Latest / Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD / ParentData Presents: The Lonely Palette's "Mary Kelly's Postpartum Document (1973-78)"

Transcript

ParentData Presents: The Lonely Palette's "Mary Kelly's Postpartum Document (1973-78)" · Wellness, Actually with Emily Oster & Perry Wilson, MD

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: This is parent Data. I'm Emily Oster. If you're listening
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: to this in the US, it's Thanksgiving, and after a
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: fall and really a year of divisiveness, I think we
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: all need a holiday in which all Americans are united
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: in the task of consuming too much pie. More broadly,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: this holiday, more than really any other one, is something
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Americans tend to do together. And if Thanksgiving reminds us
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: of what unites us, not what divides us, so does parenting.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Especially at the beginning, the experience of having a newborn,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: the sleeplessness, the disconnection from reality, the wonder it feels
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: somehow like this incredible, unique, magical thing that only you
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: have done, and also like a line connecting you to
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: billions and billions of people throughout the past. And all
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: of that is why I'm really excited to share today's
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: episode with you. It's made by my producer Tamar, whom
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: you've heard from before, and now I'm going to give
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: over the mic entirely. Before she came to parent Data,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Tamar had been producing her own independent art history podcast
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: called The Lonely Palette, and this episode about a nineteen
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: seventies feminist artist named Mary Kelly who meticulously tracked every
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: data point from her son's birth until age five, diaper
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Stain's first babbels. This combines both her love of art history,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: my love of data, and our shared love of parenting.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: I asked Tamar to come and talk a little bit
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: about this before we play the episode. Tomor Welcome, Welcome
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: to the hot seat. How do you feel?
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: Thanks, it's uh, it's it's warm, it's it is.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Get ready, it's getting hotter. We're going to talk about poop.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: So let's start by how about you tell us what's
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: your what's your parenting set up? Over there? You're in
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: a closet. How's the parenting in the closet?
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: It's great because I can close the door. The parenting
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: situation is I have a five almost five and a
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: half year old whom this episode is actually about his birth,
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: and then I have a as of this recording tomorrow,
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: a three year old and one on the way.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: So this is an episode from the early twenty twenty
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: one pandemic times, and it's interesting to listen to several
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: years later post pandemic. But I'm curious about how important
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: you think the pandemic is in how you were sort
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: of thinking about that time and your parenting and this
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: piece of art, you.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: Know, it actually kind of set up the framing for
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: the entire episode. So my son was born in July
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: of twenty nineteen, and I actually moved cities that December,
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: so come March, I had a seven month old, I
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: had a new city, and then we had this pandemic,
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: and it was just like triple alienation from the world.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: And it was actually there was something very kind of
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: reassuring that it felt for a little while, at least
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: at the beginning of the pandemic, that it was like
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: the whole world was on maternity leave, and it felt
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: like everybody, you know, everybody who was lucky enough to
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: kind of be able to just stay home, It felt
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: like everybody was existing in that weird out of timeeness
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: that a new mother who's home with her baby just
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: kind of gets used to, where you're so used to
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: structuring your life around routine and then all of a sudden,
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: you can't really tell one day from the next. And
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: there was something very familiar in that feeling that it's
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: like you could call up anybody and everybody was feeling
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: that out of joint.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: You talking to being any of the episode about not
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: knowing what day of the week it is, which I
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: totally related to both from the new parenting and from
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: those early, those sort of early pandemic moments.
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I liked the idea that this experience, for as
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: long as we can kind of keep it in our
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: public consciousness, gave us a lot more not just sympathy,
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: but empathy for new mothers.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: So I admit I had never heard of Mary Kelly
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: before this episode, which reflects many different things. We don't
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: need to go into all of them, but my sense
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: from you is that this wasn't like I had never
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: heard of her because I'm an uncultured, you know, individual,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: but that she is not that well known, and what
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: do you why is that?
• 5:15
  Speaker 4: Well?
