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June
The June quilt block is a relatively modern pattern. It is designed to look like the budding fruit surrounded by the leaves of a plant. It represents the middle of the year- a time for change and growth.
Lucy Weaver
Idea Haver
I asked Lucy to have their ideas included in this project because I think they have a skill of speaking frankly and with great honesty. I wanted to make sure to publish and share their thoughts because I think that I and many other people benefit from hearing much of what is discussed below. In our interview we talked about cynicism, gender, and the importance of taking good advice.
Alright. Now that we’re recording I’m going to have you tell me your name, your pronouns, and why you thing I asked you to be here today.
My name is Luke Weaver. My pronouns are they/them. I guess cause we had talked about it earlier and I just really wanted to learn some quilt making stuff. And I love to sit six feet apart.
Well I asked you to be here because I think you have interesting thigs to say and I think that people who don’t have the benefit of seeing you face to face could hear some of the. So I’m going to go ahead and upload your thoughts to the internet and whoever wants to hear them will be able to.
Cool. Direct to download my thoughts.
Yes.
I’m reading ‘Just Kids’ by Patti Smith right now. She’s always talking about how nimble Robert Mapplethorpe’s fingers were. Which I find to be incredibly endearing. That’s a very nice thing to say about someone’s fingers.
Yeah it’s something you would only notice sometimes. If you knew someone.
Yeah. It’s a really beautiful book. Honestly It’s a little history book like. You can tell she’s remembering things. She wrote it several years after he died which was in the 80’s I guess. He died from AIDS. But you can tell she’s measuring dates based on events. She’ll be like ‘this was when there was a man on the moon. Robert was very sick. When John Coltrane died we were doing this’. It’ very interesting actually to see her kind of measure that way. She does a lot of name checking as well. She lived in the Chelsea Hotel. She talks about the first time she met Allen Ginsberg. He offered to buy her a sandwich because she didn’t have enough money for it. They sat down and were halfway through a conversation and he’s like ‘are you a girl? I’m so sorry I mistook you for an incredibly pretty boy’. It’s really interesting to hear. Because of Patti Smith’s associations I’ve always regarded her as fairly woke to some degree.
IT’S INTERESTING TO HEAR HER TALK ABOUT HER LEARNING WHAT THE WORD ‘ANDROGYNOUS’ MEANS. SHE HAS ALWAYS ASSUMED IT MEANT ‘HALF UGLY’. SHE CUTS HER HAIR TO ‘MICK JAGGER LENGTH’ AND FINDS OUT THAT ALL OF A SUDDEN PEOPLE GIVE A SHIT ABOUT HER. WHICH IS FASCINATING.
It’s really interesting. She talks a lot about how Robert Mapplethorpe was such an ‘artist’. And the ‘artist’s calling’. They truly felt that they were called. Which I don’t know.
There’s some ego in there.
There’s definitely some ego in there. There’s also definitely some religious connotations to that shit too.
Have you been exploring your own religious beliefs recently?
I think I have for a while now. I realized the other day- we were going around the room and asking blank to everyone ‘do you believe in God?’ Maybe even à la- what’s the Columbine shooter? Not to that intensity. But we were going around and I realized I think I’d have to say ‘yes’. Which is odd seeing as I strongly identified as an atheist for a long time and then went back to agnosticism and now I’m just crawling back.
What would that look like to you?
I don’t know. I’m neither religious nor spiritual but I do believe in God. Which puts me in a kind of complicated little place I think.
Like a sentient thing? Or a universe type thing?
I don’t know. I’m not really compelled by either of those. I’m not quite as brave to do what [our friend] Bryn does where like ‘you are God. You control those things’. But I am a fatalist, so I do have to believe in some sort of predetermined thing. I would say right now it’s a remnant of me processing a lot of Catholic guilt still. At the same time wanting to not be such a bitter person.
I WANT TO HAVE SOME FAITH. IN SOMETHING. I DON’T KNOW. I THINK I BECAME CYNICAL AT MUCH TOO YOUNG OF AN AGE. I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE SOME SORT OF APPRECIATION FOR THE WORLD AGAIN.
Do you think atheism precludes appreciating things in that way?
No but it’s an intensely secular way of looking at the world. And when I say ‘secular’ I mean ‘human-first’. If you look at ‘human-first’ the world becomes an increasingly selfish and stupid place to be. It’s unfortunate. I think part of this virus thing revealed to me that humans just have a real inclination for stupidity and selfishness. We’re damn good at it. But I really am trying very hard to get rid of what I view as years and years of bitterness. I have been thinking a lot in the last couple days about returning to the ideas of Accelerationists. I’m not super happy about it. But I think this virus does a really interesting thing of removing a shroud. It shows where a lot of flaws are. But I guess people were saying the same thing about the 2008 recession as well. I think it shows a lot of problems.
It does. And there are a lot of problems. And unfortunately now we can’t vote and address those things.
That’s true. I early voted.
I think being inside is going to make people think about those things more.
Yeah. I think so too. And also just giving people some real quick priorities about how people live their lives.
Are you happy so far with the life you’re stuck quarantining in?
Yeah. I’m lucky that I have a long history of being able to self-isolate. This is sort of in my pocket. I am pretty capable of being a lonely person.
Do you think that’s a good thing though?
