I'm having a particularly difficult time writing this, because of the way in which this post has needed to inhabit a space that is simultaneously celebratory and morose. The post is motivated primarily by two concurrent events. First, today marks the one year anniversary of my plunge into the blogosphere. The second, infinitely weightier event, is the untimely passing of an old friend's father. I had concluded that the easiest, and perhaps most reverent, course of action would be to write two separate posts and to leave it at that. In the midst of my emotional and intellectual head-scratching, however, we lost Ms. Whitney Houston, which has made it feel even more important that my celebration and mourning remain intertwined. I've tried to let this potentially insensitive tension guide my thinking but, as with anything worth writing, it remains difficult.
In spite of my Danger-prone blogging pseudonym, I am very fortunate to have only experienced death in the most peripheral way. I've witnessed the death of acquaintances, friends-of-friends, and distant relatives, but never a passing in which I had real emotional stakes. Even now, my attachment to both of these losses is distant. I obviously didn't know Whitney as anything more than a diva figure (a position we shouldn't undervalue), and in the past ten years, I have lost touch with both my friend and his father (though I was once close to both of them). Nonetheless, I do feel both of these deaths, and they have both occasioned serious thought on my part. I think this paragraph treads some questionable ground, so I should be clear: my thinking centers around these two passings because of their temporal proximity, not as a way of analogizing them. Tragedies cannot be analogized; grief can't really be compared in any productive way. All I can concretely say is that both have affected me, and that my (admittedly distant) grief in both cases shares a similar affective core.
What is it about death, exactly? It wounds us, it scares us, it fascinates us in some strange way. No small part of my own attachment to death is the fact that every death I encounter reminds me of my own potential to end. In that way, my reaction to death feels inappropriately selfish, a discomfort which I find quite interesting.
Having just come from a funeral service, I am struck particularly by the awkwardness of grief, both our own and other people's. Though perhaps outside of culturally available scripts for grief, this awkwardness feels really important. Unbalancing as it is, extreme awkwardness makes us feel our proximity to other people in the most visceral sense. It underscores the fact that death organizes and mobilizes us in ways that life, commonplace as it is, cannot. Death creates strange intimacies and brings us into contact with figures from our past, friends-of-friends, and total strangers. Funerals become both a staging of grief and an environment in which these oblique and decidedly un-permanent relationships play out.
I don't have any concrete conclusions to draw/arguments to make, but I am wondering about the publics of grief and the way in which the performance of death becomes about diagraming a particular life. At the funeral, the priest proposed (correctly) that everyone present had their own interlocking and overlapping stories to tell about Mr. Rob. To me, this indicates a desire to map out a life and to account for our own (inevitably complex) intersections with another person.
At its core, though, our mourning always brushes up against celebration. Dear old Emily Dickinson wrote, "The absence is as the presence" (I cannot find a citation for this, forgive me if I've misquoted). Said another way, we do not mourn that which we did not celebrate, and mourning is celebration of another kind. And so, if feels strangely important that my halfhearted musing about death should coincide with New Queer's first blogoversary. Despite my uneven posting habits, this sustained writing project indicates a definite presence, in contrast to the sharply felt absence of death. My blogging efforts have helped bring about, or at least chronicle, a noticeable improvement in my ability to write and think, a progress that stands in opposition to death's haltedness. There's an appropriate symmetry to celebrating my blogoversary on the heels of a funeral, continuing to build and progress in proximity to death, and to celebrate every step, movement, and blog post along the way. When I die, let them pour streamers (or possibly Pokemon cards) into my open coffin.
So, I am left thinking about birthdays and death-days, about progress and passing, about the euphemisms we invent, the stories we tell, and the emotional baggage that we try to avoid. (As a short side-note, the copy of Nella Larsen's novel sitting on my nightstand has me thinking about the numerous conceptual puns we might explore regarding "passing." Why do we use an action verb as a euphemism for death, the most literally immobilizing human experience?) Mr. Rob, Whitney, you are both missed in complex and surprisingly simple ways. Happy Birthday, New Queer. Let's toast to many more years of sporadic posting and bullshit before Will Danger finally lays his pen, his party hat, and his ten-inch stilettos to rest.
A short note for my own funeral: Drag optional, presents not expected but encouraged. In lieu of flowers, you may drop jewels/pages from Mrs. Dalloway/pogs into my casket. Whitney was slated to perform, but I guess that's probably not going to happen. Bjork, maybe? Alanis?