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: So she is a second wave feminist artist, and most
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: second wave feminist artists were really adamant about asserting their
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: non motherness, that they were really trying to kind of
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: break from the idea that women had to be mothers
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: and that, you know, we had this sexual revolution, we
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: had the pill, you know, I mean, there were ways
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: to sidestep and kind of transcend motherhood, and you would
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: see that a lot in their art, and she did
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: this really kind of revolutionary thing of actually bringing motherhood
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: back into second wave feminism. But she also did it,
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: and you know you'll hear this in the episode, she
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: did it in a way that if you haven't had kids,
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: it's really easy to kind of dismiss her as like
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: a little psycho. And so you have this artist who
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: both was kind of like subverting the kind of feminist
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: art you were supposed to be making in the seventies
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: and doing it in kind of an unappealing way. But
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: I think she's getting her doe now, you know. I
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: think that that history is going to be kinder to her,
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: even if it doesn't make her actually anymore famous.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: So one of the things I the piece is about
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: sort of documentation of early childhood, of baby ness and
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: child and the thing I just kept thinking about, and
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: this is why I think this is like perfect for
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: the parent data audience is the person who once set
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: me a picture of a quilt they had made. And
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: in the quilt, every stitch was it was the entire
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: first year, with every row was a day, and every
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: stitch was six minutes, and they were colored whether it
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: was the baby was awake or asleep, and it was
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: this like incredible, like wow, blanket documentation, like is it art?
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Is it commentary? Is it insane? Like yes? And also yes,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: and this is sort of it's like a continuation of
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Mary Kelly, but in quolting form, with like an app.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: I guess you must have used an app if only
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: she had had an app.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean Mary Kelly is like the precursor for
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: the nursing app that I used and the contraction app
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: that I used. And you know, it's like we we
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: feel like we kind of have to do this, like
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: we have to track and and I talk about this too,
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: but it's like, you know, in the hospital right away,
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: I was given something to keep track of every breastfeeding
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: attempt and then if there was any latching, it was
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: like well for how long and which breast? And it's
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: like right out of the gate, this, this experience that's
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: supposed to be all about instinct, not only is really regimented,
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: but makes you question if you can trust your own instinct.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: And you know why they do it, you know, you
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: know why doctors and nurses are keeping tabs on all
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: this stuff, but it just it sets you up to
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: just feel like you have to write everything down and
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: there are just a million ways to do it wrong,
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: and you know, you slowly build instinct back up. I mean,
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: I'm I'm anticipating my third and I don't know if
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: I'll even use my apps anymore. It's like, but I
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: couldn't have known that with my first.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Yes, this piece of art is very much a first
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: child art. I feel like her second child, she's got
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: this first. If she had another child, they just get
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: like a little poster, you know, like a eight and
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: a half eleven with a few notes on it. Yeah,
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: gus on the second part, who knows, I forgot to
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: take pictures?
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Well she never had another kid, unfortunately.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Well, I think we should get into it because I
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: listened to it again last night and I love it. It's
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: so good. It's so good.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: Tomorrow.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: Thank you for sharing it with us, and thanks for
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: being a part of parent Data and doing all your
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: cool stuff.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: Thanks Emily, thank you so much for sharing this episode
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: with everybody. That means so much to me.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: All right, next up, everybody, we have the Lonely Palette
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Hub and Spoke Audio Collective.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: This is The Lonely Palette, the podcast that returns art
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: history to the masses. One object at a time, I'm
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: tomor Avey shy.
