, you might have assets like your time, your bilingualism, or your ability to cook. As an organization, you might have assets like a building, a digital following, or the ear of the mayor.
For me, the most important part of this step is creative dot-connecting. How can you use your creativity to make unexpected connections between what is desired and what you have? These connections don’t have to be huge to be meaningful. For example, my sister (who lives alone) was feeling socially isolated. She mentioned on the phone that she was going to see if she could foster a furry companion. When that didn’t work out, we gave her our dog for a few weeks.
I probably never would have put my dog on a list of assets I have that can help right now. But he is, and he does.
4. CHECK YOUR ASSUMPTIONS.
Once you have an idea that matches your assets to your perceived community interests, take a pause. Check in with community representatives before hitting go. You might think something’s a great idea, but value is in the eye of the community.” Read Nina Simone’s whole piece here>
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*: My answers
