newyorker--2020-05-27--The Death of Antonio Bolívar, an Indigenous Elder in the Amazon Rain Forest

On the last Sunday of April , in the small city of Leticia , Colombia , a thirty-eight-year-old security guard named Cristian Bolívar was at work when he received a phone call from his wife , who had some bad news .
“ Your dad is still very ill , ” she said .
Antonio Bolívar , at seventy-five , was a respected indigenous elder , and for three days he had been suffering chills and a high fever , which the family had been trying to lower with liquids , soothing baths , and acetaminophen .
By that Sunday @ @ @ @ @ @ @ breathing .
“ I left my post right away , ” Cristian told me .
He rode his motorbike to his father ’ s small wooden house .
Antonio ’ s temperature had reached a hundred and four degrees , so Cristian called an ambulance , which , he said , took three hours to arrive .
Antonio turned to Cerina , his partner of twenty-eight years , and said , “ Sweetheart , I am just going to the doctor to get some antibiotics .
I ’ ll be right back.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forest , at the southern tip of Colombia , bordering Brazil and Peru , the two countries with the highest number of COVID-19 cases in Latin America .
The number of reported cases in the Amazon had been increasing since mid-March , especially in Manaus , Brazil , and Iquitos , Peru .
In Manaus , a city of more than two million , which has been recording up to a hundred and thirty fatalities a day ( up from its normal toll of twenty to thirty-five ) , the dead are being @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which has a population of half a million people , hospitals do not have enough beds .
The three countries are divided by the Amazon , but the river towns are closely connected to one another .
“ The sugar we buy is from Peru , and the rice we eat is from Brazil , ” a doctor on the Colombian side told me .
The governments of the three countries have announced plans to protect those living in the Amazon , but so far few measures have been implemented .
( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Brazil is making the process more difficult for the other countries . )
The first confirmed patient in Leticia was reported just a week before Antonio Bolívar got sick .
Within a month , there were more than a thousand confirmed cases .
The city , with a population of about fifty thousand , has only a small private clinic and a public facility , the San Rafael hospital ; between them , there are barely more than a hundred beds and eleven ventilators .
There is no I.C.U .
in Leticia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ samples all the way to Bogotá to be tested for COVID-19 .
Antonio Bolívar was admitted to San Rafael that Sunday night .
Cristian and Cerina went to the hospital each day but were not allowed to see him .
“ They told me he was doing fine , eating well and joking with the staff , ” Cristian said .
But , on the night of April 30th , a neighbor came to the house and told him , “ Your father just passed away.
” She had seen the news on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tested for COVID-19 , but , given his symptoms , the doctors believed that he had been infected by the coronavirus .
They told Cristian that Antonio had gone into cardiorespiratory arrest , and they could not revive him .
The following morning , a hearse took his casket to the town cemetery , where the mayor had ordered the building of more vaults .
Cristian rode behind on his motorbike , to the entry of the cemetery , and watched as a forensic team buried his father .
The indigenous communities in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quarantine , so no other mourners were present .
“ That was the saddest part , ” Cerina told me .
“ I used to tell him , when he was still alive , that if he passed away , I would throw him a big funeral , like the one he deserved.
” Antonio Bolívar had been a celebrity in the Amazon since 2016 , when he appeared in “ Embrace of the Serpent , ” a movie by the Colombian director Ciro Guerra .
( It can be streamed on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ name : Amazon Prime . )
Set in the early twentieth century , the movie portrays the exploitation of indigenous groups by rubber companies and Capuchin missionaries .
Bolívar played Karamakate , a member of a fictional group called the Cohiuano , which had been almost completely wiped out .
The Times ’ review noted that “ he is no innocent , noble savage but an angry , morally complex individual with a heart full of grief.
” In his first scene , Karamakate is drawing what looks like a jaguar on a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a loincloth and a necklace made of crocodile teeth .
His calm expression changes when Evan ( Brionne Davis ) , a botanist , arrives in a small canoe .
( The movie is inspired by the travel diaries of the American botanist Richard Evans Schultes and the German ethnographer Theodor Koch-Grunberg . )
Evan wants Karamakate to help him find a rare medicinal plant , the yakruna .
“ You devote your life to plants ?
” Karamakate asks him .
“ That ’ s the most reasonable thing I ’ ve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to help Evan in exchange for some coca leaves , to cook into mambe , which some indigenous groups chew for spiritual and medicinal reasons .
“ I forgot mambe existed .
Now I don ’ t know how to make it , ” he admits .
Karamakate , it turns out , is on a quest : he has not just forgotten how to make mambe ; he has lost a spiritual connection with nature .
“ These rocks used to talk to me , ” he says .
“ They answered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
My memories are gone .
Rocks , trees , animals , they all went silent .
.
.
.
Now I am empty.
” The film was an international success .
It won awards at Cannes and Sundance , and became the first Colombian film ever nominated for an Oscar .
( Bolívar attended the ceremony in Los Angeles , and videos show him on the red carpet wearing an elegant black suit , a necklace , and a headdress made of colorful feathers . )
But perhaps what ’ s most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Karamakate ’ s life resembles Bolívar ’ s .
“ When we realized that he was going to act with us , we shaped the character to him , to his experience , to his knowledge , ” Guerra told me recently .
Bolívar “ was one of the last original Ocaina , ” Cristian explained .
In the late nineteenth century , the Ocaina were an indigenous group in the western Amazon region of Putumayo .
Researchers estimate that , by 1909 , there were at least two thousand people who identified @ @ @ @ @ @ @ two hundred , and only fifty who speak the Ocaina language .
The Ocaina , along with six other indigenous groups , call themselves “ the People of the Center , ” and they share a tragic history .
At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth , a British rubber company enslaved , tortured , and killed many of them .
“ It must always be borne in mind that the Indian is no party to the contract , ” Roger Casement , an Irish diplomat working @ @ @ @ @ @ @ government , wrote , in 1910 .
“ He is compelled by brutal and wholly uncontrolled force—by being hunted and caught—by floggings , by chaining up , by long periods of imprisonment and starvation , to agree to ‘ work ’ for the Company.
” “ Only a few Ocainas remained after that , ” the anthropologist Juan Alvaro Echeverri told me .
Although most of the survivors live in Peru now , a few remain in the Colombian Amazon .
Antonio Bolívar was orphaned at a very young age , and lived @ @ @ @ @ @ @ group belonging to the People of the Center .
But he identified as an Ocaina , despite the fact that , like Karamakate , he was forgetting his roots .
“ He had no one to speak his language with , ” Echeverri , who knew Bolívar , told me .
He recalled that one of the few women who still spoke the Ocaina language fluently in Leticia would sometimes try to speak with Bolívar , but all he could say to her was “ I can ’ t understand.
” Bolívar ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , was intact .
Cristian recalled that the only time his father grounded him was when he cut all the leaves off one of his medicinal plants .
Luis Ernesto González , a friend of Bolívar ’ s , remembers talking with him about a fishing method that employed barbasco , a poisonous plant .