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: Oh, yes, it was very funny. In the paper I said,
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: they had a picture of me. I don't know how
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: they got it, and under it said it's art because
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: I say so. Because there was the you know, the
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: problem for perhaps some of the critics were involved in
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: conceptual art at the time, as they say, well, you know,
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: I like that theory, that structure, but why do you
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: have to have that stuff in there? And on the
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: other hand, the women would say, I can, I can
• 10:32
  Speaker 4: relate to that, but what do you have to why
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: the theory? Why that? So it seemed to in a sense,
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: be three interlocking circles, you know, one where you would
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: have a conceptual artists, you would have women in the
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: movement right, and you would have mothers, and there would
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: be one point in the middle where very few people
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: could understand exactly where this was pointed. And when this
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: work first shown in the context of conceptual art, this
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: is before disposable nappies, before disposable diapers, they had something
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: which was like a liner that you put in a
• 11:11
  Speaker 4: cloth diaper, and it's really that the stain on that
• 11:15
  Speaker 4: liner that I kind of used as the evidence of
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: how well I was doing with the feeding, and there
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: was actually no other way to go about.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: This episode fifty one, Mary Kelly's postpartum document from nineteen
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: seventy three to seventy nine. Early on in the pandemic,
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: I was on the phone with my mom, and in
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: the course of our conversation, I had that experience that
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: everyone has had at least a couple times since last March,
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: the realization that I couldn't tell what day of the
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: week it was. I screwed up my brain and tried
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: to find some purchase, but it just wouldn't come to me.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: We all know how in the before times, each day
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: of the week had its own unique, imperceptible quality to it.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: Monday has fresh momentum, Wednesdays are productive but kind of bloodless.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: Thursdays have the promise of Fridays, Sundays kind of feel
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: like the end of the summer. And now all of
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: that was replaced with a smooth, blank wall. We knew
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: on some rational level that the pandemic would mean we
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: were losing hugs and restaurant meals, but we didn't consider
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: this kind of loss, the untethering of time itself. My
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: mom responded with a chuckle. I heard a good one
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: the other day. She said, we used to have days
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: of the week. Now every day is Blursday, and I'll
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: give it to her. It was a good one, and
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: not just because it rings so true for the pandemic
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: and it's something that we can all understand, but because
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: that joke is an old chestnut on loan from a
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: very specific demographic one that I'd also been a part
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: of since the summer before, because I'd been living in
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: months of blursdays by the time the pandemic hit. Because
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: I was the mother of a freshly born baby, I
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: had been living the cottony haze as hours bled into hours,
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: days into nights, into days into nights. Babies aren't born
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: with a circadian rhythm. They need to develop them, and
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: that means that as a new parent, you lose yours
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: three am, three pm, sunlight, moonlight, It's all the same.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: This decade of my life had been structured by a
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: nine to five, the distinct borders between weeknights and weekends,
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: and the seven fifty one train to get to work
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: on time, and beating the eleven am grocery store rush
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: on Sundays, And now all of that, I mean truly
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: all of it. My life, my normal fell away, dissolved, disappeared,
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: structure itself was meaningless, and the sleepless, broken hours spent
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: staring into the face of this little, squeaking being who
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: stared back in equal wonder our most urgent needs, food
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: going in, food coming out, and the crashing waves of
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: sleep became our only indication that time was actually passing.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: How can I even describe those first days and weeks
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: of my son's life. Someone once told me that it's
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: impossible to actually conjure the memory of pain, And when
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: I think back on that time, I realized that I
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: can't actually conjure the fatigue, only the small, poignant details,
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: the warm light of the bedside lamp in the middle
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: of the night, staring at his impossibly tiny, yet wholly
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: complete fingers, the hollow, little squelchy suck as he nursed.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: I remember how simple it was to feed him, and
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: yet so stressful to feed me, How attempting to follow
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: recipes brought me to frustrated tears, how I would order
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: food to pick up just as a reason to leave
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: the house. And more than anything, I remember how separate
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: I felt from the world on a solitary rocket ship