At any rate, here's to more years, while we have them. Let's let the late Queen of the Night sing us out:
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Monday, January 23, 2012
The Impossibility of Dating: A Terrible Quarter-Lifer's Guide to Being Terrible
Good Catholic that I am, I want to reenter the confessional for a moment. I've been itching to do some more autobiographical writing lately (even if my teenaged attempts at the genre suggest that I'm not very good at it). "Twenty-something confessional" or, dare I say it, "Tales from the Bad Years," was never quite the project I imagined for this blog. However, bearing in mind that blogs need to be as malleable as the assholes that pen them and that we almost never know where we're going until we get there, I am now deviating from the blog-path I originally imagined. If you're looking for a smarter, more discursive post, go here. Or even here.
One of the most frustrating things (so far) about my unmoored twenties, other than the permanent gnawing sensation that's lodged itself in my stomach, is that I find myself totally incapable of really comprehending anything. More than any other time in my life, I find myself needing to learn and re-learn the same lessons; nothing seems to stick. I know, for example, that going to the gym will make me feel great and is occasionally the only part of my day that gives me any sense of forward momentum, but convincing myself to go is still quite the chore. Every time I go, I learn this lesson anew, only to forget it the following evening. And calisthenics are not the only area of my life in which this lack of retention has surfaced. I really hope this inability to actually know anything doesn't become a permanent fixture in my life.
Perhaps the strangest occurrence of the past six months or so is that I've had my first sustained brush with dating. I don't know what it is, but the strange combination of desperation/anxiety/immaturity must be some kind of pheromone for gay men. On this seemingly endless string of first dates, I've picked up a few ideas about dating (only to forget them 48 hours later). So, without further ado, I offer you the [Never a Grown-Up] Quarter-Lifer Who's Never Really Done Much Dating but Now Finds Himself Thrown into the Romantic Deep-End's Guide to Dating, for the Neurotic Self-Saboteur in All of Us :
[A legal disclaimer: There is no one on the planet less qualified to talk about dating in any sort of successful way. These simple tenants were generated by a string of humorously unsuccessful first dates (with a few successful ones thrown in the mix; even a stopped clock is right twice a day). I can guarantee, however, that these thoughts will enrich your post-date Last Five Years sing-along, which is the cornerstone to any successful self-medication attempt.]
1. There's always more: Seriously, look around you. All the most obnoxious people you know are dating someone, sometimes multiple someones. Even if the date is going really well, there will be more awkward first dates in your future, whether a week/month/year/decade from now. When the person sitting across the table from you decides to stop answering your calls, there will always be another painfully attractive asshole waiting in the wings to repeat the experience. You will go on other dates. And they will suck just as hard as this one does. I'm wanting to say something about fish in the sea, but in a much shittier formulation. Dating feels less like fishing and more like guest-starring in Two Girls, One Cup the sequel.
2. Sometimes it really isn't your fault: That really cute guy sitting across the table has stopped answering your text messages. And you're sure, neurotic as you are, that it's because you accidentally mentioned the time when you celebrated Tyra Bank's birthday (December 4th, incidentally) by wearing a yellow sundress and having a photo shoot/walk-off. Or else you showed up to dinner wearing the same shirt you've been wearing for four consecutive days. Without trying to sound like a deluded seventeen year old prom queen, sometimes it isn't something you said. Really. Bad timing, lack of chemistry, or a weird head shape can mean that you've done everything right and still aren't getting a callback.
3. Sometimes it really is your fault: You accidentally made a joke about wearing his skin as a suit (we've all made that mistake once or twice), you got drunk and vomited on him, or you made some comment about transnational sexualities that he 115% misunderstood. In any case, this date went sour as a direct result of something you did. Well, the joke's on him, because you are going to fuck it up over and over and over again for the rest of your life. Two years into a relationship, you are going to continue to say exactly the wrong thing. I might even argue that interpersonal relationships are about failure above anything else. If that's the dealbreaker, fuck 'em. As someone whose foot likes to live in his mouth, I repeat: fuck 'em. There's only so much apologizing (or accommodating) you can do for your inept mode of communication.
