Local Gestures
because the personal is cultural
Ninety percent of the time, when I went clubbing, I didn’t have a good time. So it was surprising to me, when rereading my old LiveJournal, to realize how often I went out all the same. Why did I keep on doing it in spite of everything? Because I was desperate.
I’ve always been an introverted loner. I like to say that it was because I grew up on a farm in the country and that I’m more used to the company of cows than that of humans, but that’s probably only partially true; I have two older brothers whose personalities are vastly different from mine. Yet I’ve probably gone to clubs hundreds of times more than both of them combined. I was hoping to meet someone. I never did. Still I kept going. Keep reading... |
Shock
Online events. Denial Ça va bien aller. “We’re all in this together” and other positive affirmations. Early in the pandemic, in a panel on Zoom, one of the curators where I work said that he feared that all new works would be about the pandemic, although he understood that it would be something that people would need to process. Now I fear that none will be. Even the most realistic movies and TV series have gone out of their way to create a world where the pandemic never happened. Judges on Nailed It sat a bit further apart. If there were post-pandemic generations, they would not believe us. Keep reading... |
“Are you happy?” the former curator at my work asked me. Funnily enough, a co-worker and I had just been talking about this.
I always felt that each person was their own barometer. I consider people who are stupider than me stupid; people who are smarter, smart; people who are more beautiful, beautiful; people who are uglier, ugly. Given that no one is average in every way, our perception of others and ourselves is necessarily skewed. So how could I know if I’m happy? Sometimes I think “How could I possibly be happy?” At other times I think that maybe I’m the happiest person on Earth and I just don’t know it. Keep reading... |