017: Misease [and Mystery Lights]

So I ended the last post with what I thought was a clever ending to a random Monday morning existential crisis blog, asking the world “what now?”

Well, turns out the universe was like, “How about this, dumbass.”

Let us all pretend the last 9 weeks have been filled with catching up on New Yorker articles, and not gorging on elemental comfort foods like Love and Hip Hop. The sad boys of the 60s played Dylan when pondering about Vietnam, now the depressed and downtrodden turn to Tiger King to pass the moments until the unavoidable. 

36 million are out of work right now. The country is in that weird spot when you accidentally miss your gear downshifting too fast and it makes that weird fucking noise that scares the shit out of you. We’re living in that weird screeching noise right now, and we don’t know if we fucked the transmission or not yet.

I literally don’t know what to say about living in the worldwide epicenter of a pandemic, a life event that will shape generations. I could speak about the horrors of waking up every morning, walking to the kitchen to make my coffee and hearing nothing but sirens. No construction noises, no homeless yelling, none of the stereotypical New York Lifescapes that make up our soundtrack pretty much 24/7. Instead it’s replaced by Ambulances. And then I open the New York Times to see the numbers reaching a new world wide height of death. Every morning.

I could talk about the internal struggle to remain productive, when we as a society are dealing with utter chaos and heartbreak every moment. I could speak about the blessing of remaining healthy, and the survivors guilt of not suffering as much as some of my friends. I could talk about the shell shock of having every business plan and idea I have or had or goal or plan for 2020 just completely go up in smoke. 

I could talk about the fury I feel inside about this Administration’s handling of the entire process, how any functional manager in a leadership position could have probably done a better job. I could talk about my disappointment in the Americans who chose that Administration out of some child like tantrum towards the so called establishment. 

But I have no cleverness left. I don’t have the energy to focus on something to wax poetic about. I’m exhausted. As we all are. And we have such a long way to go. And that starts soon, because We’re Reopening. Who knows if that’s a good idea, I make no claim of authority on the matter. I made it a personal mission, to not take anyone’s opinions too seriously on this whole ordeal, if that person didn’t know the difference between an epidemic and a pandemic prior to this year. I’m one of those folks who wouldn’t have given you the right answer if you Phone A Friend’d me with that inquiry last year, so I’ll mostly defer to the smarter people, in this time when everyone seemingly became an epidemiologist during Spring Break.

Collectively we strive for what was before, and we are meandering around coming to grips with the reality, that what was once, shall never be again. Call it the 2010s, call it the 9/11 generation, or wait 20 years and wait for VH1 to deem it a proper name, the yesterday of our lives have ended. The purgatory of now is our home until we each start our new journey. Societally we will come to terms with the new Life, and eventually have the same emotions as the previous times. We will laugh, we will love, we will cry, we will endure until we all go dark. A noble goal is the attempt to be better humans, better friends, better lovers. We can build, rebuild, and create new and wonderful life paths. It is our destiny. It is our charge. It is seemingly all that is left.

An unknown Patti Smith once asked an equally obscure Robert Mapplethorpe, “What will become of the world when there is no trace of you?” Mapplethorpe replied, “I think they’ll be some trace.”, a hint at his confidence that his imagery would live past his body. 

The days of the past are no longer, but the images are still here, and will survive as long as we value them. Here’s my images of the band The Mystery Lights. Images made March 9th, the last show I captured before the world closed. My last images of yesterday.