9' x 12': Chapter 5 - IG LIVE

A Window Into Another World

Our world shrank in the early days of lockdown, most of us withdrawing from the day-to-day hustle and bustle of life into the cocoon of our homes. We all became isolated. Cities became ghost towns and our isolation led to apprehension. Apprehension of touch, of unmasked speech, of physical contact. How quickly we went from hugging our friends to keeping our distance, hidden behind a protective shield of masks and disinfectant.

Walking through deserted streets in Santa Barbara, April 2020

How then were we to communicate? In a digital world where so much communication already took place via impersonal texts, requiring the knowledge of a lexicon of emojis (particularly when messages were sent by anyone born this century), where actual phone conversations have been replaced by a labyrinthine sequence of automated steps (how does one actually reach a human being when one needs one?), suddenly the very fact that we could not meet in person accentuated our very real need to meet, to actually speak and be with one another.

Companies rushed en masse to platforms like zoom to connect their employees and then everyone took to social media, even more than they did before. An explosion of content flooded the airwaves with ‘how to’ videos. How to keep your pets, your mail, your food safe, how to make sourdough bread, how to handle your work from home and simultaneously juggling your children’s school schedule. Videos, often hilarious, sometimes positively scary in their misinformation, mushroomed overnight. What else were we going to do while shut up in our homes?  In the midst of my existential angst about my business and life in general, I watched fellow authors, chefs, and food writers grapple with the fallout of lockdown regulations. Anyone unlucky enough to have a book coming out in the first few months of lockdown had their release dates changed, delayed and book tours cancelled. How then to promote it?