All by Sue-shane Tsomondo
I asked my Instagram community of friends and acquaintances if they’ve been feeling progressively apathetic about life since the pandemic began, of those who responded most answered yes. I turned 27 a few weeks ago, and it dawned on me that I was now living in the youth that had been the container for my dreams. At some point during the pandemic, I had realized there was nowhere to place all my hopes of the future, all the hopes of who I could be as an adult, I have arrived. My older-self held all the hopes and dreams of my younger self.
In my piece How Can I Be Myself when Strangers are Watching? Performing Blackness and Black Joy, I spoke of how a white audience by its very presence transforms performance art by black artists, turning an expression into an exhibition – an execution. It’s a crime for which I have convicted Canadian born and or raised Black artists. But I don’t know what it’s like to grow-up in a place as a minority. So, I asked my friend if I could walk a mile in his shoes.
During a conversation with a friend, who is also an artist and a photographer, he said, “What is it with you writers, why are you always writing sad stuff?” The most honest answer would be I haven’t experienced enough joy to write about it at any length, but I can’t speak for anyone else. Secondly, when the joyful moments seem so few and far between, I want to enjoy them; I cannot be bothered to intellectualize them.