No but I think it’s a skill I’ve developed nonetheless. It’s honestly a little bit of schadenfreude selfishness to see other people lose the stability and have to figure out how to cope with being with themselves all the time. There’s a small bit of me that’s like ‘y’all motherfuckers are going to learn some things. This is good’. I feel in these times I resort to content consumption for the most part. When I was living by myself in Indiana I would watch so many movies. There’s something for me where passing time by consuming what I consider to be meaningful content or really meaningful art just does it for me. That’s my favorite way to hunker through personal isolation or collapse.
Is it kind of receiving information from these other people and sources?
Totally. And it’s also that movies in particular I really got into in London because it would take two hours of my day out of my hands. That’s an important thing. When you don’t know how to pass time because you’re spending so much of it by yourself it’s nice to have things to just write off two hours for.
That’s very true.
It’s a very worthwhile way to write off two hours in my mind. I feel like I gain a lot from it.
Do you just sit and watch or do you do things while you watch?
I sit and watch. I guess it sort of depends on the movie. But I just sit and watch.
Let the audio recording note that [their cat] Frank is sitting upon as many of the quilting squares as he can.
Are you feeling good about the lack of external perception in this time?
I am. Honestly it’s nice.
BEING PERCEIVED IS A VERY STRESSFUL THING. NOT BEING PERCEIVED IS SIGNIFICANTLY LESS STRESSFUL. I WAS TALKING ABOUT THAT THE OTHER DAY. EVEN THE IDEA THAT, LET’S ASSUME I CAN GET SOME PART TIME WORK AND GO BACK TO OUR JOB, ALL OF A SUDDEN I DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THE PEOPLE WHO COME IN TO OUR JOB SEEING OR CARING ABOUT HOW I DRESS OR WHAT I DO OR HOW I PRESENT MYSELF.
[students will not be allowed back in to our workplace because of COVID 19. Only our coworkers will be there] For me, right now, if members are there wearing a dress into work is not something I feel comfortable doing. Honestly it would just be a hassle for me. It would be a huge fucking hassle. But combatting our coworkers is something I’m totally capable of doing.
Why is that?
BECAUSE I CAN TELL THEM CONFIDENTLY TO FUCK OFF AND THAT I’M AN INDIVIDUAL AND I CAN DO WHAT I WANT. I’M GOOD AT WHAT I DO AND IT DOESN’T MATTER. I CAN PRETTY CONFIDENTLY TELL SOMEONE I KNOW THAT THEIR OPINION DOESN’T MATTER TO ME. BUT NOT A STRANGER. STRANGERS OPINIONS MATTER SO MUCH.
It’s funny how that happens.
I know. I think it’s partially also just the way people who know me personally would not be surprised to be told to fuck off my me. I’ve cultivated some sense of abrasive individuality. I want to be myself.
I feel like for you your individuality can be really personal. Some people are loud about it. Some people put it in your face and if they get a look that’s all they need to go off. Whereas for you I don’t think that’s the case at all.
No I have to actually verbally say things to people a lot of the time. It has been interesting thinking about how if we’re all going to die, honestly right now might be the ideal time to come out to my extended family because there’s so much going on in the news that they can’t possibly give a shit about it. And God forbid I die being perceived as the wrong gender. I’m not going to die as a man. I don’t know.
I’VE ALWAYS HAD A REAL FEAR OF REALLY PUBLIC OR SOCIAL MEDIA INDUCED COMING-OUT POSTS AND THOSE SORTS OF THINGS. I’VE ALWAYS FOUND THAT TO BE TERRIFYING. I DON’T KNOW WHY. I THINK THAT REPRESENTS SUCH A SUDDEN SHIFT FOR A LOT OF PEOPLE. THIS HAS NOT BEEN A SUDDEN SHIFT FOR ME. I DIDN’T JUST WAKE UP ONE DAY AND WAS LIKE ‘TURNS OUT I DECIDED TO SHIFT MY ENTIRE IDENTITY. I THINK DOING IT AS QUICKLY AS THAT IS NOT SUPER INTERESTING TO ME. AT THE SAME TIME IT SURE IS EFFECTIVE. IT SURE IS EASIER THAN HAVING TO EXPLAIN TO A BUNCH OF PEOPLE IN A BUNCH SEPARATE CONVERSATIONS.
Do you think that’s something you would consider doing?
Maybe eventually. It’ll get to a point where I’m going to really want that. But right now I’m pretty content. I’m not going to class or anything. My circle of people around me is pretty small and they’re all very very understanding. So I’m not too concerned about it. But I think I will eventually.
-
Work is sort of a divine thing to me in a lot of ways.
You have thoughts about work.
