Dearests,
I write to you from the bedroom in which I have been isolated since Friday. Today is Sunday. Originally I was going to method-write this whole thing, a few rants and raves each day, then deliver upon exiting the woods. But now I think it would be more interesting and self-serving to summarize from deluded memory and then get this OUT so some sensitive souls could write back “oh no! sorry!” and I would have a thing to do for a few seconds in addition to watching all of Succession and reading Kiese Laymon and Max Porter a little at a time and boring oval grooves into my skull from headphones because I blew my laptop speakers with sawtooth waves or something of the sort.
So it is ironic, I think, though I have long held that no one knows what irony means, that I should have COVID given How Careful We Have Been. But is it, really? I mean, it goes viral, no? And our kids are in school in a Deep Purple state of the union, and I went to the dentist on Monday and dentistry cannot happen through a mask, they say. No one says that, but I like coming up with slogans (“No one knows what irony means,” “Dentistry cannot happen through a mask,” “I look forward to seeing each other between variants.”) I suppose, since haters gonna hate, that one could see this COVID Despite Caution as proof of nihilistic concept, i.e. “See, it doesn’t matter! I’m just going to live my life!” One could also decide not to vote, while we’re at it. One would stand on problematically shaky ground in both cases, in my view, though my view is presupposed here given that this is technically my newsletter.
Reading something with the moral clarity of How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America (the aforementioned Kiese Laymon) in the midst of an infection from an outbreak so deeply indebted to lack of moral clarity would be ironic if I knew what irony meant. Instead it just feels like tea leaves rearranging themselves, page after page, less as tools for prophesy as tools for diagnosis. This is where we are, it says, over and over, this is where I am, Laymon says, over and over, and makes the overwhelming but nonetheless true-feeling claim that we can write ourselves into moral clarity regardless of our ability to live or will ourselves into it. I am trying to write, too. About Steve Reich, and Laymon has become, after reading this collection of essays, my shadow interlocutor. Can I live with the words on my own pages if I imagine them landing on this other mind and heart that I so admire from afar?
I have been thinking about thin lines since I thought of the cute title for this letter, how I can make light of thin blue, how tossed-off wisecracking can be its own blistering condemnation. But I also connect that to how Laymon writes himself into clarity but never absolution. That condemnation, that outrage, is a blade that is sharp on both sides.
It makes one wonder what one is doing, is all. It makes one wonder what other work there is to do in this world but Essay Work. Attempting. Here is what I am able to see at the beginning (I have a positive COVID test, there is a thin pink line indicating this, my neighbors have thin blue line flags, I am reading essays about race) and here is what I am able to see as syntax puts them into orbit (these things are intimately interrelated, you joke because without that shield reality is blinding, this is neither my first nor last sickness). It also makes one grateful to have a community of readers that seems to understand that essaying is worthwhile, that reads these attempts with generosity and grace, and that might even take this bait to get in touch during what C calls my Isolation Theater, since everyone in this house either gave it to me or has already gotten it from me. I suppose there are other contagion permutations possible, and the move from the binary this-or-that into the complexity of replication, whether of viruses or ideas, is blinding.
I look forward to seeing each other between variants,
Andrea
Very sorry to hear the positive test results, though I’ve never heard them better. What you say you see up close is clear, and what you say you see from orbit is wonderful and thought-provoking. Best wishes for a speedy trip to negativity.
Oh no! Sorry! I love this, though I hate the Covid part.