[-empyre-] [empyre] COVID Sonata, Movement 1, Allegro

[Kathy High]

Dear friends,

I write this contribution on the heels of just reading Patricia's amazing Movement 1: Allegro... I had started writing something else. But was so deeply moved by P's text and stories that I have started again. Thank you for sharing those vivid moments, Patty.

I too thank Renate and Tim for making this space. I find at present - it is these spaces of exchange that mean so much to me, and are probably helping me to process much more than I would if left to my own devices.

Like many of us here on this particular chat I, too, am an academic. I will teach my last on-line classes for the semester today. I will encourage my students as best I can - many of whom are graduating seniors with nothing but an online graduation ceremony to look forward to. Others who will return next year are cautious and wary of engaging in yet another semester with possible online teaching. We all hate it and are not trained or it. It is tiring in unexpected ways. The processing of the little faces in the boxes draws all my energy as does speaking to a screen with little response. How much to talk about the virus? How much to not talk about the virus? 

Our university is in financial trouble - like so many others. It feels like it is dying. Having mismanaged funds probably and with an overinflated budget, it seems like a mini version of bigger institutions, governments. Everything is being decided top down. None of us can have any input. Our university president took only a 5% pay cut even while they have furloughed almost 300 university workers. We are told that faculty will be "sized" and assessed by their enrollment numbers for their classes. That doesn't bode well for the Humanities and Arts. Sounds like so many other institutions.

I am thinking these days about time as many of us are. With the uncertainty of when and how we can return to some other life besides the ones in our homes - and what that might look like. I have been influenced by writings in disabilities studies - in particular an article by Ellen Samuels "Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time."  -   https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/5824/4684

Samuels beautifully sums up what time is like for those with disabilities - unpredictable, non-linear and where scheduling is difficult or non-existent: "Crip time is time travel. Disability and illness have the power to extract us from linear, progressive time with its normative life stages and cast us into a wormhole of backward and forward acceleration, jerky stops and starts, tedious intervals and abrupt endings."

We float a bit seamlessly now and share some of that crip time space. As someone with chronic autoimmune diseases, I know this kind of time where your body disrupts your expectations and deadlines. Now we all have a kind of time disrupted and out of our control. 

Besides this we all are surrounded by death or the possibility of death and dying. Tens of thousands have died in our country. And often they have died alone without family to support them. All this made me wonder how we can comprehend this. We are a culture reluctant to even mention the word death much less discuss what it means to us. How do we collectively grieve? I am working a "death tool kit." What does it take for us to start this discussion? What tools do we need to help us? I am not sure what this tool kit looks like yet. But I am working with artist and death doula Marne Lucas to try to figure this out. Marne has been working with other artists at the end of their lives. She helps these artists develop their legacy: https://griefgratitudegreatness.com/episodes/2019/07/30/marne

My thoughts are really scattered these days as I am distracted and can't find time (oddly). But these are some thoughts to add into this very rich mix. I am deeply grateful to my colleagues writing and contributing thoughts to empyre! 
Be well.
Big embrace, Kathy



On 4/27/20, 9:06 AM, "empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au on behalf of Patricia Zimmermann" <empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au on behalf of patty at ithaca.edu> wrote:

    ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------