banality

 A Note: Mass shootings are anything but banal. This visual essay is meant to explore the experience of living alongside a rapid news cycle when a mass shooting occurs. In the fall of 2022, I began to realize that my depression and anxiety manifested in a fear of everyday, public spaces where mass shootings have occurred in the last ten years. Some of them, like the 36th Street subway station, where I got on and off the train for work, are actual places where mass shootings occurred. Also supermarkets, movie theaters, concerts, schools, places of worship, bars. I began to wonder what it means to live out the contours of my "banal", everyday thought patterns in the shadow of terrible brutality. This project is nested in the experience of receiving a news notification while frying an egg for breakfast or learning about a death count while scrolling through Instagram on the toilet. How can one reconcile both the tremendous pain and horror of such events with the knowledge that, once the news cycle moves on, it won't take long for another mass shooting notification to pop up on your screen?

i am watching a rat crawl around the third rail from the platform at 36th street. it is rainy and December and my feet hurt, i am thinking about Dana who leaves the lights off when she comes in to work because she does not like the fluorescence and now twice the owner has reprimanded me: “The lights are off.” i am thinking about how badly i wish not to be thinking about these things when i go home for the day from my minimum wage job where i am micromanaged from my bosses’ vacation in hawaii. the platform is not crowded but enough that i notice each person’s face in the dim light. new york city winter makes people so tired. i am excited to go home and eat my jungle curry and say hello to my cat  i look at my phone and feel embarrassed telling johanna i do not want to go to the concert but the truth is i have no desire to be near all those bodies and in general i am a 24-year-old grandma, so no, i will not go see rosalía even though the part of me that aches to be a cooler, better version of myself wants to, so much, desperately lily orders tea before the movie starts and i wonder if i should order a chicken sandwich or if it will be too many calories since today is day one of my Noom weight loss journey. i went to the bar and ordered a ginger ale before the movie and they ended up giving me club soda by mistake but i didn’t mind i was just proud of myself for not ordering tequila. i truly do not even know what this movie is about but lily is such a good friend, drawing me out of my depressive episodes to come do something together and for that i am grateful. shhhhh it is getting dark, the movie is about to start in the wake of my most recent heartbreak i wonder if i really truly am finally over men. every time i pass the gay bar i think, i should go inside. but i don’t. rosie texts me she needs to have sex but everyone is awful and what’s the point, and i text her back, you need to go to The Woods on Wednesday. a return to queerness would be welcome but i also find myself not ready for anything, my instinct is still to fold inwards, the effort to extend my body or even my heart toward another being gay or not just feels too hard. so i do not go to Ginger’s but i reckon someday soon, i will. i always feel like supermarkets are the pinnacle of American capitalism and it never fails to amaze me these piles of lemons and limes and oranges, these stacks of herbs and spinach and chopped mushrooms. here i can find tampons, here i can find frozen beef. i used to think the ACME my dads took me in New Jersey was possibly the most marvelous place, the pinnacle of suburban normalcy that a part of me craved, so different from hot concrete in Brooklyn. always abundance in the supermarket my moms call me to tell me shabbat was FULL of young people, all my age and a bit older, i really should consider coming next time. i think they feel bad for me because i am sad and hopeless and in a rut but truly i never was one for shul. i guess i could try but for some reason i do not really want to, maybe it was all those boring Saturdays spent waiting for the chanting to finish so i could wriggle free, i should give it another chance, if i were being good i would sometimes i pass my elementary school during recess, if i could go back and tell my younger self something, what would it be? my therapist wants to do this inner parts therapy thing with me and when we tried doing it the other day i just randomly started crying so much for younger me, for how alone she felt. i have become the person she always needed – she needed me. today i am so tired i try to remember what got me out of the depression in the past but it feels fleeting, or that the answer is just good things began to happen and life got better. or maybe it was Zoloft? Wellbutrin? a new relationship? being alive in the world even when it feels so hard and that’s a triumph in and of itself? i feel so useless when i wake up in the morning, such a waste of space, when i was younger i had so much potential and now i am just a depressed waitress trying to drink less. but i have to believe something will change, that something will get better. i have not yet lost hope and if it got better before then it will happen again. for every thing i experience i swear, it’s going to happen again

