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  • Writer's pictureBecka

Episode 2.7 - Wish I honestly felt that unconcerned

Updated: Apr 16, 2020



photo: Paul Wade


So here we are, with a special bullbat hour edition.

I wonder if Jack was already saying "bullbat hour" in 1942 or if that came later.


I actually felt nervous today - there's something about it being the evening. Or evening-ish, when performances generally happen. And about there being more people. All of which is good and fun. Just yeah. I got nervous.

(There is a part of me that secretly fears a massive onset of social anxiety when all this self-isolation is over, because I will have gotten so used to my own company that the presence of others will be more distressing than usual.)


But back to bullbat hour. Maybe next time I'll have a Manhattan ready to go. I'm really thinking about my grandfather today, though I didn't read one of his letters.



At-the-Office. Somewhere we are not.


Noting the wide variety of stationary in these letters is one the pleasures of this project.


Winnie is very self-deprecating about her paper in this epistle - it's not appropriate for a letter at all.


It's hard to believe this letter is 78 years old. There's a yellowish tinge to the margin, but much of it looks very contemporary.




You can just see the tinge.


My poor grandmother - there is a passage in here that suggests Jack has been making (gentle?) fun of a recent haircut she's had. Telling her she looks like a teddy bear. 


She appears to have been quite stressed by it. 


As an older person, she often asked for assurance about her appearance.

This question of external assurance is an obvious one, but perennially troubling. Ideally we wouldn't need it, right? Except needing some of it at least seems to be an indispensable part of what it is to be human. 

And, as ever, a gap opens between what we know to be the case and our ability to live that way.


And then we hate ourselves because that gap exists. 



Maybe it was just a bad haircut. 


She certainly seems worried about him getting one. 




I read an article today about about how to deal with one's hair during quarantine. I was looking for practical advice, as my partner and I are in agreement about his increasing resemblance to a great horned owl. 

Instead the piece was more existential - all about how we express identity through our hair and simultaneously about now being a time when there is no one to see us and so we are free to do what ever we want. It also included an interview with a hair stylist who suggested we all shave our heads at some point, just for the experience. 

It's freeing, he says.


There's something contradictory, though, isn't there, in this idea that we a) express identity through appearance and b) can now do what we want now that no one is looking? Doesn't that formulation suggest that we're not expressing, so much as signalling, or communicating? I'm not being clear. What I mean is, if you're doing what you want generally anyway, why change it now? Unless you're not. In which case, yes, I see this is useful.


Now I am sitting here thinking about all the things I have contemplated doing to/with myself, but haven't, and wondering if it is because I don't truly want to, or because there is some inevitable spectator whose approval I fear losing. 


I have always said that this project is about inheritance. 


The photo for this episode - with the tea cup and the chain - shows things I have inherited from my grandparents. 


This space, though - this is about other kinds of inheritances.


This need for affirmation. This discomfort. They're in the letters and recognise them. I don't want to, but I do. 

I feel guilty, because I kind of feel like Jack has been a bit of jerk here, but I still totally love him. Is it because I see myself in him, or because, like Winnie, I want him to think I'm cool?


Maybe it's both those things. 


Both/and, right? That's the way forward. 



Or try at least. When that doesn't work, there are always Manhattans.


Until next time, 


All my love,

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