Katharina Joy Book
Gentle stranger, I hope this email finds you well is a collection of letters, written by artists around the world. Each artist explores care in some aspect of their work, and each letter is written in response to the previous one. These letters, which may take the form of (creative) writing, sound or visual essays, will be published weekly, from June 1st onwards. With these letters, we invite you to think with us about new ways of thinking about and through care, in these changing times.
This letter by Katharina Joy Book, responds to Adam Patterson's, which you can read here.
dearest friend, lovely stranger,
I am writing to you from the highest point of a mountain where I am no longer standing.
near is sweet, fear is sugar. If you had a minute or two and looked at me now, you would see that I sprout green and ultraviolet from my eyes and mouth.
dearest friend, lovely stranger,
anchor me here. anchor yourself there.
I have something small, something tiny I'm grabbing onto. It is the hope of a warm bath after cold rain. I walked through the woods the other day and it started hailing and I kept walking. I honestly didn’t know what else to do, had never asked. Taking care - methodical - herkules.
dearest friend, lovely stranger,
Taking care of my friends has been time and words, taking care of you has been solving puzzles with a timer. Have you ever seen an hourglass in which the sand has run through half a second after you’ve turned it?
When I tried this instagram filter above [1] the other week, hoping for a cute answer or some spark from the surprise element of the game, I had woken up from a night after a panic attack, and I was still exhausted and confused. When I received that result from the random generator - Without you, not a single cog turns - I didn’t know how to feel about that idea. Did I want to be necessary to the cogs turning? Indispensable, a key component of things running smoothly? You cannot separate the job from the house from the rent from the earth from the food from the healthcare from the water... [2] - this enmeshment is terrifying and outsized some days, just as it is terrifying to be connected to others through such need.
I didn’t know whether I could shoulder the responsibility, and whether I wanted to, since much of my exhaustion and confusion seemed to come from trying to keep the cogs turning at all cost. I attempted a tiny smile when I remembered I was on camera, and out of the habit of responding to instagram filter quiz results with happy surprise.
dearest friend, lovely stranger,
I’ve asked you in here as my dearest friend, and as a lovely stranger. I’m presuming, but also hoping, that you're consenting to being addressed in this way, as a reader of this letter. How do you feel about it?
Do you love being loved? I struggle sometimes. I can't always be generous. Come as resistant as you are.
Notes on care, for me, are also notes on consent. Questions of consent are bound up in narratives of desire, but also narratives of becoming and imaginative healing.
Consent is connected to repercussions, to consequences. Practicing active consent is connected to cultivating agency and respect. Knowing how to practice consent is a key part of understanding accessibility, and being able to ensure it in physical and online spaces, as much between intimate partners as in larger communities.
Consent is a part of how we can practice care with generosity, against the state’s idea of family or partnership. When the pandemic took hold in Canada, the Quebec minister of public health stated that ‘monogamy is preferable in these times’. As writer Clementine Morrigan noted [3] , people in power choosing to prioritize the ‘straight nuclear family’ in times of crisis is dangerous. This model of family as an economic unit is favored and rewarded by the governments of many Western countries, but the idea that our energy in love and protection should be focused only on ‘our own’ [4] perpetuates capitalist ideas of ownership, ‘earned’ privileges, and finite resources that you have to fight to gain access to. Collaborative networks of care have existed in marginalised and queer communities for a long time, and part of building these is investing in the practice of consent, which is a vital part of keeping each other safe in a pandemic while still experiencing closeness and giving care. [5]
Taking care isn’t always gentle and beautiful and natural and easy. In her speech at the Human Rights Campaign National Dinner in 2019, actress Dominique Jackson talked about how human rights are neither about tolerance nor acceptance, they are about respect. You do not have the power to accept or tolerate me - I take that from you. You will respect me. [6] That’s what we owe each other if we want to take care in ways that are tangible rather than symbolic or performative.