4. Don't be scared of other people: Admittedly, this is the lesson on this desperation checklist with which I am most uncomfortable. That 6'2, blond, crazy attractive former-athlete you suddenly find yourself sitting across the table from (God only knows how)? He's a person, and probably a less interesting person than you are. Glitter/sunshine doesn't fall out of any of his orifices and 7-9 times out of 10 (depending on how attractive/what a basket-case you are), he's every bit as jittery as you are and just as likely to say something stupid. No one escapes the horror of dating. No one has an upper hand. This dinner is about to suck for both of you.
5. Hide the crazy: In the car, on the way to this date, you listened to the Rocky theme four times, followed immediately by The Greatest Love of All, And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going, Shake It Out, All I Really Want, and any other determination anthem that occurred to you. Plus, you showed up 45 minutes early so you could accomplish this sadness sing-along and still be on time. Whatever you do, do not mention this. As an Ally Sheedy-sized basket case, I can tell you that no good will come of it. You might think it's quirky and endearing, especially if you've just finished a lengthy conversation about Liz Lemon, and maybe one day it will be. For now though, nothing cuts a date short like tipping the hand of your neuroses. Hold it in, even if that means you cry all the way home because you're pretty sure there's no cat heaven.
6. Bring up Tina Fey: Seriously. My 30 Rock fanaticism has smoothed over more first dates than I could have imagined. I'd always suspected that quoting Liz Lemon at length would be terrifying on a date, but it has almost always worked out nicely. Thank you, Tina, for facilitating my access to a slowly revolving door of mediocrity (with an actual good date every now and again).
7. Don't over-think: There's so much bullshit circulating about the right and wrong ways to approach dating (the previous paragraphs included). Wait three days to call, make sure they don't think you like them too much, retain some air of mystery, be as oblique as possible, etc, etc. My general feeling is, messy and complicated as people are, dating them can be surprisingly simple. If they like you, you've got a lot of leeway in terms of approaching them. (When's the last time you were put off because someone you really liked was texting you too frequently?) If they don't like you, it really doesn't matter how long you wait to respond to their message, does it? Despite all the terrifying minutia which dating induces, isn't it ultimately governed by a relatively simple bottom line? They either like you or they don't. You either like them or you don't. I think we can probably all benefit from being told not to worry so goddamn much, right?
Obviously, the state of my quarter-life existence means that I will need to be reminded of each of these (variously useless) bullet points 24 hours from now, but hopefully my writing them (and your reading them) has provided us occasion to examine our various approaches to the black art of dating. Or maybe I've just made you extremely glad that you are no longer a single twenty-something. In either case, you're welcome.
As a final observation, this is the least queer and most lame this writing experiment has ever been. Whoops!
Edit: An infinitely more public version of this post can be found here.
One of the most frustrating things (so far) about my unmoored twenties, other than the permanent gnawing sensation that's lodged itself in my stomach, is that I find myself totally incapable of really comprehending anything. More than any other time in my life, I find myself needing to learn and re-learn the same lessons; nothing seems to stick. I know, for example, that going to the gym will make me feel great and is occasionally the only part of my day that gives me any sense of forward momentum, but convincing myself to go is still quite the chore. Every time I go, I learn this lesson anew, only to forget it the following evening. And calisthenics are not the only area of my life in which this lack of retention has surfaced. I really hope this inability to actually know anything doesn't become a permanent fixture in my life.
Perhaps the strangest occurrence of the past six months or so is that I've had my first sustained brush with dating. I don't know what it is, but the strange combination of desperation/anxiety/immaturity must be some kind of pheromone for gay men. On this seemingly endless string of first dates, I've picked up a few ideas about dating (only to forget them 48 hours later). So, without further ado, I offer you the [Never a Grown-Up] Quarter-Lifer Who's Never Really Done Much Dating but Now Finds Himself Thrown into the Romantic Deep-End's Guide to Dating, for the Neurotic Self-Saboteur in All of Us :
[A legal disclaimer: There is no one on the planet less qualified to talk about dating in any sort of successful way. These simple tenants were generated by a string of humorously unsuccessful first dates (with a few successful ones thrown in the mix; even a stopped clock is right twice a day). I can guarantee, however, that these thoughts will enrich your post-date Last Five Years sing-along, which is the cornerstone to any successful self-medication attempt.]