I have a lot of thoughts about work. Work is play baby. Work has been some sort of saving grace to me in a lot of ways. In the same way that I like to watch movies to spend two hours not in my head, when I’m isolated work is a way of also stepping back and clarifying things for me. It’s weird because I’ve fallen in and out of different types of work. There’s a really good breakdown of work where you look at it as ‘self-conscious work’ or ‘un-self-conscious work’. Self-conscious work is where you are aware that you are the one making it and you will be held accountable for that. So like anything in a creative field is that for the most part. That work requires a sort of intellectual energy that I honestly don’t know it I’m even into anymore. But I’ve spent a lot of time reading books and pretending to be smart or whatever. I feel like I’m sort of stuck in there. Then there’s truly un-self-conscious work. This is un-self-conscious work right now, doing this stitch. I don’t have to wonder about what my self means while I’m doing this. I’m just making the stitch. I’m definitely coming out of a long phase of being Marxist. I still hold on to insurrectionary ideas of what work should be. But I’m definitely still squarely anti-capitalist. The unfairness of capitalism does not bode well with me. I think a lot of that has manifested in a sort of resentment towards work that isn’t self-defined. I don’t like jobs. But I definitely love working. Having jobs sucks. I don’t really appreciate that. I don’t have a five-year plan or anything. I don’t look at my life as having this linear story arc. Many people would refer to that as ‘laziness’ or whatever else you want to call it. But I’m just not really into the ‘hustle’ or the bustle of things anymore. I think my idea job would be some form of work you would give to someone who needs rehabilitation where they’re just doing somewhat non-cognizant tasks for a long period of time. People love to grow and maintain systems. Those systems do not have to be complicated at all. The system can be a plant. You water it every day. I’ve opened myself up to a pretty broad idea of what work is in that I consider things like watching movies to sometimes be part of the work. I am doing work right now. I’m progressing.
I love to hear you say some of that. What you said about a five-year plan and laziness- I was definitely on that. I guess I’m still in my ‘capstone semester’ and we had to do this project were we make five-year plans and then a ten-year plan. And I felt like during the critique everyone said ‘at this year mark I’m going to work at this company. At this year mark I’m going to own a house. This is where I’m gonna have a kid. Here’s where I’m gonna make this much money’. And I was like, ‘dude I can not relate to even wanting any of that’.
No I also don’t relate to that. And this is where I’m talking about the schadenfreude of feelings I’m getting out of this. Watching everyone be thrust into the instability I spend most of my everyday life in has been kind of sweet. In a very vengeful way. I’m not proud of that. But I view the world as a pretty unstable place. It’s just kind of how my life has been. This week I’m fine. But I truly do not know if next week will be unbearable for me based on my mental health and a whole slew of issues. I make do. There is something about watching the rest of the world become as unstable that feels good.
I DO VIEW A LOT OF THE IDEAS OF HAVING FIVE-YEAR PLANS AS A FAÇADE. IT’S A STORY-TELLING DEVICE. IT’S A WAY SOMEONE COPES WITH A TIME PROBLEM, OR WITH THE FACT THAT THE FUTURE IS NOT STABLE. THEY TELL THEMSELVES IT IS. THEN THEY MAKE UP A WHOLE STORY TO GO ALONG WITH IT WHERE THEY ARE THE MAIN CHARACTER AND THERE’S A PLOT AND THEY CAN KNOW THAT THERE WILL BE A RISE AND FALL OF ACTION. I JUST DON’T REALLY BUY INTO THAT SHIT.
I find it to be untrue and perhaps even a way, for me, of leading yourself to disappointment. When I was buying into that shit I was significantly more unhappy. I was more disappointed in myself than before.
Definitely. I feel like this ‘ask to plan’ came in a point of my life where I did have a plan like six months ago. I knew when I was going to graduate. I did have an idea of how much money I wanted to make. I knew where I was gonna live. I knew who I was going to be engaged to. I knew when I was gonna do all these things. And then all of a sudden my plan fell through. And it wasn’t going to happen. I realized that the amount of money I was going to make and the place I was going to live- I didn’t care about those anymore either.
Totally. Life happens to people. It just unfolds. I remember [our friend] Jasper telling me about that class, where a description of it was them trying to help you avoid having a midlife crisis. I think having a plan is a surefire way to set yourself up for a crisis. It’s going to go wrong. To even loop further around in the conversation I have consistent faith in the unchanging unflinchingness of the universe. That is a thing that I have strong faith in. I don’t have faith in myself to carry out plans. I have faith in the universe to just kind of do its things. To unfold.
I think making a plan can actually be what leads to your midlife crisis. I was actually talking to my therapist about that. Some of the people she sees are older. Maybe in their 40’s or 50’s and maybe they come to her because they’re having a midlife crisis. They’re unhappy. They don’t know what’s going on and they’re upset all the time. It’s because their plan has not changed but the person who they are has changed. They no longer actually care about all these goals that they set when they were 25 and deciding what their future would look like. They don’t understand how they could be so unhappy with these plans that they made when they were an entirely different person.
Totally. To tell yourself a story over and over again is to kind of trap yourself in that. My favorite thing David Lynch said is ‘you’re a dreamer who dreams a dream and lives inside a dream’. He said that about making movies but it’s also a pretty vague, dumb, open notion about anything in life. You’re making this shit up. It’s your read. You have to be able to react to how you feel at a moment. I don’t have a lot of loyalty to my past self in any way. I don’t treasure anything they had to say about anything. It also kind of struck me what you were saying there about how you realized that the money and where you were living wasn’t what you really cared about. I’ve had that realization. Having meaningful relationships is way more meaningful to me than having meaningful work. Even though in a selfish way I need the work to function. Because then who would I share that with? I don’t know. That has made me pretty cynical towards a lot of capitalistic ‘hustle’ ideals. I really don’t understand ‘the hustle’. I’m someone who does a ton of work. I’m constantly working on projects whether I want to or not. I can’t stop. I’m always working on a thing but it’s never this grand hustle to make a bunch of money or find my calling. Maybe two years ago I had a better idea of what I thought I wanted. But it gets increasingly foggy. My idea of what I want for a calling has gotten farther away from me than it has closer. Which is a little bit concerning.
