Dear Friends,
I write this
salutation automatically. It is a
phrase, like “how are you” that simply oils the social wheels. We don’t
really expect an answer other than “fine”or “fine, how about you?” (Except for those awkward moments when people reply, “ well, I have this pain in
my toe….”) The phrase exists in other languages, eliciting
the same sort of answer. “Comment ça va? Ça va bien, et toi?” “Come stai?
Tutto bene.” “ Wie geht’s? Gut, danke.” Even if answered in the negative, “not
bad” is the fallback position: "pas mal," "non c’è male," "nicht schlecht." Positivity is the default position. But no longer. That
simple question has become fraught. The
last few months has brought us Covid 19 and the economic crisis that followed, the
killing of George Floyd and the subsequent uprising, with the many families of
those harmed or killed by racial injustice and the protestors on the front lines of danger and
pain and death, health care and essential workers on the front lines of heartache
and fear and death, and the heartache
and sorrow of the families of the over 100,000 people who have died, and the nearly
2 million sick in the US alone. How are
you now?
Remaining
untouched takes on new meaning too. Covid
enjoined us not to touch, not to embrace.
The protests enjoin us to do the opposite, to hug, to express our pain
and solidarity in physical ways. Both
ways, contradictory as they are, charge us to manifest our care for each other. We are brothers and sisters in pain. The words “how are you” must now be followed by “what can I do to help?” Each in
our own way, we have the means to help. There is no right way, there is just everyone’s
individual way.
In the Thai
language “ how are you” is expressed as “have you eaten?” Dear friends, and friends I haven’t yet met, how can I
nourish you?
This piece by
artist Ben Belghachi speaks to my hunger
for connection, and to say Art Heals.
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