I started drafting this newsletter in April, had a series of pretty bad months, and now it’s somehow August. Reading my older words is a little surreal. I was writing during some ambient turbulence that…never really ended. I did buckle my seatbelt sometime in June and made some choices that helped me navigate the shaking. The turbulence is still there but it’s manageable. Well, the plane’s not crashed. Yet.
At the time of my original draft, I hadn’t left the house for a couple of weeks and had attended a string of virtual spaces that felt…really good?1 Poetry readings, literary festivals, discord birthday parties. A lot of discord birthday parties. So I’d been to quite a few places and nowhere at the same time. It made me think a lot about virtual events and poetry readings.
(Speaking of poetry readings, have I ever told you? I love poetry readings. A part of me was created at poetry readings. I think if you looked very closely at my very tissue under a microscope you’d see macrophages making riotous cellular composition.)
Anyway, when I was doing poorly in college, spanning the end of my 1st year to my 4th year,2 I took solace in public art spaces. Kaya Press readings at other books, Tuesday Night Cafe in the Union Center for the Arts courtyard, Sunday Jump at the Pilipino Workers Center…
I’d sit and listen to all sorts of things but it was the poetry that I loved. I learned to mmm and clap and whoop.3 I have a whole shelf of poetry that comes from this time; books and chapbooks and zines I purchased at these in-person events. A whole lot of paper.
I didn’t attend many poetry readings in 2020 or 2021.4 Occasionally, I’d drop into an instagram live or a zoom room when one of my favorite poets was performing (when jzl jmz is reading or spinning you drop everything and go listen to her because, duh).
This year I’ve been enjoying virtual poetry readings again. Like, snap snap snap enjoy. Like, wheeeew enjoy. There’s been some lovely experiences. Incredible poets and speakers. For once, I was present and engaged. I was, maybe, just a little bit, very active5 in the comments and the chat box. And in April I was trying to figure out why. Why in 2022? Why not in 2021?6
Well, in August I’ve finally returned with some answers. I’ll put it nicely, though others are right to be much harsher.7 It’s because I hadn’t fully let go of 2019. I thought that, even if it wasn’t going to be tidy or neat, there might be some middle ground between safe and unsafe. And I learned A.) there wasn’t and B.) even if there was, it wasn’t justifiable.
So many spaces have returned to some variation of in-person and no matter how much solace they brought me in 2017 and 2018 and 2019, it’s 2022. We’re still in a pandemic. Unless some miracle occurs (or the nasal vaccine pans out), in-person events are not going to be a thing for me.8 So, I started to pay attention to virtual spaces as actual spaces, not some inbetween bridge to a future in-person space.
It took a lot to come to that decision. When I’m with others though, there’s this perpetual tenor with virtual events. This exhaustion. Oh…it’s virtual. Oh…it’s on zoom. And there’s relief with the in-person events. Thank god, we’re back! Every time I have one of those conversations, I realize. Oh. We’re not on the same page at all. We’re not even reading the same book. Where do I even start?
I’m tired.
I’m staying home.9
But back to poetry readings. You know that moment at a reading where you can feel the space opening up? When someone communicates and you understand? I entered Bocas Lit Fest’s panel The Big Idea: A future we can live with right when Gillian Goddard was speaking and whew. WHEW. Her words were clarifying.
On governmental action and inaction during the pandemic…
“…Anybody with imagination would have been able to take their imagination, mix it with experience and realize there was something that needed to happen. But that imagination wasn’t there, in our governing bodies. And really and truly it’s in very short supply.”
On organizing during climate change…
“...there’s this sparkly thing that we keep thinking we can get to. And [pause] the only time is now. And so even in terms of thinking of the future we can live with, it’s actually, to me, based on a present that we can live with. And so that’s where it starts.”
Seriously, go listen to her.10
I’ve been thinking about Goddard’s question, “How do you mix imagination with experience, and do it skillfully?” And that word: imagination. The pandemic revealed a profound lack of imagination. Especially from those of us who organize in-person events. We spent 2020 and 2021 waiting around for 2019 to return.
Actually, let me just get rid of the we and say I. I wasted my time. I’ve been perpetually wasting my time. Now I’m here, in 2022, wanting to create imaginative digital spaces and realizing how utterly ill-prepared I am. How little imagination I have for the now.
There are plenty of people who do have that combination of imagination and experience,11 as Gillian Goddard vocalized. So I’m holding onto other people’s writing on COVID. On isolation. On imagination.
There’s Mia Mingus’ You Are Not Entitled To Our Deaths: COVID, Abled Supremacy & Interdependence.
I need you to care about disabled people’s lives more than you care about a vacation, a party or a celebration. A cornerstone of being disabled in an ableist world is isolation…You take the luxury of in-person connection for granted and feel entitled to it, even as thousands around you die and suffer, even as you may risk prolonging and worsening the pandemic.12
And there’s Rasha Abdulhadi’s Table of Contents For a Manual of Pandemic Response Protocols which—whew.
How to explain to everyone you know that things are Very Bad................
How to explain to everyone you know that things are Even Worse...........
How to explain to everyone you know that things are Much Worse Than We Can Imagine................
How to imagine beyond your imagination....................................................
What digital spaces are you cultivating? What are you imagining beyond your imagination?
Warmly,
Mya Worrell
they/them
(these were the three virtual events I attended btw)
More than Organs: A Queer Asian Celebration, AAWW’s celebration of Kay Ulanday Barrett’s second year book anniversary.
Kick Your Feet Up Reading Series, hosted by Shade Literary Arts and Luther X. Hughes.
Bocas Lit Fest, the Trinidad and Tobago literary festival (and a thank you Brandon O’Brien for tweeting about it!)
(most of college, really)
(I never learned to snap)
Enough people have talked about why they don’t like virtual events and I’m not going to add to it because, pettily, it irritates the fuck out of me.
(annoying)
(or prior to 2020 for that matter, but I’m getting ahead of myself)
Those who know me (and you know who you are) know I’m thin-skinned, even though I’d like to pretend I take criticism well.
(outside the events I’m obligated to run for my IRL current job)
There’s nuance I’ve abandoned in these newsletters simply because I’m already, always, constantly thinking about the yes and—yes and—yes and—YES I realize there’s nuance to physical vs virtual. YES there’s nuance to why folks want to return to physical events. NO I’m not holding that space for them right now. I can’t think of a single institutions that hasn’t returned to some semblance of ‘normalcy’ anyway.
I’m still thinking through Goddard’s discussion of climate change. I was reading a recent interview with Mike Davis in the LA Times that resonated as well. Even Mia Mingus’ article, who I later quote, includes the header image of a splintering iceberg. COVID and climate change go hand in hand. Just as many activities were made unthinkable in 2020 (all of which have ‘returned’ in 2022) there is a lot that must once again become unthinkable in 2023, 2024, 2025 and onwards. Flying, for example. Maybe I’ll write messily on this later.
(some of you may be reading this newsletter)
If you want to shift your own behavior to better protect the frontline workers and immunocompromised people impacted by your decisions, go ahead and read Still In It: An Invitation to My Fellow Abled Kin, written in response to Mia Mingus’ essay, which lists some ways you can alter your own routines. It’s a start.