Day 100 Consent, Negotiation, The Pandemic; and, Building Bridges to A New World

One of the results of hook-up culture, which, as I understand it, is best described as sex without commitment, is that a whole generation of people have had to learn to be good at negotiation. When you say ‘consent’ to a millennial or a Gen Zer, it doesn’t need to be explained.

But what about the rest of us? Even if we’re not conflict-avoidant. Even if we’re conflict-bring-it-on. Even if ... we’re in the middle of a pandemic.

The rules, such as they are, in the middle of a pandemic are unlike any other consent scenario I have ever encountered. When I was growing up, consent, most of the time, was implicit not explicit. Now we live in a world wherein consent must be explicit. A lot of us are failing at it. Some, spectacularly.

The International Thespian Society sponsors the International Thespian Festival every year. This is the first year it’s virtual—because of the coronavirus. Never let it be said that theatre people are not flexible.

“Abby Stuckrath, 18, who graduated this spring from Denver School of the Arts, remembers performing “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” for a 2018 main stage audience during a tornado warning—and being told by her teacher that, should a tornado come their way and the auditorium be evacuated, ‘You will stay in character.’”

The virtual attendees have some hot cameo appearances to anticipate: Dolly Parton, Tina Fey, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Miss Peppermint. Kenny Leon, a Black theatre director, who was recently featured in an article about racial discrimination in the theatre, will be speaking.  One of the much-anticipated videos that will be shared includes a Cassie from “A Chorus Line” who is a person of color.

Kids who will be in “attendance” this year have all had to negotiate toward consent. One pair, doing a duet from “Once,” finally agreed to record it from separate spaces even though it was ‘legal’ for them to be in the same room. Another girl hoped that Covid and Black Lives Matter would be on the agenda “so everyone will be educated.”

One of the faculty theatre directors of a production of “All My Sons” that had been chosen said, “It’s all about our shared humanity, and our sense of the human family, and that we are responsible to and for each other, always. That’s exactly what the heart of this play is.”

“Of course she feels responsible to her students, and she has drilled into them that they are responsible to one another, too—which in 2020 means being vigilant about coronavirus safety.” Eventually one of her students tested positive and after some backing and forthing amongst director, students, and parents, she shut down the production.

It’s a rough row to hoe, believe me. It’s creating both internal and external conflict as people are doing their best to figure out boundaries and safety and health and well-being and diversity and care and you-can-fill-in-the-blank for any other agenda you want. There are conflicting desires in all of us.

Through these long pandemic months, a line from “Hamilton” has played on repeat in that theatre director’s head: “the world turned upside down.” It is. Introverts, like me, feel pretty much that isolation and social distancing work for us. Extroverts, who get their energy from being around others, are hurting from it. They want social lives again. I understand.

People who are partnered, and live with their partners, have some needs met that singles cannot hope to meet. Dating during Covid is fraught. We are already a lonely people as it is. There’s a real difference between friends and Facebook friends.

Working from home, which has made many of us very happy, and restored countless hours normally spent in commuting, is a wow—yes! Unless, homeschooling goes with it. Ugh—no. People are creating corona bubbles with their own negotiated sets of rules. If one person in the bubble breaks the rules, they’re out. Ya know. Coronavirus—it’s complicated.

The desires and boundaries and conflicts and negotiations that are required to reach consent in each one of our lives, which will be extant until there is a universal vaccine, are a microcosm of what our society needs to be doing to perceive, honor, and address the systemic racism that is oozing out all over.

The hardest part of the negotiations will always be the feelings. Always. Because feelings are slippery. Because so few of us are adept at putting words on them. Because they change so damn fast. And feelings, no matter what a good emotional GPS they offer, don’t really matter around facts. Or, better said, they don’t have a say in the facts. “Do you feel safe?” is the wrong question. “Are you safe?” is the right one.

Frank Bruni made me laugh yesterday. In “The Revenge of the Trump Tattletales,” he wrote, “Beware the number of enemies you make, and pray to God they don’t have literary agents. That’s a lesson President Trump never learned. But he’ll be schooled anew in late July, the scheduled publication date for a book by his niece, Mary Trump. Spoiler alert: She’s not defending the honor of a misunderstood uncle. She’s reportedly plunging a dagger into him, though its lethalness is unclear. It’s not as if she had an Ivanka-grade seat to the circus of his life.” There’s also the tell-all John R. Bolton book about which the Trump administration has gone to court twice.

A literary come-uppance, if you will. But as Mr. Bruni says, “One way or another, the truth will come out. Then again, the truth was never in. While most presidential administrations leak like kitchen faucets—or at worst, garden hoses—Trump’s leaks like Niagara Falls, as many unflattering books and much unsparing journalism have already shown. And while most presidential administrations have a few embittered exiles, Trump’s has a teeming diaspora of disgusted refugees, many of whom tattled as soon as they fled, either on the record or in whispers to reporters.”

And why? Well, here’s partly why: “Trump has incensed and alarmed officials and staffers in all kinds of institutions and all corners of the government. He has burned through personnel like a pyromaniac.” So true. But there’s also the megalomaniacal tendency toward controlling everything around him. He feels out of control—because he is out of control. Honestly, we all feel a little out of control because of the virus.

We will get used to feeling this way, but in this interim time, we could use it for a remarkable amount of good if we’ll make the time to realize what it means, explicitly, for each of us personally. Those theatre kids are facing what we’re all facing. The Control-Freak-in-Chief is facing what we’re all facing. We get a say in how we handle this liminal time.