Antonio Bolívar, who appeared in an acclaimed Colombian film, “was one of the last original Ocaina,” his son said. Photograph by Mauricio Duenas Castaneda / ZUMA
On the last Sunday of April, in the small city of Leticia, Colombia, a thirty-eight-year-old security guard named Cristian Bolívar was at work when he received a phone call from his wife, who had some bad news. “Your dad is still very ill,” she said. Antonio Bolívar, at seventy-five, was a respected indigenous elder, and for three days he had been suffering chills and a high fever, which the family had been trying to lower with liquids, soothing baths, and acetaminophen. By that Sunday afternoon, he was also having trouble breathing. “I left my post right away,” Cristian told me. He rode his motorbike to his father’s small wooden house. Antonio’s temperature had reached a hundred and four degrees, so Cristian called an ambulance, which, he said, took three hours to arrive. Antonio turned to Cerina, his partner of twenty-eight years, and said, “Sweetheart, I am just going to the doctor to get some antibiotics. I’ll be right back.”
Leticia is situated in the Amazon rain forest, at the southern tip of Colombia, bordering Brazil and Peru, the two countries with the highest number of COVID-19 cases in Latin America. The number of reported cases in the Amazon had been increasing since mid-March, especially in Manaus, Brazil, and Iquitos, Peru. In Manaus, a city of more than two million, which has been recording up to a hundred and thirty fatalities a day (up from its normal toll of twenty to thirty-five), the dead are being buried in mass graves. In Iquitos, which has a population of half a million people, hospitals do not have enough beds. The three countries are divided by the Amazon, but the river towns are closely connected to one another. “The sugar we buy is from Peru, and the rice we eat is from Brazil,” a doctor on the Colombian side told me.
The governments of the three countries have announced plans to protect those living in the Amazon, but so far few measures have been implemented. (President Jair Bolsonaro’s reckless response in Brazil is making the process more difficult for the other countries.) The first confirmed patient in Leticia was reported just a week before Antonio Bolívar got sick. Within a month, there were more than a thousand confirmed cases. The city, with a population of about fifty thousand, has only a small private clinic and a public facility, the San Rafael hospital; between them, there are barely more than a hundred beds and eleven ventilators. There is no I.C.U. in Leticia, and doctors have to send patient samples all the way to Bogotá to be tested for COVID-19.
Antonio Bolívar was admitted to San Rafael that Sunday night. Cristian and Cerina went to the hospital each day but were not allowed to see him. “They told me he was doing fine, eating well and joking with the staff,” Cristian said. But, on the night of April 30th, a neighbor came to the house and told him, “Your father just passed away.” She had seen the news on social media.
Bolívar had not been tested for COVID-19, but, given his symptoms, the doctors believed that he had been infected by the coronavirus. They told Cristian that Antonio had gone into cardiorespiratory arrest, and they could not revive him. The following morning, a hearse took his casket to the town cemetery, where the mayor had ordered the building of more vaults. Cristian rode behind on his motorbike, to the entry of the cemetery, and watched as a forensic team buried his father. The indigenous communities in Leticia and the surrounding areas were under quarantine, so no other mourners were present. “That was the saddest part,” Cerina told me. “I used to tell him, when he was still alive, that if he passed away, I would throw him a big funeral, like the one he deserved.”
Antonio Bolívar had been a celebrity in the Amazon since 2016, when he appeared in “Embrace of the Serpent,” a movie by the Colombian director Ciro Guerra. (It can be streamed on the platform that took the region’s name: Amazon Prime.) Set in the early twentieth century, the movie portrays the exploitation of indigenous groups by rubber companies and Capuchin missionaries. Bolívar played Karamakate, a member of a fictional group called the Cohiuano, which had been almost completely wiped out. The Times’ review noted that “he is no innocent, noble savage but an angry, morally complex individual with a heart full of grief.”
In his first scene, Karamakate is drawing what looks like a jaguar on a large rock by a river, wearing a loincloth and a necklace made of crocodile teeth. His calm expression changes when Evan (Brionne Davis), a botanist, arrives in a small canoe. (The movie is inspired by the travel diaries of the American botanist Richard Evans Schultes and the German ethnographer Theodor Koch-Grunberg.) Evan wants Karamakate to help him find a rare medicinal plant, the yakruna. “You devote your life to plants?” Karamakate asks him. “That’s the most reasonable thing I’ve heard a white say.”
Karamakate agrees to help Evan in exchange for some coca leaves, to cook into mambe, which some indigenous groups chew for spiritual and medicinal reasons. “I forgot mambe existed. Now I don’t know how to make it,” he admits. Karamakate, it turns out, is on a quest: he has not just forgotten how to make mambe; he has lost a spiritual connection with nature. “These rocks used to talk to me,” he says. “They answered my questions. The line is broken. My memories are gone. Rocks, trees, animals, they all went silent. . . . Now I am empty.”
The film was an international success. It won awards at Cannes and Sundance, and became the first Colombian film ever nominated for an Oscar. (Bolívar attended the ceremony in Los Angeles, and videos show him on the red carpet wearing an elegant black suit, a necklace, and a headdress made of colorful feathers.) But perhaps what’s most striking about the film is how much Karamakate’s life resembles Bolívar’s. “When we realized that he was going to act with us, we shaped the character to him, to his experience, to his knowledge,” Guerra told me recently.
What’s perhaps most striking about the film “Embrace of the Serpent” is how much the life of the character played by Antonio Bolívar resembled his own. Photograph from Alamy
Bolívar “was one of the last original Ocaina,” Cristian explained. In the late nineteenth century, the Ocaina were an indigenous group in the western Amazon region of Putumayo. Researchers estimate that, by 1909, there were at least two thousand people who identified as Ocainas. Now there are just two hundred, and only fifty who speak the Ocaina language. The Ocaina, along with six other indigenous groups, call themselves “the People of the Center,” and they share a tragic history. At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, a British rubber company enslaved, tortured, and killed many of them. “It must always be borne in mind that the Indian is no party to the contract,” Roger Casement, an Irish diplomat working on a special report for the British government, wrote, in 1910. “He is compelled by brutal and wholly uncontrolled force—by being hunted and caught—by floggings, by chaining up, by long periods of imprisonment and starvation, to agree to ‘work’ for the Company.”
“Only a few Ocainas remained after that,” the anthropologist Juan Alvaro Echeverri told me. Although most of the survivors live in Peru now, a few remain in the Colombian Amazon. Antonio Bolívar was orphaned at a very young age, and lived in Leticia with the Witoto, another group belonging to the People of the Center. But he identified as an Ocaina, despite the fact that, like Karamakate, he was forgetting his roots. “He had no one to speak his language with,” Echeverri, who knew Bolívar, told me. He recalled that one of the few women who still spoke the Ocaina language fluently in Leticia would sometimes try to speak with Bolívar, but all he could say to her was “I can’t understand.” Bolívar’s knowledge of botanical traditions, however, was intact. Cristian recalled that the only time his father grounded him was when he cut all the leaves off one of his medicinal plants. Luis Ernesto González, a friend of Bolívar’s, remembers talking with him about a fishing method that employed barbasco, a poisonous plant.
Friends and colleagues describe Bolívar as having a particular relation to the rain forest. “I ask the world to please stop drilling oil in the Amazon,” he said, in a speech at Cannes. Last year, he appeared in the Netflix series “Green Frontier,” which chronicles the struggles of an indigenous couple to protect their culture. He asked his acting coach, Ana Isabel Velásquez, to “respect nature” before each scene. “We would talk to the river or the trees, telling them, ‘I am coming in. I promise I will be respectful,’ ” she told me last week. “It was something short, but we needed to ask permission, to get some protection.” She would do it mentally, and he would do it sometimes chewing mambe. “We need this for the scene to be perfect,” he told her.
Nelly Kuiru, a forty-three-year-old Witoto woman, opened a film school in Leticia, and she told me that Bolívar was one of the first to volunteer to help with her project. “He was there to guide us,” she said. “Elders like him are the ones telling us the stories that we write. They guide us on what we should be saying, on how we should be saying it.” In their last conversations, she said, “He would say ‘We have to fight to not lose our identity as a people, to not disappear like my own people did.’ ”
Juan Pablo Chiquiza is a twenty-five-year-old native of Leticia who recently graduated from medical school in Bogotá. With two other doctors, he is in charge of attending to almost ten thousand people, many of whom belong to twenty-two indigenous communities in Colombia’s Amazon forest. Chiquiza is based in the village of Puerto Nariño, a two-hour boat ride upriver from Leticia. “The first time I got here, I thought this looked like a prison,” he told me, about the village’s only hospital. A public facility, it has nine beds for adult patients, four for children, and six oxygen tanks. Mold grows on the walls, and the ceiling is falling in in some places. When we spoke, two COVID-19 cases had been confirmed in Puerto Nariño; one of the people who tested positive was an indigenous man in his eighties. Chiquiza was able to send him by boat to San Rafael hospital, in Leticia, but the man died soon after he arrived. “We suspect many more here have the virus,” Chiquiza said. (A week later, he told me that at least twenty-six new cases had been reported.)


newyorker--2020-05-31--A Pianist’s Marathon of “Vexations”

A Pianist’s Marathon of “Vexations”

In 1893 , Erik Satie composed an enigmatic little piano piece titled “ Vexations.
” At the head of the score , he wrote , “ To play this motif eight hundred forty times in a row , it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand , in the deepest silence , through serious immobilities.
” Seventy years later , John Cage decided to take that cryptic instruction literally ; he organized a performance at which the piece was , in fact , played eight hundred and forty times , by a rotating team of pianists .
Since then , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ regularly , around the world .
A few brave souls have played the piece solo ; the late British-Australian musicologist Richard Toop was the first to accomplish the feat , in 1967 .
The brilliant young German pianist Igor Levit , whom I recently profiled in the magazine , responded to the coronavirus shutdown with a marathon feat of his own : beginning on March 12th , he presented fifty-two house concerts—nearly one every night—in his apartment , streaming the results on Twitter .
He then took a pause , although he already @ @ @ @ @ @ @ own solo rendition of “ Vexations , ” one that would be tailored to the current moment .
It went on all day , beginning at 8 A.M. Eastern time , on May 30th .
The Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival , in Kalamazoo , Michigan , and Der Spiegel , in Germany , both carried the feed—and you can watch a selection from the performance here at The New Yorker , in the video above .
When I called Levit to ask what had possessed him , he took an unexpected @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Do you remember the end of the last ‘ Godfather ’ movie ?
, ” he asked me .
“ When Sofia Coppola has been shot , and Al Pacino is on the steps outside the opera ?
He is screaming , but you can ’ t hear him .
It is a ‘ stumme Schrei ’ —a silent scream .
This is the feeling that has often taken hold of me in recent weeks , when I see so many people struggling and so many people suffering .
I looked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and thought of Satie.
” Levit went on : “ I honestly don ’ t really know what is going to happen .
But I believe I will feel , while doing it , kind of similar to what I go through now .
There will be ups , there will be downs , there will be devastation , there will joy , there will be literal pain .
Just this monotonic repetition of just the same thing , of a piece which in a way has no apparent musical content—just this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ waiting .
At some point , you lose the perspective of time—like now .
You lose the perspective of an end—like now .
I think at some point I will lose the hope that this will ever end—like now .
Maybe I won ’ t make it .
It ’ s just about surviving .
Like now .
”

The live stream has ended. Watch a selection from Igor Levit’s all-day performance of Erik Satie’s “Vexations.”
In 1893, Erik Satie composed an enigmatic little piano piece titled “Vexations.” At the head of the score, he wrote, “To play this motif eight hundred forty times in a row, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, in the deepest silence, through serious immobilities.” Seventy years later, John Cage decided to take that cryptic instruction literally; he organized a performance at which the piece was, in fact, played eight hundred and forty times, by a rotating team of pianists. Since then, “Vexations” marathons have taken place regularly, around the world. A few brave souls have played the piece solo; the late British-Australian musicologist Richard Toop was the first to accomplish the feat, in 1967.
The brilliant young German pianist Igor Levit, whom I recently profiled in the magazine, responded to the coronavirus shutdown with a marathon feat of his own: beginning on March 12th, he presented fifty-two house concerts—nearly one every night—in his apartment, streaming the results on Twitter. He then took a pause, although he already had another scheme in mind: his own solo rendition of “Vexations,” one that would be tailored to the current moment. It went on all day, beginning at 8 A.M. Eastern time, on May 30th. The Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Der Spiegel, in Germany, both carried the feed—and you can watch a selection from the performance here at The New Yorker, in the video above.
When I called Levit to ask what had possessed him, he took an unexpected mental leap, as he often does. “Do you remember the end of the last ‘Godfather’ movie?,” he asked me. “When Sofia Coppola has been shot, and Al Pacino is on the steps outside the opera? He is screaming, but you can’t hear him. It is a ‘stumme Schrei’—a silent scream. This is the feeling that has often taken hold of me in recent weeks, when I see so many people struggling and so many people suffering. I looked for a way to express that musically, and thought of Satie.”
Levit went on: “I honestly don’t really know what is going to happen. But I believe I will feel, while doing it, kind of similar to what I go through now. There will be ups, there will be downs, there will be devastation, there will joy, there will be literal pain. Just this monotonic repetition of just the same thing, of a piece which in a way has no apparent musical content—just this staring at a wall, waiting, waiting. At some point, you lose the perspective of time—like now. You lose the perspective of an end—like now. I think at some point I will lose the hope that this will ever end—like now. Maybe I won’t make it. It’s just about surviving. Like now.”


