Hello, hello, hello, from the depths of the New Pandemic, which is really just the Old Pandemic except it grew and grew and grew while everyone was running around unmasked and pretending that “normal” had returned.
Anyway.
Why, yes, I’m feeling a bit…salty about all the pandemic bullshit. I’ve been saying for months that this is not over and, oh, look. We are in this for a minimum of two more years, much longer if the United States continues to act like a petulant, bratty child AND a despot who refuses to let the rest of the world get the vaccines that it so desperately needs.
As this pandemic continues, I find myself raging at the ineptitude of the mainstream press and a CDC that continues to deliver disastrously contradictory directives every two weeks. I tend to write about all this in short bursts on Twitter and Facebook, which you’ll see if you’re following me on those platforms. In the coming weeks, I’ll be turning those shots into longer pieces.
I struggled with writing a fair bit this past fortnight. Part of it is the general ennui in the world, I suppose, but also trying to finish a piece that’s been simmering for so long that it now looks more like a book. I didn’t realise this until a conversation with my friend M., who also pointed out that it was fine to turn out a piece that did not cover all the ground I wanted to traverse but which still gave the reader a lot to chew on. When I was an actual reporter for Windy City Times, I had very hard deadlines (10 p.m after covering a 5 p.m event, for instance) and also word limits (in those days, the paper was an actual paper-paper). Those sorts of structures helped even if I sometimes wished I could say more. Now I can, for various reasons (though I still have deadlines, they’re often a few months away), and that’s great but the problem is too many of my pieces work like mini-books.
Anyway. I’d rather have too much than too little to think and write about and I’m still excited about all the work. The piece I’ve been struggling with is a lot about Blackness and the Diaspora and I concur with Hazel Carby in this piece and the accompanying podcast that African American Studies in the U.S in particular has become provincial to a great extent. There’s a way in which Blackness is being construed as a homogenous global reality that pools in the United States, and this does nothing to help us understand the complexities of, for instance, slave trades across the globe and over time or the differences in Blackness everywhere and its weaponisation by Capital, and more.
In other realms: I’m also frustrated with the fact that it’s not as easy as it used to be to get out of a neighbourhood that is essentially landlocked (getting out of Hyde Park without a car means a bus ride or a bus ride and a train and more). We’ll see: South Siders are much better at masking than North siders (who are mostly white and deeply entitled) so I might hazard a trip on the 6 to downtown, to test the waters. As always, I think of this period as a deep writing retreat of sorts, so I don’t really mind living here for now and it’s a deeply weird and interesting, if deeply and thoroughly racist, neighbourhood, but so is all of Chicago (and it’s very pretty, and I’m close to the lake). I have enough to write about here to sustain me for years.
But I’m also sickened by a Chicago Mayor who is fine with putting the city’s health at risk by hosting a gigantic music festival, Lollapalooza, and, frankly, I’m a little irritated with friends and colleagues who threw off their masks and began running around in groups even though it was perfectly clear that we were by no means over the hump. And now the city is planning to host Market Days this week and a delayed Pride fest in October. Organisers haven’t even bothered to give lip service to Covid protocols. Because, sure, why not? There’s only a deadly global pandemic for us all to worry about and massive numbers of racist, mostly white and drunken gay men running around in droves in the city are exactly what we need right now (you have not seen rage and carelessness until you’ve seen a group of drunken, mostly white gay men).
Anyway. Below are the pieces I wrote this past fortnight. This coming month, I’ll be writing more about the pandemic and also working on several other pieces. The latter are longer and require more research but are always in the works, so expect them to come tumbling through almost all at once over a short period of time. I’m discovering that gestation is a thing.
Be well, stay well, mask up, stay socially distanced. Again: We’re in this for a while, at least two years, at a minimum. If Americans really want this to end, we have to force lawmakers to make things better for those who need money and homes to survive. Let me repeat myself: Give people money. Just. Give. People. Money. And demand that they push the Biden administration to stop acting like a spoiled brat and actually increase vaccinations not just in the U.S but all around the world. Unless the entire globe has access to vaccinations, it will cease to exist in a much shorter time than we have ever thought possible.
In other news: I’m learning to cook again and I make at least one new dish every week, and one new dessert (the latter is promptly divided up among friends because I still need to lose these pounds). Who said there were no advantages to a pandemic?
WRITING
“Granny Labour in Never Have I Ever.” I watched Season 2 of Never Have I Ever. It’s a bit more tepid than the first season, but still fun to watch but I was struck by the use of what I call “Granny Labour.”
I wrote about the lack of systemic critiques of the causes of the pandemic and wrote “Stop Blaming the Unvaccinated.”
DAILY POSTS FROM THE ARCHIVE
“When XXX Doesn’t Mark the Spot.”
“AOC and the Weaponisation of Trauma.”
“No, No, Nanette: Hannah Gadsby, Trauma, and Comedy as Emotional Manipulation.”
“A Manifesto.”
“We Are Strangers Here: Notes Towards an Anti-Memoir.”
And here’s Nico, with “These Days.” Lyrics by Jackson Browne who wrote them at the tender age of 16. Please.
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Don’t plagiarise any of this, in any way. Read and memorise “On Plagiarism.” There’s more forthcoming, as I point out in “The Plagiarism Papers.” I have used legal resources to punish and prevent plagiarism, and I am ruthless and persistent. If you’d like to support me, please donate and/or subscribe, or get me something from my wish list. Thank you.
Image: Albrecht Dürer, Young Hare (1502)