Do you ever worry that this way of looking at it just lends itself to instability?
Yes. All the time. It’s something that I can’t tell if it’s a situation I’ve put myself in through spending years thinking about the world this way or if the world is more accurately like this. There are some kind of bullshit studies that claim that people who suffer from depression actually are much more capable of making realistic decision. I don’t really buy into a lot of those studies. I think they’re not really compelling from a standpoint of contemporary science. But there is a lot of validity in seeing the world as an unstable and fractured place that I think, if nothing else, is how I live. I can change that. It’ll take me a couple years, but at this point, I’m just gonna roll with it for a while and see where I end up. God forbid another pandemic I probably have at least another 30 years on the earth. Maybe. Not to really overshare but there was a long time when I really didn’t think I was going to be this old. I really didn’t think I was going to make it this long. When all of a sudden I realized that I was 21, and that I had survived this long, I was like ‘fuck I didn’t make any plans’. I didn’t think about life like this. That life was going to be a thing that would keep happening to me. When decided that life would be a thins that should continue happen to me I was like ‘oh shit I didn’t have any plans for this at all. I am full winging this’. I think I’m still kind of in the aftermath of those realizations in a lot of ways. But I’m working with it. I think there’s a lot of validity to it. I think I could change all these views and decided to put a lot of work into it and maybe take a year out of my life and change. I see a lot of validity to it still honestly. That’s something I’m adjusting to all the time. Trying to extend even just my to-do-list from being a day long to a week long. It’s not that currently I have any question if whether or not I’m going to make it through the week. But my brain just does not work like that. I am used to fucking putting my head down and making it through the day. Now all of a sudden I find that I’m high-functioning enough that I can begin doing much larger things.
I THOUGHT THINGS WERE GOING TO BE EASIER WHEN I GOT TO THIS POINT. I’M NOT SURPRISED THAT THEY’RE NOT. I’M UNSURPRISED. AT THE SAME TIME, I’VE HAD AN UNBELIEVABLY PRIVILEGED AND SAFE LIFE. I THINK IF THIS IS MY PRICE TO PAY FOR WHAT I GOT OUT OF THE LOTTERY OF LIFE THEN IT WAS MORE THAN FAIR.
That’s not a great way to look at it.
Yeah. True. As I am even talking about believing in God and shit, I don’t really buy into the original sin sort of shit. As if I’m guilty and being punished. That’s just an unproductive way to live. That is one of the things that I definitely held on to for a long time and it just had to be shrugged off.
In what way were you holding on to it?
I think in being raised Catholic I thought for a long time that my impulses were not to be trusted. They were evil or maligned. They were selfish. And then basically I became a totally debauched, punk teenager who didn’t give a fuck about anything and was using a ton of drugs and was doing whatever I wanted. Not realizing that the entire time I was doing that I was still feeling really really bad about it. I was still feeling guilty. I eventually lost that. I think those things I was actually feeling guilty about for a reason. But my brain was associating it with ‘you are a bad person’. Not ‘you have bad behaviors’.
That essentialism will get you.
That shit will cut you down. If you think that you are the sum of your parts you’re fucked. That is the end. There is no way to think your way out of that.
So since you’ve thought about that, if you’re not the sum of your parts then what are you?
That’s where it gets tricky. I think I switch back and forth from a pretty Judith Butler way of looking at the world as performance and perception as in you’re just the amalgamation of other peoples’ ideas of you- or you have to get into this weird territory of dealing with souls and true self. What is actually in there?
That’s something that I’ve actually had brought up tangentially in other interviews. People’s experiences and forgiveness. It’s a big cultural thing right now. Can people redeem themselves and still contribute to the world?
That’s an interesting one. If you believe in the perception thing, then no. You can’t. What you’re perceived as is who you are. You’re the amalgamation of other people’s ideas. You’re kind of fucked at that point. You have to change people’s minds, which would probably be worth doing in that situation. Or there is definitely some worthwhileness in believing in the sacredness of a human soul.
HUMANS ARE WORTH SOMETHING. I’M ENOUGH OF A CYNICAL NIHILIST THAT ANY SORT OF HUMANIST TALKING POINTS JUST MAKE MY EYES GLAZE OVER. I TELL THEM THEY’RE FULL OF SHIT. BUT THEY’RE PROBABLY RIGHT. I JUST WOULD PREFER THAT THEY USE DIFFERENT WORDS THAT ARE LESS FLOWERY. THEY HAVE TO USE COOLER WORDS TO TALK ABOUT THAT SHIT.
I wanted to smoke cigarettes and read Camus. I wanted people who died tragically to tell me how to live my life. It was very lame to conceive that people who went to the Baptist church might have a better way of living their life than I do. I would use my unhappiness as a point of pride. As a badge. ‘I’m unhappy so I must know more about what’s going on’. Which I think, in today’s age of everyone being an expert on everything, unhappiness is a really interesting gauge that people use online all the time to show that they know more about something. How pissed off someone can be online directly relates to how much they know. You never hear someone correcting someone on some wokeness shit because they know less. It’s like ‘how could you be so ignorant’.
My name is Luke Weaver. My pronouns are they/them. I guess cause we had talked about it earlier and I just really wanted to learn some quilt making stuff. And I love to sit six feet apart.