Sunday Reading: Commencement

This month , students are celebrating graduation in ways that we could not have predicted at the beginning of the year .
High schools , colleges , and other institutions are changing—grappling , like the rest of us , with social , technological , and public-health transformations .
This week , we ’ re bringing you a selection of pieces on higher education and school life in transition .
In “ How the Coronavirus Pandemic Has Shattered the Myth of College in America , ” Masha Gessen writes about how the virus has altered the undergraduate experience in profound , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Coronavirus and the Ruptured Narrative of Campus Life , ” Dan Chiasson explores what it means for college to come to a halt , even temporarily , just as young adults are discovering their potential .
Hua Hsu examines how the explosion of student debt is redefining the American family , and , in a piece from 1986 , the novelist Mary McCarthy recounts her experiences at public and private schools and considers how they helped mold her into an intellectual .
Finally , in “ What I Learned , ” David Sedaris @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Princeton University ( where he never matriculated ) .
We hope that you find the readings on the syllabus this week as fascinating as we do .
Young people think of college as an investment in their future .
Now that future is changing in ways they can ’ t apprehend .
Colleges across the country are trying to figure out their way forward in a story in which meanings have suddenly , drastically , and frighteningly changed .
The cost of a degree—and the “ open future ” that supposedly comes with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of middle-class life .
At a time when I was close to failing most of my school subjects , my real education was getting under way .
And what I said at Princeton .

This month, students are celebrating graduation in ways that we could not have predicted at the beginning of the year. High schools, colleges, and other institutions are changing—grappling, like the rest of us, with social, technological, and public-health transformations. This week, we’re bringing you a selection of pieces on higher education and school life in transition. In “How the Coronavirus Pandemic Has Shattered the Myth of College in America,” Masha Gessen writes about how the virus has altered the undergraduate experience in profound, possibly long-lasting ways. In “The Coronavirus and the Ruptured Narrative of Campus Life,” Dan Chiasson explores what it means for college to come to a halt, even temporarily, just as young adults are discovering their potential. Hua Hsu examines how the explosion of student debt is redefining the American family, and, in a piece from 1986, the novelist Mary McCarthy recounts her experiences at public and private schools and considers how they helped mold her into an intellectual. Finally, in “What I Learned,” David Sedaris delivers a humorous baccalaureate address about attending Princeton University (where he never matriculated). We hope that you find the readings on the syllabus this week as fascinating as we do.
—David Remnick
Illustration by Grace J. Kim
Young people think of college as an investment in their future. Now that future is changing in ways they can’t apprehend.
Colleges across the country are trying to figure out their way forward in a story in which meanings have suddenly, drastically, and frighteningly changed.
Illustration by Till Lauer
The cost of a degree—and the “open future” that supposedly comes with it—has become one of the defining forces of middle-class life.
At a time when I was close to failing most of my school subjects, my real education was getting under way.
Illustration by Barry Blitt
And what I said at Princeton.


newyorker--2020-05-31--An Australian Photographer’s Dreamy Portraits of Mothers and Their Children in Quarantine

Stay-at-home orders amplify the struggle that mothers already face—a feeling of isolation , the endlessness of parenting , the difficulty of finding an outlet for other parts of ourselves .
Over Google Hangouts , Sorgini told me that the pandemic has caused her to lose her editorial and commercial photography work .
To compensate , her partner , a landscaper , is working more , leaving her in charge of child care .
Her younger son , a seven-month-old , isn ’ t sleeping ; her older son , an “ energetic ” five-year-old , needs snacks , attention , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a craft mom , ” Sorgini said , laughing .
“ I see a lot of people baking sourdough or doing crafts , and I ’ m just not that person.
” The baby ’ s sleeplessness had left Sorgini in tears that morning at 4 A.M .
Even over our grainy video chat , as we sat in our respective homes across the world , I could see her eyes grow moist as she spoke .
She said that she misses getting outside , seeing friends—the structures that shored her up before @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , she told me .
And part of it is motherhood .

Stay-at-home orders amplify the struggle that mothers already face—a feeling of isolation, the endlessness of parenting, the difficulty of finding an outlet for other parts of ourselves. Over Google Hangouts, Sorgini told me that the pandemic has caused her to lose her editorial and commercial photography work. To compensate, her partner, a landscaper, is working more, leaving her in charge of child care. Her younger son, a seven-month-old, isn’t sleeping; her older son, an “energetic” five-year-old, needs snacks, attention, activities. “I’m not a craft mom,” Sorgini said, laughing. “I see a lot of people baking sourdough or doing crafts, and I’m just not that person.” The baby’s sleeplessness had left Sorgini in tears that morning at 4 A.M. Even over our grainy video chat, as we sat in our respective homes across the world, I could see her eyes grow moist as she spoke. She said that she misses getting outside, seeing friends—the structures that shored her up before. Part of that is the lockdown, she told me. And part of it is motherhood.


newyorker--2020-05-31--In Minneapolis, Protesters Confront the Police—and One Another

On Thursday , in Minneapolis , crowds protesting the killing of George Floyd overran the Third Precinct police station , where Derek Chauvin , the officer now charged with murdering him , had been assigned .
By midnight , the building was ablaze and hundreds of looters were emptying out the surrounding stores , restaurants , and businesses .
People in a celebratory mood gathered around two burning vehicles in the intersection outside the station .
Nearly all of them looked to be in their early twenties , and at least half of them were white .
Alcohol circulated from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into .
Jay Carter , a twenty-six-year-old African-American studying copywriting at Augsburg University , a mile and a half to the north , gazed at the scene with an air of saddened disbelief .
Before I could pose any questions of my own , he asked me , “ Do you think it ’ s worth it ?
” As Carter watched flames pour out of the precinct-house windows , and a car filled with teen-agers spinning donuts nearby , he said that he was disturbed by the turn the protests had taken @ @ @ @ @ @ @ right , ” he told me .
“ I ’ m not judging anybody here , but I don ’ t agree with all this.
” By the time the police returned to the area , at around 4:30 A.M. , large fires were threatening to spread into residential neighborhoods .
Enough of the protesters had gone home for the police to retake control ; when I returned , later that morning , state troopers in riot gear and Minnesota National Guard soldiers with armored Humvees had cordoned off the area .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
By Friday evening , thousands of protesters were back at the Third Precinct station , and there were no soldiers or law enforcement in sight .
( Carter wasn ’ t there , either ; when I texted him , he responded , “ I had enough.
” ) At around eight-thirty , everyone began marching east on Lake Street , a main commercial boulevard , toward another police station , in the Fifth Precinct .
They chanted , “ Say his name !
George Floyd !
” and “ No Justice @ @ @ @ @ @ @ !
” At some point , vehicles in a parking lot were set on fire , and several exploded , but otherwise the protest felt tenuously restrained .
Officials in the Fifth Precinct had erected two perimeters around the station , made of concrete barriers topped with tall fencing .
Officers in helmets and bulletproof vests took up positions on the roof .
Protesters pressed against the fence , chanting and listening to local organizers , who spoke through megaphones .
Nobody attempted to breach the perimeters or attack the station house , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
They talked of George Floyd , justice , and the urgent need for systemic reform .
At a gas station across the street , however , something else was happening .
People with crowbars had pried free sheets of plywood that had been nailed over the front door and the windows of the station ’ s convenience store , and they were filing in and out with goods .
A young woman in Doc Martens , jeans , and a hoodie passionately chastised the looters .
“ This is not why we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , her voice hoarse with emotion .
“ We ’ re not protesting to go in the store and get cigarettes !
Y ’ all are stupid !
This is about the police !
” Pointing at the protesters and the speakers gathered in front of the precinct station , she said , “ That ’ s where we should be !
” The woman ’ s name is Chantaveia Burnett ; she is eighteen years old and lives with her parents , a few blocks away .
After giving up on trying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me that she was not necessarily advocating nondestructive action—she just felt that any destruction should be purposeful .
“ It ’ s potentially the only way we ’ re gon na get heard , ” she allowed .
“ Peaceful protests can only go so far .
Rioting—that ’ s when they ’ re going to say , ‘ Oh , shit , we should actually be doing something.
’ I feel like rioting is the only way.
” But , Burnett insisted , “ I don ’ t think we should be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ snacks.
” In front of the Fifth Precinct station , another young woman , Nupol Kiazolu , was addressing the protesters .
I had met her earlier in the day , at Thirty-eighth Street and Chicago Avenue , where Floyd had been killed .
The intersection had become the site of a communal vigil , attracting hundreds of people , including families with young children , who placed flowers , signs , and mementos along the sidewalk where bystanders had witnessed and filmed Floyd ’ s death .
Kiazolu , who is nineteen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Matter for greater New York ; she had just arrived in Minneapolis .
She had gone directly from the airport to the vigil site , where , with dozens of mourners circled around her , she had led them , with raised fists , in a recitation of the famous chant created by the Black Liberation Army member Assata Shakur : “ It is our duty to fight for our freedom .
/ It is our duty to win .
/ We must love and protect each other .
/ We have nothing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , at the Fifth Precinct , the protesters squeezed around Kiazolu , cheering and shouting as she told them , “ These police officers will no longer kill us with impunity !
” Suddenly , she was interrupted by a man with a megaphone , who announced , “ The gas station is on fire—we need you all to move this way.
” To the extent that I can identify a moment when the night started to shift into something more anarchic and dangerous , it was then .
The peaceful , coherent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ others in front of the station house was soon surpassed by a different kind of mobilization across the street .
In a strip mall behind the gas station , looters swarmed an Office Depot , a Kmart , and even a Subway .
People streamed out of the smashed glass doors of a Dollar Tree with armloads of merchandise ; the store ’ s interior was opaque with smoke .
I spotted Burnett on the sidewalk , looking on helplessly .
She was collecting loose bottles of water that were strewn about and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ People are probably going to need water , ” she explained .
At some point , the rioters shifted their attention to a U.S. Post Office building and a Wells Fargo , kitty-corner to the precinct house .
People broke into both buildings and lit them on fire .
As a helicopter hovered overhead , I watched a group that was taking cover behind a car wash at the gas station shoot large fireworks in such a way that they exploded directly among the police officers on the roof of the precinct @ @ @ @ @ @ @ chunks of concrete at the officers .
Many of these individuals were white and quite young .
Around midnight , the police , reinforced by National Guard units , began to push out from the precinct house , deploying tear gas , stun grenades , and rubber bullets .
The protesters withdrew into the strip mall , and , at this point , the rioting became organized around confronting the officers and the soldiers .
A line of people moved fencing , signs , large drainage pipes , and other material from a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ barricades .
Everything was still chaotic and dark , but I had the sense that a core element of the remaining protesters—again , most of whom seemed to be young and white—were directing the effort , shouting out such orders as “ Pull back !
” and “ Hold here !
” and “ Regroup !
” These tactics reminded me of actions I had seen during the gilet jaune protests in Paris , in 2018 .
After a few hours of pitched confrontation , many protesters , either from fear or fatigue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ remained were forced to pull back several blocks .
At around two in the morning , I found Burnett again .
She was sitting on a curb with one of her Doc Martens off , holding her foot .
A rubber bullet had struck her toe , and blood oozed through her sock .
A friend sat beside her—his head had been grazed and his left eye was swollen shut .
Burnett had trouble walking , but the police were steadily advancing toward us , with a heavy barrage of rubber bullets and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up and began to limp away .
We walked together for a while , toward the neighborhood where she lives .
Toward three in the morning , one of Burnett ’ s high-school teachers picked her up and gave her a ride home .
Burnett said that she didn ’ t regret coming out and predicted , “ It ’ ll continue .
People will be back tomorrow .
”

