Kerri has started a new collection of images. It began a few months ago on our walk through Des Plaines. Why did someone discard their mask on the river trail? Her collection is the discarded mask collection.
Look around you. They are ubiquitous. Star Wars masks and smiley faces, Mickey Mouse masks and the garden variety medical mask. They are on sidewalks and in parks. They are in less obvious places like a nature trail.
I suppose a few of the masks in her now vast collection fell from a walker’s pocket. Most were tossed aside. As cultural studies go this one is many layered. We are consumers. Mostly, we know not where our garbage goes as long as it goes away.
Masks, like the people they protect, in these once-united-states, are disposable. That sounds harsh but with every prediction of lives lost, with the daily horror story of rising loss of life, comes a clear caveat: roughly 80% of those who will die, those who have died, would be alive today, will be alive by January, if 95% of us wore masks.
We hear that wearing a mask is an assault on personal freedom and shake our heads.
Many years ago in a facilitation, a person bemoaned that they didn’t have a voice. My business partner asked simply, “If you did have a voice, what would you say?” The person was…speechless. Having a voice is wildly different than knowing how to use it, why to use it. The same is true of personal freedom. We have it but know not how to use it.
And, after all, isn’t that the point? To have freedom requires the responsibility to know how to use it well and to know when…well…you are being used.
read Kerri’s blog post on MASK DISCARDS
Filed under: Flawed Wednesday, Perspective | Tagged: david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, freedom, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, mask, masks, personal freedom |
The Direction of Intention 
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