A gratitude-filled farewell

A still from the critically acclaimed comedy-drama series ‘The Bear’

For many years, I mistook delay for procrastination. This impacted how I interpreted the set of behaviours that are central to my creativity. For instance, when I had a deadline coming up for a commissioned story, the spontaneous and sudden need to clean my entire apartment seemed like an inconvenience. Why was I insisting on wasting time? Until, at some point, I accepted that the act of cleaning was linked to my brain's thinking process. By de-cluttering my living space, I was creating room for my thoughts to wander freely, to stumble upon ideas, to arrive at precision, to hone my sentences. I learned that writing isn't always about strapping oneself to a chair and desk; it is entangled with living and involves the kind of maintenance that is synonymous with housekeeping. I wasn't procrastinating by going for a walk. I was fuelling the neural connections between hand, head, and heart so that the words could drip more easily from my tongue. Embracing the distinction between delay and procrastination has helped me feel more attuned to my practice as both a creator and a receiver of art. I eventually understood that I had to learn to lean into the feeling of being ‘ready' in order to enable the miracle - because art making is transcendence.

For months, I've lived in the limbo of unknowing. I last left the cast of The Bear on the cliffhanger of season three. I felt alone in my deep appreciation for the entire season. The general critical and popular consensus was that the season felt frustrating for viewers because there was so little plot advancement. It was a cinematic equivalent of the same day and mood repeating itself, even though it looked different, or the menu changed constantly, as did many other variables in the form of milestones, like birth, death, or separation. I couldn't relate to most reviewers' critique of the show because to me, it felt like every second echoed a perfect synthesis between form and content. Some episodes felt like bravely standalone character sketches. There were moments of utter beauty, when someone cooked a meal out of love, not to prove anything to anyone. Do you see, dear reader, how hard I am trying to talk about this show without offering too many spoilers, in case you feel inclined to watch it too? I felt a certain kind of ecstasy watching the show because of how layered the narrative is, how cinematically engrossing it is, and how attuned it is to its characters' internal worlds. For all these reasons, I felt both keen and afraid to watch season four, which was released earlier this year. I wanted to feel ready to receive it, and I continue to watch it as if it were a delicate and elaborate 10-course meal - pausing to digest each episode, returning to a flavour, deconstructing its structure.

Each time I watch an episode and read reviews online, I unearth so much about our consumption patterns, as a culture. I feel like the capacity to ‘binge-watch' has fundamentally altered how we receive art and what we expect from it. Ten years ago, we were sure we were in the golden era of television, but the gradual abundance of streaming platforms killed that buzz. I found, universally, that stories stopped having nuances and plots became predictable. Most shows feel like endorsements of high fashion. You don't often get the sense of anything laboured. I also find that the way we talk about shows has changed, because we don't sit with scenes; we consume television like popcorn, somewhat mindlessly, not allowing for too much recall.

Especially because, as a second-time mother and a full-time editor, time feels like a limited resource, I've completely stopped bingeing in any form and frequently remind myself of the word's inherently negative connotations. It is an anti-consumerist decision, and adhering to it has enriched the quality of my pleasure as a reader and a viewer. It has also made me think more concertedly about how time gets imprinted within our bodies in direct relation to the attentiveness with which we allow the world to enter into our bloodstreams. Who we are is both cellular and ceaselessly transient, especially when we choose to make space for art in our lives.

On Monday morning, when I arrived in Bozen for my meeting with the new dean of our faculty, I chanced upon this quote by Sara Ahmed on the window of a women's co-operative: ‘A book tends to fall open on the pages that have been most read…' It elevated my day, because I had been thinking about how our bodies not just carry time but are time itself, and I began to wonder about the weight and material properties of words, and how a collection of words forms a textual body that is also, somehow, an embodiment of time. I wrote my first column for mid-day in January 2016. I was 30. I'm 40 now, and while considering this, my last dispatch, I felt awed by the notion that in letting go of this space, I was being compelled to plant both my feet on South Tyrolean ground. Even as I mourn the loss of you, my audience, who have followed me through my ecstasies and my traumas, it is with an effusive joy that I surrender this colossal 10-year archive to the dictates of fate in the hope that it may either ferment or take root and embrace how time acts upon it alongside bacterial mediation. I have loved every second of writing to you, for you and with you, and I entrust you with my colossal, monumental gratitude, as well as a small prayer that you keep
me in mind.

Deliberating on the life and times of every woman, Rosalyn D'Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She posts @rosad1985 on Instagram
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The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.