Nothing Has Changed

for the 'pandemic blog' Everything Has Changed, invited yet unpublished by City Gallery, Wellington, 2020

After you get cancer, your lover’s tongue tastes different. After you’ve survived being near an IED going off, seagulls sound different. After you’ve been behind bars for a month, toilets feel different. After a friend jumps off an apartment building, cityscapes look different. But after you’ve been inside your ‘personal working space’ deleting a thousand group emails from arts and cultural organizations big and small, all of which comment on how ‘we’re all together in these trying times’, all art grappling with its First World problems looks even more the same than it was before.

April 26th, 2020, Melbourne


Text © Philip Brophy. Image © COVID-19.