So much of ‘radical softness’ looks like white fragility and spiritual bypassing [7] , and that shit erases necessary anger. Even though the concept of ‘radical softness’ asks for emotions to be freely expressed in all spaces, as a political act, policing the tone in which Black people and POC express themselves is rampant within toxic strands of white feminism especially - as if the best or most productive way to express emotion was always polite and ‘soft spoken-ly’. It’s common practice to absorb the work of Black feminist scholars like Audre Lorde, Maya Angelou, or Angela Davis into the (white) feminist cause while erasing the particularity of the struggle against anti-blackness, and ignoring the fact that identity markers of privilege such as gender, race, class, sexuality and ability affect the degree to which people are safe to be vulnerable and to which they can expect care from their family or from society. [8] The belief that ‘radical softness’ gives white women permission to center their pain and shock in issues of racism or injustice speaks to the self-involvement of this group and an incredibly narrow understanding of what it means to achieve equality and liberation. Sometimes it is actually not about how you feel, and you are just a cog in a bigger movement forward. [9]
Practicing consent brings us closer to a shared reality of experience, where multiple needs can be honored and known. [10] Practicing consent and taking care require cultivating a practice of asking questions, again and again, and in all kinds of spaces, not only between intimate partners. Practicing consent comes with an inherent belief in multiple possible directions, spaces to move from, around, or into - and consensually understanding how to be moved and inspired by each other [11] includes connections beyond sex and intimacy. It may be connected to the kindness of strangers, to organizing, to working together, to recognizing different kinds of labor at play for different people, and so much more. In the words of Cara Page: maybe [it’s] an erotic exchange that’s actually about sharing knowledge, memory, power, and that to me is understanding levels of intimacy in relationship to liberation. [12]
It takes practice to honor both a yes and a no answer. It doesn’t always feel light to receive answers. (Even in this small part of the universe: I hadn’t met my Instagram filter results with too much resistance before that day when I was so exhausted - I had asked for a puzzle, input, and maybe an answer to be placed on my body, and realized my discomfort when I had it superimposed onto my face).
Setting a boundary, though, is a sign of respect for the other, enabling them to make their own choices when met with a truthful yes or no. In her book Pleasure Activism, writer adrienne maree brown explains beautifully how the power of yes is enabled by the power of no, how being able to say no makes yes a choice. [13]
dearest friend, lovely stranger,
If Action Is Required / Please feel free / to ask for me because / I will gladly cut down / armies of the undead and / remove my pancreas [14] - and -
- love is an action, not a feeling, according to bell hooks, and I would agree. But in this poem by Cavin Bryce Gonzalez, the narrator’s voice is so strong in their willingness to sacrifice, to be there for the other at all costs - those armies of the undead cut down, the pancreas removed. Maybe there’s another note here on boundaries, and how crossing them is a thrill to unlearn. I’d definitely want you to keep your pancreas - stay in service to yourself, too. At the same time, the presence of the body in this poem, the pancreas imagined as a potent space to give from - I want to return to that later. I like how close I am to the narrator by having received their pancreas. It has a special heat. They feel like a lovely stranger to me, maybe much like you are. These are the contradictions we all live with - pleasures both simple and complex.
dearest friend, lovely stranger,
I am writing to you from the midpoint of a field of dandelions, which I will be standing in again some day. Dandelions congregate here in the evening sun, glowing vaingloriously. I say congregate, because once there is one, there will be many. In this overgrowth, you cannot separate the water from the house from the healthcare from the war from the transit from the schools from the food from the job from the prisons from the rent from the earth. [15]
dearest friend, lovely stranger,
This time requires extreme mental diligence and aptitude combating against the sadness that looms. But we go on because we hope for more. [16]
dearest friend, lovely stranger,
I’m thinking about the necessity of desire, and of staying sharp. Apparently, our hunger corresponds to our libido. How you experience hunger - how you respect your hunger, how you take care of it - can tell you something about how you respect and take care of your desire. Desire is bound up with consent, and hunger for more, the hope for more, is why we riot. Hunger speaks of necessity, but it can take tremendous courage to respond to.
