Elegy

MEGAN: Over the course of touring, I came to see Elegy as a foundational piece of the exhibit. And that’s what I’d like to explore: how your piece fits in the exhibit and the origins of it. What you brought to the project.

HIROKI: Chronologically we were at the start of 2021, because I had just gone on parental leave. I remember, “Oh, yeah, I’ve got the time to do this. I can entertain this.”

And you were talking about how to bring this project to life. You’d thought of a presentation and objects. You wanted an object to represent an individual who had passed during COVID in an eldercare facility. And you wanted an audio recording to match that object and to have people walk around in the space.

But then I was like, wouldn’t it be cool if you also had this like… What was I thinking? Some representation of the sheer numbers of people who had passed away during COVID in eldercare facilities. The terrible sublime of watching these huge numbers of people and knowing that they represent loss. And to look down at the individual objects and to see them.

And so that contrast of the two pieces would play together in giving an overall picture of the experience and the suffering, and how important the issue at hand was.

MEGAN: Yes, that was it. I mean, I was really looking to pull in people who weren’t historians like me to help me envision this. Because it wasn’t going to be a history project, but it was going to be about memory and storytelling.

And so that was just a huge gift. Actually Hiroki, I was quite surprised. And when you started talking technically about it, I had really very little understanding of what you were talking about. But I instantly knew it was brilliant.

Hiroki, can you explain the process about getting the numbers and how you made them into that piece?

HIROKI: Yes. I had to learn a programming software called Max MSP, a pretty high learning curve for a non-computer-savvy person like myself. But essentially, I figured out a way to go into those government websites and find that data. I would get the region and the number, and however many people had died within elder care facilities in that region. You were a lot of help with that.

I created a couple of spreadsheets, and I started from the dates of the initial infections and the initial recorded deaths. And then I listed it out week by week, put in the number of deaths, and just really brute force, kind of put all the numbers into the sheets. Once I had the sum, I was able to put that into the program, then play that through from March 12th or March 17th, 2020, to the end of the first three waves, which was towards 2021, 2022. That period was just all in the code, and just running through the algorithm on a loop of three hours or something like that.

MEGAN: Actually, I wasn’t the one that was so good at finding that data. There was a wonderful librarian at York who just went after it, like she was gonna get it. But given the sometimes ineptitude of Ontario government in the pandemic, it was interesting that those that data was super easy to get. In BC, they did not have that data easily available, and when I put in a request – a special request – the woman just said, “You’re not a scientist. We would never prioritize your request.”

HIROKI: That’s right, that is, it’s all coming back to me now. BC was difficult.

MEGAN: And, as I go through the contributions that people made to our Story Space, I am so struck by this disarray that people’s lives were thrown into by COVID. I believe that the arts and the humanities are our best bet for not forgetting this difficult history that we’ve been living through. And, you know, every one of those deaths that you portrayed, each one of those dots and the accompanying musical note, is a whole story that we will never know.

HIROKI: Yeah.

MEGAN: Imagine – and I’m not suggesting that we do it – but imagine, if you were to do that for all of Canada and extend the time period. It would be a symphony of distress and lost stories.

Quite something to think about. No wonder I feel in need of a little holiday from the project.

So, Hiroki, can you tell me a bit about yourself that explains why you were one of the people that connected with the project – because you saw yourself in the project.

HIROKI: And during that period caregiving was really still close to my life, and it was something that I thought about often. And so, thinking about my experience as a caregiver, looking after Gran and, you know, thinking about the elderly and the failure of our elder care facilities and what work needs to be done.

I imagine you thought of me as well because of the album that I released back in 2020, and I think you had come to one of the last shows that I performed before the COVID lockdown at The Burdock.

The album name is called Kaigo Kioku Kyoku – caregiving memory songs – and it is an exploration of my time as a caregiver for my grandmother, who had Alzheimer’s.

Ultimately, it was a really challenging and transformative time for me where I really sort of faced a lot of my own demons, and a lot of my own fears and anxieties around death and loss. While also trying to be there for my grandmother.  So, it’s a pretty raw album suffice to say, and, you know, I’m really proud of what I was able to accomplish.

MEGAN: You’re right. It’s a raw album, but it cuts right to the heart of things. So, I knew that you understood about place and objects and emotions and stories and memory. You know all those things. And grief.

HIROKI: And so yeah, I I wasn’t surprised at all when you send me an email, like, “I’m thinking of this thing.” I was like, “Oh, yeah, this is this is my wheelhouse.” Really, in terms of what I want to talk about artistically.

MEGAN: Yeah, yeah. I’m just so grateful. really grateful. I feel it’s important memory work.

HIROKI: I think this project goes a long way towards humanizing what may otherwise end up being just a chapter in a history textbook. And I think that’s really important and valuable.

Your act as a historian is so critical to preservation.  And the maintenance of empathy as well because we need to remember these things in order to feel for them.

MEGAN: Yeah, and I’m going to say goodbye and thank you, Hiroki. And we will talk soon.

HIROKI: Yes!