Well I asked you to be here because I think you have interesting thigs to say and I think that people who don’t have the benefit of seeing you face to face could hear some of the. So I’m going to go ahead and upload your thoughts to the internet and whoever wants to hear them will be able to.
Cool. Direct to download my thoughts.
Yes.
I’m reading ‘Just Kids’ by Patti Smith right now. She’s always talking about how nimble Robert Mapplethorpe’s fingers were. Which I find to be incredibly endearing. That’s a very nice thing to say about someone’s fingers.
Yeah it’s something you would only notice sometimes. If you knew someone.
Yeah. It’s a really beautiful book. Honestly It’s a little history book like. You can tell she’s remembering things. She wrote it several years after he died which was in the 80’s I guess. He died from AIDS. But you can tell she’s measuring dates based on events. She’ll be like ‘this was when there was a man on the moon. Robert was very sick. When John Coltrane died we were doing this’. It’ very interesting actually to see her kind of measure that way. She does a lot of name checking as well. She lived in the Chelsea Hotel. She talks about the first time she met Allen Ginsberg. He offered to buy her a sandwich because she didn’t have enough money for it. They sat down and were halfway through a conversation and he’s like ‘are you a girl? I’m so sorry I mistook you for an incredibly pretty boy’. It’s really interesting to hear. Because of Patti Smith’s associations I’ve always regarded her as fairly woke to some degree.
IT’S INTERESTING TO HEAR HER TALK ABOUT HER LEARNING WHAT THE WORD ‘ANDROGYNOUS’ MEANS. SHE HAS ALWAYS ASSUMED IT MEANT ‘HALF UGLY’. SHE CUTS HER HAIR TO ‘MICK JAGGER LENGTH’ AND FINDS OUT THAT ALL OF A SUDDEN PEOPLE GIVE A SHIT ABOUT HER. WHICH IS FASCINATING.
It’s really interesting. She talks a lot about how Robert Mapplethorpe was such an ‘artist’. And the ‘artist’s calling’. They truly felt that they were called. Which I don’t know.
There’s some ego in there.
There’s definitely some ego in there. There’s also definitely some religious connotations to that shit too.
Have you been exploring your own religious beliefs recently?
I think I have for a while now. I realized the other day- we were going around the room and asking blank to everyone ‘do you believe in God?’ Maybe even à la- what’s the Columbine shooter? Not to that intensity. But we were going around and I realized I think I’d have to say ‘yes’. Which is odd seeing as I strongly identified as an atheist for a long time and then went back to agnosticism and now I’m just crawling back.
What would that look like to you?
I don’t know. I’m neither religious nor spiritual but I do believe in God. Which puts me in a kind of complicated little place I think.
Like a sentient thing? Or a universe type thing?
I don’t know. I’m not really compelled by either of those. I’m not quite as brave to do what [our friend] Bryn does where like ‘you are God. You control those things’. But I am a fatalist, so I do have to believe in some sort of predetermined thing. I would say right now it’s a remnant of me processing a lot of Catholic guilt still. At the same time wanting to not be such a bitter person.
I WANT TO HAVE SOME FAITH. IN SOMETHING. I DON’T KNOW. I THINK I BECAME CYNICAL AT MUCH TOO YOUNG OF AN AGE. I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE SOME SORT OF APPRECIATION FOR THE WORLD AGAIN.
Do you think atheism precludes appreciating things in that way?
No but it’s an intensely secular way of looking at the world. And when I say ‘secular’ I mean ‘human-first’. If you look at ‘human-first’ the world becomes an increasingly selfish and stupid place to be. It’s unfortunate. I think part of this virus thing revealed to me that humans just have a real inclination for stupidity and selfishness. We’re damn good at it. But I really am trying very hard to get rid of what I view as years and years of bitterness. I have been thinking a lot in the last couple days about returning to the ideas of Accelerationists. I’m not super happy about it. But I think this virus does a really interesting thing of removing a shroud. It shows where a lot of flaws are. But I guess people were saying the same thing about the 2008 recession as well. I think it shows a lot of problems.
It does. And there are a lot of problems. And unfortunately now we can’t vote and address those things.
That’s true. I early voted.
I think being inside is going to make people think about those things more.
Yeah. I think so too. And also just giving people some real quick priorities about how people live their lives.
Are you happy so far with the life you’re stuck quarantining in?
Yeah. I’m lucky that I have a long history of being able to self-isolate. This is sort of in my pocket. I am pretty capable of being a lonely person.
Do you think that’s a good thing though?
No but I think it’s a skill I’ve developed nonetheless. It’s honestly a little bit of schadenfreude selfishness to see other people lose the stability and have to figure out how to cope with being with themselves all the time. There’s a small bit of me that’s like ‘y’all motherfuckers are going to learn some things. This is good’. I feel in these times I resort to content consumption for the most part. When I was living by myself in Indiana I would watch so many movies. There’s something for me where passing time by consuming what I consider to be meaningful content or really meaningful art just does it for me. That’s my favorite way to hunker through personal isolation or collapse.
Is it kind of receiving information from these other people and sources?
Totally. And it’s also that movies in particular I really got into in London because it would take two hours of my day out of my hands. That’s an important thing. When you don’t know how to pass time because you’re spending so much of it by yourself it’s nice to have things to just write off two hours for.
That’s very true.
