Behind the lines of BE.aGaIN today lands in the world of someone working from home during the pandemic (I was one of them!!). Zoom and Teams and other such technology allowed for travel-less meetings that were at once borderless but also crossed some boundaries between work and the home.Other human faces literally became “Two-dimensional” and we became “semi-detached`” from human contact while working in our semi-detached homes.
Zoom took the human out of the equation and we all became “Zoom-an”, -well trained animals performing behind screens.We paradoxically knew not to “Knock on the glass”
“Shipwrecked or Harboured” and “Captained by fools” was looking at the context of first-were all the restrictions necessary? and secondly- did the people steering their national ships at the time know what they were doing?.
The caged animal element returns again in the last two lines where “feeding time” and life outside of work inside your own home was the solace at the end of the day if we “follow the rules”
It’s a piece that was of it’ s time and from a very personal context, but still relevant now in the way that work and therefore life has changed since 2020.
The image I chose was of an Orangutan that I took a photo of in the Berlin Zoo.In Malay, “Orang” and ” Utan” means “person” and “forest”. A compound word of something the Orangutan probably wishes it had never met-and somewhere it would rather be.
The animal hangs cruciform like. The roped ring next to it reminded me so intensely of the brass rings we all chase in our work life on a daily basis and mostly these days- through a screen.
Algo.
Algo Poetry-Behind the Lines 