Consider This from NPR - Memorializing The Deaths Of More Than 500,000 Americans Lost To COVID-19

Episode Date: February 19, 2021

The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 is on track to pass a number next week that once seemed unthinkable: Half a million people in this country dead from the coronavirus.And while the pandemic isn't over yet, and the death toll keeps climbing, artists in every medium have already been thinking about how our country will pay tribute to those we lost.Poets, muralists, and architects all have visions of what a COVID-19 memorial could be. Many of these ideas are about more than just honoring those we've lost to the pandemic. Artists are also thinking about the conditions in society that brought us here.Tracy K. Smith, a former U.S. poet laureate, has already written one poem honoring transit workers in New York who died of the disease. Smith says she wants to see a COVID-19 memorial that has a broader mission, that it needs to invite people in to bridge a divide. Paul Farber runs Monument Lab, an organization that works with cities and states that want to build new monuments. He says he wants to see a COVID-19 monument that is collective experience and evolves over time. He also wants it to serve as a bridge to understanding.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Kim Nguyen of Denver, Colorado, lost her brother Frank Nguyen to COVID-19 on November 23rd of last year. He was 40 years old. Growing up, my brother and I were very close, being that we're only four years apart. As children, we bickered, but he was always there for me. Kim says the two of them shared a passion for music, especially the music they listened to as teenagers in the 90s. A lot of it was electronic music, but in particular, Depeche Mode at that time, Ultra came out. And I think that was a very, very pivotal time in his life. And it hit so many notes for him. A couple of days after he had passed away, I remember just having a few moments to myself. And I had my music streaming just on random songs.

And Depeche Mode's Home came up. The song has this big orchestral wind-up to the chorus where it says, And I thank you for bringing me here. For showing me home. For singing these tears. Finally, I found that I belong here. That song helped me because it felt like a message, him letting us know that things were going to be okay, or at least he was okay. And just trying to figure out where I go from here, where my family goes from here, and what we do to honor his life and legacy.

That was Kim Nguyen talking about her brother Frank, who died from COVID-19 a few days before Thanksgiving. The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 is on track to pass a number next week that once seemed unthinkable. Half a million people in this country dead from the coronavirus. Consider this. When this pandemic is over, how will our country pay tribute to those we lost? Artists in every medium have been thinking about this as the death toll keeps climbing. From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro. It's Friday, February 19th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees.

Download the WISE app today, or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. In recent mass shootings, people have been targeted for who they are or who they worship. But on June 28, 2018, people were targeted for the job they do at a newspaper. Listen to the new series from NPR's Embedded about the survivors at the Capital Gazette. It's Consider This from NPR. Poets, muralists, and architects all have visions of what a COVID-19 memorial could be. Many of these ideas are about more than just honoring those we've lost to the pandemic. Artists are also thinking about the conditions in society that brought us here. There have already been some tributes, like a short poem by Tracy K. Smith.

The former U.S. Poet Laureate wrote this for transit workers in New York who died of the disease, and I asked her to read it for us. Travels far. What you gave, brief tokens of regard, soft words uttered, barely heard. The smile glimpsed from a passing car. Through stations and years. Through the veined chambers of a stranger's heart. What you gave travels far. That was a very specific memorial to transit workers in one city who died of the coronavirus. And so I asked Tracy K. Smith what qualities she wants to see in a pandemic memorial that has a broader mission. And she told me it needs to invite people to bridge a divide, to answer a question, complete a sentence. It feels good to me to look at something like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and realize that there's a lot that I must fill in in order to activate this memorial. There's nothing telling

me, well, these are the three stages that you need to go through to arrive at this conclusion that we think is effective. And the fact of lingering in uncertainty, of dealing with possible feelings and deciding, well, is this the one I need to kind of invest in? All of that work leads me to a place that feels indelible in a way, more so than it might if I was just looking at a foregone conclusion that somebody else is presenting for me to accept. If you imagine 10 or 20 years from now that you visit this memorial, whether visit means, I don't know, in virtual reality or going to the sacred this, which is every major city, that brings a sense of local specificity. I want Minneapolis to have a COVID memorial that includes George Floyd. I want Washington, D.C. to have one that includes the forms of injustice that peaceful protesters during the summer of 2020

