Rest is such a dirty word these days that we come up with different names that feel active even when they are trying to speak towards the opposite. There’s self-care, which of course can include exercise but doesn’t have to. There is mediative practice, which adheres an action-sounding word onto the opposite. I mean, even at our desks we should apparently be moving — see ‘walking’ desks, mini treadmills, and micro ellipticals.
There are pills you can take to think better, shakes you can drink to grow stronger, breath mints that make you sleep better, and meal plans that make you want to get up and do it all over again.
Hilariously, this rat race has one kill switch: rest. Sometimes that means sleep, but it can also mean time with a book or laying under a tree or simply closing your eyes and humming without a timer that will go off in 5 minutes to tell you it’s time to address another thing on your list.
Speaking with Lilah in preparation for her month-long show Rest Stop at Quittner, which will be up until June 28th, we shared a deep connection to the simultaneous urge to ‘do’ and the bodily need to, well, not. There is such a multitude of evidence that the strongest medicine our bodies can get is rest, but we as a society seem keen not to offer it. Why wouldn’t a green juice do the trick where 30 minutes of deep breathing may feel wasted?
As we bounced ideas around, Lilah and I kept returning to the somewhat made-up term ‘de-optimize.’
I feel this deeply. I want a phone that is dumb, a book I can hold in my hands, and no bathroom scale at all. Buying appliances for our house, we had one hard rule that could not be broken: there may not be screens or a digital display of any kind. Bonus point if it was made prior to 1980. Our stove should, we decided, be older than we are.
This isn’t because of an internalized hatred of time, as we both wear watches. However, I don’t want a blinking 6:45 reminding me that I didn’t sleep as late as I could have done if only I didn’t need to pee. I didn’t want better, faster, smarter. I wanted purposefully slow, ploddingly inefficient, and decidedly dumb.
Lilah embodies a colorful, playful take on what it looks like to de-optimize, from pencils that are only for “Good Ideas” to a soft painted lily pad for a baby or, maybe, yourself. Guests are invited to “Steal These Good Vibes” by grabbing a poster off of the wall, and to hang an evil eye pom-pom from their rearview mirror.
Rest Stop closes on the evening of June 28th, and will be celebrated with early evening boozy snow cones, on-the-spot poetry, and plenty of putting our feet up. More details to come.
