Attunements

Posted on | August 23, 2009 | 6 Comments

A friend hurts her back in the middle of a work event she’s been planning for months. Rather than miss the Saturday workshop she Skypes in from bed.

Someone can’t RSVP for an event later in the year because she might need to have an operation. Someone who was going to come can’t anymore: the chemo is taking longer than expected.

A colleague gets her hair done before a seminar and wears a suit to feel more professional. She is the second person in a few weeks to tell me that most of her hair is already grey.

Now she has tenure all she wants to do is catch up on all the TV she’s missed.

A lover is attached to a football team and to cigarettes. Both break his heart.

A fellow researcher returns from fieldwork with a new interest in affect theory. She can’t get the memories from the sex change clinic out of her head and wants to know how to write about it ethically.

Old friends meet for lunch and before anything happens a pregnancy is announced. She wonders whether she should have known sooner if she really was a friend.

A visiting academic gives a lecture that talks about a homeless step-son. People want to know what is actual and what is virtual.

A former co-worker loves her job but misses the place she used to work. She says she can still get everything done each week if she just stays awake one night out of seven. We joke about the ordinariness of jet-lag.

Someone inspiring leaves for an indefinite amount of time. People improvise strategies of mourning based on their preferred visions of the past or the future – and what may or may not happen if she returns.

The contract worker we all feel protective about has given up coffee to stop writing emails so quickly. Another contract worker we all find endearing drinks coffee to stay writing into the night.

A neighbour’s partner banishes him from the house on Saturday to get an essay done. He can’t find anyone who will drink the afternoon away.

A collaborator isn’t showing enough signs of commitment, but she doesn’t want to raise the issue in case it means the project might die. It is one of the few things still linking them.

My best friends want to be able do things that aren’t as boring and disciplined, but they have mortgages, travel plans, renovations, responsibilities.

The number of people writing emails on Sundays.

The fetishisation of cooking on Twitter (as if food can forgive everything).

I will wake up on my birthday in Melbourne on my own.

My niece might not be coming to my wedding.

Category: Saturn Returns

Comments

6 Responses to “Attunements”

  1. Rachel Hills
    August 24th, 2009 @ 5:08 pm

    Such a simple, yet beautifully compelling, post.

  2. geert lovink
    August 27th, 2009 @ 6:49 pm

    high theory, melissa. there is some much into this. amazing condensed aphorism of the present. excellent!

  3. Rachel O'Reilly
    August 27th, 2009 @ 9:22 pm

    nobody quite does attunement like you. great to see it at the front end. solidarity with the fetishization of cooking – what i don’t miss about work lunches and one of the things i love about the netherlands…people don’t give a $#&t about culinary relief. x

  4. Rachel O'Reilly
    August 27th, 2009 @ 9:37 pm

    also – i’ve been pondering alot lately cultural theory’s turn (back? again?) towards poesy. want to talk more to you about that…i wonder if we aren’t all trying, partly, to become or to know good novellists/novelling again. very interesting times.

  5. now-cultural-poesy « ror’s research blog
    August 30th, 2009 @ 1:52 am

    [...] practices, as consciousnesses of bounds of the literary. How to think about this? And why am I so interested in wondering this how? It seems to cut across so many of my supposed theoretical and aesthetic [...]

  6. Anna Hickey-Moody
    October 19th, 2009 @ 7:59 am

    gorgeous post, sad fragments of life. I feel like I seem pathetic and happy from the outside – embarrassing but livable. Most days. :-) After my youth arts book I am almost considering writing about English crime drama. But I am worried it might spoil the fun. Youth arts projects feel like work when designing and running them. So in this respect, I am safe enough keeping my TV joy largely contained to the purple couch. And splinter moments of enthusiasm. xx a

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