HELL IS OUTSIDE//HELL IS INSIDE
By Quindo Miller
From a young age I was taught to disassociate my mind from my body. I was taught that my mind and soul was something eternal even when my body would decay. That my emotions are not me; I am not my feelings. Trying to meditate when I was five, I was taught to observe the emotions and thoughts as they come and let them pass without giving them too much attention. The Physical Plane of Existence is just a test for the soul. Lessons learned here will challenge you to a different life after this one. I was born and raised with respect for the Spirit and the collective consciousness. Also from a young age, I was taught that money didn’t bring happiness, and I’m now beginning to believe that maybe my childhood taught the wrong lessons because I would be so happy to have a lot of money right now.
The scope of my mental health during this time of coronavirus has challenged my spirit. The depression becomes painfully obvious when the memes haven’t been funny for a while and all I do is spiral from article after article to Wikipedia. How could I disassociate now? Humor feels hard to come by and of course it feels impossible to be happy when marginalized people are dying and health protections are largely ignored. Of course it feels hopeless when the president isolates the country from the rest of the world by departing us from the World Health Organization (to which we could combine our resources and research to come up with a vaccine) while actively creating physical borders. Of course it feels painful when strangers, friends and family alike treat the virus casually or believe the pandemic is a hoax. I imagine the virus entering my body, compromised. Fighting its way through my respiratory system, my cells failing. The heaviness in my chest. Laborious breathing. Vulnerable. Weak. Incapacitated.
Images/Quindo Miller.
It feels exhausting to see American individualism trending and authoritarian powers grow stronger while democracy with freedoms, rights, and protections are threatened. The power of the people is overshadowed by the power of the…
A cloud of abstract anxiety hovers over my head meanwhile...I am not my emotions and let them pass? I fear I haven’t made enough phone calls, written enough emails, signed enough petitions, or donated enough money.
Inside my guilt and shame I’ve taken to playing the video game Spider-Man (2018) on the PS4. I haven’t felt obsessed with a video game since I was 17. Yet even in this fictional game I can’t escape the external realities of the real world: a deadly virus called “Devil's Breath” is released in Times Square from a terrorist organization while an international police force as a dominant authority threatens the freedoms of the public. The virus causes an epidemic throughout New York City where people are seen wearing masks and distancing to protect themselves. The effects of the virus on the economy leave people homeless living in tents and lighting trash cans on fire to keep warm. The police organization (Sable) begins to lock up protestors who speak out against their military presence and you, as Spider-Man, show-up web slinging in to save the day: Literally releasing citizens of New York City from cages. With eerie similarities to real life, the game itself demonstrates a densely limited imagination to inadvertently create a world we already exist in.
The real difference between the game and real life happens when ALL the prisoners from Rikers Island escape and attempt to take over the city with weapons of mass destruction. You, as Spider-Man, must stop hordes of prisoners from “looting” cash, stealing cars and inciting violence in Manhattan. An entertaining plot that outlines basic fears but deaf to the intricacy of a racially motivated prison industrial complex. Problematic as it is, the game is also therapeutic. Slinging through New York City, fighting “bad guys” while bringing order from chaos provides a powerful sense of control. Spider-Man transcends the Physical Plane of Existence. I can’t stop playing it. I need to see where it goes next. I’m only 10% away from completing the main storyline.
As the days go on, a constant bombardment of bad news continues to drown my clarity and focus. I scroll through Twitter. Searching for something to change my mind or fill a gap in my being. I stumble upon an old Bernie Sanders campaign video on my phone. With a sunken heart I can’t stop myself from watching it: A woman living in Alabama with sewage draining through her backyard still owes $15,000 on her mold-ridden trailer. The video was posted under a tweet informing us that she (Pamela Rush) died of COVID-19 just a few days (weeks?) ago, on July 3. She was Black. What lesson did she have to learn to live a life that would challenge her in this way?
Racism and the virus work in a peculiar system. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. Both systems thread inconspicuously through the mind and the body, weaving an anxiety into our wellbeing. A poison in our actions and reactions operative with a lack of control. Our perfect lives have now become uninhabitable. The powerful structures we were once thoughtless to are not pillars but paper. Racism: a virus rather, not appearing from nothing, but mutating. Becoming something else, something stronger. An old thing of time that is developed and constantly evolving to destroy us. Like the virus itself, appearing from nothing, a blemish in thought becomes action. Perhaps the lesson is to learn to observe our emotions and monitor our reactions towards others, in addition to ourselves. Everyday we do nothing, the urgency of what we have already created grows. “With great power, comes great responsibility.” (Uncle Ben, Spider-Man 2002) We have the power to change—will we use it responsibly?
Photo/Mikayla Whitmore.
Quindo Miller is a queer conceptual artist born in Guam. Inspired by isolation, rituals, and repetition, Miller's formative years were defined by exploration in their jungle environment. In 2012, Miller earned a BFA at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Since then, Miller has attended PREMC and PECA artist residencies in India and shown work through Contemporary Arts Center, Susie Magazine, and Goldwell Open Air Museum. Miller's mediums span painting, drawing, installation, and sound. When they are not splitting time between the studio and a full-time production manager, Miller enjoys plants. They currently live and work in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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