also endured. All of this is part of what I think is a single overarching epidemic that America has been dealing with from its inception, which has to do with maybe disregard. That's one very concise way of putting it. It has to do with the sense that some people are expendable. And what do you think you personally will hope to get out of that memorial and that experience of returning to these memories of the year 2020 and this very moment that we're in now? It feels trite to say what we always say, like we will never forget. So I don't want to say that,

but I want the remembering to get inside my skin. I want the remembering that I do to make me move through space differently, to speak to and touch people that I usually don't look at or make space for, but also people that I just don't agree with. What does it mean that we have to work together to cure ourselves. At many memorials, that idea of making space is literal. You stand in a physical place to think about a moment in time. Where people are really trying to just find a pathway to collective memory. I'm Paul Farber. I'm the director of Monument Lab. We're a public art and

history studio looking at the past, present, and future of monuments. Paul Farber's organization works with cities and states that want to build new monuments, and he told me he's not hearing a lot of that talk from civic leaders just yet. What he does hear comes from artists leading the way. In Philadelphia, where he lives, Monument Lab worked with local artists over the summer to create a video projection series called Cleanse. It projected photographs, video, poetry, and more along a wall. And then a number of messages put on a monumental-sized face mask projected that included phrases like, memorialize the missing among us. It didn't have to be this way.

And finding the light within us. Like so many of the tributes we've seen in the last year, this project addressed the twin epidemics of COVID-19 and racial injustice. Memory is not something separate from our daily lives. The work of mourning doesn't happen outside of the time of society. So if anything, perhaps our acts of collective mourning and grief can also be ways that we come together and we really understand the need for equity and for justice. That sounds like a lot to ask of an obelisk or a plaza or whatever the thing is? Well, I think we ask a lot of our monuments because traditionally they've been seen as the end of the sentence, so to speak. They're supposed to be the moment of finality. Monuments, if we look at them and how they're really treated on an everyday level,

are bridges between the past, the present, and the future. So when I asked Paul Farber what he wants to experience when he visits a coronavirus memorial one day, years from now, he said, of course, it should create a space to mourn. But he wants more than just a monument to loss. I also want to know about in this memorial how everyday people kicked into acts of care and make that part of the story as well. And then finally, I want to understand how it will live into the future, you know, that it will be a bridge, that it will allow us to understand and mark those who we have lost, but also give us a pathway for lessons learned that can be formed into new pathways for healing. So Paul Farber's checklist includes a collective experience, something that evolves over time, and serves as a bridge to understanding. Those bullet points all describe one of the most

powerful memorials in recent American history, an art project that grew out of another pandemic that's killed some of the most vulnerable people in our society. Mike Smith is the co-founder of the AIDS Quilt, a vast patchwork of more than 50,000 brightly colored panels made by people to remember loved ones who died in the AIDS crisis. At one point, it covered the National Mall in Washington, D.C. When you say the word quilt, you think of your grandmother tucking you in at night and Western community women coming together to work on a blanket for a new family that had just arrived. I mean, that sort of thing. It's a real metaphor for warmth in America. And that certainly wasn't the way anybody was responding to AIDS at that point.

One of the things that I find so moving about the quilt is that unlike a monument in concrete and marble, the quilt is not designed by any one person. It's a collective creation. Can you speak to the importance of that? Well, I think it was certainly important to us at the time. We needed that multitude of voices. Each panel may represent a life, but it really represents the relationship between that person and the person or group making it. And we wanted to tell those stories. We needed a way to make it more about storytelling and less about history writing. And do you think that's relevant to the way we think about memorializing those who've died of COVID-19 as well?

I would like to hope that similar to what the quilt did, that whatever memorial there is for COVID inspires communities to come together and to not isolate. The nature of COVID, the devastating nature of COVID is this isolation. The shutdowns, the gradual reopenings, the shutdowns again, people disappearing into hospitals and never coming back out. I mean, there's a tremendous amount of loneliness and invisibility related to COVID. And I would hope that some memorial kind of teaches people that the next time around, we need to do this differently. Mike Smith, he's the co-founder of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. You can find links for each of these artists' work in our show notes.

You're listening to Consider This from NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro.