Heartfelt care for each other will unlock joy By Issey Scott
25/7/21
With Cancer sun season being a time that illuminates themes around care, and Leo season on the horizon that embraces joy, this feels like an apt moment to reflect on both of these terms. Of course, we cannot help but frame these terms in the current moment of a pandemic, where these words have been used perhaps more than ever to describe our needs as a society and as individuals. ‘Care’ and ‘joy’ are certainly buzzwords, and often ones which are so excessively used that we do not stop to think about what they mean, and how integral they are to the human experience.
Feeling isolated is a sign of the times we’re living in, even pre-pandemic. Late-stage capitalism, neoliberalism and its brightly-coloured cousin Social Media have us all treating each other as competition or enterprising opportunities. Life sometimes feels like a fleshy LinkedIn, and we’re all nothing but profiles.
Many have said that the pandemic is, or was, the wake-up call we needed to start thinking about care in a meaningful way. What this consideration perhaps wasn’t ready for was the stubborn self-absorption that we are all programmed into (to different degrees, of course), and if we’re honest, it’s really hard to break away. Now, so far this has been a fairly miserable analysis, but as we straddle the care-centred Cancer season and the joy focus of Leo, I have been thinking about how the latter may not be able to authentically exist without the former.
One avenue to thinking about this is thinking about how both care and joy are represented in the media. We all know there are deeply embedded issues with the ways in which the media functions, however one that is particularly prevalent is the representation by journalists, directors, scriptwriters, casting agents etc., of marginalised, or silenced, communities. One of the trickle-down outcomes of 2020’s Black Lives Matter, similarly to #MeToo, was to have increased representation of Black people on television. Some have done this fairly seamlessly (as it absolutely can and should be), but where is the joy? Having people of marginalised communities on your programme or publication as experts of their own existence and predicaments is one thing, and necessary, but when they only appear when the discussion is about violence towards their communities only serves to re-traumatise and regurgitate pain and suffering. Where is the care? Certainly, these commentators’ voices are more crucial than ever, but where are the voices discussing politics, comedy, cookery, nature, and the myriad other things everyone is passionate about? A similar situation is unravelling in the trans community, whereby everyone with a media platform seems to have an opinion about the trans right to exist, but where are the trans voices? This serves as a further alienation. Trans people are people; where is the right to joy without constantly having your identity thrown into public debate? Where are the support networks made public enough to say “we are stringently opposed to and horrified about the vitriol you receive online and in real life, we have your back. You are cared for”?
These examples, which are unfolding in real time, evidence my suggestion that joy cannot exist without a foundation of care. In his work on ‘Fully Automated Luxury Communism’, Aaron Bastani states that the liberal utopia can’t exist without socialism first, whereby all are at an equal footing. It can sometimes feel that we are trying to build joy (here’s looking at you, Self Care industry) on rotten ground. Care for each other must feel easier, and less of a burden, which it ultimately does when we are fixated on the hustle 24/7. If it doesn’t make us money, there is a huge guilt attached to paying it attention. This care extends beyond platitudes towards genuine attention and attending to the needs and desires of ourselves and everyone around us, especially those facing multiple disadvantage.
It’s almost as if care unlocks joy. Joy is something that cannot be bought or sold (again, sorry to tell you, #Girlboss) but is transferable in its very nature, and the fact that we all have the capacity to give and receive it is a gift.
Issey Scott is a writer and curator based in London. Issey has run the art blog Let’s Make Lots of Monet since July 2013, and her writing has appeared in various publications including Candid Magazine, The Big Issue, RIBA and Floorr Magazine, and has produced exhibition essays for Castor Gallery and Wimbledon Space. She has curated projects at South London Gallery, Anise Gallery, Museum of the Home and arebyte. Issey is currently studying MA Contemporary Art Theory at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Insta @_isseygram
Website www.letsmakelotsofmonet.com