I miss, I miss, I miss.
The Pessoptimist
Vol. 2 | Issue 5 | March 2021
Contents:
Thoughts, or something like it
Things and Links
Thoughts, or something like it
I miss walking into the ICA and browsing the bookshop. I miss sitting on the stairs before an event on a warm Autumn evening and running into my friends.
I miss hanging outside a venue after an event and debating where we should go.
I miss heading to a restaurant or a pub after an opening with friends.
I miss showing someone around London and knowing I can walk into the Tate or the Barbican or the Wallace Collection freely.
I miss queuing for disappointing restaurants and complaining about it.
I miss walking into the Southbank to work on my laptop when I could not bare staying home.
I miss the students queuing at the canteen and struggling to find a table during lunchtime.
I miss the classroom, the students standing outside my office, the awkward hellos when you see them in the corridor.
I miss walking into a restaurant went I felt hungry.
I miss when the city was quiet not because there is a lockdown.
I miss going to openings and air kissing people.
I miss having books in my office and colleagues around me.
I miss the excitement of visiting friends in another city.
I miss people I don't like.
I miss dancing.
I miss leaving places because "no one here is cute or interesting".
I miss the excitement of ordering takeaway.
I miss the prospect of being able to board a plane or a train to visit people.
I miss going to talks and conferences and seeing people and meeting new people.
I miss the smell of other people, the colognes, perfumes and natural smells mixed together that you catch a whiff on when walking the streets.
I miss the random run ins.
I miss coffee dates.
I miss having a reason to walk somewhere.
I miss the option of being bored, rather than it being a permanent one.
I miss having something other than a global pandemic to talk about.
I miss the city feeling safer than it does now.
I miss waking up without a sense of dread.
I miss everything. I miss everyone. I miss life.
The past few weeks have been loaded with an overwhelming feeling of missing everything. Despite the success of the UK's vaccination programme, I have found this lockdown the most difficult and hopeless. People still pretend to be fine. Admitting that it is not is a breath of fresh air. But we can't get away from the business as usual mindset.
I am not sure why everyone is raving about the vaccination programme. Is it not the job of the healthcare service and the government to execute a successful mass vaccination programme and apparently be prepared for a pandemic?
There is a lot I want to write – about Sarah Everard's murder, the police, the pandemic, vulnerability, about what it will take for people to truly become politicised...but when I attempt to type what I am thinking, I am unable. Perhaps there is just too much.
Be well.
Danah
(The Pessoptimist)
Things:
illustration by Nour Hifaoui Fakhoury
Found a nice home for my essay "Against Performative Positivity" was published in Futuress
My chapter "Disciplinary Disobedience: A Border Thinking Approach to Design" was published in the book Design Struggles: Intersecting Histories, Pedagogies, and Pespectives. The book is available as open access
On Friday 19 March (12pm Toronto/4pm London time), I will be in conversation with Maya Mahgoub-Desai from OCAD University. This is my first Canadian speaking engagement, and I wish it was in person. The event is free, just sign up on Eventbrite
Links:
Listen:
My Decolonising Design college Ece Canli discusses queer futures and her research work on the podcast Off_Line
My good friend Vera Sachetti discusses design's responsibility in shaping futures on the hurra hurra podcast
Readings:
Why are some objects we do not really think about, such as the radiator, so prominent in our lives? Great overview of heating provision and the radiator in this article.
This article really sums up some thoughts I've been thinking about regarding society's relationship to fitness, bodies and war.
Watch:
I've never binged in my life until the world stopped and never as much as this past month. I could not be bothered to search for shows so relied on student suggestions, including Unsolved, a show about the Tupac and Biggie murders (mixed feelings), Dead to Me (Christina Applegate, a.k.a. Kelly Bundy, is brilliant), and How to Get Away with Murder (why are lawyers always portrayed as the quickest problem solvers in the world?). A friend suggested Franco Rosso's Babylon, a raw portrait of the racial tension in 1980s London. Spotting the New Cross House pub, before it became an overpriced pub, brought back some memories.