The emotional distance of social distance | May 7 2020
Welcome back.
Has it only been a week since we promised to write weekly newsletters?
Wow.
It seems longer. But then time has gotten kind of chewy in lockdown. Like it's been two weeks. Or 13 days.
Weird.
But despite the general complexity of nonlinear time theory, we've been pretty busy, at least in this dimension. We've been creating a bunch of safety videos that address the difficulties of working from home, something we have kept up despite our lock down because we're a bunch of extroverts who think the planet would come to a screaming halt if we didn't keep producing incredible works of art that win awards...
Wait, that sounds just like the last newsletter right?
See how time gets mixed up? And if you think that's weird...
Our first safety video was released by HOTA on Sunday and now it's Wednesday but we're talking about the video as though we're just releasing it now, when it's not even us doing the releasing, and also HOTA don't know that we're writing this newsletter but they will when they read it which will be sometime in the future, yet the words will be the same ones we're writing now and at the same time (?) as writing this not so weekly newsletter we're working on the release of a second safety video about the hazards of children, which is finished but won't be released until Sunday even though we need to get it to HOTA two days ago, as per our contract, which means that it's late except, as we kept telling them, time doesn't work that way.
It's all string theory, so don't blame us, blame Stephen Hawking.
And after you've reconciled your guilt for blaming someone who's no longer with us, check out our video...
Despite the vagaries of time, things are slowly returning to some kind of normal in the Farmhouse and we've been able to get out a bit and back to business, which leads us to a question that is important because it helps set up the rest of the newsletter.
As we re-emerge from our cocoons and unfurl our sticky wings we ask ourselves - what has been the cost of our social distance?
Consider this...
do you recoil when a stranger brushes against you?
are you amazed at the amount of tasks you can accomplish with your elbow?
have you forgotten how to hug?
do you deliberately wear oversized clothes so the sleeves cover your hands?
do you try to get in and out of Coles on a single lungful of air?
and...
have you ever spayed someone in the face with disinfectant?
This bit is not a joke. We experienced it ourselves only a few days ago. We were on our weekly nature walk and passed a woman with a scarf across her face. We stepped off the path (a tricky thing to do when there are so many of us) observing strict social distancing codes and she said thank you. Then, because the Burleigh headland is a loop trail we passed the same woman again a half hour later and this time there wasn’t a moment to negotiate an off path manoeuvre, she came around the corner too fast, we were caught by surprise, there were too many butterflies to look at. We stayed on the path and…
She sprayed us! In the face!
This incident makes us ponder the cost to our humanity following this extended period of social distancing.
It is widely known that when humans are isolated a subtle shift in their chemistry takes place. During world War 2, in Nazi Germany, experiments were conducted where twins were separated at birth. One twin was raised in a normal home and efficiently given hugs on the hour, the other was raised in prison.
By the time they were twenty these twins were remarkably different. The one raised by the German family was always on time whereas the prison baby was often late, socially awkward and had many tattoos.
What does this teach us?
Under certain conditions the brain will stop producing the pheromone oxytoxicyclin (the hormone secreted that makes us want to talk, hug and socially interact with each other) and the chemical foxinsocksbicycling will be manufactured instead. This hormone is secreted by a gland that is mostly inert in human beings until they experience severe stress, isolation and/or funding deadlines.
It is the same chemical process that leads to carrying small spray bottles on nature walks.
At The Farm we don't think we should let fear guide us as we start to reconnect.
And we think that there is a movie (mentioned earlier in an alternative time continuum) that can help us redefine our boundaries without disinfectant...
Cocoon.
For those of you who weren’t alive in the 80’s or who somehow missed this cultural phenomena, here’s a quick rundown...
Atlantis is real. It sunk ages ago and the peaceful, architect aliens who built it fled, all except 20 who didn't get out because they were still recovering from a massive night out (that's a guess). The aliens return (in the 1980's) led by a guy called Walter, who can shine light out of his eyeball and Kitty, a beautiful female alien who falls in love with Jack, some guy who owns a boat.
With us?
They fill a swimming pool with enough life force to charge the cocooned 20 party aliens with enough juice to get them home, kind of like one big aspirin. But then a bunch of old people invade the pool and soak up all the life force, which means they can no longer go home. Instead of getting pissed off, Walter just invites the old people to come instead and drops the cocoons back into the ocean, probably because he's still angry they didn't invite him to the party.
That's basically it, except for one scene we want to pick out. Kitty, the beautiful alien, decides to get nude and show Jake how to make love in the pool without touching. Why she needs to be nude if they're not touching is never fully explained but this is the result on Jack...
Now stop looking at Jack's abs and look at his face. Right there. That's the power of not touching.
Don't you think we can also have meaningful connection with other human beings without actual physical contact? If Kitty and Jack can have such mind blowing orgasms on opposite sides of the pool, can't we connect to one another in public while still abiding by social distancing guidelines?
In nonlinear time the future and the past are all available for us. In Nazi Germany in 1942 two twins are separated from their birth mother. One is given to a foster family and the other is locked into a maximum security cell. In Cocoon, a movie released in 1985 (a year after the name of the famous book 1984), a bunch of old people choose to leave Earth to live forever and have energy orgasms, bar one who decides to stay and face his natural death for reasons never fully explained. In The Farm's last newsletter (released only one week ago) we discussed our lock down and we're doing the same in this one. And at HOTA, the Home of the Arts, they're still waiting for our video to arrive.
All things connect. All dimensions overlap.
Maybe we can take the time to do the same.
Maybe in this time/space continuum we can step out of our social distance and help create a better world.
Maybe we can cross paths without spraying each other in the face with disinfectant.
And if not, maybe we should just take another path...