Partying Like It’s 2020

 

A few months ago, one of our fall issue contributors, Janelle M. Williams, asked me to be on a publishing panel for an event she was running, a Teen Writers’ Summit through her work at Writopia Lab. Throwing on some eyeliner and a clean-looking sweater and logging on to my computer to greet strangers is the only time I put on a clean anything anymore, so I said yes. Plus it sounded like fun. Over this time, I’ve said yes to Zoom weddings, Zoom parties, Zoom classes, Zoom therapy. I’ve been doing it all on Zoom, just on this side of presentable.

The panel was great, and I hope it was helpful to the teens. What I didn’t expect is that it would shift my thinking about Zoom a bit. One of the panelists, Sarah Kay, a poet and performance artist and, I daresay, impromptu speaker whose talents skew guru, said the most amazing thing. I’ll start off by saying this: I’ve spent many, many hours on Zoom over the past nine months, and never have I felt on the verge of any kind of eloquence about the experience. Mostly I’ve felt tired and gray, annoyed at having to confront my physical self so often. I’ve felt like I was failing my students. I’ve felt unsure about where to put my eyes when speaking or why I even owned shoes anymore. Everything about Zooming felt like the opposite of something I wanted to think more about.

On that panel, someone asked us how our work had changed during the pandemic, and when Sarah spoke (I really hope I’m doing her justice here), she said that in the before-time she used to get energy, love, and support for her own work through in-person events: readings, poetry slams, coffee house open mics, meetings with friends. Rooms full of people ready to clap and lift one another up. She had replaced that connection with her own mind, trying to support itself. Worse, actually: her own mind fueled by her experience with the virtual world. When she sat down now to write, all she could hear was the naysayers, the voices she’d internalized from hours of (doom) scrolling and (doom) browsing and (doom) clicking.

Two months earlier, in fact, I had cried to my therapist after I’d stumbled upon a Facebook post about an old friend’s dog who had died horribly. “Why did I have to see that?” I asked her, unable to get this long-lost person’s pet out of my head for days. “Because social media is a trauma machine,” she said, as if she had said it many millions of times before. Even with this admonition, I was still thinking of the internet as something I could look at or not look at, not something that was infiltrating my very personhood. When Sarah described how all of that virtual time started changing how she felt about her work, something clicked.

Maybe this all seems obvious. But I hadn’t considered the way all of that screen time was rewiring my own thinking about myself: my physical self, my intellectual self, my self as a friend, my self as a teacher, even my self as an editor. All of the joy I used to get from out there and could then channel into myself and my work was being replaced by feelings of incomplete connection, a sense of the impossibility of intimacy. I had let the internet drag me into the world of its own horrid thinking, and I’d started to believe that thinking was coming from my own mind.

Meanwhile, two of the students in the Shenandoah internship class thought it would be fun to have a Zoom launch party for the fall issue. Jackson and Savannah said there should be readings, some kind of game, maybe party hats, a book giveaway. You know: fun. On Zoom.

I’d become such an Ebenezer Zoom at this point, that I only felt the weight of having to plan something else. I’d have to do my hair, I thought. I’d have to try to be charming. I’d have to create an engaging atmosphere for a group of onlookers. These were things I used to try to do on the daily as a professor and as a human. Now even the thought of conjuring up that kind of energy made me feel incompetent, ready for a nap.

Thanks to those two students, though, and the ingenious party-planner that is our associate editor Morgan Davis, and our many fabulous editors and interns, we managed to pull off a Zoom event for the ages. After every short reading, the crowd of over one hundred people hooted and hollered and clapped. Contributors shared their made-up songs honoring the 2020 holiday season (“Tis The Season of Four Seasons Total Landscaping,” “Twelve Days of Sweatpants,” “Sanitizer is Coming to Town.”) The chat was impossible to keep up with, it was so full of love and support and joyful tidings. I saved it, and open it now when I need to feel, you know, good. Here’s a taste.

 

Nonfiction writer J.D. Ho, whose seventh-grade teachers came to the party, read from the essay, “Memoirs of a Stink Bug.” The chat went crazy:

 

Clover: “I got stunk” is so perfect
Layne: ^^^
Jen: Holy cow, that was incredible
Tina (Dean_Is_Batman): gorgoeus lines.
Hannah: Amazing, J.D.!!!!! Thank you!!!
Tina (Dean_Is_Batman): ❤️❤️❤️
Katy: So powerful, jd!
Clayton: “People have plagued me all my life”!!! :0
Ashley: looking forward to reading that in the issue! really great!
Jackson: Wow JD!!! Amazing!
Anna: I’m left speechless by that essay, so powerful
Anna Lena: I love yelling and screaming, and I love these readings! ❤️
Brandon: That was awesome
Layne: so insanely good, thank you JD!
Karen: JD, So great to hear you read again – I’ve been listening to you since you were 12! I’ve missed your voice. xo
Safitri: So good JD thank you :)0
James: I love it!

 

If you need to, why not pretend these lovely people are talking about your work?

 

Or about your hair?

 

Jen: The background ate most of my hair.
xhenet: Jen, me too, but I have hair to spare, so…

 

Or your clothes or your sanitation protocol or your baby? There was so much love going on, it was hard to keep track, and the chat started to feel like a poem:

 

Clayton: sweatpants and dress shirts
Jen: JOGGERS 4 EVA
Jen: You look like modern art
Emily: Mark, you are the 4th wall
xhenet: Hand sanitizer.
Andrew: OMG
Molly: I almost sang!
Danielle: Baby!!!!!
Nancy: Cute Baby!!!!

 

I guess my point is this: We know that literature connects us. When you read this issue, I suspect you’ll find pieces of yourself everywhere, and surprising pieces of other people’s lives that make your own life feel larger, make more things feel possible. We know people have been reading and watching a lot of TV and movies during this pandemic—it is art that saves us, that reminds us we are alive in the world when we need that reminding. But the people behind the art? It turns out they are so amazing too—full of warmth and joy and support and love and hair and babies. If you can get some of them in a Zoom room and do some screaming, I definitely think you should.

To close us out, selections from our party denouement. Maybe whisper them to yourself when you need to get to sleep tonight? Just pretend they’re talking about all of the wonderful things you did on your computer today.

 

Mark: partying like it’s 2020
Seth: What joy to see and hear everyone’s work. Thanks to all!
Hannah: Thank you, it was so special to be a part of this!
Marisa: absolutely incredible- everyone. thank you!!
sylvia: So happy to have been here for this wonderful event!
Nancy: What a wonderful launch party and reading. Such an honor to be included in this issue.
Brandon: Thanks so much for putting this together! Loved it!
Leslie: Thank you to everyone!! So special to share Zoom space with you all 🙂
Kimary: Wow! I think I just experienced a night of culture during covid. I didn’t think that was possible. Thank you!!

 

Doesn’t it suddenly feel like so many things are still possible, with people like this in the world? Happy reading, happy Zooming, happy writing, happy screaming. Until we party in person like it’s 2021.

 

—Beth Staples