dearest friend, lovely stranger,
It feels like I am lacking in courage right now. I have diligence, I can collect resources and share them, and hold space for others, but I can't really hear my own voice. I keep frothing milk and watching drag queens in an attempt to gather both softness and nerve. The other day I thought about how the way in which we move from day to night and night to day is still unsettling to me every time. It was disturbing to me as a child, and it’s disturbing to me now, being asked to leave at a certain point. I've never had difficulty leaving a party early and on my own, but I’ve always had a hard time putting myself to sleep. When I wake up again, in the mornings, I'm relieved, and grateful. Made it through another one, how nice.
dearest friend, lovely stranger,
Waking up yesterday I thought maybe I'm on some small family farm. The warmth in the air and indistinct sounds of activity outside seemed to suggest it. Last night, falling asleep, with the light from other people’s windows on the wall, I thought myself into a hotel room, with blinds, near a big street, in Delaware.
It is morning now, again. Which means that it’s time for the city’s cleaners to take the city’s trash from out of the courtyard, with much noise. I try to move with compassion, whether it’s against or towards myself. I haven’t slept, though, and bringing myself into a state of extremes hasn’t really made it possible for me to experience gentleness while writing about it. I've been eating extra greens for my gut bacteria to make up for the absence of mixing with my friends’ mycobiomes. [17]
In these last few weeks, I’ve been solving riddles, learning games, and writing small, small stories. This bewilderment I feel, I actively look for it. Solving puzzles, the great unknown, maybe the solution to it lies in a palindrome. It’s an attempt to go beyond the surface, some movement towards uncovering, while being in limbo, being a small child in a garden house with an illusion of autonomy, until I need to eat.
I bet at this point you’ve seen The Social Change Ecosystem Map, created by Deepa Iyer [18]. People’s fascination with this map makes sense, it’s like a multiplayer game with characters, it’s like using the signs of the Zodiac. It’s a beautiful task to find your role in social change, it’s beautiful to do it in a time when each one of us is so needed. It’s also just useful sometimes to imagine yourself as an archetype, an image that has cultural resonance. Both using the imagination and practicing consent are connected to these networks of care, and both are necessary to finding our role in them. We practice imagining ourselves - and I think there’s both an inward and outward movement to that imagining. Just like practicing consent gives us spaces to move from and directions to take towards what we desire.
When we are trying to imagine ourselves new, we should be taking note of the body. The blood, its pressure helping to keep us upright, that big blood vessel that constitutes our liquid center, the liquid that the brain is floating in, not feeling its own weight, smallest parts of the human anatomy, or the chambers of our heart, the bones of the pelvis - I’m not great with symbolism, but I love sensations and colors. A blue, heavy throat, pink, frothy eyelashes, focus on the tip of the nose, it connects you down to earth. If you’re at a protest and you feel overwhelmed, try tapping your fingers on your body, below the collar bones, in the center of the chest, at the end of the ribs. [19] It helps to be viscerally reminded where your body starts and ends.
What kind of images have you been collecting, as you cared for yourself and reached out to others? I do think moments of gentleness and strength come and go through cycles. My partner keeps getting these sweet, gentle cards when I draw tarot cards for him, all birds and happy children, and I keep getting the devil, the kings, the hermit. Gather images of things you can pretend to be when uncentered [20], questions you can ask when gloriously centered, ridiculous new things you can pretend to be when betrayed by your past or your future. There’s seeing it to believe it - seeing it and still not believing it - and not seeing it and still believing it’s to come.
How riddles and consent relate to each other is by both speaking of pleasurable mystery. Both solving a riddle and navigating consent require imaginative thinking; you move towards a solution, or each other, by asking the right questions, and by imagining your role for the other (as analyst in the puzzle author’s mind, or as partner in a stranger’s mind). Our dearest friends should also remain lovely strangers to us, to an extent - there’s a responsibility to keep asking how they want to be taken care of, what proximities and intimacies they consent to; giving up the presumption that you know how they feel is letting go of a claim to ownership.
