#42: Fiona Alison Duncan
"I try to give myself grace no matter how I feel. This took years of practice."
Today’s guest is Fiona Alison Duncan, a Canadian-American author, organizer, and founder of the social literary practice Hard to Read.
Fiona approaches her commitments with the sort of rigor that is increasingly hard to come by, pairing Virgo-level precision with an often unexpected cast of characters (her seventh H2Reading, SUBTLE BODIES, featured the likes of Guru Jagat and Nina Cristante, who she also interviewed way back when). Fiona was also largely responsible for the late Pippa Garner’s art world renaissance, co-curating the first touring retrospective of her work and editing a corresponding monograph.
There’s so much more to say here, but I’ll leave you with this: following a year-long hiatus, Hard to Read will be hosting its first event of the year in early March, at the ever-liminal Brookfield Place (look for the balloon). And rumor has it there will be another, more health-oriented event later this spring… 🤫
Health Gossip with Fiona Alison Duncan
Virgo/Leo/Scorpio
New York, NY
What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?
Since you sent me this questionnaire back in November 2024, I’ve been kind of haunted by its questions. I kept trying to answer them but my answers kept falling apart as issues surrounding health, sickness, and death became so dominant in my life. I wondered if Health Gossip hadn’t cursed me! To gossip about myself, during this time…
My muse Pippa Garner died after a prolonged illness.
I experienced the worst PMDD and period of my life (not a hyperbole), prompting me to return to acupuncture.
I found a lump deep in my right breast then fainted during the mammogram (my first fainting). It seems like the lump is benign, I'm still waiting for my PCP to call me with a full report.
I grappled with what it means that Kundalini, my go-to daily exercise and meditation practice, has such a lurid history. I knew this already but I didn’t know how bad it was until I watched this. (I still do Guru Jagat’s videos.)
My boyfriend Matt Hilvers had a tooth pulled, a costly, invasive procedure and not his first dental rodeo (Matt was a teenager junky, coming on sixteen years sober; heroine sucks the calcium from your teeth). Matt’s father Tony died in February of last year, the very same day as Cecilia Gentili. Matt went on to present, this past fall, an amazing performance called the Foster Rose Method that drew from his experiences with his father’s dementia, mutual aid, recovery, and the health care system. Matt’s taught me so much about spiritual health — you should interview him.
After waffling and troubleshooting, I decided not to give my senior cat Noo subcutaneous hydration treatments for her recently diagnosed chronic kidney disease; she hated the needles, it didn't seem worth it. The vet says Noo may only have 6-12 months to live, I'm in denial.
Wait there's more! I got a skin cancer screening (all clear), went to the ENT doctor (I have dull ear drums), and finished the first full draft of a long novel about a healthcare scam, a story that rhymes with the Luigi Mangione case. Weird..
What does health mean to me? I'm grateful for every ounce of it that my loved ones and I get to experience. I don't know how else to answer.
How would you describe your current lifestyle?
My current lifestyle is routine, disciplined, extremely free, and extremely constrained.
Most days, I wake up to the light coming through the American money green curtains in my bedroom. I turn to say hello to my cat Noo who’s at rest on the chair beside me. If Matt’s awake, I say hi to him too. Maybe we snuggle. More often though, what I reach for is my phone. While I absentmindedly pet my cat (having invited her onto the bed by scratching the sheets beside my head), I delete all of the spam emails I’ve gotten overnight, scan or ignore the important emails, check my DMs and texts, and read my daily horoscope on the Chani app — then I get up. I’m naked, I look at myself in a full-length mirror and like what I see. (None of this I consider to be healthy, by the way.) After pulling on some ratty home clothes, I walk across my apartment to piss then go to the kitchen where I drink a cup of New York tap water. While drinking more water, I make an oat milk latte. I have the same De'Longhi espresso machine as the Kunstverein Munich where my friends work, the very same model — I think this every morning. After pouring myself another cup of water, I take it and my seed oil latte to my green leather desk where I write for as long as I can focus.
At the end of pretty much every day, I read until I pass out. Depending on the book, this might take an hour or three minutes.
Was there a specific moment when your relationship to your health changed?
In my mid-to-late 20s, I experienced a pretty gnarly burnout and have been refining my health practices ever since. Things keep changing. You have to adapt and adapt again. Witnessing Pippa and Tony through the end of their lives has changed me in ways I don't know how to articulate yet.