Devil's Country
outtake from beingone
I recorded “beingone” January 2021 at Deep Space, Brooklyn, with Chris McLaughlin. That December, Saturn and Jupiter blazed in the twilight. Night after night, they approached one another. By the time they met on the solstice — the “Great Conjunction” — they were 0.1 degrees apart; everywhere people wished each other a happy solstice instead of merry Christmas. It was beautiful to see everyone unified in their awareness of these cosmic beings.
In fact, the world had just endured the 9 months of the virus. Everyone had already been unified by an invisible entity; Saturn and Jupiter refocused the inward gaze of the pandemic outward, towards two celestial bodies of the outer solar system. My contemplations in the months before the solstice were focused on the message of the pandemic. What was the metaphor of the illness? I spent time trying to write an essay about this, particularly presenting an alternative view of Susan Sontag’s book Illness as Metaphor. Despite its murky origins, the virus illumined the power the unseen has in our lives; at the same time, it confirmed the web of interdependence that connects all living things on Earth. Even the animals came out from their hiding places and entered our cities, drank from the Trevi fountain, slinked along the avenues no longer filled with crowds. There was talk of hotspots and the news outlets showed maps with red orbs radiating outward, overlapping. There was death; and not just death in a distant place— no one was able to say, “that’s happening to someone else,” because everyone knew someone who knew someone. And there was a lot of time to think about it.
Within my own biography, I had recently lost my father to cancer; earlier in the year, I had to identify my best friend in a Nogales morgue. I was stepping out of a relationship which had run its course.