An evening performance (TinyLetter Archive)
Hello friends. I've been away a while but am compelled finally to return to this space. I hope you're as well as is possible...
I don't know which day it started exactly. I remember Sarah Silverman posting a video to instagram of people banging pots and yelling and cheering from their apartment windows early in COVID. By that time, we must have all seen the man playing piano for his neighbors in Spain. There was that brief window early on where it felt like people cared about each other, where we genuinely didn't want other people to die, be they strangers or no. And somehow, in my neighborhood, on my street, someone commenced cheering.
Supposedly it was about supporting essential workers. At first, I was only surprised. I thought it seemed like a nice gesture, and I considered joining in. But I am nothing if not rather hermit-like and disinclined to be among strangers, so I ultimately decided to forego that act of solidarity. As the weeks went on, the small fellow feeling aroused from the display dissipated for me. My neighbors started gathering around a fire pit in the middle of the street every weekend in a party-type atmosphere. Over time someone acquired orange cones which they'd set up to close off half the block, and people would pull their camping chairs out and surround the fire, and kids and dogs would run between the people, and there was no social distancing or masking, and we did not yet know that outdoor gatherings were mostly safe.
As an immunocompromised person who went a full year without being around another person unmasked until I'd been vaccinated, hearing the convivial party sounds from the street--the laughter, the guitar, the singing, the squeals--felt like the ultimate hypocrisy. All these people cheering for essential workers (and I was one, wasn't I? a high school teacher?) every night at 7 while also partying it up on saturday nights, taking over the street, so that I was afraid to leave my house and risk being plunged into a crowd of infection. I watched as kids ran into my yard to pick through shed branches from the two giant trees in front of my house to take back to the fire, while elsewhere people were so afraid of contracting the virus that they were wiping down their groceries and leaving them outside for hours or days. It feels a little silly to talk about at this point in 2022, but we knew so little about transmission then, and it felt to me like everyone else in my little community just didn't give a fuck. I put a handwritten sign on the glass of my front door thanking the delivery people who came to my house for helping me, an immunocompromised person, to survive. Some of them knocked and returned the thanks, or waved, and one even left a note. Those are the interactions that got me through.
But here we are, 28 months since America shut down, and my neighbors are still cheering. They're cheering even though we have a doctor and a nurse on our street who do not participate in the spectacle. They continue cheering through the spikes, through omicron, on days when the news is full of mass shootings and civil unrest, and on days when people's lives and rights are being taken away. They cheered on the day cops killed George Floyd and almost numberless others since then. They cheer. I wonder what will be the thing that finally makes them stop, though I'm sure it feels like validation to them, which must be...comfortable. Do they still believe they are showing support? What or who are they cheering for?
I want to believe we are still a nation filled with people who care about other people. But increasingly I wonder: is it time to seek another nation?
I don't know which day it started exactly. I remember Sarah Silverman posting a video to instagram of people banging pots and yelling and cheering from their apartment windows early in COVID. By that time, we must have all seen the man playing piano for his neighbors in Spain. There was that brief window early on where it felt like people cared about each other, where we genuinely didn't want other people to die, be they strangers or no. And somehow, in my neighborhood, on my street, someone commenced cheering.
Supposedly it was about supporting essential workers. At first, I was only surprised. I thought it seemed like a nice gesture, and I considered joining in. But I am nothing if not rather hermit-like and disinclined to be among strangers, so I ultimately decided to forego that act of solidarity. As the weeks went on, the small fellow feeling aroused from the display dissipated for me. My neighbors started gathering around a fire pit in the middle of the street every weekend in a party-type atmosphere. Over time someone acquired orange cones which they'd set up to close off half the block, and people would pull their camping chairs out and surround the fire, and kids and dogs would run between the people, and there was no social distancing or masking, and we did not yet know that outdoor gatherings were mostly safe.
As an immunocompromised person who went a full year without being around another person unmasked until I'd been vaccinated, hearing the convivial party sounds from the street--the laughter, the guitar, the singing, the squeals--felt like the ultimate hypocrisy. All these people cheering for essential workers (and I was one, wasn't I? a high school teacher?) every night at 7 while also partying it up on saturday nights, taking over the street, so that I was afraid to leave my house and risk being plunged into a crowd of infection. I watched as kids ran into my yard to pick through shed branches from the two giant trees in front of my house to take back to the fire, while elsewhere people were so afraid of contracting the virus that they were wiping down their groceries and leaving them outside for hours or days. It feels a little silly to talk about at this point in 2022, but we knew so little about transmission then, and it felt to me like everyone else in my little community just didn't give a fuck. I put a handwritten sign on the glass of my front door thanking the delivery people who came to my house for helping me, an immunocompromised person, to survive. Some of them knocked and returned the thanks, or waved, and one even left a note. Those are the interactions that got me through.
But here we are, 28 months since America shut down, and my neighbors are still cheering. They're cheering even though we have a doctor and a nurse on our street who do not participate in the spectacle. They continue cheering through the spikes, through omicron, on days when the news is full of mass shootings and civil unrest, and on days when people's lives and rights are being taken away. They cheered on the day cops killed George Floyd and almost numberless others since then. They cheer. I wonder what will be the thing that finally makes them stop, though I'm sure it feels like validation to them, which must be...comfortable. Do they still believe they are showing support? What or who are they cheering for?
I want to believe we are still a nation filled with people who care about other people. But increasingly I wonder: is it time to seek another nation?