Matthew Gallaway

The Un-Repair Shop (Week Fifty)

This week, the fiftieth of the lockdown, Stephen and I started watching a British show called The Repair Shop. The premise is that people bring broken possessions -- usually family heirlooms, not particularly valuable in 'the market' but with great emotional attachment -- to The Repair Shop, a barn in the English countryside staffed by an array of expert craftspeople who repair the item in question, usually with astounding feats of detail and intricacy. Sometimes I get a little frustrated watching The Repair Shop, though, when someone brings in what I consider to be a hideous item, stuffy and Victorian, like a ceramic clock that was recently featured, covered with pastel flowers with broken petals. I think to myself, it's not worth the repair, just get rid of it!

I was joking about this idea with some friends (via text) and we concocted a concept for a new show called The Un-Repair Shop, where people bring in old items and the expert says [in a British accent, of course], 'No, sorry, not worth it,' before smashing it with a hammer and releasing the person from the often-onerous ties of ownership. It's a stupid idea, but we thought it was funny for a few minutes.  

It was an idea that returned me, however, when I went to the park and was thinking about how the United States passed 500,000 COVID-19 deaths this week. I was listening to the most recent episode of Death Panel about the 'normalization' of death that is increasingly defining this phase of the pandemic: where, for example, our new president marked this milestone with a candlelight ceremony that looked like a set from The Bachelor and the New York Times represented (abstracted) these deaths with a chart filled with dots; where there's a creeping consensus that most of these deaths were (are) somehow expected and are #actually caused by advanced age or underlying comorbidities of the sort (diabetes, obesity, poverty) that we often use to blame the victim; where there's a lot of discussion about how the virus is becoming the 'new flu,' as if the flu weren't one of the major causes of death in the world, particularly for those who can't afford to take time off of work or see a doctor; where the media has focused a disproportionate amount of its attention on the admittedly disturbing, alienating conditions of lockdown for people working from home who must deal with no childcare, increasingly exploitive employers, cancelled vacations, etc. while downplaying the even-more disturbing conditions forcing lower-income people to leave their homes to go to generally speaking the shittiest jobs imaginable and literally dying as a result; where there's been almost no talk by anyone in a position of power to, for example, shut down everything for a few months (with pay) so that THE GOVERNMENT (and not your local drug store chain) can vaccinate as many people as possible to end this cycle, much less to fundamentally address the structural inequities of a system that at this point is ritualistically sacrificing the poor; where we can't even count on the Democratic party to rally behind the cancellation of a non-trivial sum of student debt or a minimum wage of $15/hour, which doesn't make the prospects of M4A or say, DC statehood seem too promising; where, as I saw someone on Twitter point out, we're only two months in and all we hear are apologies for what can't be done.  

And as I considered all of this, it occurred to me that we don't need to create The Un-Repair Shop, because we're already living it. The metaphor isn't perfect, but the people of the United States are the ones being brought into the government with the hope of repair, and the experts are responding with a level of disdain that might be farcical if it weren't so cruel. 

Or maybe the people will bring the government in for repair and the show-runners will bring a hammer to it, relinquishing us from the burdens of this antiquated form of ownership. 

 

The Renewed Case for Queer Futurism (Week Forty-Nine)

This week, the 49th of the lockdown, one of our orchids bloomed, which was a welcome respite amid all the snow and ice and news about the ongoing failures of the neoliberal state in which we have been condemned to exist. 

Has anyone else been watching It's a Sin, a mini-series now airing on HBO? It's getting a lot of critical acclaim for its depiction of a group of young friends in London during the 1980s as they confront AIDS. There are things to like about the show: its unapologetic depiction/celebration of gay sex is always a welcome antidote to the paucity of such depictions/celebrations in all forms of entertainment these days, and the young cast is fun to watch as they move through cycles of joy, confusion, fear, and grief. I would recommend the show to anyone who's unfamiliar with the basic story of how AIDS swept through the 1980s and 1990s and eviscerated an entire generation of -- at least in the West -- gay men, leaving deep scars on society that are barely acknowledged or discussed. I would also recommend it to those who are familiar with the history, but with several caveats. 

First, there is the sex (and the men having it): is it possible that London in the 1980s did not have any gay men who weighed more than 135 pounds? It seems unlikely to me. Gay directors: please remember what it feels like to be inundated with images of straight people having sex and note that it's really not that much better to be inundated with images of skinny white boys having sex. It's 2021: MIX IT UP. Second, and more importantly, the emotional impact of the show -- despite confronting a most harrowing episode of history -- feels limited by its adherence to an era whose basic, historical truths, when presented in a fictional context, make it very difficult to offer a corresponding sense of fictional redemption. Characters become ciphers as they are rushed through the stages of AIDS as it unfolded in the 1980s: pre-AIDS partying/1970s nostalgia, disbelief, denial, acceptance (symptoms), political awakening, death or not death. Because I'm aware of the actual history, I don't feel like I'm watching people; instead, I'm watching a lottery in which the question is which of the gay characters are going to die. The show fails capture the true emotional weight of the actual death lottery that occurred because we don't know much about the inner lives of these characters, whose role is to represent the past more than to occupy it. So when the moment of fictional redemption arrives, it ironically enough feels trite, detached from the historical reality. 

