Episode 79: the investigator

Monday, June 22

I've actually had to take on more work than I was doing before the pandemic. And. deadlines have been pushed up because people assume that everyone's just sitting around. And so, you know, you should be able to get these things done faster or have these 24 hour turnarounds. And  the time commitments have  just exploded in this way, where I'm working 10 hour days every day, including weekends to try and meet deadlines, because people have sort of this. Inflated sense of what remote workers can accomplish, because there's this assumption that you must only be working, doing this one remote thing, as opposed to doing five separate remote projects at once.

That was Erica Huang, who is coming to us today from New York as we continue looking at this time through the lens of the Enneagram. If you don’t know much about the Enneagram, don’t worry. Erica didn’t know much about it when she reached out to me. She’d recently taken an Enneagram test and had a 98% match with one type. I’ll let Erica tell you about it. 

I'm an Enneagram five. The word I would use to describe myself is logical. One thing that I've learned about Enneagram type fives is that we are constantly looking to expand our ideas about things. So it's not enough to be given one piece of information about a thing. we're constantly taking in data and different perspectives and searching for things that contradict our own ideas so that we can build on our, systems of how we understand the world. 

 I'm 23 years old. I'm not married, but I have a partner. I do not have any children. I am an audio editor, a sound designer, a musician and composer. I. Also used to act and perform and play music  in live theater productions. but with the lockdown, there's obviously not a lot of theater happening right now.

I was born in New York. I was raised in New York. I've lived here my entire life and the entire character of the city has changed in just a few months. Before we began sheltering in place, I would go out every single day and get an iced coffee from the same cafe. I would travel to the studio in Brooklyn, where I work as an assistant editor. I would go out to the park. I would play my guitar on the roof. I would go to the theater a lot.

It used to be that you would go outside and there were people just hanging out and talking and music, playing and, groups of friends, groups of strangers, people with their dogs. I mean, it was an intensely close,  socially knit and in close proximity, group of. People the vibrancy and character of the city was I think entirely to do with, the people that were in it  every single day and New York feels obviously wildly different right now.

I hope that we can regain some of our life and spirit and connection and just the music on the street that we've lost right now. Now I go out and the only interaction that I have is somebody yelling “Six feet!” at me.

I feel afraid that live performance is going to die out in favor of recorded livestreamed and otherwise, media from home experiences. I come from a background of doing theater and performing music live. And if those sorts of things go away, because people are afraid to sit in an audience, then we'll lose the collective experience that comes from having a lot of bodies in a room. And I'm afraid that we'll never get over the fear of that. And so the joy of that sort of communion will be lost.

The worst thing about sheltering in place, has been the lack of a reason to go outside. It's hard to leave the house some days. 

I am still working, but it's all remote: remote editing, remote sound mixing, for podcasts and a couple of short films. 

What I really wish that people understood about me is that, I can't really be asked to carry on business as normal, and I don't think anyone should be asked to carry on business as normal.

There's an intense psychological toll that this is taking on everyone. And the idea that we can all just work from home now, as though it were the same thing as it used to be is pretty unfair. One of the podcasts that I produce, one of the hosts of it, his wife just passed away, and a week after that happened, we were trying to do  a live streamed episode on Facebook and have everyone tune in and do questions. And it was going to be an event and the night before the other hosts and me, asked him “are you really okay to do this?” And he was like, “no, I'm not.” And of course, that event didn't happen.

What I need most right now is a sense of security about the future. And I know that that's not possible.

When I think about the future, I feel kind of exhausted because I know that there is so much longer that we're going to have to be dealing with this in whatever way. That means when I dream about what life could be like after COVID, I hope that we won't forget the value that essential workers, many of them minimum wage workers have.

The best thing anyone has done for me during this time is do the dishes or take out the trash or help move the laundry from the washer, the dryer, when I just forget to do all of those things, 

During this time of sheltering in place, I've actually had to move locations. mMy lease in Manhattan was up.  I was staying at a friend's place on long Island with a couple of my other friends and my partner. We were there through all of March and April and part of may. and right now I can't shelter in place because my lease is up on my apartment and I have to move all of my stuff out to Queens. So I have not been sheltering in place for the last week and a half, and that's been kind of stressful.

One good change that's happened though, is that when I was staying out on Long Island for two months, I was staying with my current partner and we hadn't been living together until that point.

And now we are planning on cohabitating in the future, which is really lovely. And it's been nice to have somebody sort of by my side through this, who's been going through. It's been nice to share this with someone.

My partner has been incredibly supportive during this time, just with managing basic household tasks. And, I'm so indebted,  when I'm feeling down during this time. I deal with that by. Reading online comics or playing music.

One of my favorite things is  to compose and record a lot of original music. As a musician, I'm interested in patterns and in space, I'm interested in the way that a thought can sort of kaleidoscope into a thousand other thoughts, the way that  a certain phrase and the feeling that rides on it can give way to the next, to the next, to the next, in this sort of, train of thought or trail of spoken melody kind of feeling. I like to compose sort of moment to moment, and I like to leave a lot of room between phrases for breath and thought and. Just a moment to  reflect like the moment that the swing goes up and stops and its momentum and just  hangs there for a second before gravity takes it back down again.

The music you’re hearing is some that Erica composed. When I read the description for 5’s, it sounds just like Erica: insightful, insightful, curious, able to focus on complex ideas and skills. At their worst, they can become detached, intense, and isolated. Reading that I felt glad for Erica that she’s had someone to spend this time with. It seems like it’s helped a lot.

Erica sent me her voice memo in late May. I reached out to her this past week to see how she was doing, and if there was anything she wanted to add. Here’s what she had to say. 

So, this is an update to my previous voice memo, where I talked a lot about the lack of community on the streets of New York during the pandemic. And actually one thing that has completely shifted that has been the recent Black Lives Matter protests, in the wake of George Floyd's death, people have been taking to the streets like every single day for the past three-ish weeks.

And  the turnaround from nobody being outside, nobody interacting, everybody kind of keeping distance to this swell of community and people coming together for a cause, it's been a totally radical shift and I think it's wonderful. I've been at this point to, I think, three or four protests, and every few steps, there are people handing out water bottles. there are volunteers  with snacks, handing out masks, hand sanitizer, reminding people to stay hydrated with big signs, like, free masks here, free snacks here. And I think because we went without that for so long. I think everybody is feeling that sort of community engagement and like the need to stand up together as a force, as New York.

I think we're feeling that all the more strongly because of the months that we spent without it. 

When I think about the future, my hopes are that we, as a society, are able to create spaces where we maintain a certain level of health and safety precautions, but we're still able to feel connected as people.

At their Best, 5s are visionary pioneers, ahead of their time, able to see the world in an entirely new way. Their greatest fear is being useless and helpless. They’re motivated by wanting to understand their environment and figuring out how to live safely in it. When I hear Erica talk about the sense of community she’s experienced joining in the protests, the picture she paints feels measured, but hopeful. There’s a sense of coming together for the things that really matter, but figuring out a new way to do that safely. 

The gift of daily sanity I’m receiving from Erica today--the gift I hope you’ll receive as well--is that vision for a world where we can be together without fear. It reminds me of something Dr. Joyce Sanchez said in Episode 48: open for business. That life in quarantine isn’t an on/off switch. It’s a dial that we slowly turn up or down until we get it just right. 

Until we do, I’m grateful for Erica and all of the other 5s out there, who can cast a vision for a safer and more connected world. 

You can find the music you heard today and more of Erica’s other work on her website, www.erica-huang.com.