On Thursday, in Minneapolis, crowds protesting the killing of George Floyd overran the Third Precinct police station, where Derek Chauvin, the officer now charged with murdering him, had been assigned. By midnight, the building was ablaze and hundreds of looters were emptying out the surrounding stores, restaurants, and businesses. People in a celebratory mood gathered around two burning vehicles in the intersection outside the station. Nearly all of them looked to be in their early twenties, and at least half of them were white. Alcohol circulated from a liquor store that had been broken into.
Jay Carter, a twenty-six-year-old African-American studying copywriting at Augsburg University, a mile and a half to the north, gazed at the scene with an air of saddened disbelief. Before I could pose any questions of my own, he asked me, “Do you think it’s worth it?” As Carter watched flames pour out of the precinct-house windows, and a car filled with teen-agers spinning donuts nearby, he said that he was disturbed by the turn the protests had taken. “It doesn’t feel right,” he told me. “I’m not judging anybody here, but I don’t agree with all this.”
By the time the police returned to the area, at around 4:30 A.M., large fires were threatening to spread into residential neighborhoods. Enough of the protesters had gone home for the police to retake control; when I returned, later that morning, state troopers in riot gear and Minnesota National Guard soldiers with armored Humvees had cordoned off the area. The show of force didn’t last. By Friday evening, thousands of protesters were back at the Third Precinct station, and there were no soldiers or law enforcement in sight. (Carter wasn’t there, either; when I texted him, he responded, “I had enough.”) At around eight-thirty, everyone began marching west on Lake Street, a main commercial boulevard, toward another police station, in the Fifth Precinct. They chanted, “Say his name! George Floyd!” and “No Justice, no peace! Prosecute the police!” At some point, vehicles in a parking lot were set on fire, and several exploded, but otherwise the protest felt tenuously restrained.
Riot police outside the Fifth Precinct station in Minneapolis on the fourth day of protests. Photograph by Nicholas Pfosi / Reuters
Officials in the Fifth Precinct had erected two perimeters around the station, made of concrete barriers topped with tall fencing. Officers in helmets and bulletproof vests took up positions on the roof. Protesters pressed against the fence, chanting and listening to local organizers, who spoke through megaphones. Nobody attempted to breach the perimeters or attack the station house, and none of the speakers encouraged violence. They talked of George Floyd, justice, and the urgent need for systemic reform. At a gas station across the street, however, something else was happening. People with crowbars had pried free sheets of plywood that had been nailed over the front door and the windows of the station’s convenience store, and they were filing in and out with goods. A young woman in Doc Martens, jeans, and a hoodie passionately chastised the looters. “This is not why we’re protesting!” she yelled, her voice hoarse with emotion. “We’re not protesting to go in the store and get cigarettes! Y’all are stupid! This is about the police!” Pointing at the protesters and the speakers gathered in front of the precinct station, she said, “That’s where we should be!”
The woman’s name is Chantaveia Burnett; she is eighteen years old and lives with her parents, a few blocks away. After giving up on trying to discourage the looters, she told me that she was not necessarily advocating nondestructive action—she just felt that any destruction should be purposeful. “It’s potentially the only way we’re gonna get heard,” she allowed. “Peaceful protests can only go so far. Rioting—that’s when they’re going to say, ‘Oh, shit, we should actually be doing something.’ I feel like rioting is the only way.” But, Burnett insisted, “I don’t think we should be going into the store getting cigarettes and snacks.”
In front of the Fifth Precinct station, another young woman, Nupol Kiazolu, was addressing the protesters. I had met her earlier in the day, at Thirty-eighth Street and Chicago Avenue, where Floyd had been killed. The intersection had become the site of a communal vigil, attracting hundreds of people, including families with young children, who placed flowers, signs, and mementos along the sidewalk where bystanders had witnessed and filmed Floyd’s death. Kiazolu, who is nineteen, is the president of Black Lives Matter for greater New York; she had just arrived in Minneapolis. She had gone directly from the airport to the vigil site, where, with dozens of mourners circled around her, she had led them, with raised fists, in a recitation of the famous chant created by the Black Liberation Army member Assata Shakur: “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. / It is our duty to win. / We must love and protect each other. / We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
Now, at the Fifth Precinct, the protesters squeezed around Kiazolu, cheering and shouting as she told them, “These police officers will no longer kill us with impunity!” Suddenly, she was interrupted by a man with a megaphone, who announced, “The gas station is on fire—we need you all to move this way.” To the extent that I can identify a moment when the night started to shift into something more anarchic and dangerous, it was then. The peaceful, coherent, and focussed protesting by Kiazolu and others in front of the station house was soon surpassed by a different kind of mobilization across the street. In a strip mall behind the gas station, looters swarmed an Office Depot, a Kmart, and even a Subway. People streamed out of the smashed glass doors of a Dollar Tree with armloads of merchandise; the store’s interior was opaque with smoke. I spotted Burnett on the sidewalk, looking on helplessly. She was collecting loose bottles of water that were strewn about and stacking them in a neat pile. “People are probably going to need water,” she explained.
At some point, the rioters shifted their attention to a U.S. Post Office building and a Wells Fargo, kitty-corner to the precinct house. People broke into both buildings and lit them on fire. As a helicopter hovered overhead, I watched a group that was taking cover behind a car wash at the gas station shoot large fireworks in such a way that they exploded directly among the police officers on the roof of the precinct house. Other protesters lobbed bottles and chunks of concrete at the officers. Many of these individuals were white and quite young.
Around midnight, the police, reinforced by National Guard units, began to push out from the precinct house, deploying tear gas, stun grenades, and rubber bullets. The protesters withdrew into the strip mall, and, at this point, the rioting became organized around confronting the officers and the soldiers. A line of people moved fencing, signs, large drainage pipes, and other material from a nearby construction site in order to improvise barricades. Everything was still chaotic and dark, but I had the sense that a core element of the remaining protesters—again, most of whom seemed to be young and white—were directing the effort, shouting out such orders as “Pull back!” and “Hold here!” and “Regroup!” These tactics reminded me of actions I had seen during the gilet jaune protests in Paris, in 2018.