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: to the moon. Life became a series of contradictions. Everything
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: was both itself and its total opposite, just depending on
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: the hour. I remember feeling giddy and bursting with love.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: I remember feeling wrung out and desperate. My rocket ship
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: was perfectly cozy and fit to our scale and utterly claustrophobic.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: I had nestled in my arms, the exact person who
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: made me feel whole, and I was really lonely. I
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: was on this thrilling, far flung adventure whilst sitting in
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: the same spot on my couch, unmoving sometimes for hours,
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: wearing the same clothes, steeped in my own gentle stink,
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: the existential silence of outer space, guided entirely by sounds, whimpers,
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: snorts and those deep shuddery sighs. But for all its
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: nebulous haze, the fact is that I can revisit the
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: nuts and bolts of those days any old time I
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: want to, because no sooner had this little body been
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: evacuated from my own, no sooner had I joined the
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: celestial ranks of our species. I was handed a hospital
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: chart to fill out which breast, how long, what time,
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: how many ounces. As soon as he would wake up
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: all thrashy and sniffy, I was to pop him on
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: my nipple and start a timer. Countless doctors and nurses
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: then checked up on it, made sure I was filling
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: it out, and a student that I was. Of course,
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: I wanted to impress them, but it wasn't just for them.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: I needed it. I needed something, anything that would give
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: me back some control. This is not a shock to
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: anyone who really knows me. When I first told my
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: sister I was pregnant, she shook her head and smiled,
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: not unkindly about just how much control a control freak
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: like me was going to have to accept losing. Because
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: it's true, control is an exceedingly short supply from the
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: moment of conception from which hormones are released to grow
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: his spleen, to how long the labor takes, to how
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: much milk you produce to when he starts to talk.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: But you'd never know it from the app store. There
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: are infinite ways to maintain the illusion of control. To
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: process all of this unknown With a tap, I was
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: able to track my ovulation to the day. I know
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: the exact moment of conception as soon as I found
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: out I was pregnant, I was able to check in
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: weekly on what literal size the fruit growing in my
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: womb was a grape at nine weeks, a grapefruit at
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: twenty three. With the first labor spasm, I was searching
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: for apps to time the length between contractions, to tell
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: me when it was going to happen. And I think
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: I hoped what was going to happen, because even though
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: my entire job that day was to give up control
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: and just get out of my body's way so it
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: could do the primary act that it was built to do,
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: the data is still there, structuring the experience in bits
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: and bytes, making me feel like it could have been
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: structured at all. And whether or not this kind of
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: neurotic charting creates more stress on a larger level, I
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: know that it comforted me in the moment. It gave
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: me back a sense of control, and it made me understand,
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: maybe it was the only thing that could make me
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: understand on a molecular level, what the artist Mary Kelly
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: was all about. Because if we're being honest, when I
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: was introduced to the work of Mary Kelly in a
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: college art history course, I rolled my eyes Postpartum Document
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: is her most famous work. It's the one that puts
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: her in college survey art history courses, usually lumped together
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: with other second wave feminists artists. And if you're familiar
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: with many of those artists, Marina Abramovic, Kroly Schneman, Judy Chicago,
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: and others who we've looked at in the past, then you,
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: like I was, would be predisposed to dismiss Kelly. Come on, girl,
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: you would say, with all the inflated confidence of a
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: co ed. You're working alongside women artists who pour their
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: souls into reclaiming their women bodies. These are artists breaking
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: out of the gaze or subsuming it or subverting it.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: And here you are obsessively tracking the birth of your son.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: Because this is what Postpartum Document is on its face,
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: a series of six sections mounted as a seemingly endless
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: series of individually framed works, essays, images, and footnotes documenting
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: every inch of her baby's development until he's five years old.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: His feedings, his diaper changes, down to the poop stained clothliners,
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: his babbels, his scribbles, every little token gifted by his
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: chubby toddler hand all charted and described with a precision
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: that I at the time could only have described as
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: psychotic and worse, unfeminist. To devote your freshly liberated female
