What if we define values, principles, and methodologies, resisting the pressure to define outcomes? What if we focus on what drives us and on how we want to live and work together, but leave the imagination open to the concrete shapes our collaboration can take?
The pandemic has been racialised, oft-referred to as the “Wuhan virus” and the “Chinese virus”, and anyone who passes as Chinese (or, really, of East or Southeast Asian descent) in the western world has been Othered and, in some cases, physically assaulted, violently denying them of their sense of self.
We refuse an impulse to put on-hold and opt instead to hold each other from afar, shifting our definitions of productivity and product, alongside precarious timelines and futures.
The extravagance of these small fragments and minor aesthetic details are not wasteful, but beautiful. Think trans girl with diminutive ambition, sufficient amuse-bouche, endless caress, depressive, but comfortable, reparative when she leaks a little, and juvenile with a crush.
Will our love stories ever resolve, they wonder, will they come to a head at some point like a mountain peak or a vast plateau or will they stubbornly revolve in spinning sequences of not-quite-endings, hapless or half-hearted attempts to cut cords left over from the last vow-less beginning?
The stage directions here describe the future, what will come to pass, and what has already passed for these characters between the time of the play’s setting and the time of the play’s writing.