An American Uprising

“ A riot is the language of the unheard.
” This is how Martin Luther King , Jr. , explained matters to Mike Wallace , of CBS News , in 1966 .
That language is now being heard across the United States with an uprising that began in Minneapolis and has spread to dozens of American cities , where there have been hundreds of arrests , curfews declared , National Guard troops summoned .
The proximate cause is the video images of yet another black man killed by an officer of the law , the death of George Perry Floyd @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Chicago Avenue South .
Floyd joins Breonna Taylor , Freddie Gray , Philando Castile , Alton Sterling , Sandra Bland , Laquan McDonald , Tamir Rice—a lineage that goes back decades in the American story .
But before he was a horrific video image , an entry in the history of injustice , George Floyd was born in Fayetteville , North Carolina , and came to Houston with his mother when he was very young .
He was raised in the Cuney Homes , a housing project in the Third Ward , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a woman named Waynel Sexton was Floyd ’ s second-grade teacher , at Frederick Douglass Elementary School .
After hearing of Floyd ’ s death , Sexton posted on Facebook a facsimile of her pupil ’ s composition for Black History Month : “ When I grow up , I want to be a Supreme Court Judge , ” Floyd wrote .
“ When people say , Your honor , he did rob the bank , I will say , Be seated .
And if he doesn ’ t , I will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Then I will beat my hammer on the desk .
Then everybody will be quiet.
” Sexton told me that she was saddened and “ appalled ” when she saw the video of her former pupil ’ s death .
“ I went right upstairs and put my hands on that paper of his .
I always keep some memento of my students .
I remember I always told the children during Black History Month , ‘ Well , we have studied all these famous people .
What kind of famous person @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ I remember that he was so influenced by our lesson on Thurgood Marshall.
” Under the image of Floyd ’ s composition , Sexton wrote , “ How could his dream have turned into the nightmare of being murdered by a police officer ?
It just breaks my heart.
” At Jack Yates Senior High School ( named for a clergyman and a former slave ) , Floyd grew to his full height , six feet seven , and was a fine basketball and football player .
Some star athletes at Yates @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the N.B.A .
Floyd attended South Florida Community College , where he hoped to play basketball .
But he gave up community college after a year , tried Texas A .
& M. University , in Kingsville , and finally returned home to Houston , where he became active on the local hip-hop scene .
In the mid-nineties , performing as Big Floyd , he recorded “ Sittin ’ on Top of the World ” at the home studio of Robert Earl Davis , Jr. , better known as DJ Screw , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ chopped and screwed ” technique of remixing .
With time , Floyd “ got into trouble , ” his friend Meshah Hawkins told Michael Hall , a writer for Texas Monthly .
“ He fell into the things a lot of the guys in the neighborhood were doing.
” There were arrests for theft and drug possession .
In 2009 , Floyd pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon and was incarcerated for the next four years at the Diboll Unit , a private state prison in East Texas .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ worked at a church called Resurrection Houston , assisting people in the housing project where he ’ d grown up .
The next year , Floyd moved to Minneapolis and became a security guard at a club and restaurant called Conga Latin Bistro , where he was known as friendly and hard-working .
However , with the onset of the pandemic and the general shutdown of bars and restaurants , Floyd , like millions of other Americans , found himself out of work .
On May 25th , he was arrested , accused @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bill to a clerk at Cup Foods .
Not long after encountering officers from the Minneapolis Police Department , he was face-down on the street ; a white police officer named Derek Chauvin dug his knee into his neck and kept it there while three other officers stood guard .
In videos taken by onlookers , Floyd begs for mercy .
He calls out for his dead mother : “ Mama , I ’ m through !
” He tries to get the attention of bystanders , saying , “ They ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ I can ’ t breathe !
” This was the repeated plea , six years ago , of Eric Garner , a black man arrested for allegedly selling loose cigarettes on the street and put in a chokehold by police .
The videos are impossible to watch without revulsion and anger .
First , there is the sheer heedlessness of the act .
Chauvin , who has been charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter , kept his knee and weight on Floyd ’ s neck for eight minutes and forty-six @ @ @ @ @ @ @ point when he became utterly unresponsive , according to the criminal complaint .
“ He ’ s a human being !
” one of the bystanders says , but Chauvin does not relent .
What also makes the video so devastating is its familiarity , the way it rhymes , in its stark cruelty , with countless acts of racist violence through the years and decades .
Now , in the wake of several days and nights of protest across the country , there are many voices calling for calm .
One such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s girlfriend , who told a reporter for WCCO , in Minneapolis , “ You can ’ t fight fire with fire .
Everything just burns , and I ’ ve seen it all day .
People hate , they ’ re hating , they ’ re hating , they ’ re mad .
And he would not want that.
” Another came from John Lewis , the congressman from Georgia and King ’ s close comrade in the civil-rights movement .
In a statement , Lewis , who is suffering from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Minneapolis videos reminded him of the murder of Emmett Till , in 1955 , and all that followed— “ the recanted accusation , the sham trial , the dreaded verdict.
” Then Lewis makes his plea : “ To the rioters here in Atlanta and across the country : I see you , and I hear you .
I know your pain , your rage , your sense of despair and hopelessness .
Justice has , indeed , been denied for far too long .
Rioting , looting , and burning is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Sit-in .
Stand-up .
Vote.
” John Lewis has repeatedly put his life on the line for justice and civil rights ; it is impossible not to honor , even revere , him .
But the human capacity for patience and endurance , in the face of blatant injustice , is not without limits .
The ballot also has its limits .
The mayor of Minneapolis , Jacob Frey , and Minnesota ’ s governor , Tim Walz , are liberal-minded members of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party ; in the end , that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Floyd .
Alicia Garza , one of the co-founders of Black Lives Matter Global Network , said that although she deeply respected Lewis , she differed with his emphasis .
“ It ’ s a familiar pattern : to call for peace and calm but direct it in the wrong places , ” she told me .
“ Why are we having this conversation about protest and property when a man ’ s life was extinguished before our eyes ?

“A riot is the language of the unheard.” This is how Martin Luther King, Jr., explained matters to Mike Wallace, of CBS News, in 1966.
That language is now being heard across the United States with an uprising that began in Minneapolis and has spread to dozens of American cities, where there have been hundreds of arrests, curfews declared, National Guard troops summoned. The proximate cause is the video images of yet another black man killed by an officer of the law, the death of George Perry Floyd outside Cup Foods, on Thirty-eighth Street and Chicago Avenue South. Floyd joins Breonna Taylor, Freddie Gray, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Sandra Bland, Laquan McDonald, Tamir Rice—a lineage that goes back decades in the American story.
But before he was a horrific video image, an entry in the history of injustice, George Floyd was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and came to Houston with his mother when he was very young. He was raised in the Cuney Homes, a housing project in the Third Ward, a historically black neighborhood. In 1981-82, a woman named Waynel Sexton was Floyd’s second-grade teacher, at Frederick Douglass Elementary School. After hearing of Floyd’s death, Sexton posted on Facebook a facsimile of her pupil’s composition for Black History Month: “When I grow up, I want to be a Supreme Court Judge,” Floyd wrote. “When people say, Your honor, he did rob the bank, I will say, Be seated. And if he doesn’t, I will tell the guard to take him out. Then I will beat my hammer on the desk. Then everybody will be quiet.”
Sexton told me that she was saddened and “appalled” when she saw the video of her former pupil’s death. “I went right upstairs and put my hands on that paper of his. I always keep some memento of my students. I remember I always told the children during Black History Month, ‘Well, we have studied all these famous people. What kind of famous person will you be in the future?’ I remember that he was so influenced by our lesson on Thurgood Marshall.” Under the image of Floyd’s composition, Sexton wrote, “How could his dream have turned into the nightmare of being murdered by a police officer? It just breaks my heart.”
At Jack Yates Senior High School (named for a clergyman and a former slave), Floyd grew to his full height, six feet seven, and was a fine basketball and football player. Some star athletes at Yates have ended up in the N.F.L. and the N.B.A. Floyd attended South Florida Community College, where he hoped to play basketball. But he gave up community college after a year, tried Texas A. & M. University, in Kingsville, and finally returned home to Houston, where he became active on the local hip-hop scene. In the mid-nineties, performing as Big Floyd, he recorded “Sittin’ on Top of the World” at the home studio of Robert Earl Davis, Jr., better known as DJ Screw, a master of the slowed-down, mellow “chopped and screwed” technique of remixing.
With time, Floyd “got into trouble,” his friend Meshah Hawkins told Michael Hall, a writer for Texas Monthly. “He fell into the things a lot of the guys in the neighborhood were doing.” There were arrests for theft and drug possession. In 2009, Floyd pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon and was incarcerated for the next four years at the Diboll Unit, a private state prison in East Texas. After being paroled in 2013, he worked at a church called Resurrection Houston, assisting people in the housing project where he’d grown up. The next year, Floyd moved to Minneapolis and became a security guard at a club and restaurant called Conga Latin Bistro, where he was known as friendly and hard-working. However, with the onset of the pandemic and the general shutdown of bars and restaurants, Floyd, like millions of other Americans, found himself out of work.
On May 25th, he was arrested, accused of trying to pass a fake twenty-dollar bill to a clerk at Cup Foods. Not long after encountering officers from the Minneapolis Police Department, he was face-down on the street; a white police officer named Derek Chauvin dug his knee into his neck and kept it there while three other officers stood guard. In videos taken by onlookers, Floyd begs for mercy. He calls out for his dead mother: “Mama, I’m through!” He tries to get the attention of bystanders, saying, “They’re killing me, man.” He says, “I can’t breathe!” This was the repeated plea, six years ago, of Eric Garner, a black man arrested for allegedly selling loose cigarettes on the street and put in a chokehold by police.
The videos are impossible to watch without revulsion and anger. First, there is the sheer heedlessness of the act. Chauvin, who has been charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter, kept his knee and weight on Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and forty-six seconds, nearly three minutes past the point when he became utterly unresponsive, according to the criminal complaint. “He’s a human being!” one of the bystanders says, but Chauvin does not relent. What also makes the video so devastating is its familiarity, the way it rhymes, in its stark cruelty, with countless acts of racist violence through the years and decades.
Now, in the wake of several days and nights of protest across the country, there are many voices calling for calm. One such call came from Courtney Ross, Floyd’s girlfriend, who told a reporter for WCCO, in Minneapolis, “You can’t fight fire with fire. Everything just burns, and I’ve seen it all day. People hate, they’re hating, they’re hating, they’re mad. And he would not want that.” Another came from John Lewis, the congressman from Georgia and King’s close comrade in the civil-rights movement. In a statement, Lewis, who is suffering from late-stage pancreatic cancer, said that watching the Minneapolis videos reminded him of the murder of Emmett Till, in 1955, and all that followed—“the recanted accusation, the sham trial, the dreaded verdict.” Then Lewis makes his plea: “To the rioters here in Atlanta and across the country: I see you, and I hear you. I know your pain, your rage, your sense of despair and hopelessness. Justice has, indeed, been denied for far too long. Rioting, looting, and burning is not the way. Organize. Demonstrate. Sit-in. Stand-up. Vote.”


