zerotohero – Spatchcocking the Future

Yesterday marked the first photo session for one of two photo-essays that I am conceptualizing (many, many thanks to my roommate, Sandi Ball, for following me around Alameda and photographing me.) It seems only a natural evolution of Madam Spatchcock that she should become a Plague Doctor, since she was essentially a variant of that to begin with.

The past few weeks have been spent acquiring costuming and props, an endeavour that is more laborsome than it might appear, in a time in which one cannot simply go to the store and make purchases for most things. Furthermore, I no longer have access to my once-readily-available stockpile of secondhand clothing, from which to spatchcock together most anything I needed for projects past. Even if thrift stores were open, I wouldn’t care to brave them at this moment in time. Having pared down my huge backstock of hoarded sewing materials of the last couple of years, I now find myself somewhat beholden to what I can order online.

Also, as I take on these projects, I realize how very much I am a relic of the 20th century (with requisite homage the several centuries preceding the 20th,) as the technological aspects of presenting anything to the world is an absolutely baffling frustration for me. However, being confined mostly to sheltering-in-place, the Internet is my only means for reaching an audience artistically, and the situation is therefore leading to a greatly overdue crash course in interfacing with the world through digital means.

It seems likely that my employment will also hinge on digital communication more and more, forcing me to learn to navigate this terrain. I undoubtedly should have learned most of these things a decade, or more, ago — but had rather delighted in being as analog as possible where education was concerned.

I suspect I will use this blog page to chronicle the day to day struggles and adventures of a life spent sheltering-in-place, and my overall thoughts and observations on the current cultural moment, the psychology of a pandemic, and other matters that are on my mind.

I hope to put together several adjunct pages — one for each photo-project, and a third dedicated entirely to my thoughts about the Trickster archetype past, present, and future. I’m not certain that my current account will support that, but I aim to find out. If it doesn’t, I will either a.) upgrade to an account level that does support it, or b.) start an entirely new and separate account to present the photo-essays. I am dearly hoping that I can do this all with my current set-up, as managing this basic one is proving to be quite challenging enough for my current abysmal skill set.

As we near the close of the third week of a shelter-in-place quarantine order, days are beginning to meld one into the next. Sleep is furtive, and comes when it pleases, often leaving for days at a time, and returning with a furor to encompass nights and days back to back. People are checking their calendars more often, not because they have things to do, but because they can’t remember which day of the week it is, with no daily schedules to help them mark the time passing. Few of us are working regular day jobs, as many have moved to working from home, and many more have become completely unemployed.

We (here in the SF Bay Area) are no longer allowed to leave our homes, except to perfom necessary tasks such as grocery shopping, pharmacy pickups, and animal care. We are still permitted to exercise outdoors, though it looks as though that privilege will soon be greatly restricted.

We are not to congregate in groups, and are discouraged from having any physical contact with others, excepting those with whom we live.

Each day, a good portion of the world looks with fascination and horror at a somewhat-meaningless chart, detailing how many new cases of COVID19 have been diagnosed, and where. We see a running total of active cases, recovered cases, and (increasingly) deaths.

We read articles about politicians bickering, casting blame, and fumbling around ineffectively in attempts to mitigate the damage. We listen to our Clown President changing his story daily, always in an attempt to make it look as if he is doing a fantastic job handling this crisis, when nothing could be further from the truth. We cringe, we attempt to turn off the news, and many of us fail.

It isn’t as if there are no projects to be done at home — for many of us, there is work that is piling up rapidly, and for me, there are also many organizational, craft, and art projects that I have yet to get to doing. This time at home seems as if it would be the perfect time to do those things, yet I feel mostly emotionally paralyzed, and unable to turn away from the slow-crush apocalypse that is encroaching on my reality. I know that the world I once knew is not coming back, and I have no idea what to expect in its place.

Tag: zerotohero

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