Spreadsheets will not save us from the apocalypse
Dear Adhocracy,
I have been thinking a lot about love letters lately. I have been thinking a lot about loneliness in the face of the apocalypse. I have been thinking a lot about romantic comedies.
This is only our second time together, and I do not feel as if I know you intimately yet, but I do know you a little. Music plays a big part in romantic comedy movies. Music and journeying and longing looks. I think about Roomba Rihanna dance parties and soft lighting with pink confetti. I think about murmuring voices telling quiet stories on long walks. A fire, a gift, a chat. Perhaps Adhocracy is the closest version of surreal moviescaped romance I will ever access. This year, our second together has already wooed me with bubbles and cheese.
“Perhaps Adhocracy is the closest version of surreal moviescaped romance I will ever access. This year, our second together has already wooed me with bubbles and cheese. ”
I only write love letters. Mostly platonic, although I did once send a poem halfway around the world to profess my decidedly not platonic love, but we don’t need to hear how that ended. Let’s just say that this relationship is more likely to end with a ride off into the sunset then that one did, even if the ride is the bike I pilfered from my parents' garage, and the sunset is setting over the Birkenhead bridge. I love letters though I love love letters. A love letter got me here (employ me, keep me pay me → I love Port Adelaide and I love feminism → take me, train me, especially pay me) and now it’s late at night and a love letter is winding me down to sleep.
“I think that this riverbank is the only place I felt at home for three long, immigrant years of my life ”
I think this: I think that I cannot detangle you (Adhocracy) from us (Vitalstatistix). I think that this riverbank is the only place I felt at home for three long, immigrant years of my life and if I could time travel I would tell her that one day I would work here and she would find that comforting. I think that for all the glitz, for all the excitement, for all the ART, for me Adhocracy is schedules and Excel spreadsheets. I LOVE schedules and Excel spreadsheets. Unironically, unabashedly, unambiguously. I am passionate for them. Sometimes I open up a particularly satisfying one (2019 Adhocracy volunteers. Fully colour coded.) and just look at it, sighing in comfort and affection.
“You are optimistic, which helps me be optimistic.”
Unfortunately, spreadsheets will not save us from the apocalypse. Adhocracy will not save us from the apocalypse. Even art alone will not save us. But I think that at its heart – at your heart, I beg your pardon – Adhocracy is about optimism. I think that any development that gives the artist four days to work on what are frequently immense ideas, requires them to deliver an impromptu but thorough public program in a beautiful but slightly ramshackled venue on limited but imaginatively limitless resources with a barebones staff and a ban of plucky volunteers to pull it off HAS to be innate optimistic. Both in scope and actuality. Adhocracy is like standing on a plane and trusting that your ten-year-old parachute will catch you as you fall, and jumping out with a smile on your face. You are optimistic, which helps me be optimistic.
And that is why I wrote this letter on ‘Who Gives a Crap’ toilet paper wrapping. Optimism. EVery little bit helps.
LOVE ISOBEL