A star-studded roster of Tony Award winners is starting a new non-profit for the theatre. “An all-star team of black theater artists has formed a new coalition vowing to combat racism in the theater community. Black Theater United counts among its founding members the Tony Award winners Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Billy Porter, Phylicia Rashad, LaChanze, Kenny Leon, Adriane Lenox and Lillias White.

“The group, whose founders also include the actors Wendell Pierce, Vanessa Williams, Norm Lewis and Brandon Victor Dixon, said it had formed a nonprofit that would seek ‘to influence widespread reform and combat systemic racism within the theater industry and throughout the nation.’” Now that’s an explicit response to implicit bias which will address the bias with a view toward changing it.

“Black Theater United began by specifying actions it intends to take, including supporting  existing efforts to bolster census participation and developing new mentorship programs for aspiring young black theater artists. The group said it will next ‘constitute an inquiry committee to accurately assess past practices and policies within the theater.’”

Is there a group of like-minded individuals within the New York Police Department who might do the same thing? I bet there’s a coalition of black officers. Could they set up a similar agenda?

There was an article in yesterday’s Times entitled “Why More Children’s Books Are Tackling Sexual Harassment and Abuse.” Authors are addressing genuine, real live, everyday concerns of genuine, real, live people. They are arising out of the truth that continues to be spoken because of #MeToo. These stories cannot be easy to write, but they are functioning in a space where things are implicit and insisting that they become explicit. Yet another taboo—healing. Hopefully not another young gymnast will have to tell the tales we read about earlier this year.

This process is happening everywhere because it needs to be happening everywhere. There is a deep need to name what is happening so that we can change it. There seems to me to be a new urgency for revelation so that we take our time to create restoration. I truly believe that the coronavirus is here to reset all of civilization. A young woman talking about celebrating this very day, Juneteenth, Brianna Holt said, “Freedom is still long overdue.”

“In the fall of 2015, [Tazewell Thompson] received an email from Francesca Zambello, the director of the Glimmerglass Festival. ‘I’m interested in commissioning an opera about race in America, about where we are now as a people dealing with race,’ she wrote. ‘I have a composer set, and I’m looking for a librettist. What are your thoughts on the following writers?’”

Eventually, he suggested himself. He met with that composer, Jeannine Tesori, and the result is “Blue,” which tells the story of the family of a black police officer torn apart when his son is killed at a protest by another officer. When I read the storyline, I had goosebumps.

It could happen. It may have happened already. I can feel what that heartbreak would do. But unless we let our feelings lead us into productive spaces where we are able to examine what’s implicit and traverse the often rocky road to the explicit, we are simply stuck at heartbreak.

The most amazing part of these protests about the police brutality that caused the death of George Floyd and countless others is that not only will systemic racism be noted and addressed, and hopefully, released from our consciousness, but those who are just as enslaved on the other side of the racism stand the exact same chance for freedom.

Nicholas Kristof wrote about this in terms of women and leadership apropos of the coronavirus. He said, “It’s not that the leaders who best managed the virus were all women. But those who bungled the response were all men, and mostly a particular type: authoritarian, vainglorious and blustering. Think of Boris Johnson in Britain, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran and Donald Trump in the United States.

“Virtually every country that has experienced coronavirus mortality at a rate of more than 150 per million inhabitants is male-led. And where we’ve seen things go most badly wrong—the U.S., Brazil, Russia, the U.K.—it’s a lot of male ego and bluster.” His conclusion made me smile. “It’s also possible that this isn’t about female leaders but about the kind of country that chooses a woman to lead it.”

The kind of country that chooses .... That sounds so good to me, Beloved. Doesn’t it, to you?

So. Here’s a possible choice for a way forward for the police. I believe that separating Law Enforcement from Public Safety makes the most meta-sense. The police have become the strong-arms of the law. What if law enforcers and public safety teams were two entirely separate entities?

There’s a Public Safety Committee on the NYC Council—why not begin with an extension of that? And make a plan to transition law enforcement via public safety training to public safety squads over two years? That way, those who want to enforce laws will go one way with one explicit set of priorities and those who want to work toward public safety will go another way with an equally explicit set of priorities.

Contrary to popular opinion, Beloved, the universe is endlessly abundant. This means that the creatures which inhabit it are also endlessly abundant, if we’ll see ourselves this way. What that means is that we’re endlessly inventive, creative, and possible. We can absolutely figure out where to go from here if we’ll stay with it till what everyone needs is considered.

Sebastion Ryder of Burlington, Vermont answered a question posed by The New York Times about when he would feel comfortable returning to the theatre. He said, “There is no aspect of life that theater doesn’t help me understand. You ask what it would take for me to feel comfortable enough to come to New York? A ticket and a free Saturday. I can provide my own face mask.”

Tattoo artists are inking skin with the words #ICan’tBreathe. One young recipient said, “I just wanted this tattoo on my body as a representation to say that if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” We must, each one of us, Beloved, stand for something.

New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo reached his hundredth day of news conferences a week ago Monday. Today is my hundredth day of daily essay-writing. My heart is calling me to different writing projects, and other media. I will still write my essays, but probably once or twice a week instead of daily. Soon enough, I will invite you to a new, ancient way of thinking, The Ampersand Society. Stay tuned.

Until then, consider this observation of Angela Y. Davis, “Walls turned sideways are bridges.” What wall will you convert next, Beloved? Where will you build your next bridge? Let me close with Our Lady of Whimsey, Mary Engelbreit, “When you choose to see the universe as an endless source of abundance, you’ll reap great rewards.”

Dr. Susan Corso is a metaphysician and medical intuitive with a private counseling practice for more than 35 years. She has written too many books to list here. Her website is www.susancorso.com  

© Dr. Susan Corso 2020 All rights reserved

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