The Ghost in the Studio

There is a ghost in the studio

And the children are running.

Running,

Screaming,

Fleeing to the elevator.

There is a ghost in the studio

And the children are running.

It’s Friday, May 29th, 2020.  Last night I watched a video of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, being assaulted and killed by a white police officer.  This is not the first time this has happened.  In fact, it has happened 1,254 times since 2015 (Tate, Jenkins and Rich, 2020).  I feel sad thinking about this, as I watch the children play a new pretend game that they’ve been rehearsing the last couple of weeks. 

There is an old wooden shed in front of me, nestled within our outdoor garden/playscape.  The roof of this “storage shack” jets out behind it to provide shelter for our newly-revived outdoor studio.  Only yesterday one of the children’s’ parents came to guide the children and I through the construction of a long table that now inhabits this covered area.  Also inhabiting this space is a thin white sheet, hanging along the back wall of the studio.  “It’s a ghost!” LW announces, as they, and the other two children, turn and run out of the studio and towards the front of the shed.  Once there, LW yells, “Get into the elevator!”, while all three of the children jump on top of a small table.  “Press the button!”, says OS, while TH presses the imaginary button on the wall with a stick which they had gathered on the way to the elevator.  “We’re at the top floor!”, LW says, and they climb down from the elevator and into a net of safety again.

Fear

For almost three months now, these children have been under the ominous cloud that is COVID-19.  At school we often refer to this reality as “the virus,” and the children have seemed to find some understanding in the term.  However, for perhaps the first time in their lives, there is something that their parents don’t have an answer for, their teachers don’t have an answer for, that no one has an answer for.  This must be a scary place for them to be, as those who have built such strong fencing around them struggle to construct a new barrier, a new layer of protection from this new reality.  As the children continue to engage with this ghost, I am curious, and I wonder about the connections their making between this thing that they are running from and the virus that we’re all trying to escape…

Change

It’s Thursday, June 4, 2020.  The children have just finished adding to our “BLACK LIVES MATTER” mural, outside the fence of our playscape. We are in the studio again; however, today I notice a change in their play.  Contrary to their interactions with this ghost for the past couple of months, they are not running away.  They are moving towards the towards the white sheet with sticks in their hands, and they are attacking it; they are attacking the ghost.  OS has two sticks in their hands as they become entangled with it, hitting it, assaulting it, from close proximity.  CF says, “It disappeared!” “What disappeared?”, I asked.  “The ghost disappeared because we hit it!”, CF replied. 

We gather in the studio together and celebrate the destruction of this thing that they once feared.  As we revel in this new occurrence, I can’t help but to become curious once again.  What has changed in their relationship to the ghost in the last couple of weeks?  What transformation has taken place?

I do not pretend to know the answer to these complex questions, but I also can’t help but to draw on the symbolism that is occurring.  This ghost, this white sheet, has for so long been a cloak that has symbolized hate, racism, and even death.  It has been wielded as a weapon of fear and a relic of ignorance.  Even those who have sworn to protect the citizens of our country have embraced this ghost.  In fact, since I began writing this post, the number of black people who have been killed by the police has risen to 1,298 (Tate, Jenkins, and Rich, 2020).  That’s forty-four people in less than one month. 

The Fight

But it is time to stop running from it.   It is time to recognize that this ghost is something that lives all around us, among us, and even within us.  It is time to encounter the thing that we fear.  It is time to attack it, to thwart it, to destroy its ideal and its reality.   It has been wielded for far too long and far too much.  It is time we take a lesson from the children, to take a stand and to fight.

On a morning soon after George Floyd’s death, we were talking about what happened to this man who was beloved by so many.  I shared with the children the story of his death and without any prompting, TH spoke up and said, “I would have pushed the policeman off of him!”  “Wow,” I thought, "I hope we all have the courage to do the same."

There is a ghost in the studio

And the children are attacking.

Hitting it,

Dismantling it,

Taking it by force.

There is a ghost in the studio

And we are not running anymore.

Tate, J., Jenkins, J., Rich, S. (2020). Fatal Force. The Washington Post.  Retrieved
            from  https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/