I had a blank in my original list for this series since I figured that over time something would emerge that I couldn’t have know about in the first blush of the pandemic. Indeed, the grueling repetitiveness of working, living, eating, schooling, and managing everything day-to-day in small spaces became an overwhelming theme of our times.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Blursday, Blursday….. According to Oxford Language’s analysis, the term “Blursday” emerged in 2020 describing the phenomenon of experiencing day-to-day as never-ending… days dragging on and on, as well as a feeling of months passing by in the period of weeks. The Urban Dictionary states: “When you’ve been sheltering in place for so long because of a global pandemic you have no idea what day it is as they all blur together”.
Staying at home, minimizing socialization, reducing going out and traveling… all have created a blur of sameness, a dearth of memory crumbs, a lack of stimulus that can mark difference and progress in time. The routines at home, while comforting in many ways, are now so predictable and, well, routine, that the sense of being in a time warp, or a record skip (anyone remember what that is?), is real.
Day-to-day drags on, and because of how our brains work, the weeks also fly by. “It’s laundry day again? I JUST did the laundry!” This ChoreOVID plays with redundancy, multi-tasking, the stress of living in a pandemic, and the labor of keeping it all together. I decided to film it in our kitchen accentuating the notions of home-making as particularly poignant. You might read elements of a day in the costume, setting, objects, and sequence of movements – from morning beverages to reading to meal-making to screen time to final wine sips…. over and over. I also had fun with things being not quite right – pajama bottoms with dress shirt; apron with sunglasses; one sock on and one earring on; and hair a bed-tussle mess.
I have always loved T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and the line, “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons” is referenced explicitly in the piece. The tedious ennui of keeping up appearances referenced in the poem seemed an apt correlative to our pandemic times.
My post would be incomplete without a huge thank you to Richard Schenk, composer of the music for this piece. He is musician and composer for dance at Connecticut College, and formerly at The Ohio State University. He was inspired by thinking about making a piece that could encapsulate a passage of time in a succinct one minute composition. It became the perfect catalyst for the never-ending concept of “Blursday.”
the video: https://vimeo.com/511751285
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