“But how does a life look when it doesn’t define itself in relation to the status of wage labor, but rather through the desire to freely decide one’s own conditions for living and working, effectively comprising a demand for a flexible labor market?” - Marion von Osten, Irene ist Viele! Or What We Call “Productive” Forces in e-flux journal’s Are You Working Too Much? Post-Fordism, Precarity, and the Labor of Art.
A month and a half down, with a few more weeks to go here in Rome. Time is passing both quickly and slowly, and I’m in this emotional limbo of wanting to rewind back to the pre-arrival anticipation I felt, I’m also ready to see what kind of human I’ve become from this experience. Hopefully an Italian-speaking one.
I arrived with a far-fetched goal to become conversationally fluent in Italian by the end of my trip and so far, my vocabulary is only slightly better than before. (I’ve now stocked up on the following: just, gym, near, what the fuck, pussy, ass, healthy, delicious.) I still sound like a self conscious primitive human when I speak. And not according to plan, I’ve started dating someone who speaks good-enough English. Also not according to plan, I’ve temporarily discontinued my Italian lessons because frankly I’d rather spend my mornings cuddling (and apparently speaking English) with the new amore than make my one hour trek to class. I’m learning to not reproach myself for choosing to linger in bed. It’s a privilege to stay in bed.
This time away from New York, on my own without much of a daily compass other than “what should I eat?” has thrown me for a huge existential loop. Friends have jokingly compared me and my travels to that of the Western zeitgeisty trope of the middle-aged woman who bucks all conventions for a spiritual journey abroad. But I don’t feel like mid-life crisis Julia Roberts or Diane Lane. In fact, I’m not white nor middle-aged. I don’t feel like I’m doing anything different from what I was already doing in New York. I came because in the simplest terms — I came because I could. (In Italian, I’d only know how to say it in the present tense: Because I can. Perche io posso.) Actually, I like the sound of “because I can, motherfucker.”
It would be a lie to say that while I’m blissfully lying horizontal on my couch in the afternoons with the perennial Mediterranean sun massaging my body, I don’t have overachievement fomo. Work hard-play hard fomo. Art-as-my-labor-as-my-art-as-my-identity fomo.
I occasionally crave who I was pre-pandemic, pre dad death, pre Italy. I was intensely preoccupied with work and addicted to being busy. From running my own catering business to moving to Mexico to open a restaurant. I never knew how to exist quietly. Stillness felt like a straight jacket in a windowless all-white room.
Even in college, I was always “hustling.” Simultaneously going to class, hosting a jazz night on campus, working two paying job, interning (for free, ugh), and working the door at a Hollywood club occasionally. Unlike some of my chill-mode friends, I had a job lined up a month before I graduated. What summer break? I had student loans to pay.
My aspiration was always to surpass my immigrant parents in their socio-economic circumstances. My dad’s construction hands, rough and blistered from electrical work motivated me to stay snug in air-conditioned corporate environments. My mom’s low-paying, dreary zombie-like secretarial work in a silk flower factory inspired me to thrive in the creative industry. I’ve always chosen the harder path not because I’m masochistic (ok, a little) but for the addictive busy-bodying approach to life. I have not known how to relax. I have only known work as a survival modality. But also, I’m realizing that I’ve been afraid of what thoughts would bubble up if I wasn’t constantly distracted with activity. I’ve been afraid of who I’ll be if I wasn’t “useful” or “relevant.”
Then everything changed. The atomic bomb that dropped on humankind, that gave us pause to consider how we want to live our lives in the wake of a global pandemic. I busy-bodied myself then too. I managed to avoid stillness even when I was suddenly unemployed. I was hyper-active on social media. I became emotionally invested in every cause, rallying for donations through food pop-ups and bake sales. I became addicted to collaging. I set up a mini bedroom recording studio, playing guitar and singing covers. My purpose went from being a worker bee to enlightened artist-activist. But bills were suddenly due again, and the stimulus check barely tickled my bank account, so I had to get an “interim” writing job. A job that was just a job to cover my essentials. A job that wasn’t my identity, that I could mentally detach from at 5pm every day.
My relationship to labor changed in this time. It was the first time I was working just to work. I didn’t care about prestige. I didn’t care if it fulfilled my creative sensibilities. No one else was doing much at the time so there was no social pressure to posture or self-promote or flex. Life became Zoom and Slack from 9 to 5, home-cooked meals at home, walks around the neighborhood. I had never known this routine. I have only ever known ambition: staying at work too late or 12 hour+ work days. I have only ever considered what the next big thing I had to do was, who I am as a result of what I do for work — and not — I need a quick stroll before the sun goes down. And guess what, I’ve been strolling every day in New York since and have brought my strolling tendencies with me to Rome. Before the sun goes down, and sometimes after.
“Capitalism is the shape-shifting creature-beast always ready ahead and above — regardless of which revolutionary force tries to overthrow or subvert it—as it continually vampirizes any signs of resistance.” - Tom Holert, Hidden Labor and the Delight of Otherness: Design and Post Capitalist Politics, in e-flux journal’s Are You Working Too Much? Post-Fordism, Precarity, and the Labor of Art
In that privileged period of reset and rest, and then the return of our post-Covid hyper-capitalistic reality, my outlook and my insides have changed. New York City feels unchanged though — restaurants, bars, parties, shops, stylishly-costumed hipsters abound. People are back to work in a psychotic way, even if remotely. My friends in culinary are back to adorning tables of elites with their sculptural edible creations. We are talking about our careers again. Almost everyone I know (myself included) has shared a photo from Italy this past summer.
Like I said, the occasional fomo arrives on a speeding train asking me to hop on. If I am not on this train, then what is my value anymore?
“Cosa fai?” my Italian boo asked me this morning over WhatsApp. And I was in the process of spooning yogurt onto my plate (as I do almost every day for breakfast), and just listening to a Spotify playlist my friend Sadé made. For just a second, I suddenly wished I could say that I was reading Foucault or seeing art at Borghese Gallery or working on some cool art project. But that was very much the lingering shadow cast of a former me with the sun positioned in a very, very different direction. “Mangio collazione" I responded. “I eat breakfast.” In present tense —which is all I know at the moment both literally and figuratively and that’s ok. (There was a time when I wouldn’t make time for breakfast, can you believe that?)
With that said, I’m going to go easy on myself about my Italian fluency too. About feeling fomo. About everything I have done/haven’t done. And just continuing to practice being still, relaxing, enjoying my cuddles and late mornings, and continuing my breakup with my need to be valuable through my labor. Perche io posso. Because I can, and because godamnnit, I’m tired.