PANIC IN BROOKLYN SUBWAY: POLICE HUNT GUNMAN WHO SHOT 10 SUBWAY ATTACK PROVES CITY’S RESILIENCE AGAIN: ‘WE DON’T HAVE A CHOICE’ LAS VEGAS CONCERTGOERS SAY GUNFIRE WENT ‘ON AND ON AND ON’  LAS VEGAS SHOOTING: 59 KILLED AND MORE THAN 500 HURT NEAR MANDALAY BAY MAN OPENS FIRE INSIDE MOVIE THEATER IN MINNESOTA LAFAYETTE MOVIE THEATER SHOOTING: 911 CALLS, VIDEOS REVEAL MOMENTS BEFORE, AFTER SHOOTING GUNMAN KILLS 5 AT LGBTQ NIGHTCLUB IN COLORADO SPRINGS BEFORE PATRONS CONFRONT AND STOP HIM, POLICE SAY WORST MASS SHOOTING IN U.S. HISTORY: 50 SLAIN AT ORLANDO GAY NIGHTCLUB THE BUFFALO SUPERMARKET SHOOTER WILL DIE BEHIND BARS AFTER PLEADING GUILTY TO KILLING 10 PEOPLE ‘LIKE EVERY OTHER DAY:’ TEN LIVES LOST ON A TRIP TO THE STORE ‘I LOOKED UP, AND THERE WERE ALL THESE DEAD BODIES:’ WITNESS DESCRIBES HORROR OF SYNAGOGUE MASSACRE ‘I’M ALIVE’: HE SURVIVED THE HOLOCAUST, AND THEN THE MASSACRE AT THE SYNAGOGUE  CHILDREN CALLED FOR HELP INSIDE CLASSROOMS IN UVALDE. THE POLICE WAITED. THE NAMES: 19 CHILDREN, 2 TEACHERS KILLED IN UVALDE SCHOOL NATION REELS AFTER GUNMAN MASSACRES 20 CHILDREN AT SCHOOL IN CONNECTICUT ‘WHEN WILL THIS END?’: RAGE OVER US GUN VIOLENCE AFTER SECOND MASS SHOOTING IN 10 DAYS ‘IT’S GOING TO HAPPEN AGAIN’

APRIL 12th, 2022 APRIL 16th, 2022 October 2nd, 2017 October 2nd, 2017 June 29th, 2022 July 30th, 2015 November 21, 2022 June 12, 2016 November 28th, 2022 May 17th, 2022 October 28, 2018 October 20, 2018 May 27th, 2022 June 3rd, 2022 December 14th, 2012 May 24th, 2022 It’s going to happen, again.

The Tiny Cabinet

Hello to the Tiny Cabinet community, and allow me to introduce my installation. 

The centerpiece of the installation is a canvas painting I made that is largely ripped off from the Converse/Commes de Garcon Chuck Taylor collaboration. The shoe features most of the outline of a red heart, with the distinctive eyes looking through the canvas all the way to you. I took the outline of the heart and kept the eyes (the most important part). I love this idea--the eyes of the heart without a mouth, that we can see but never say what we want. In my canvas, there is the word "CAREFUL" written above the central figure of the piece. That is there for me, of course, but also for you. The more I am around writers the more I am reminded that I am not the only one with a big, fat, wet, heart. So as the love of my life and I decide if we're going to give it one last run in Tucson or call it quits for good, I am demanding my heart be careful. 

There are polaroids surrounding the canvas, all of Mount Lemmon. I loved the drive but I was tired of being in the car with my mother (we had just driven to Arizona from Connecticut). This trip to Mt. Lemmon might have been the only thing we did once we got here, we were just too tired to do anything else. And so when I see these pictures I think of saying goodbye to my mother on top of that mountain. Not saying goodbye like we did when she left, but the type of goodbye where it's the last fun thing you do before it's time to leave. I refer to this as the last good sip of soda. We'd spend the next days sipping at the bottom of the styrofoam, trying to suck up any final drops, but we'd already had the last good sip. 

Below the polaroids are two canvas panels, fun designs by my new friends in the MFA: the majestic and incomparable Nellie Papsdorf and Maya Bernstein-Schalet. I wanted to bring in something that I had not done but still meant a lot to me. Nellie and Maya made these pieces in my apartment the first time we met, and it is the opposite of the "careful" heart. These are the reminders in my cabinet to go out, make new friends, to live the opposite of carefully. It is much a command as it is a celebration of the people who are making a new home, home. 

That's my cabinet. I'll catch you around town. 

John