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: body to another person, and to devote your artistic life
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: to tracking something that only the mother of that specific
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: baby could ever possibly be interested in, well, it felt
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: retrograde and trivial. I mean, Shnemann was painting canvases with
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: her own goddamn vagina. Mary Kelly, all you did was
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: become a mom, and worse, the kind of insufferable mom
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: who shows us the whole photo burst when one would
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: have more than sufficed. Okay, both college age Tamar and
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: and everyone else, let's sit with this for a moment.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: Shall we specifically this idea that all a woman did,
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: that all our moms did, was become a mom, That
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: making and caring for new life is so common that
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: we stop seeing it for the tremendously profound thing that
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: it is. And this seeps in when you become a mom,
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: because you start to question, how can something be so
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: transcendently life altering in theory and yet so mundane in practice.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: I was thinking about that this morning as my son
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: sat calmly on my lap, sucking down a bottle. This
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: was the leap off the side of the world. The
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: small innocuous body with the sweet smelling curls, swinging his
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: little pajamaed legs. This is my new greatest joy, seriously
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: watching him happily shake a container of cupcake sprinkles. But
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: it is, and parenting exists in the contrasts at once
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: everything and nothing, obvious and obliterating. But unlike all the
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: other existential paradigm shifts that human beings experience, like death
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: or falling in love, parenting is treated differently. It's treated
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: like a choice. We choose to take the leap, We
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: choose to undergo the Copernican revolution in our own lives,
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: to no longer be the center of our own universes.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: And it stands to reason that if something was a choice,
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: then there's a clear metric for determining if it was
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: the correct choice, or if it's being done correctly or incorrectly.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: That it's indeed possible, as all the mommy sites try
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: to tell us it is, to rationally track motherhood. These contradictions,
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: these metrics, the work the leap. These are the issues
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: that postpartum document tries to unpack, and it's the contradictions
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: in particular that give the work its spine. Like with
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: motherhood itself, Postpartum Document is both everything in its opposite.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: It's an attempt to view an exposed human heart through
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: an objective filter. It's an anthropological project that elevates motherhood
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: to an academic social science that can be understood through
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: enough observation and dissection through the authority of theoretical analysis.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: And it's a deeply ironic parody of such an approach,
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: from the formal, typewritten cataloging that's covered with crayon scribbles
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: to the pleasing rorshak like esthetic of poop stains. And
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: at its core, it's a comfort, a quiet tethering for
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: a struggling new mom named Mary Kelly, who is clearly
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: trying to understand something that and sends our understanding, our
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: language to pin down feelings that can't ever be processed
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: in real time, only exquisitely remembered with a whiff of
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: baby shampoo. This attempt at objective rationalism is her own
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: attempt to make sense of what cannot be made sense
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: of and to feel a little less unhinged in the
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: moment by manufacturing this anthropological framework around it. Measuring stains
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: on diapers with mathematical precision, as she has described, helped
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: to fend off the anxiety that she wasn't feeding him correctly.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: Deciphering his babbels as only a mother can do, reinforced
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: her own value as only that mother quote. It was
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: all evidence of how well I was doing, Kelly said.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: If you track his progress, she's telling herself, then you
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: can track your own, and you can reassure yourself, as
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: every mother must, that you're not talking it all up.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: And we need to consider how postpartum documents intrinsic contradictions
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: met their historical moment. Images of mothers and children are
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: perhaps the most primal pillar of visual culture, given the
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: Biblical references to the Madonna and child. The genre essentially
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: peaked in the nineteenth century with the tender French Impressionist
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: paintings of Bert Morriso and Mary Cassatt, who had been
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: confined to their domestic settings by dint of their sex
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: and class, and therefore painted what they had access to,
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: that is children. But these images had largely fallen out
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: of favor by the middle of the twentieth century, and
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: certainly by the nineteen seventies, when the artistic discourse of
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: second wave feminism, as we've said, saw itself explicitly about
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: liberation from the body, from the gaze, and especially from
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: the home, that is, from homemaking. So when Mary Kelly