It’s a very worthwhile way to write off two hours in my mind. I feel like I gain a lot from it.
Do you just sit and watch or do you do things while you watch?
I sit and watch. I guess it sort of depends on the movie. But I just sit and watch.
Let the audio recording note that [their cat] Frank is sitting upon as many of the quilting squares as he can.
Are you feeling good about the lack of external perception in this time?
I am. Honestly it’s nice.
BEING PERCEIVED IS A VERY STRESSFUL THING. NOT BEING PERCEIVED IS SIGNIFICANTLY LESS STRESSFUL. I WAS TALKING ABOUT THAT THE OTHER DAY. EVEN THE IDEA THAT, LET’S ASSUME I CAN GET SOME PART TIME WORK AND GO BACK TO OUR JOB, ALL OF A SUDDEN I DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THE PEOPLE WHO COME IN TO OUR JOB SEEING OR CARING ABOUT HOW I DRESS OR WHAT I DO OR HOW I PRESENT MYSELF.
[students will not be allowed back in to our workplace because of COVID 19. Only our coworkers will be there] For me, right now, if members are there wearing a dress into work is not something I feel comfortable doing. Honestly it would just be a hassle for me. It would be a huge fucking hassle. But combatting our coworkers is something I’m totally capable of doing.
Why is that?
BECAUSE I CAN TELL THEM CONFIDENTLY TO FUCK OFF AND THAT I’M AN INDIVIDUAL AND I CAN DO WHAT I WANT. I’M GOOD AT WHAT I DO AND IT DOESN’T MATTER. I CAN PRETTY CONFIDENTLY TELL SOMEONE I KNOW THAT THEIR OPINION DOESN’T MATTER TO ME. BUT NOT A STRANGER. STRANGERS OPINIONS MATTER SO MUCH.
It’s funny how that happens.
I know. I think it’s partially also just the way people who know me personally would not be surprised to be told to fuck off my me. I’ve cultivated some sense of abrasive individuality. I want to be myself.
I feel like for you your individuality can be really personal. Some people are loud about it. Some people put it in your face and if they get a look that’s all they need to go off. Whereas for you I don’t think that’s the case at all.
No I have to actually verbally say things to people a lot of the time. It has been interesting thinking about how if we’re all going to die, honestly right now might be the ideal time to come out to my extended family because there’s so much going on in the news that they can’t possibly give a shit about it. And God forbid I die being perceived as the wrong gender. I’m not going to die as a man. I don’t know.
I’VE ALWAYS HAD A REAL FEAR OF REALLY PUBLIC OR SOCIAL MEDIA INDUCED COMING-OUT POSTS AND THOSE SORTS OF THINGS. I’VE ALWAYS FOUND THAT TO BE TERRIFYING. I DON’T KNOW WHY. I THINK THAT REPRESENTS SUCH A SUDDEN SHIFT FOR A LOT OF PEOPLE. THIS HAS NOT BEEN A SUDDEN SHIFT FOR ME. I DIDN’T JUST WAKE UP ONE DAY AND WAS LIKE ‘TURNS OUT I DECIDED TO SHIFT MY ENTIRE IDENTITY. I THINK DOING IT AS QUICKLY AS THAT IS NOT SUPER INTERESTING TO ME. AT THE SAME TIME IT SURE IS EFFECTIVE. IT SURE IS EASIER THAN HAVING TO EXPLAIN TO A BUNCH OF PEOPLE IN A BUNCH SEPARATE CONVERSATIONS.
Do you think that’s something you would consider doing?
Maybe eventually. It’ll get to a point where I’m going to really want that. But right now I’m pretty content. I’m not going to class or anything. My circle of people around me is pretty small and they’re all very very understanding. So I’m not too concerned about it. But I think I will eventually.
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Work is sort of a divine thing to me in a lot of ways.
You have thoughts about work.
I have a lot of thoughts about work. Work is play baby. Work has been some sort of saving grace to me in a lot of ways. In the same way that I like to watch movies to spend two hours not in my head, when I’m isolated work is a way of also stepping back and clarifying things for me. It’s weird because I’ve fallen in and out of different types of work. There’s a really good breakdown of work where you look at it as ‘self-conscious work’ or ‘un-self-conscious work’. Self-conscious work is where you are aware that you are the one making it and you will be held accountable for that. So like anything in a creative field is that for the most part. That work requires a sort of intellectual energy that I honestly don’t know it I’m even into anymore. But I’ve spent a lot of time reading books and pretending to be smart or whatever. I feel like I’m sort of stuck in there. Then there’s truly un-self-conscious work. This is un-self-conscious work right now, doing this stitch. I don’t have to wonder about what my self means while I’m doing this. I’m just making the stitch. I’m definitely coming out of a long phase of being Marxist. I still hold on to insurrectionary ideas of what work should be. But I’m definitely still squarely anti-capitalist. The unfairness of capitalism does not bode well with me. I think a lot of that has manifested in a sort of resentment towards work that isn’t self-defined. I don’t like jobs. But I definitely love working. Having jobs sucks. I don’t really appreciate that. I don’t have a five-year plan or anything. I don’t look at my life as having this linear story arc. Many people would refer to that as ‘laziness’ or whatever else you want to call it. But I’m just not really into the ‘hustle’ or the bustle of things anymore. I think my idea job would be some form of work you would give to someone who needs rehabilitation where they’re just doing somewhat non-cognizant tasks for a long period of time. People love to grow and maintain systems. Those systems do not have to be complicated at all. The system can be a plant. You water it every day. I’ve opened myself up to a pretty broad idea of what work is in that I consider things like watching movies to sometimes be part of the work. I am doing work right now. I’m progressing.
