Up Close and Personal

I recall a roadside nail salon, I saw them grooming in the streets
Now stuck at home, many learned what you could do without in extremis
This global pause, borne of a disease and planetary emergency,
Has caused many a reconsideration of one's identity
For you could go without many strictures that society used to impose
All the way from haircuts, to fancy nails, and even working clothes
What they termed domestic cozy escaped from being a passing fad
To become a universal pose, a way of life lived in your sweatpants

Not for nothing that the first ones to mandate a return to the office
Were J.P. Morgan, the investment bankers, factotums of the monopolists
It's hard to justify the chores of the masters of the universe
At a remove from boiler rooms, alpha males lack people to coerce
The burden of their capitalism demanded that labour return to the fold

I'm minded that The Grind Date
   was not just an album recorded by De La Soul
The loudest cries to reopen the economy
   came from, well, call them vultures
Equipped with perverse incentives galore,
   a shame aversion subculture
But the virus sets the timeline,
   we are yet to reach herd immunity
And even with vaccine nationalism,
   a global disease requires global solidarity

Up Close and Personal, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• Move Closer by Phyllis Nelson
• Closer by Goapele
• Cozy by Bar-Kays
• Too Close by Next
• Up Close and Personal by Buju Banton

This note is part of a series: In a covidious time

File under: culture, observation, perception, coronavirus, pandemic, Ghana, capitalism, culture, work, Africa, covidious, poetry, Observers are worried, toli

Writing log: April 30, 2021