Big. Yellow. Taxi. 🚕 🚕 🚕
Wake up. Play the parking lot song.
Wow. Larissa’s piece from last week really struck a chord with me, and with a lot of you it seems.
One thing I’m incredibly grateful for in our romantically aromantic platonic non-sexual non-monogamous relationship is the lack of cognitive dissonance required for us to function together - as friends and as creative collaborators. Our meetings truly do bounce from “did you see the protests?” to “let’s talk budget” to “they are pushing for a ground offensive” to “we need to give proper feedback on the social media strategy”. And as someone who started a new job this week, I can’t help but already feel the heavy mask required to function in the day to day of the corporate world as contrasted to how we work at PTK.
It reminds me of an article I wrote last month talking about how much the burnout epidemic is directly correlated to the complete mismatch in ethics coming from the small, homogenous group of people who are trying to make all of the decisions in our institutions of education, work, and governance.
After hearing all of your responses to her piece last week, Larissa and I spoke about how lucky we are to have each other. To talk, yes, about grants and dreams and exhibition “marketing” plans, but also how fucked up the world is right now and how the purpose of everything really is just to be in community with one another.
It’s insane how much our jobs (and sometimes even our family and our friends) ask us to play pretend as we’re watching a genocide escalate.
PTK is a space for you to break that fourth wall. Please use it. Free Palestine. 🇵🇸
Big. Yellow. Taxi. 🚕 🚕 🚕
Wake up. Play the parking lot song. Blast N.W.A. out the window. Play the parking lot song. Piss off Dutch neighbors. Play the parking lot song. Feel guilty. Play the parking lot song. Go to gym. Play the parking lot song. Pretend to swing kettlebell into the face of a - 🐷 Play the parking lot song. And the catch phrase used in your house in 2008. (Bombs never go out of business) Play the parking lot song. Make dinner. Play the parking lot song. UberEats wine. Play the parking lot song. Google how much $1.50 in 1970 is worth today. Play the parking lot song. Google how much a single Raytheon stock was worth in 1970. Play the parking lot song. Block all of the Kardashians. Post dystopian story of tourists eating dinner on Spui lined by riot police. Cry into cheese omelet. Play the parking lot song. Cycle to UVA. Think wtf you were doing in college in 2012?? Occupy Wall Street. Zuccotti Park “interview” for project. Hand signals, free libraries, communal kitchens. Run into friends. Ask each other moot question like, how are you doing? Run into more friends. From the queer gym, the queer book club, the queer poetry circle. Remember how someone on insta had said it’s always their queer/bipoc friends they run into at protests. Pass by your old office building. Remember the employee petitions from years ago. And the shoes lined up in front of the new building today. Remember how vehemently we stood up for each other when they came for our jobs. Oink oink piggy piggy. Run. Watch. Silence. Disperse. Applaud. Disperse. Into maze where you went shopping for red heels the month before. Fall back into crowd. Search for bikes. Watch Vanderpump Rules. Play the parking lot song. Finish UberEats wine. Play the parking lot song. Change out the words in your poem. Play the parking lot song.
We love you. Stay together. 🍉🍉🍉🍉
“It’s insane how much our jobs (and sometimes even our family and our friends) ask us to play pretend as we’re watching a genocide escalate.” — I’ve thought a lot about this recently. It definitely feels insane. Thank you for naming it.