I love to hear you say some of that. What you said about a five-year plan and laziness- I was definitely on that. I guess I’m still in my ‘capstone semester’ and we had to do this project were we make five-year plans and then a ten-year plan. And I felt like during the critique everyone said ‘at this year mark I’m going to work at this company. At this year mark I’m going to own a house. This is where I’m gonna have a kid. Here’s where I’m gonna make this much money’. And I was like, ‘dude I can not relate to even wanting any of that’.
No I also don’t relate to that. And this is where I’m talking about the schadenfreude of feelings I’m getting out of this. Watching everyone be thrust into the instability I spend most of my everyday life in has been kind of sweet. In a very vengeful way. I’m not proud of that. But I view the world as a pretty unstable place. It’s just kind of how my life has been. This week I’m fine. But I truly do not know if next week will be unbearable for me based on my mental health and a whole slew of issues. I make do. There is something about watching the rest of the world become as unstable that feels good.
I DO VIEW A LOT OF THE IDEAS OF HAVING FIVE-YEAR PLANS AS A FAÇADE. IT’S A STORY-TELLING DEVICE. IT’S A WAY SOMEONE COPES WITH A TIME PROBLEM, OR WITH THE FACT THAT THE FUTURE IS NOT STABLE. THEY TELL THEMSELVES IT IS. THEN THEY MAKE UP A WHOLE STORY TO GO ALONG WITH IT WHERE THEY ARE THE MAIN CHARACTER AND THERE’S A PLOT AND THEY CAN KNOW THAT THERE WILL BE A RISE AND FALL OF ACTION. I JUST DON’T REALLY BUY INTO THAT SHIT.
I find it to be untrue and perhaps even a way, for me, of leading yourself to disappointment. When I was buying into that shit I was significantly more unhappy. I was more disappointed in myself than before.
Definitely. I feel like this ‘ask to plan’ came in a point of my life where I did have a plan like six months ago. I knew when I was going to graduate. I did have an idea of how much money I wanted to make. I knew where I was gonna live. I knew who I was going to be engaged to. I knew when I was gonna do all these things. And then all of a sudden my plan fell through. And it wasn’t going to happen. I realized that the amount of money I was going to make and the place I was going to live- I didn’t care about those anymore either.
Totally. Life happens to people. It just unfolds. I remember [our friend] Jasper telling me about that class, where a description of it was them trying to help you avoid having a midlife crisis. I think having a plan is a surefire way to set yourself up for a crisis. It’s going to go wrong. To even loop further around in the conversation I have consistent faith in the unchanging unflinchingness of the universe. That is a thing that I have strong faith in. I don’t have faith in myself to carry out plans. I have faith in the universe to just kind of do its things. To unfold.
I think making a plan can actually be what leads to your midlife crisis. I was actually talking to my therapist about that. Some of the people she sees are older. Maybe in their 40’s or 50’s and maybe they come to her because they’re having a midlife crisis. They’re unhappy. They don’t know what’s going on and they’re upset all the time. It’s because their plan has not changed but the person who they are has changed. They no longer actually care about all these goals that they set when they were 25 and deciding what their future would look like. They don’t understand how they could be so unhappy with these plans that they made when they were an entirely different person.
Totally. To tell yourself a story over and over again is to kind of trap yourself in that. My favorite thing David Lynch said is ‘you’re a dreamer who dreams a dream and lives inside a dream’. He said that about making movies but it’s also a pretty vague, dumb, open notion about anything in life. You’re making this shit up. It’s your read. You have to be able to react to how you feel at a moment. I don’t have a lot of loyalty to my past self in any way. I don’t treasure anything they had to say about anything. It also kind of struck me what you were saying there about how you realized that the money and where you were living wasn’t what you really cared about. I’ve had that realization. Having meaningful relationships is way more meaningful to me than having meaningful work. Even though in a selfish way I need the work to function. Because then who would I share that with? I don’t know. That has made me pretty cynical towards a lot of capitalistic ‘hustle’ ideals. I really don’t understand ‘the hustle’. I’m someone who does a ton of work. I’m constantly working on projects whether I want to or not. I can’t stop. I’m always working on a thing but it’s never this grand hustle to make a bunch of money or find my calling. Maybe two years ago I had a better idea of what I thought I wanted. But it gets increasingly foggy. My idea of what I want for a calling has gotten farther away from me than it has closer. Which is a little bit concerning.
Do you ever worry that this way of looking at it just lends itself to instability?