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: first began to show the series in nineteen seventy six,
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: it's perceived quote unquote anti feminist quote unquote backsliding was
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: laughed out of the room. Moreover, like with most newcomers
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: to the work, all people could focus on were the diapers.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: After the tates bricks, come the dirty nappies. The headline
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: of the London Evening Standard blared obnoxiously, as though the
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: move from minimalism to motherhood was something to mourn. But
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: little by little the discourse deepened and textured, and the
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: work's revelatory nuances began to shine. Hiding elements of motherhood
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: had become such a fixture of feminist art that to
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: show them became the bravest thing a woman artist could do,
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: and not as an idealized nineteenth century love letter to
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: domesticity or as a nineteen seventies bragging right of the
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: woman having it all, but showing it all in all
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: its invisibility in the profundity of what is so easily dismissed.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: Many women artists in the seventies, as we looked at
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: in the Fiber Art of Episode fifteen, were also looking
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: to explore what it meant to reclaim what had been
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: derided as women's work, the typically unseen labor of simply
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: being domestic, the exhaustion and the dignity the creativity of
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: the craft. And these diaper linings, so easy to mock
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: at first glance, so easy to not take seriously, were
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: unlike any account of motherhood that the art world had
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: ever been exposed to, especially after those gauzy Impressionist paintings
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: of mothers and children. Those stained diapers represented not only
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: the relentless tedium of the work of motherhood, the strand
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: of beads with no not, as my mother in law says,
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: but of the corporeal reality of motherhood, of the bodies themselves,
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: their functions and fluids and smells that moms, because they're moms,
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: don't actually mind so much. And this larger plea to
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: take the work seriously is reinforced and may be satirized
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: by Kelly's use of arcane theoretical frameworks. From the first
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: section onwards, this little fluff headed baby is being cranked
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: through the cogs of Lakanian and Freudian analysis, sexual compulsions
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: and phallic associations, gendered labor, and the foundational aspects of
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: adult socialization. It's a lot. She stamps onesies with Lakhanian visualizations.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: She takes the not exactly unfounded eroticization of breastfeeding to
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: a totally overreaching Freudian conclusion, and it becomes difficult to
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: take this aspect of the work seriously, which is maybe
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: her point. As any feminist artists will attest, art theory
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: and philosophy in general have been unequivocally shaped by a
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: patriarchy by men, and maybe Kelly is revealing that using
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: this methodological framework to explain objectively the relationship between a
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: mother and her baby is just as absurd from a
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: distance when they do it as it looks up close
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: when she does it. That said, there is no question
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: that the formal clinical language of this framework lends an
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: academic authority to the subject matter. Not only does the
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: endless cataloging and analysis draw awareness to the work itself,
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: that is, the labor, but it methodically creates an empirical
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: lens through which to view the sacred, the profundity of
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: the experience itself. It elevates these objects, the onesies and
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: diaper liners and the Rosetta stone of her son's scribbles.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: These objects that are so easily forsaken, so inevitably thrown away,
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: become invaluable artifacts of human archaeology, a testament to the
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: way that we as a human species develop measuring out
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: our humanity in plastic baby spoons. On a macro level,
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: these objects are a way of articulating why we matter
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: at all, and on a micro level, they also explain
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: why to our moms those musty old receiving blankets are
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: more valuable than diamonds, because again, it's the mother's perspective
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: here that we really care about. She is the author
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: of a text that is tracking her own evolution alongside
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: her child's, documenting her own internal conversations, alongside the conversations
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: with her son, and in looking at those, we see
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: this empirical framework kind of dissolve from objective to subjective,
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: from anthropological to anxious. As the rocket ship slowly leaves
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: the atmosphere in every one of the six sections of
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: the work, each tracking an overarching developmental stage that aligns
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: with her son's age. Her observations are detached and pragmatic,
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: and then conclude with a sweeping, heartbreakingly vulnerable question about
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: what all this amounts to? What have I done wrong?
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: She asks, following the first section on feedings and fecal analysis,
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: and echoing every mother who has ever stood vexed and
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: tearful over her newborn's empty diaper. Why don't I understand?
