So much bread

In the initial weeks of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, I’ve seen a lot of performing quarantine on social media. A LOT. And a few years ago, somewhere around Charlottesville, I had decided facebook was too much for me and promptly unfollowed any actual person, my feed becoming almost entirely food or animals or theatres. Only a couple people are on my feed now, so I can’t even imagine the level it’s gotten to with everyone being online now, and those that are subjected to hundreds of people’s opinions and performances during this time. I’m already dealing with growing levels of annoyance with everyone’s performing of baking bread.

Some ways of performing quarantine are positive, but I’m personally alarmed at the level of plucky, let’s pick it up and keep going attitude some people seem to have. I’ve seen a lot of what seems like new business ventures, with others shifting their established businesses online, and there is something really impressively depressing about America’s addiction to the grind. Even in a pandemic, some people are so accustomed to constantly doing that for many there wasn’t even a pause.

Of course I’m making generalizations. There are others who, like me, tell people to be easy on themselves and we are all in uncharted territory, it’s ok to behave as such. Many more who are just trying to keep going as best they can, and I think all our reactions contain some combo of the three. But it seemed as though before we, as a society, mourned our lives changing, so many of us sped up as if to pretend there wasn’t anything to mourn at all.

In terms of performed citizenry, one activism campaign that I’ve been following is Never Again Action, a group of Jewish anti-ICE activists protesting the concentration camps in our country. Their tactics before the pandemic were pretty typical to civil disobedience—blocking traffic, offices, etc. One member was runover by ICE during a protest. So now, they can’t take their activism to the streets as they always have. How do they perform it?

For the last several weeks, they’ve been organizing car protests, surrounding ICE facilities in their vehicles, protest signs taped to the sides of their cars, demanding all people trapped inside be released. Their shift was near-immediate, but there is an urgency there—of course they have to keep going just as strongly! Most of us don’t.

I’m trying to find balance but the performances I’ve seen from many of my peers has made me feel like pushing back against it. Meme culture has been a saving grace—performing emotions via images that are not necessarily personal, but very relatable is somehow more palatable to me. Thanks Henry for the reminder!

The theatres that I follow that have done really fun things, like living room zooms of classic works, however, have been really inspiring. I think for me, there is little value to individuals performance of quarantine. That’s where I get glazed over. But in terms of how arts organizations, human rights organizations, and other move their way forward, that’s where I’m looking. I’ve been heartened to see many artists providing free events online. That’s the encouragement I need—acknowledgement that things are different right now, not trying to keep them the same.