A Note from the Editors: Issue 33

For months, the pandemic forced everyone into a discomfiting confinement–everyone except those offering “essential services.” With home deliveries surging and hygiene woes sky-high, the backbones of daily economies relied almost entirely on the often invisible workers who wipe and clean and cook and package and deliver for us. So often unseen and taken for granted, they were suddenly many people’s only point of contact with the outside world. They were there during the quick exchange of thin rolls of cash between gloved fingers. The passing of a delivery carton at an apartment door. All of this behind the many shields of sanitizers, masks, and careful distance. These essential service workers have continued to work at all hours in various kinds of weather; in Abu Dhabi, where we live, we banded together to keep cool water bottles ready for delivery drivers who trekked across highways in the blaring desert sun so that we could have our Burger King, Thai take-outs, at-home skincare products, and the newest tech to keep us entertained.

While brainstorming themes for our upcoming issues, the concept of “Service” stood out to us immediately. The pandemic and lockdown had clearly heightened our awareness of the stakes of what it means to serve others and to be served. Of course, we wanted to be open to other interpretations that weren’t necessarily so transactional or economic–we considered the word in more interpersonal contexts, thinking about what it could mean if someone says “This relationship or situation doesn’t serve me anymore.” We considered how to serve ourselves, this contested notion of self-care and self-preservation amid adversity. 

The verb “to serve” often comes loaded with a power dynamic, something that paves the way for incisive, probing art and literary discussion. While our latest issue of Postscript inevitably contains incredible pieces about the service industry and service workers–from writing about baristas and liftmen to multimedia playing on the tedious “Terms of Service” contract–there are also other kinds of daring texts and artwork that come from different angles, colored by the lens of our new normal. Poems and prose consider the hypocrisy of politicians' false promises as services left failed or unfulfilled. Photographs, multimedia, and texts traverse various cities, real and imagined, to peek into criminalized activities, art as a service, racial archetypes, machine services, and the fashion statements found in uniforms.

While you soak in these thought-provoking works, we ask you to reframe your own perceptions about service in your life. We urge you to interrogate your biases and prejudices towards how we serve ourselves and others; how we receive; the power held and the power given; and what are the stakes involved in each direction. 

Love always, 
Zoe & Vamika

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Artwork by Myriam Louise Taleb