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: She asks?
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: After the second section on speech development, The third section
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: on markings and scribbles pivots self consciously outward, why is
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: he like that? The fourth on transitional objects, what do
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: you want? And on to the final section. When he's
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: five years old and now able to write the alphabet,
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: which to her signifies the completion of the artwork. Her
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: son is now capable of becoming the author of the text,
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: and she, the mother, asks what will I do? And
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: this drives home may be the most powerful aspect of
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: the work. Loss separation, both a mother from herself at first,
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: and then the mother from her child, having devoted herself
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: so assiduously to her baby, and then losing him quite
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: appropriately to the natural terms of his own development, and
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: this speaks to what is actually the most striking contradiction
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: in the series, the idea that an experience so ephemeral
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: can be recorded, captured in its tracks, placed beneath glass,
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: able to be revisited. For all of the comfort maybe
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: that this charting gave Kelly in real time, and for
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: all of the larger societal elements that her art was
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: tapping into, one also has to imagine that she was
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: simply trying to hold on to moments as they were
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: slipping away. Motherhood is rightly referred to as the longest
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: shortest time. Moments and phases that feel interminable actually go
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: by in a flash. Maybe she was trying to capture
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: the feeling of being caught in those moments, or maybe
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: she was recording them so that she could revisit them
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: when she actually had the emotional wherewithal two, even though
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: by then they'd be long gone. I mean, that was
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: certainly my hope, because I also recorded everything, and it's
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: not like I was thinking about Mary Kelly, or at
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: least not explicitly when I brought my microphone into my
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: doctor's visits or into my delivery room, or when I
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: hold the voice memo app in front of my son's
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: giggling face before he tries to grab my phone away.
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: It wasn't an intentional artistic project, like, hey, I'm an
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: audio producer. Maybe I can get some good tape for
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: a future project. But because it's why I'm an audio
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: producer at all, because I know that recreating a sense
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: of time and space after a moment has passed is invaluable.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: There's not much that takes you back there like sounds
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: to nothing else can so powerfully envelop you and recreate
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: a lost moment, especially a moment that's meant to be lost.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: So sound so much at.
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: This.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: You got this.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: About seven.
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: Graduation, the words we're getting new nutrition. There we go, congratulation. Joy,
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: he's so cute. You look to that?
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, mhm yah.
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: St still kay? Did that? Did hate?
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: Did that?
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: Hey? Do? Don't die? Hey Calvin, how are your cheerios good? Hey? May?
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: It's really good? Thanks for asking? What grade are you
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: in Cana? How old are you? What's your favorite music? Joe?
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: I want to be in a podcast.
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: Hi, parent Data, I'm Jellan.
• 38:32
  Speaker 4: How are you?
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: Good? Job?
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: But I think I did it for at least some
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: of the same reasons that she did. You do this
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: kind of thing in the moment because it makes the
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: moment feel real when you can't trust your own headspace.
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: You do it because the idea of a future in
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: this impossibly untethered, relentless present is so absurd that you're
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: almost daring time to pass for these recordings to hurry
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: up and become nostalgic. You do it because you can't
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: pay the attention in the moment that it deserves, because
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: the sacred is completely swallowed up by the mundane, because
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: there's too much to think about, too much to schedule,
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: it's too new, and you're too tired. You do it
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: because in these moments there are no words, and I
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: can't help but think about Kelly when I listen back
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: to these now. Because what actually strikes me the most
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: is here myself change as a mom, doing it all
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: for the first time, which I'll never do again. I'm
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: struck by how comfortable I sound, how increasingly unself conscious
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: in my role, even though I remember feeling like I
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: was flailing and failing. I'm struck by how much these
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: sound like tapes of my own mom with me. It's
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: amazing how our voices are almost indistinguishable now. And maybe
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: these recordings aren't interesting to anyone but me or maybe
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: him someday, But maybe they are. Maybe they make a
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: new mom feel a little less alone. And though postpartum
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: document and all my own recordings do speak to a
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: kind of loss, they are also, ultimately and with the
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: much wider and wiser lens of experience, about gain, about
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: stretching out your own surpriseingly elastic life to make room
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: for someone else's, and from more love than you ever
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: thought possible, And you're not only making enough space to
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: keep them alive, but all that extra wiggle room to
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: help them thrive. Someone had to do that for you,
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: and it was, in all likelihood the most poignant experience
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: of their life. So let's not think of this artwork
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: as just about motherhood or a mother, when it's really
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: about everyone who has ever had one. In other words,
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: it's about everyone. And so let's also stop rolling our
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: eyes at Mary Kelly. Let's stop dismissing her as some
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: obsessive mother, as just a mother. Let's instead think about
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: the hard earned wisdom that moms, and especially new moms
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: can teach us about this moment that we're all in
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: right now if we just look to them, because we
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: are all surviving a global pandemic, one day at a time.