newyorker--2020-05-31--Trump Plays Macho Man as America Burns

Trump Plays Macho Man as America Burns

There was a moment on Saturday afternoon when President Trump stood on a rooftop in Florida for what could have been a sorely needed moment of national unity .
A made-in-the-U.S.A. spacecraft was about to blast off from Cape Canaveral , bound for the International Space Station with astronauts aboard , the first time an American craft had done so in nine years .
Trump was so eager to witness the launch that he had flown to Florida twice , first for a scrubbed effort , on Wednesday , and then a return , on Saturday .
In the short @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , already struggling with the death of a hundred thousand Americans from COVID-19 and concurrent economic devastation , had exploded over the police killing of George Floyd .
Captured on video , the horrific act in Minneapolis led to days of protest , chaos , and looting .
When Trump arrived in Cape Canaveral , though , he seemed to want a campaign ad , not a moment of American reconciliation , and soon after he walked onto the rooftop , the song “ Macho Man , ” by the Village People , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ began blaring from the speakers .
The spectacle of a florid disco tribute to the President at such a time could not have been more discordant , or the message clearer : it ’ s all about Trump .
It always is .
Trump loves such theatrical displays of Presidential power .
He believes that you project strength by proclaiming it—that if you say you are macho , then you are .
But , on this violent , tragic weekend for America , there was no narcissistic photo op that could obscure the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , deeply insecure politician , who is struggling , as never before , to lead his divided country .
A few hours later on Saturday , after Trump flew back to Washington from Florida , he retreated for the night behind the high walls of his fortified executive mansion , defended from an angry crowd by a heavily armed swarm of riot police and National Guardsmen .
For twelve hours , Trump said and tweeted nothing , as the fires raged outside , and as the “ American carnage ” of his strange @ @ @ @ @ @ @ become manifest in televised images of a country at war with itself and plagued , once again , by its long and awful history of racism and police abuse .
Trump did not offer new versions of his race-baiting tweets of Saturday morning , about “ vicious dogs ” and tough-guy tactics , to stop the riots .
Nor did he mention the pro-Trump crowd of counter-protesters he had sought to summon that morning to the White House , but which had entirely failed to materialize .
The Macho Man did not seem @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , of course , Trump was back to being Trump , even as the piles of broken glass were still being swept away from the front of expense-account restaurants and fancy hotels and A.T.M .
machines in the blocks around the White House .
As joggers snapped pictures of the fresh “ Fuck Trump ” graffiti across the street , the President was back to fulminating on Twitter about the “ Lamestream Media ” and “ FAKE NEWS.
” He was blaming the mayor of Minneapolis and “ radical Left Anarchists ” for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leaders of “ Democrat run Cities and States , ” and mocking his November opponent , “ Sleepy Joe ” Biden .
He was claiming legal power that he does not have to designate the loosely organized , leftist Antifa movement as a terrorist organization .
He was back , in other words , to being the almighty President of his public conjurings , the fulminating would-be autocrat who loves nothing more than to ramble on about his “ absolute right ” to do just about anything , whether he has that right @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hunkered-down Trump of America ’ s ruinous Saturday night is no less real than the Sunday-afternoon Twitter bully Trump , who has monopolized our public stage for the last five years .
His desire to be the omnipresent macho man of our public life obscures his very real impotence in the face of indisputable events , like the killing of an innocent black man—or the outbreak of a deadly once-in-a-century pandemic .
Now seems to be a rare instance when the hard cold unpleasant facts of what is happening in America have intruded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump Presidency .
He is lagging in the polls five months before the Presidential election and , despite trying desperately for the last two and a half months , he has not succeeded in distracting Americans from the awful new normal imposed on our society by the coronavirus and his Administration ’ s botched handling of it .
We don ’ t know yet how the last few days will reshape Trump or his Presidency .
Is this the beginning of a long , hot summer of discord in our cities that will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sort that Trump has long encouraged and embraced ?
In the past , Trump has shamelessly stoked racial discord and divisiveness for political gain .
He is expert at blame-shifting and dog-whistling .
In his tweets on Sunday afternoon , he was already conjuring the spirit of Richard Nixon in 1968 to call for “ law and order ” as another long night of mayhem looms .
He may briefly hunker down in his White House bunker , but he has never done so for long .
If this crisis is like any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Trump will talk and tweet and tweet and talk no matter how many Americans wish he would just shut up .
Irrefutable events , however , are piling up on the Trump Presidency , and , although it is only May , 2020 has already given us an impeachment trial , a deadly plague , and the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression .
We can now add the worst riots in a generation to this election year ’ s grim bid for the history books .
Will that finally be @ @ @ @ @ @

There was a moment on Saturday afternoon when President Trump stood on a rooftop in Florida for what could have been a sorely needed moment of national unity. A made-in-the-U.S.A. spacecraft was about to blast off from Cape Canaveral, bound for the International Space Station with astronauts aboard, the first time an American craft had done so in nine years. Trump was so eager to witness the launch that he had flown to Florida twice, first for a scrubbed effort, on Wednesday, and then a return, on Saturday. In the short time between launch attempts, the country, already struggling with the death of a hundred thousand Americans from COVID-19 and concurrent economic devastation, had exploded over the police killing of George Floyd. Captured on video, the horrific act in Minneapolis led to days of protest, chaos, and looting. When Trump arrived in Cape Canaveral, though, he seemed to want a campaign ad, not a moment of American reconciliation, and soon after he walked onto the rooftop, the song “Macho Man,” by the Village People, a staple of his campaign rallies, began blaring from the speakers. The spectacle of a florid disco tribute to the President at such a time could not have been more discordant, or the message clearer: it’s all about Trump. It always is.
Trump loves such theatrical displays of Presidential power. He believes that you project strength by proclaiming it—that if you say you are macho, then you are. But, on this violent, tragic weekend for America, there was no narcissistic photo op that could obscure the reality that he is a deeply unpopular, deeply insecure politician, who is struggling, as never before, to lead his divided country. A few hours later on Saturday, after Trump flew back to Washington from Florida, he retreated for the night behind the high walls of his fortified executive mansion, defended from an angry crowd by a heavily armed swarm of riot police and National Guardsmen. For twelve hours, Trump said and tweeted nothing, as the fires raged outside, and as the “American carnage” of his strange, apocalyptic Inaugural Address finally seemed to become manifest in televised images of a country at war with itself and plagued, once again, by its long and awful history of racism and police abuse. Trump did not offer new versions of his race-baiting tweets of Saturday morning, about “vicious dogs” and tough-guy tactics, to stop the riots. Nor did he mention the pro-Trump crowd of counter-protesters he had sought to summon that morning to the White House, but which had entirely failed to materialize. The Macho Man did not seem so alpha anymore.
On Saturday, Donald Trump retreated behind the high walls of his fortified executive mansion, defended from a crowd of protesters by a swarm of riot police and National Guardsmen. Photograph by Michael A. McCoy
By midday Sunday, of course, Trump was back to being Trump, even as the piles of broken glass were still being swept away from the front of expense-account restaurants and fancy hotels and A.T.M. machines in the blocks around the White House. As joggers snapped pictures of the fresh “Fuck Trump” graffiti across the street, the President was back to fulminating on Twitter about the “Lamestream Media” and “FAKE NEWS.” He was blaming the mayor of Minneapolis and “radical Left Anarchists” for the nation’s troubles, chiding leaders of “Democrat run Cities and States,” and mocking his November opponent, “Sleepy Joe” Biden. He was claiming legal power that he does not have to designate the loosely organized, leftist Antifa movement as a terrorist organization. He was back, in other words, to being the almighty President of his public conjurings, the fulminating would-be autocrat who loves nothing more than to ramble on about his “absolute right” to do just about anything, whether he has that right or not.
But the silent, hunkered-down Trump of America’s ruinous Saturday night is no less real than the Sunday-afternoon Twitter bully Trump, who has monopolized our public stage for the last five years. His desire to be the omnipresent macho man of our public life obscures his very real impotence in the face of indisputable events, like the killing of an innocent black man—or the outbreak of a deadly once-in-a-century pandemic. Now seems to be a rare instance when the hard cold unpleasant facts of what is happening in America have intruded in a most unwelcome way on the Trump Presidency. He is lagging in the polls five months before the Presidential election and, despite trying desperately for the last two and a half months, he has not succeeded in distracting Americans from the awful new normal imposed on our society by the coronavirus and his Administration’s botched handling of it.
We don’t know yet how the last few days will reshape Trump or his Presidency. Is this the beginning of a long, hot summer of discord in our cities that will cause a white American backlash of the sort that Trump has long encouraged and embraced? In the past, Trump has shamelessly stoked racial discord and divisiveness for political gain. He is expert at blame-shifting and dog-whistling. In his tweets on Sunday afternoon, he was already conjuring the spirit of Richard Nixon in 1968 to call for “law and order” as another long night of mayhem looms. He may briefly hunker down in his White House bunker, but he has never done so for long. If this crisis is like any of the many others in his life, Trump will talk and tweet and tweet and talk no matter how many Americans wish he would just shut up. Irrefutable events, however, are piling up on the Trump Presidency, and, although it is only May, 2020 has already given us an impeachment trial, a deadly plague, and the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression. We can now add the worst riots in a generation to this election year’s grim bid for the history books. Will that finally be enough to silence Donald Trump?
Race, Policing, and Black Lives Matter Protests


