COVID Vortex Anxiety Opera Kitty Kaleidoscope Disco

"Karen Finley doesn't just address the grief and the gloom of the COVID year. She guides us with wit and poetry through a kaleidoscope of recent traumas: the police murders that necessitated Black Lives Matter, the end of abortion rights, and the rage that still lingers from our last epidemic, AIDS. This is a natural for an artist who's made it her life's work to tell the awfullest truths and to give voice to the marginalized. This is how disco becomes opera."—Cynthia Carr, author of Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar

"Only an artist, writer, and performer with the magnitude of talent, power, compassion, and vision such as Karen Finley could shape the fear, loss, grief, anxiety, and the inequities of the COVID pandemic and our world into song, elegy, verse, an opera, an epic poem. Only she could comfort while leading us in a collective cry for action, freedom, and justice, and offer a prescription for our survival through art."— Pamela Sneed, author of Funeral Diva

"Karen Finley's COVID Vortex Anxiety Opera Kitty Kaleidoscope Disco is a visceral flashback to the landmark turmoil of our recent past. After expressing her fear and grief, Finley gathers the energy to argue for peaceable politics and meaning-making community. Ironically, the artist once declared 'indecent' by the NEA ultimately makes a plea for decency — for love and tolerance, human dignity, and the virtues of civil society." — Sarah Thornton, sociologist and author of Tits Up: The Top Half of Women's Liberation

"Karen Finley is like a profane Mother Goose for our contemporary world, weaving together verses and drawings to guide us in making sense of the cruelty of so many pandemics — not only viral, but political too. Like the best nursery rhymes and cautionary tales, she recounts scenes of life during Covid that are both extraordinary and mundane, and reassures us that, while many things rest on fate, how we respond is ultimately in our own hands. Some pieces read like seething battle cries as we face ongoing storm, while others are soothing lullabies offering a momentary respite of calm. Either way, in her oracular wisdom, Finley reminds us that the only way to survive is through community, creativity, and care." — Lil Miss Hot Mess, author of If You're a Drag Queen and You Know It

"Only a magician like Karen Finley could turn a nursery rhyme into an elegy, fast and furious and funny, shimmering glitter grief metastasizing loneliness into that collective scream dream. Here it is—mourning and mayhem, anxiety brain-drain shame game dancing with wisdom and whimsy, sashaying out of isolation and into a frenzied call for camaraderie. Karen Finley knows that masking the pain only makes it worse—here she lets it loose so we can truly live."—Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, author of Touching the Art

Reviews of Karen Finley’s performance piece “Covid Vortex Anxiety Opera Kitty Kaleidoscope Disco”:

“The structure here is a series of poems, their inspiration bards such as Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg. . . . Obviously, her work is never done, and the culture will keep throwing situations her way, to be met by her unrestrained talent. Her intention here is to heal herself and us, to help us see ourselves, feel our fellowship, and be able to say, ‘Look, we’ve come through!’ In this, she succeeds.”—Elisabeth Zimmer, The Village Voice