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: And I say this, of course about those of us
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: who are lucky enough to both be a mom if
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: we want to be, and lucky enough to have been
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: able to stay home. But look, no matter what, it's hard,
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: we have all just lost an entire year of normalcy
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: to blursdays, and it feels like we're all hitting a wall.
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: The darkness of this winter is beginning to close in
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: on us, and even though we know there's a light
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: at the end of the tunnel, it only makes this
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: time of interminable stillness feel even more potent, even more oppressive.
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: And new moms they see you, and they're here to
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: tell you, as only moms can, that you'll get through this.
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: There's a new normal waiting on the other side, with
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: weekends and train schedules. And once we get there, because
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: our adaptable lizard brains leave us no choice, we're going
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: to forget how this felt. We won't be able to
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: just conjure up this untethering from time, what it really
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: feels like when you don't know what day of the week.
• 43:16
  Speaker 4: It is.
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: And because we forget, we need to actively try, really
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: make a conscious effort to come away a little wiser,
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: with a little more empathy, a little more compassion for
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: each other, for ourselves, and hopefully for all those new
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: new moms who are, as we speak, sitting in their
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: divid on the couch, staring at their babies, simultaneously weightless
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: and crushed and isolated from the very species they're perpetuating,
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: maybe even more isolated than you are. We see you
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: right back, moms, and maybe it took this pandemic to understand,
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: maybe the only thing that could make us understand on
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: a molecular level, what you've been going through. And we're
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: sorry that it took the mother of all reminders to
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: get here. Special thanks to Evan Blanche, who deserves his
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: own episode on fatherhood, my birth team of Kristin paren
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: and Adrian Mathowitz, and all my other dear friends and
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: family members who have joined the Stretch Mark Club in
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: the last little while, both literally and metaphorically, and are
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: hanging in there like champs. I'm counting down the days
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: until I can bring Calvin over for a playdate. For
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: more information, past episodes and all the images go to
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: the Lonely Palette dot com, and you can and follow
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: us on Instagram at the Lonely Palette, like us on Facebook,
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts, and please,
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: if you value this content and want more of it,
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: become a sustaining patron at patreon dot com slash Lonely Palette.
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: And if you're on the lookout for a safe and
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: highly enjoyable activity with your coworkers, book a virtual tour
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: of art through the ages with the Lonely Palette over zoom.
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: Check out the Lonelypalette dot com slash Virtual Tours. The
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: Lonely Palette is a proud founding member of Hub and Spoke,
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: a collective of story driven, mind expanding podcasts. And if
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: you're in particular need for the kind of advice you
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: can only get from a mom, then check out the
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: most recent episode of The Briny, Matt Frassica's sound rich
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: Stories from the Sea, about an internationally decorated marathon swimmer
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: who combats her anxiety of the water following a shark
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: scare when she was younger by continually reminding herself to
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: stay focused and swim. You can find episodes at The
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: Briny dot net, or at hubspokeaudio dot org, or wherever
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: you get your podcasts
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: D