newyorker--2020-05-30--All the Ways Not to Waste Your Citrus Peels

Our world abounds with shells and leaves and peels and bones that demand faith from those who wish to treat them as edible .
Citrus peels are different .
We all , at least unconsciously , recognize that the peels of oranges and limes and lemons and grapefruits are key to the pleasure of eating citrus itself—at least as an olfactory herald , a creator of the anticipatory gust that wafts upward when you first dig a nail into a mandarin , or cut a lemon in half .
We know that there ’ s something worth keeping in those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ orange , at least from watching bartenders twist them into cocktails to release their volatile oils .
As hard as it can be to see the promise in a picked-clean chicken carcass or tough fennel tops , it ’ s easy enough to tell that citrus peels are good .
It ’ s another thing , though , to actually make use of them .
One hurdle is technical : once you ’ ve got a fruit out of its peel , or the juice out of a fruit , the rind that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Have you tried to zest a squeezed lemon ?
Have you zested your knuckle instead ?
Have you registered that knuckle zest is less versatile than the lemon kind ?
Ideally , each of us would commit to removing the zest from our citrus before cutting it in half to juice , or peeling it to eat .
Like a lot of people , however , I ’ m not ideal .
I have a steady enough disposition to do the right thing about thirty per cent of the time .
The rest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lime juice for guacamole , or lemon wedges for chicken cutlets , I fail to take the extra twenty seconds it would require to pull out a zester—a whole extra tool !
—and execute the plan .
Here is how I compensate for this seemingly permanent flaw in my character : I go ahead and zest my lemons and limes and , hell , even oranges right when I bring them home , or a day later when I open the refrigerator and see the fruit and am reminded to do it .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ span somewhat—the peel is what protects the fruit inside it .
But I ’ m forgiving of slightly dried or sunken fruit ; I figure it ’ s better to have two ingredients—zest and fruit—in passable shape than just one in superb shape .
If you don ’ t have a zester , you can use a Microplane or a cheese grater , or you can take a sharp knife and carve the outermost , oily , brightly hued layer of skin off in strips , which can be chopped by hand into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ water , or seltzer , or the cavity of a roasting chicken , or , or , or .
Zest is a miracle ingredient , because it offers the flavor of the fruit it came from in ultra-distilled form .
This means that a very little bit goes a very long way .
I have tested how far by devising a recipe that I can only think to transcribe like this : Store leftover boiled potatoes in a recently emptied zest container until they become citrusy and delicious .
There ’ s no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also changing it enough to ward off boredom , than by putting it in a little pot and adding a drizzle of stock or water , some butter , and a hefty pinch of lemon zest .
Sure , it ’ s just lemony rice .
But lemony rice is great !
Here ’ s a really weird one : take leftover boiled egg yolks , smash them up , add a little pounded-up garlic , a tiny smidge of Dijon mustard , lemon or orange zest , and olive oil .
Stir @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it , then dollop it over asparagus , or toast , or newly boiled eggs .
Or , if you have parsley , you can chop that up , mix it with any zest ( including grapefruit , or clementine , or pomelo ) , garlic , and salt , and you have a version of gremolata , the perkiest sprinkle for anything from oatmeal to beef stew .
Have you made citrus-zest vinaigrette ?
Why not ?
Sometimes , the above advice notwithstanding , you will still find yourself looking regretfully at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lime or lemon or orange that you recklessly squeezed without zesting first .
There are good things to do with these peels , too , whether their pith is the very little bit you get from a mandarin or the insulation-level stuff on a navel orange .
One strategy is to make citrus kosho , the Japanese fermented condiment .
( I do this following the method of Jori Jayne Emde , a virtuosic fermenter : she grinds the peels in a spice grinder with chilies and salt , sprinkles the mixture with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it cure . )
A more straightforward strategy is to let the peels dry out .
This can be accomplished by putting them on a baking sheet by the window , or outside on a fire escape , or in an oven turned on very low .
The goal is for the peels to become dry enough that they can be ground into a powder using a spice grinder or a mortar and pestle .
Then mix the powder into sugar to make citrus sugar ; it will taste surprising and fancy ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or yogurt .
Or , instead , mix it with a combination of salt and dried chili flakes .
Then wet the rim of a glass , roll it in the citrus-chili salt , and fill the glass with ice and mezcal .
Or cut up fruit and dip it into the citrus-chili salt .
Imagine that you ’ re milling around outside , surrounded without fear by other humans , and a vender has handed you the fruit in a plastic bag and asked you whether you want it doused in hot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will store for a few years .
What will life be like in a few years ?
Wherever you are and whatever is going on , your cooking will taste better owing to that odd period when you gathered your leftover shells and leaves and peels and bones , and resolved to let nothing go to waste .

It’s easy to see that there’s something worth keeping in those petals of shiny yellow and green and orange. It’s another thing, though, to actually make use of them. Photograph by Iain Bagwell / Getty
Our world abounds with shells and leaves and peels and bones that demand faith from those who wish to treat them as edible. Citrus peels are different. We all, at least unconsciously, recognize that the peels of oranges and limes and lemons and grapefruits are key to the pleasure of eating citrus itself—at least as an olfactory herald, a creator of the anticipatory gust that wafts upward when you first dig a nail into a mandarin, or cut a lemon in half. We know that there’s something worth keeping in those petals of shiny yellow and green and orange, at least from watching bartenders twist them into cocktails to release their volatile oils. As hard as it can be to see the promise in a picked-clean chicken carcass or tough fennel tops, it’s easy enough to tell that citrus peels are good.
It’s another thing, though, to actually make use of them. One hurdle is technical: once you’ve got a fruit out of its peel, or the juice out of a fruit, the rind that remains behind is floppy and structureless. Have you tried to zest a squeezed lemon? Have you zested your knuckle instead? Have you registered that knuckle zest is less versatile than the lemon kind? Ideally, each of us would commit to removing the zest from our citrus before cutting it in half to juice, or peeling it to eat. Like a lot of people, however, I’m not ideal. I have a steady enough disposition to do the right thing about thirty per cent of the time. The rest of the time, when I need lime juice for guacamole, or lemon wedges for chicken cutlets, I fail to take the extra twenty seconds it would require to pull out a zester—a whole extra tool!—and execute the plan.
Here is how I compensate for this seemingly permanent flaw in my character: I go ahead and zest my lemons and limes and, hell, even oranges right when I bring them home, or a day later when I open the refrigerator and see the fruit and am reminded to do it. This decreases the citrus’s life span somewhat—the peel is what protects the fruit inside it. But I’m forgiving of slightly dried or sunken fruit; I figure it’s better to have two ingredients—zest and fruit—in passable shape than just one in superb shape. If you don’t have a zester, you can use a Microplane or a cheese grater, or you can take a sharp knife and carve the outermost, oily, brightly hued layer of skin off in strips, which can be chopped by hand into zest, or dropped whole into ice water, or seltzer, or the cavity of a roasting chicken, or, or, or.
Zest is a miracle ingredient, because it offers the flavor of the fruit it came from in ultra-distilled form. This means that a very little bit goes a very long way. I have tested how far by devising a recipe that I can only think to transcribe like this: Store leftover boiled potatoes in a recently emptied zest container until they become citrusy and delicious. There’s no lazier way to reheat rice, while also changing it enough to ward off boredom, than by putting it in a little pot and adding a drizzle of stock or water, some butter, and a hefty pinch of lemon zest. Sure, it’s just lemony rice. But lemony rice is great! Here’s a really weird one: take leftover boiled egg yolks, smash them up, add a little pounded-up garlic, a tiny smidge of Dijon mustard, lemon or orange zest, and olive oil. Stir the mixture like your life depended on it, then dollop it over asparagus, or toast, or newly boiled eggs. Or, if you have parsley, you can chop that up, mix it with any zest (including grapefruit, or clementine, or pomelo), garlic, and salt, and you have a version of gremolata, the perkiest sprinkle for anything from oatmeal to beef stew. Have you made citrus-zest vinaigrette? Why not?
Sometimes, the above advice notwithstanding, you will still find yourself looking regretfully at the pithy, juiceless half of a lime or lemon or orange that you recklessly squeezed without zesting first. There are good things to do with these peels, too, whether their pith is the very little bit you get from a mandarin or the insulation-level stuff on a navel orange. One strategy is to make citrus kosho, the Japanese fermented condiment. (I do this following the method of Jori Jayne Emde, a virtuosic fermenter: she grinds the peels in a spice grinder with chilies and salt, sprinkles the mixture with a little orange juice, then lets it cure.) A more straightforward strategy is to let the peels dry out. This can be accomplished by putting them on a baking sheet by the window, or outside on a fire escape, or in an oven turned on very low. The goal is for the peels to become dry enough that they can be ground into a powder using a spice grinder or a mortar and pestle.
Then mix the powder into sugar to make citrus sugar; it will taste surprising and fancy; sprinkle it on cookies or banana bread or yogurt. Or, instead, mix it with a combination of salt and dried chili flakes. Then wet the rim of a glass, roll it in the citrus-chili salt, and fill the glass with ice and mezcal. Or cut up fruit and dip it into the citrus-chili salt. Imagine that you’re milling around outside, surrounded without fear by other humans, and a vender has handed you the fruit in a plastic bag and asked you whether you want it doused in hot sauce.
Citrus sugar or citrus salt will store for a few years. What will life be like in a few years? Wherever you are and whatever is going on, your cooking will taste better owing to that odd period when you gathered your leftover shells and leaves and peels and bones, and resolved to let nothing go to waste.