I believe that one solution to this dilemma (of representing AIDS in fictional works that are both historically accurate and emotionally resonant) is queer futurism (which I've written about before). The creators of It's a Sin would have been well-served to watch and learn from the television show Pose, which used queer futurism to transcend the AIDS narrative. As with It's a Sin, the show depicts AIDS in ways that are historically accurate/expected -- symptoms, fear, denial, hospital scenes, funerals, political activism -- but also has its characters move through landscapes that are exaggerated or fantastical, either in glamorous Harlem ball scenes or in musical dream sequences (which is one of an unlimited number of option: I'm not saying every show needs a musical interlude, of course.) These scenes, which blur the lines between (fictional) life and death bind us to the characters (even, or especially, the ones who are dying) while offering us a sense of hope (and grief) that feels artistically satisfying in ways that so often are lacking in works of art that try to cleave too closely to a reality that for all intents and purposes is emotionally incomprehensible. Queer futurism offers us a way of acknowledging the horrors of the past without being constrained by these same horrors, which in addition to being artistically satisfying is politically potent at a time when our enemies are still trying to oppress us, and when too many works of art -- even when made with the opposite intention -- serve to unconsciously reinforce messages of futility and disempowerment. 

There is a path in Washington Heights, not far from where we live, that runs through the woods. It feels like you could be anywhere but New York City. 

If you take the path to the end, you learn that it is a temporary illusion. It opens up to a view of the city, which seems that much more harrowing and beautiful after being forgotten for a few minutes.  

 

 

Snow (Week Forty-Eight)

The forecast of snow always arrives with dread: I worry about the plants in the garden, I worry about shoveling the sidewalk in front of our house (and the shame of doing it later than our neighbors), I worry about the likelihood that the Department of Sanitation, whose primary purpose during a snowstorm is to clear the roads for the minority of people who own cars instead of the majority who use sidewalks, will not pick up the trash and recycling for several weeks or longer, leaving narrow pathways between the leaning banks of garbage bags and the buildings, pathways on which it would be impossible to pass someone in a socially distant manner. This year, I worry about the disruption to my schedule of working and not-working, a schedule that is arbitrary -- there's no reason to do anything at a particular time within any twenty-four hour period -- but whose routine has become a source of comfort, and the potential disruption a source of concern.   

But after the snow arrives and I've shoveled and salted the sidewalk and rearranged the garbage bags and shaken the branches of our most fragile trees, I try to go out where I can see it with new eyes. 

And as I walk along Riverside Drive, a kind of gratitude gradually replaces my dread. The snow may be disruptive but it is beautiful. This insight is not new, but is one that needs to be re-experienced to be re-understood. 

The river has a different personality in the snow, the small waves and ripples spellbound under a blanket of mist. 

The glow of a lamplight cuts through the black and white. 

In the snow, the bridge seems less real than symbolic, a reminder that we are here but could be somewhere else. 

Water Dripping from the Trees (Week Forty-Seven)

After the snow, everyone was curious but also a bit trepidatious. 

As usual, Clio -- the youngest -- was the most intrepid. 

But she wasn't as exuberant as many of the dogs who were dominating the online snow coverage. 

"Do I look like a dog?" -- Elektra, when I first asked her if she wanted to go out in the snow. 

She was happy, though, to join me in a Feldenkrais exercise. This week I wrote and recorded a new song, which you can hear below. One thing I've noticed about songwriting -- and which is similar to Feldenkrais -- is that when you try something new (or break a habit), it often feels very radical or outlandish when in reality it's actually a pretty minor shift. For example, I realized this week that I have a tendency while walking and sitting to needlessly and rigidly point my feet directly in front of me, instead of letting my feet angle off to the side, as you learn to do when you're lying on your back and letting your body relax, a home position for most Feldenkrais exercises. This habit, I believe, has led me to put undue pressure on the tendons in my groin, which must be held rigid to keep my feet in this straightforward alignment, and is the reason why -- in addition to running 2000 miles last year -- I've been dealing with some minor but ongoing pain in my groin. When I made this discovery and modified my posture, I felt completely duck-footed and was sure that I must look like Charlie Chaplin, but when I examined my feet, they were only slightly angled, a difference that I'm sure would not have been remarkable even to a careful observer. Yet after a few days of paying attention to this shift, I noticed that my groin was feeling a little better. It made me wonder about other habits in my life, and the radical-seeming but actually-slight changes I might make in order to be more comfortable. I also made some similar discoveries in the process of recording this song, mostly related to different effects and synthesizers, and perhaps just the overall tempo, which seemed kind of radical at the time but on subsequent listening didn't seem like too much of a break from other songs I've written. Still, I like to think it's an improvement, although songwriting is obviously a lot more subjective than body work. (OR IS IT.)

LINK. 

Later, I went down to the river, where the mountains of snow reminded me of the skating-rink parking lots I used to see as a kid, where along with the actual snow they dumped the Zamboni snow. 

Everything was very bright, except for the trash can. 

When I listened carefully, I could hear the drips of melting snow. 

The trees, with no bad habits to break, stretched effortlessly into the blue sky.