1. There's always more: Seriously, look around you. All the most obnoxious people you know are dating someone, sometimes multiple someones. Even if the date is going really well, there will be more awkward first dates in your future, whether a week/month/year/decade from now. When the person sitting across the table from you decides to stop answering your calls, there will always be another painfully attractive asshole waiting in the wings to repeat the experience. You will go on other dates. And they will suck just as hard as this one does. I'm wanting to say something about fish in the sea, but in a much shittier formulation. Dating feels less like fishing and more like guest-starring in Two Girls, One Cup the sequel.
2. Sometimes it really isn't your fault: That really cute guy sitting across the table has stopped answering your text messages. And you're sure, neurotic as you are, that it's because you accidentally mentioned the time when you celebrated Tyra Bank's birthday (December 4th, incidentally) by wearing a yellow sundress and having a photo shoot/walk-off. Or else you showed up to dinner wearing the same shirt you've been wearing for four consecutive days. Without trying to sound like a deluded seventeen year old prom queen, sometimes it isn't something you said. Really. Bad timing, lack of chemistry, or a weird head shape can mean that you've done everything right and still aren't getting a callback.
3. Sometimes it really is your fault: You accidentally made a joke about wearing his skin as a suit (we've all made that mistake once or twice), you got drunk and vomited on him, or you made some comment about transnational sexualities that he 115% misunderstood. In any case, this date went sour as a direct result of something you did. Well, the joke's on him, because you are going to fuck it up over and over and over again for the rest of your life. Two years into a relationship, you are going to continue to say exactly the wrong thing. I might even argue that interpersonal relationships are about failure above anything else. If that's the dealbreaker, fuck 'em. As someone whose foot likes to live in his mouth, I repeat: fuck 'em. There's only so much apologizing (or accommodating) you can do for your inept mode of communication.
4. Don't be scared of other people: Admittedly, this is the lesson on this desperation checklist with which I am most uncomfortable. That 6'2, blond, crazy attractive former-athlete you suddenly find yourself sitting across the table from (God only knows how)? He's a person, and probably a less interesting person than you are. Glitter/sunshine doesn't fall out of any of his orifices and 7-9 times out of 10 (depending on how attractive/what a basket-case you are), he's every bit as jittery as you are and just as likely to say something stupid. No one escapes the horror of dating. No one has an upper hand. This dinner is about to suck for both of you.
5. Hide the crazy: In the car, on the way to this date, you listened to the Rocky theme four times, followed immediately by The Greatest Love of All, And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going, Shake It Out, All I Really Want, and any other determination anthem that occurred to you. Plus, you showed up 45 minutes early so you could accomplish this sadness sing-along and still be on time. Whatever you do, do not mention this. As an Ally Sheedy-sized basket case, I can tell you that no good will come of it. You might think it's quirky and endearing, especially if you've just finished a lengthy conversation about Liz Lemon, and maybe one day it will be. For now though, nothing cuts a date short like tipping the hand of your neuroses. Hold it in, even if that means you cry all the way home because you're pretty sure there's no cat heaven.
6. Bring up Tina Fey: Seriously. My 30 Rock fanaticism has smoothed over more first dates than I could have imagined. I'd always suspected that quoting Liz Lemon at length would be terrifying on a date, but it has almost always worked out nicely. Thank you, Tina, for facilitating my access to a slowly revolving door of mediocrity (with an actual good date every now and again).
7. Don't over-think: There's so much bullshit circulating about the right and wrong ways to approach dating (the previous paragraphs included). Wait three days to call, make sure they don't think you like them too much, retain some air of mystery, be as oblique as possible, etc, etc. My general feeling is, messy and complicated as people are, dating them can be surprisingly simple. If they like you, you've got a lot of leeway in terms of approaching them. (When's the last time you were put off because someone you really liked was texting you too frequently?) If they don't like you, it really doesn't matter how long you wait to respond to their message, does it? Despite all the terrifying minutia which dating induces, isn't it ultimately governed by a relatively simple bottom line? They either like you or they don't. You either like them or you don't. I think we can probably all benefit from being told not to worry so goddamn much, right?
Obviously, the state of my quarter-life existence means that I will need to be reminded of each of these (variously useless) bullet points 24 hours from now, but hopefully my writing them (and your reading them) has provided us occasion to examine our various approaches to the black art of dating. Or maybe I've just made you extremely glad that you are no longer a single twenty-something. In either case, you're welcome.
As a final observation, this is the least queer and most lame this writing experiment has ever been. Whoops!