newyorker--2020-06-01--You Miss It When It’s Gone, by Bryan Washington

On my last trip to a gay bar for the foreseeable future , my boyfriend and I played Jenga on a sofa outside .
I pulled a piece from a nook .
He slid one from a cranny .
A bachelor party was next to us , and eventually someone ran into our tower of blocks .
Immediately , fifteen pairs of hands , all of them various shades , stooped to gather the pieces .
Our fingers touched from time to time , grazing wrists , and we laughed about the touching , didn ’ t think twice .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ found a gay bar on a nothing Saturday night .
There was no reason for the place to be packed from wall to wall , with people breathing all over one another , sweating and pulsing and winding and shoving—but it was .
We were .
We were a blob of gas and air .
At one point , I elbowed the guy shaking beside me , and after I apologized he touched my ear and said it was fine .
One night a few years back , at a gay bar in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ drag show prep when a group of construction workers wandered in , holding helmets and kicking boots and already more than a little drunk .
Some of the bar ’ s regulars traded glances .
The performers took the stage .
Eventually , recognition rippled across the workers ’ faces .
But one of them took a dollar bill from his pants , and his buddies followed , showering the stage .
The performers pulled them onstage , where they continued to dance .
We tipped , cheered .
One night , at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ watched a group of guys huddled around a man who was flailing his hands , tickling the Christmas lights hanging above him .
He looked maybe forty .
He ’ d just come out .
His friends stood beside him , reining their guy in , asking passersby to give him a kiss on the cheek to celebrate .
A loose line formed beside them , ebbing and flowing with the music , congratulating and patting and chanting as though we ’ d all just won some championship .
Another night , at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ across the world in Osaka ’ s Umeda district , I spent a perfectly rainy hour drinking next to the only other patron .
When we stepped outside , he kissed me , and then I watched him walk away .
A little later , I told the friend I was staying with about it , and he narrowed his eyes and then rolled them into the back of his head .
One evening , at a dancy gay bar in Houston , sometime after eleven but almost certainly before one , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where people start disrobing , loosening ties and opening buttons and wrapping hoodies around their waists .
I don ’ t remember much about the music or the conversations or any of that .
But it was early February .
So I remember the steam .
One night , a few days after the Pulse shooting , I sat in an Atlanta gay bar where nobody said anything at all .
Instead , we touched the small of one another ’ s back in passing and gently squeezed every neighboring shoulder .
One @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sat with a straight friend who had never been to a gay bar before .
We vaped on the balcony , and he noted the physical proximity of the space .
Everyone stands so fucking close , he said .
Just then , a man slipped between us , cupping our elbows , not even looking at us .
One night , at a gay bar in Tokyo , I sat with a group of strangers , laughing at something I can ’ t recall , but it was enough to keep us @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from Texas , Singapore , Toronto , San Francisco , London , and Seoul—I ’ d never met them before , and will almost certainly never meet them again .
But still : we laughed until we were hoarse , leaning on one another ’ s shoulders , basically crying .
One night , at a gay bar in Sydney , after a long night of pretending to drink with writers , I shared exactly one beer with a stranger .
We talked about our jobs , and then bánh mì , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and also the fact that he was a break-dancer .
When I asked how that worked , he stood up .
He motioned for me to follow .
He ’ d pull a move , guiding my limbs until I did the same .
We did that for nearly two hours , stumbling through the motions .
It ’ s worth wondering how a space largely free of threats evolves when every space becomes a threat .
It ’ s worth wondering what the function of these spaces is , and whether @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their survival will mean as the nature of physical space continues to change .
Some of us waited a long time for those spaces .
Some might not mind waiting a bit longer .
Some of us don ’ t have time to wait .
You miss it when it ’ s gone .
But , before everything changed , there was one night—walking back to our car from a gay bar in Houston—when we skipped along the broken sidewalk , buzzed on proximity and beer and chilaquiles .
Turning the corner , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to his own car , with his own people .
We hugged in the street .
Apologized .
Kissed one another ’ s cheeks .
We said , Sorry , thank you , love you , be safe , goodbye .
♦

On my last trip to a gay bar for the foreseeable future, my boyfriend and I played Jenga on a sofa outside. I pulled a piece from a nook. He slid one from a cranny. A bachelor party was next to us, and eventually someone ran into our tower of blocks. Immediately, fifteen pairs of hands, all of them various shades, stooped to gather the pieces. Our fingers touched from time to time, grazing wrists, and we laughed about the touching, didn’t think twice.
Another time, in Austin, we found a gay bar on a nothing Saturday night. There was no reason for the place to be packed from wall to wall, with people breathing all over one another, sweating and pulsing and winding and shoving—but it was. We were. We were a blob of gas and air. At one point, I elbowed the guy shaking beside me, and after I apologized he touched my ear and said it was fine.
One night a few years back, at a gay bar in New Orleans, I was watching a drag show prep when a group of construction workers wandered in, holding helmets and kicking boots and already more than a little drunk. Some of the bar’s regulars traded glances. The performers took the stage. Eventually, recognition rippled across the workers’ faces. But one of them took a dollar bill from his pants, and his buddies followed, showering the stage. The performers pulled them onstage, where they continued to dance. We tipped, cheered.
One night, at a gay bar in Houston, I watched a group of guys huddled around a man who was flailing his hands, tickling the Christmas lights hanging above him. He looked maybe forty. He’d just come out. His friends stood beside him, reining their guy in, asking passersby to give him a kiss on the cheek to celebrate. A loose line formed beside them, ebbing and flowing with the music, congratulating and patting and chanting as though we’d all just won some championship.
Another night, at a bar in Doyama, nearly halfway across the world in Osaka’s Umeda district, I spent a perfectly rainy hour drinking next to the only other patron. When we stepped outside, he kissed me, and then I watched him walk away. A little later, I told the friend I was staying with about it, and he narrowed his eyes and then rolled them into the back of his head.
One evening, at a dancy gay bar in Houston, sometime after eleven but almost certainly before one, the crowd reached that point in the evening where people start disrobing, loosening ties and opening buttons and wrapping hoodies around their waists. I don’t remember much about the music or the conversations or any of that. But it was early February. So I remember the steam.
One night, a few days after the Pulse shooting, I sat in an Atlanta gay bar where nobody said anything at all. Instead, we touched the small of one another’s back in passing and gently squeezed every neighboring shoulder.
One night, in New Orleans, I sat with a straight friend who had never been to a gay bar before. We vaped on the balcony, and he noted the physical proximity of the space. Everyone stands so fucking close, he said. Just then, a man slipped between us, cupping our elbows, not even looking at us.
One night, at a gay bar in Tokyo, I sat with a group of strangers, laughing at something I can’t recall, but it was enough to keep us from breathing. We’d come from Texas, Singapore, Toronto, San Francisco, London, and Seoul—I’d never met them before, and will almost certainly never meet them again. But still: we laughed until we were hoarse, leaning on one another’s shoulders, basically crying.
One night, at a gay bar in Sydney, after a long night of pretending to drink with writers, I shared exactly one beer with a stranger. We talked about our jobs, and then bánh mì, and then video games, and then religion, and also the fact that he was a break-dancer. When I asked how that worked, he stood up. He motioned for me to follow. He’d pull a move, guiding my limbs until I did the same. We did that for nearly two hours, stumbling through the motions.
It’s worth wondering how a space largely free of threats evolves when every space becomes a threat. It’s worth wondering what the function of these spaces is, and whether they’ll survive, and what their survival will mean as the nature of physical space continues to change. Some of us waited a long time for those spaces. Some might not mind waiting a bit longer. Some of us don’t have time to wait. You miss it when it’s gone.
But, before everything changed, there was one night—walking back to our car from a gay bar in Houston—when we skipped along the broken sidewalk, buzzed on proximity and beer and chilaquiles. Turning the corner, we ran into a guy staggering back to his own car, with his own people. We hugged in the street. Apologized. Kissed one another’s cheeks. We said, Sorry, thank you, love you, be safe, goodbye. ♦


newyorker--2020-06-01--Bryan Washington Reads Haruki Murakami

Bryan Washington Reads Haruki Murakami

Bryan Washington joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “ U.F.O .
in Kushiro , ” by Haruki Murakami , @ @ @ @ @ 2001 issue of the magazine and was then republished in 2011 , after an earthquake @ @ @ @ @ .
Washington ’ s début story collection , “ Lot , ” was published last @ @ @ @ @ novel , “ Memorial , ” will come out in October .

Audio available Listen to this story
Download a transcript.
Photograph by Dailey Hubbard
Bryan Washington joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “U.F.O. in Kushiro,” by Haruki Murakami, which first appeared in a 2001 issue of the magazine and was then republished in 2011, after an earthquake and tsunami devastated northern Japan. Washington’s début story collection, “Lot,” was published last year, and his first novel, “Memorial,” will come out in October.