Author Christie George’s new book is a hand drawn line to the recent, misremembered past. It is an early pandemic project, begun as we were hoarding TP and baking bread.
It has now been five and a half years since the beginning of the Covid pandemic—five years since the close of the Black Lives Matter summer, and the racial reckoning that wasn’t. Although we rushed to forget the pandemic like a bad dream, it is important to remember it and remember it clearly—we are living in the world and politics that Covid created.
The Emergency Was Curiosity is the title of Christie George’s “new” book. It is a quotation drawn from artist Jenny Odell’s 2019 book, How to Do Nothing. If I can provide an interpretive gloss to George’s title, I would render it as, “what if an ‘idle’ and intuitive, childlike curiosity and wonder were raised up to the level of urgent priority—above the productive items that remain stuck at the top of our frantic, adult to-do lists.”
Mine’s not as pithy though. If I can provide the same (dis) service to Jenny Odell’s title, I would render it, “How to do nothing recognized as having ‘productive value’ to the misaligned and crushing capitalist machine.”
Odell’s book blends cultural critique and activism in its warning challenge to our modern “attention economy,” wholly captured by screens and social media, that seemly operate like control devices, keeping us distracted, stupid, misinformed, angry, hateful, anxious, hysteric and afraid (the better to rule us).
Also, Odell’s book is a call to liberation “disguised as a self-help book.” George’s new book is a commentary on Odell’s. Although she isn’t wholly comfortable with calling it “a book.” She prefers to call it a “fan letter,” a “collage,” “a book report” or a “zine.” Although it is hard-bound in a floral pattern watercolored by George, those terms evoke the loose, rambling, low-stakes art projects of a child on an idle summer day—or an adult in pandemic lockdown learning how to draw.
George entered the 2020 pandemic armed with Odell’s 2019 book, and her “book report” diarizes her experience of using the book to win back her attention and rediscover her self and her family and her wild West County home. It’s a charming and useful book (and pandemic portal) filled with hand-typed pages, doodles, diagrams, lists, manifestos, watercolors and nature field guides from pandemic year 1.
Cincinnatus Hibbard: Christie George, why did you start this book report and diary?
Christie George: I had a feeling I would not remember the early days of the pandemic faithfully—we are unreliable narrators of experience. I felt that I would remember it as way better than it was or way worse than it was… In reality, horrible things and beautiful things were happening all at the same time…
And now it remembers those days for all of us—better than a bronze memorial. You were intending to print only three copies—for yourself, for family and for Jenny Odell, but were convinced by experiences with friends and strangers to print more?
Sharing it was like an intimacy hack. If I give it to them—and if they read it, we are accelerated deep into a conversation around how we are wrestling for control of our attention in our daily lives. This is all I’m in it for—to talk to people about these ideas. That’s why I continue to share it. And I’ve now received many book reports on the book report (laughs).
Learn more: christiemgeorge.com.