Edit: An infinitely more public version of this post can be found here.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
2011: A Retrospective Drinking Game
1. I dun graduated college: Many, many years in the making, Will Danger finally finds himself outside the ivory tower's comforting walls, without salary, purpose, or a clear way to keep from bleeding out in his bathtub. Sometimes lost is best, but the real world is still a work in progress here on the Block.
2. On a related note, 2011 was also the year in which I completed my PhD apps. It was a long, obnoxious process, but I learned a lot about beginning to negotiate academic bureaucracy and also finally started to get a handle on the editing process (something I never quite managed to pick up during my undergrad). I'll drink to that.
3. I developed a taste for and subsequent addiction to coffee. Growing up, I was always taught that coffee made you jittery, but it turns out that it just makes your brain work. Who knew?
4. In 2011, I had my first threesome (this is a great way to find out if my mother is reading. My money's on no), and it was great. I don't plan on making a habit out of it because of the inevitable sexual competition it engenders, but seriously, give it a shot, folks. It was pretttty good.
5. I've been sort of silent about it 'round these parts, but I also rectified my eating/exercise habits this past year. Though it's turned me into a bit of a health nut and been a little pricey, I gained 10 pounds of muscle in 2011. The endeavor's been great for my self-esteem, anxiety, and general health. Plus, if #4 is any indication, I've gotten some pretty good sex out of the deal. Blogging about this feels vaguely narcissistic, but I set the goal about a year ago, just to see what would happen. Think of it as an exercise in self-crafting. I don't think I'll ever be as comfortable topless as my gender demands, but I feel pretty good about being a queer Dungeons and Dragons/book nerd who woke up one morning, decided he wanted to be a little less scrawny, and is now just shy of benching 225. Drink two for that one.
6. At the opposite end of the spectrum, I also gave my first conference paper this year. It seems to have been pretty well received and was more fun/less gut-wrenching than I had expected. Speaking of which, check out what's going on on this year at Queer the Turtle University (phrase thieved from Roxie). Some really neat stuff. It's good to know they haven't been completely lost without me.
7. The word "dude" and the phrase "fair enough" have both crept into my everyday speech. I'm not sure how to feel about it, which strikes me as fair enough.
8. Let's pour some out for the various celebrities we've lost this year. Here's to you Amy, Patrice, Kim Jong, Liz, et al.
9. Finally, 2011 was the year in which this cozy slice of the internet was born! As we ring in the new year, let's all toss one back for my first sustained (if under-trafficked) blogging effort! Somehow this post and this post managed to garner some pretty significant traffic (I suspect people were just image hunting). What does 2012 hold for New Queer? Perhaps an attempt to live-blog the apocalypse? Who knows?
For the tl;dr among us, have a few drinks to catch up with the rest of us and toast the end of a pretty crappy year. Sorry/You're welcome for encouraging heavy drinking on a Thursday morning and drunken commenting is always encouraged. Happy New Year, everybody.
This is the most autobiographical, perhaps the most livejournal-y this blog has ever been. Let's hope this doesn't become a trend, eh?
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Interlude
"With intermittent shocks, sudden as the springs of a tiger, life emerges heaving its dark crest from the sea. It is to this we are attached; it is to this we are bound, as bodies to wild horses." -Virginia Woolf, The Waves
Downright haunting in its execution, sort of thrilling in its suggestion, I've been thinking about Woolf's sentence alongside Kerrigan and Lowdermilk's "How to Return Home" (or, really, the entirety of their Tales from the Bad Years, links here and here). They strike some really useful intellectual dissonances in the way they frame my emergent twenties (and probably thirties and forties). Also, lately I find myself totally unmotivated to do any serious literary study without a good soundtrack. Grad schools, consider yourselves warned.
Bootleg performed by Krysta Rodriguez, who is vastly underrated, even if she is much older than I thought. Give K&L a few listens, give The Waves another read, and mull it over with me.
Monday, December 26, 2011
Holiday Angst: The Day After
While we here on the Block try to reassemble ourselves after a holiday full of wine and questionable family encounters, we want to take this opportunity to wish you a happy Boxing Day. Whether you spent your holidays hiding from your family in a closet (literal or metaphorical), explaining to British relatives what Sam's Club was, having awkward wrestling matches with your father (again, literal or metaphorical), or discovering your dad's amateur pornography, we salute you for surviving. I'll leave you with a tune from mid- 90's Alanis Morissette, New Queer's resident angry grrrl/firebrand:
One of my favorite songs from one of my top five favorite albums. And we all know I don't do favorites very well. Here's to vetting some holiday angst/blues with a good old-fashioned sing along. Be good(ish), folks.
