Buongiorno, America

The sun doesn't go down; we're turning.

Dear reader,

Tonight, I’m on dinner duty for our weekly house meeting. This morning, Farmer cracked an egg over a cast iron skillet while I surveyed the contents of our communal fridge to brainstorm what will end up on everybody’s plates come seven-o-clock. 

“Carrots, cabbage, cauliflower,” I muttered to myself in a thick British accent as my hands combed through the produce drawers. Farmer looked up from the sizzling egg. “Are you okay?” he asked. “I’ve never heard you talk in so many accents for this many days.” 

One silver lining of last week’s election is that I no longer feel a responsibility to dissociate privately. Masking doesn’t feel available to me anyway. The faculties I generally rely on to hide parts of myself are wholly exhausted. A domino fell, and it broke — and liberated me — at the same time. 

Last Wednesday morning I woke up wanting — no, needing — to be a different person. To face the day as Anna, heart wide open, felt not only reckless, but impossible. Without thinking, I resorted to my first language, a glitchy hybrid of Italian and English, and used it to pull myself up by my bootstraps and into another person’s shoes altogether: Giovanna’s. 

Giovanna wants every child of the world safely in their beds, engulfed in billowing linens, while she recounts Italian terms of endearment that she can still hear rolling off of her mother’s tongue. Giovanna knows no sides; she is a friend to all. Giovanna is resilient and only sees the beauty in everything, even as many turn away from it to a point of no return. Giovanna listens to the animals for guidance. Giovanna moves slowly, so slow that she can feel the earth turning. She is reassurance embodied. She remembers that the sun does not go down. 

At first, portraying this caricature was funny, yet it’s now become tender. I was happy to interrupt doom-scrolling with levity for the dire minds who happened upon my Instagram stories. But now a week has passed, and being Giovanna feels less lighthearted and more like a coping mechanism, one I cannot quit. Evolving into the realm of the absurd feels like the only way I will survive this hellscape. The alternative is to persist on a plane of existence where we remain harmful to each other because unfathomable states of repression, delusion and scarcity are the acceptable manifestations of being under-resourced. 

Other people, not just Farmer, are starting to talk about Giovanna. On Sunday at work, and last night at a poetry reading, I was met with the same line from various friends: “I’m seeing your stories…” said in a tone of equal parts confusion and care.

A quick Google search confirmed that “feeling overtaken by an alternate identity” is a trauma response called dissociative identity disorder (DID), formerly known as multiple personality disorder.¹ Apparently, a primary characteristic of DID is having two or more distinct identities, each with a unique name, personal history, and features. And while it’s sometimes comforting to have a name for something I’m going through, Giovanna does not need to be pathologized. I just like how it feels pretending to be somebody calm, unwaveringly loving, and completely unafraid.

Yes, I am coping, and this is how. Because yes, I am still, and always will be, an artist. E tu?

Love, 

Giovanna

1. https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/dissociation-overview

1. James Baldwin and The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity, a 30-minute recording that carries me through. Sometimes I just let it play in the background to wake what stirs my soul.

2. Come and find me this Saturday November 16th in Santa Barbara at Off Register: Art Book & Print Fair 11AM to 6PM. Free entry, free air-kisses.

3. Satya Doyle Byock
   takes us through the Six Elements of Modern Ethics. A must read please.

4. I’m listening to Unmasking Autism by

   Devon
   Price while washing dishes at my new part-time job. Tracks!

5. This country set by DJ Adam Lucky is an arrow to my heart.

6. Cody Cook-Parrott
   calls it like it is: “…the constant barrage of reels and videos and information on Instagram has never made me feel more stupid” in Deactivation Mania.

   

7. GOOD GOOD FRIEND, a limited ceramics collaboration between Erin Louise Clancy and I drops December 10th. Mark your calendars, these pieces will fly. Mugs! Cake stands! Plates!