Yes. All the time. It’s something that I can’t tell if it’s a situation I’ve put myself in through spending years thinking about the world this way or if the world is more accurately like this. There are some kind of bullshit studies that claim that people who suffer from depression actually are much more capable of making realistic decision. I don’t really buy into a lot of those studies. I think they’re not really compelling from a standpoint of contemporary science. But there is a lot of validity in seeing the world as an unstable and fractured place that I think, if nothing else, is how I live. I can change that. It’ll take me a couple years, but at this point, I’m just gonna roll with it for a while and see where I end up. God forbid another pandemic I probably have at least another 30 years on the earth. Maybe. Not to really overshare but there was a long time when I really didn’t think I was going to be this old. I really didn’t think I was going to make it this long. When all of a sudden I realized that I was 21, and that I had survived this long, I was like ‘fuck I didn’t make any plans’. I didn’t think about life like this. That life was going to be a thing that would keep happening to me. When decided that life would be a thins that should continue happen to me I was like ‘oh shit I didn’t have any plans for this at all. I am full winging this’. I think I’m still kind of in the aftermath of those realizations in a lot of ways. But I’m working with it. I think there’s a lot of validity to it. I think I could change all these views and decided to put a lot of work into it and maybe take a year out of my life and change. I see a lot of validity to it still honestly. That’s something I’m adjusting to all the time. Trying to extend even just my to-do-list from being a day long to a week long. It’s not that currently I have any question if whether or not I’m going to make it through the week. But my brain just does not work like that. I am used to fucking putting my head down and making it through the day. Now all of a sudden I find that I’m high-functioning enough that I can begin doing much larger things.
I THOUGHT THINGS WERE GOING TO BE EASIER WHEN I GOT TO THIS POINT. I’M NOT SURPRISED THAT THEY’RE NOT. I’M UNSURPRISED. AT THE SAME TIME, I’VE HAD AN UNBELIEVABLY PRIVILEGED AND SAFE LIFE. I THINK IF THIS IS MY PRICE TO PAY FOR WHAT I GOT OUT OF THE LOTTERY OF LIFE THEN IT WAS MORE THAN FAIR.
That’s not a great way to look at it.
Yeah. True. As I am even talking about believing in God and shit, I don’t really buy into the original sin sort of shit. As if I’m guilty and being punished. That’s just an unproductive way to live. That is one of the things that I definitely held on to for a long time and it just had to be shrugged off.
In what way were you holding on to it?
I think in being raised Catholic I thought for a long time that my impulses were not to be trusted. They were evil or maligned. They were selfish. And then basically I became a totally debauched, punk teenager who didn’t give a fuck about anything and was using a ton of drugs and was doing whatever I wanted. Not realizing that the entire time I was doing that I was still feeling really really bad about it. I was still feeling guilty. I eventually lost that. I think those things I was actually feeling guilty about for a reason. But my brain was associating it with ‘you are a bad person’. Not ‘you have bad behaviors’.
That essentialism will get you.
That shit will cut you down. If you think that you are the sum of your parts you’re fucked. That is the end. There is no way to think your way out of that.
So since you’ve thought about that, if you’re not the sum of your parts then what are you?
That’s where it gets tricky. I think I switch back and forth from a pretty Judith Butler way of looking at the world as performance and perception as in you’re just the amalgamation of other peoples’ ideas of you- or you have to get into this weird territory of dealing with souls and true self. What is actually in there?
That’s something that I’ve actually had brought up tangentially in other interviews. People’s experiences and forgiveness. It’s a big cultural thing right now. Can people redeem themselves and still contribute to the world?
That’s an interesting one. If you believe in the perception thing, then no. You can’t. What you’re perceived as is who you are. You’re the amalgamation of other people’s ideas. You’re kind of fucked at that point. You have to change people’s minds, which would probably be worth doing in that situation. Or there is definitely some worthwhileness in believing in the sacredness of a human soul.
HUMANS ARE WORTH SOMETHING. I’M ENOUGH OF A CYNICAL NIHILIST THAT ANY SORT OF HUMANIST TALKING POINTS JUST MAKE MY EYES GLAZE OVER. I TELL THEM THEY’RE FULL OF SHIT. BUT THEY’RE PROBABLY RIGHT. I JUST WOULD PREFER THAT THEY USE DIFFERENT WORDS THAT ARE LESS FLOWERY. THEY HAVE TO USE COOLER WORDS TO TALK ABOUT THAT SHIT.
AND BE A LITTLE SADDER.
YEAH. ‘CAN YOU NOT BE SO HIGH-FUNCTIONING WHILE YOU’RE EXPLAINING THIS?’ I FEEL LIKE MY WHOLE LIFE I’VE HAD TONS OF EXAMPLES OF VERY HIGH-FUNCTIONING, SUCCESSFUL, STABLE PEOPLE IN MY LIFE AND CONSISTENTLY I’VE REJECTED IT OUT OF A FEELING OF ‘SURELY THIS MUST BE BULLSHIT’. I DON’T THINK THIS PERSON IS COOL OR WHATEVER. I REALIZE THAT THROUGH THAT I’VE JUST BEEN REJECTING YEARS AND YEARS OF FREE ADVICE THAT PEOPLE ARE GIVING ME ON HOW TO BE A BETTER PERSON. BECAUSE IT WAS LAME ADVICE.
I wanted to smoke cigarettes and read Camus. I wanted people who died tragically to tell me how to live my life. It was very lame to conceive that people who went to the Baptist church might have a better way of living their life than I do. I would use my unhappiness as a point of pride. As a badge. ‘I’m unhappy so I must know more about what’s going on’. Which I think, in today’s age of everyone being an expert on everything, unhappiness is a really interesting gauge that people use online all the time to show that they know more about something. How pissed off someone can be online directly relates to how much they know. You never hear someone correcting someone on some wokeness shit because they know less. It’s like ‘how could you be so ignorant’.