Our capacity to imagine ourselves shifting shape - rather than as solid and unchanging, and forever further solidifying [21] - makes imagining the world new just that much more possible. [22] It’s a deep engagement with ourselves that teaches us to engage deeply with others. Knowing about the possibility of new, fantastical landscapes within each of our bodies enables us to imagine community, solidarity, and care like we haven’t before. We can be each other’s riot medicine, in that way.
dearest friend, lovely stranger,
I’m writing to you from the bottom of a waterfall that I have yet to reach. You’re navigating something with me that doesn’t have a name. Living with need and with care, leaning against a tree, petrichor and sentience and feeling. I have strong shoulders that I find hard to deal with some days. Walking on uneven ground, I’ve learned, helps my brain and my pelvis think. Go on, because you hope for more.
LINKS / SOURCES
Images
instagram filter by @happyforyoubabes
Ryan Eckes: memo for labor (2018)
Rachel Rabbit White: Eternally Turquoise (2019)
Håkan Geijer: Riot Medicine (2020) - Available here.
Sandy Balfour: Beginner’s guide to solving cryptic crosswords (The Guardian, 2010) - Available here.
instagram filter by @yayablue
Footnotes
Instagram filter by @happyforyoubabes
Ryan Eckes: memo for labor (2018)
Clementine Morrigan, in an Instagram post from 8th April, 2020 - Available here.
Prentis Hemphill: Contagion Consent and Connection (2020) - Available here.
Prentis Hemphill: Contagion Consent and Connection (2020) - Available here.
Dominique Jackson’s speech at the Human Rights Campaign Dinner 2019 - Available here.
Rachel Cargle: When Feminism Is White Supremacy in Heels (2018) - Available here.
Sarah Gorman: You Can Say Much More Interesting Things about a Scar, than You Can About a Wound’ – Selina Thompson’s salt. as an act of Radical Softness (2019) - Available here.
Rachel Cargle: When Feminism Is White Supremacy in Heels (2018) - Available here.
Prentis Hemphill: Contagion Consent and Connection (2020) - Available here.
Cara Page as quoted in adrienne maree brown: Pleasure Activism (2019)
Cara Page as quoted in adrienne maree brown: Pleasure Activism (2019)
adrienne maree brown: Pleasure Activism (2019)
Cavin Bryce Gonzalez: If Action Is Required (2020)
Ryan Eckes: memo for labor (2018)
Fariha Róisín: Taking Pause (2020) - Available here.
Paraphrasing artist Thilaka Hillman, in an Instagram story from sometime during Covid-19. - Available here.
Deepa Iyer: Mapping Our Roles in Social Change Ecosystems (2020) - Available here.
Andrea Glik: Somatic coping for in the streets (2020) - Available here.
Gabi Abrão: Things You Can Pretend To Be When You Feel Uncentered (2019) - Available here.
Let’s talk about the concept of ‘resilience’ in neoliberalism another day. Sarah Gorman writes about it a bit here: You Can Say Much More Interesting Things about a Scar, than You Can About a Wound’ – Selina Thompson’s salt. as an act of Radical Softness (2019) - Available here.
adrienne maree brown: Pleasure Activism (2019)
Further reading/ watching
Clay AD: Metabolize, If Able (2018) - Available here.
Constantina Zavitsanos & Park McArthur: It’s Sorta Like A Big Hug (2015) - Available here.
Estelle Ellison: The Anarchism of Political Aftercare (2019) - Available here.
bell hooks: All About Love: New Visions (2000)
Yumi Sakugawa’s art practice - Available here.
@richmondstrike: No One Is Coming to Rescue Us / We Need to Build Organized Resistance (2020) - Available here.
Katharina Joy Book is a writer & performance practitioner. With the members of sound writing kollab, she produces devised performances in real & virtual environments on the possibilities of noise literature & nonlinear narratives. Currently based in Berlin, she works with Ariel Efraim Ashbel and friends as assistant director and stage manager. She can be found here.
Click here for Adam Patterson’s letter, which came before, and here for Jonathan Hielkema’s letter (which will be published on June 29th).
Many thanks to Manon Beury, Tudor Etchells, Emily Medd, James Medd and Melanie Healy, Rapolas Rucinskas and all those who preferred to remain anonymous, whose contributions helped make this project possible.
