A recap of 2023 in philosophy and work
Hello reader.
Reaching back to people through my writing, because it’s just a smidge easier than painting or video producing, though this topic will be an evergreen video topic.
Deeply feeling affected as the genocide rages on.
I had COVID once again – twice in short succession during the holidays. Despite living a deeply, deeply isolated life compared to my peers, and taking every precaution available to me, we have reached a new point in the pandemic where public life and increasingly private life is not achievably safe for disabled people.
As a student of history as well as art, I see the moment in its place of a larger eugenics movement. It scares me because the last time eugenics was the leader in public health like this, the Holocaust followed. It’s just not hyperbole anymore.
“She-covery” in the economy: how can I girlboss with my many skills if the normal people are actively excluding me? I can perform all my job duties remotely or masked. Neither is a threat or unprofessional. I have classy masks, colorful masks that kids find friendly, and heavy-duty masks that scientifically minded client’s compliment.
That was the theme of my 2023. Every gasp of progress I made to my career, my return to work was thwarted by acquiring an infection from someone else.
I live with 3 disabled family members; we mask everywhere and get all our vax’s on time. Being the only family willing to face the reality of living in an extended pandemic with a large human toll, it is just not enough to do “individual” protections on an airborne virus capable of immune system damage.
COVID violence is so pervasive it is making the situation much harder for Palestinians. When I write this the number of functioning health facilities is dwindling, because when a white ethnostate bombs hospitals full of brown people it is not a war crime. If we operate in emotional numbness of the constant loss of grandparents, colleagues, and beloved community members due to a cause we are silenced about, it is difficult to maintain a sense of true reality.
Public life is increasingly not safe for any kind of protest. Students across the nation are not allowed to non-verbally protest, face dire consequence to their academic career, and there have been career consequences for very visible people in the entertainment industry.
Because of my life’s work as an artist and my passion for education about histories of oppression, I have never been shy about my personal expressions against global oppressors. I’m not someone who hides little codes and esoterica in otherwise neutral professional work. I would rather clock in, make excellent client work that’s dry and precise, clock out, and then bring my advocacy to my personal work. I think that surprises people. I am no longer a debater.
Truly I did not finish many pieces in 2023; it was an abundant year of research and visual witness. Having a capacity to be willing to see unflattering, unfavoring and terrifying aspects of current life feels rare. Public health, eugenics, fascism history, and particularly the influenza and polio pandemics were what I read up on for domestic history. Although I have been a student of apartheid history and that of Zionism I had the horrible privilege of watching many more peers than I could have imagined reaching come to heed the calls from so many brave Gazans. There is electricity in the sorrow in the air and it is unavoidable. Some questions that call me to paint – why are we in an age of genocide when we could have been in a more equitable version of a Renaissance? How will this fuel be covered up? How much of medicine will we lose in 40 years simply to commerce and hubris, when this could have been a Space Age? What makes denial the hottest fire? I painted on a single question for a couple years and still come back to it, so these arresting new curiosities should make 2024 more colorful.
Yours,
In paint, word, rain and stone,
Meheen Ruby