One of my favorite songs from one of my top five favorite albums. And we all know I don't do favorites very well. Here's to vetting some holiday angst/blues with a good old-fashioned sing along. Be good(ish), folks.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Optimism/Pesimism or, You're so Neurotic, You Probably Think this Post is the Worst
I've spent some time lately thinking about my own critical habits, and the extent to which my reading habits inform the rest of my thought patterns. Put bluntly, I find myself thinking through my everyday interactions as I would a literary or cultural text. I certainly don't mean to apologize for this, if for no other reason than that I'm pretty committed to this act. The messiness of the day-to-day has a lot to tell us about a lot of stuff. I run into problems, however, when the pessimism (or, following Eve Sedgwick, the suspicion) around which my critical practice is situated starts to seep into my everyday life. I'm finding the quest to combat my fundamental pessimism provides me a moment to also reevaluate my reading habits. As part of my brief experiment in optimism, I wonder what it would mean to also infuse my textual reading habits with optimism. I want to spend a little time thinking about what optimistic reading would look like, and to examine this optimistic/pessimistic distinction alongside Eve Sedgwick's paranoid reading/reparative reading. My goal is not so much to expand her critical work, but rather to figure out what it would mean to rescue both my reading habits and interpersonal relationships from the monotony/general pessimism of suspicion.
I'm not embarrassed to admit that I find Sedgwick's reparative reading quite difficult, both in concept and in practice. What I admire most about the article though (and really, all of Touching, Feeling, the book-length project in which the essay appears), is how deliberately unmoored it is. In her introduction, Sedgwick is careful to point out that the essays of Touching, Feeling have resisted the constriction of a book-length argument, and, giving us a glimpse of the book's optimistic core, she insists that this is an enabling possibility, rather than a limitation. Eve's optimism helps us expand the practice of reading: "I think it will leave us in a vastly better position to do justice to a wealth of characteristic, culturally central practices, many of which can well be called reparative, that emerge from queer experience but become invisible or illegible under a paranoid optic" (147). Among other things, she calls into being a critical practice that bridges gaps, seizes possibility, and might resign itself to a positive affective vocabulary. Paranoia, by contrast, lives in contradiction, is a theory of negative affects, and "places faith in exposure." In my simplest misrecognition, reparative reading does something and feels good about it.
What I am wondering, alongside Sedgwick's critical optimism, is what it means for our reading practices (and our thought processes more broadly) to resist such pessimism. At what point in our lives (or really, my life) did gaps, uncertainties, eccentricities resolve into negativities rather than possibilities? Why do I find myself choosing suspicion (and the terror that comes along with suspicion) over the giddiness of possibility? Why do I find myself reading my year off/recent directionlessness as crippling, rather than wildly enabling? Queer theory tells me to enjoy incoherence, strategic illegibility, and getting lost, doesn't it?
In terms of both my reading practices and thought patterns, what if I stopped living in problematics? What if I stopped using disgusting grad student words like complicate, reexamine, and problematize, playing devil's advocate at every turn? Among other things, it'll make me a much more tolerable person (not forgetting, of course, that suspicion can be situationally useful). And who knows, maybe optimistically recalibrating my reading/thinking practices, in addition to being wildly generative, might actually be a little bit thrilling. Remember when reading and thinking were fun?
Sunday, December 18, 2011
The World Only Spins Forward
I'm having a hard time sleeping. My brain is sort of spinning off its axis right now (read: melting out my ears), and I thought I'd try to blog my way out of it. After all, what use is a blog if I can't take my vacuous thoughts and foist them on you, my unsuspecting readers. I guess that presupposes anyone is reading this. They might not be.
I've been rereading Angels in America the past few nights. Cynic that I am, I understand that you might be tempted to roll your eyes. After all, every teenage gay boy with an HBO subscription and a chip on his shoulder likes to go on and on about how wonderful it is. And admittedly, in my most cynical moments, I find myself on the verge of dismissing the kind of identity politics which the play enacts. Maybe I'm just haunted by the ghost of 17 year old Will, who read Angels in America as the GREAT GAY MASTERPIECE. Gag me with a spoon.
And yet.
I really do think Angels in America (particularly the second part, Perestroika) contains some of the best (and most significant) writing by an American playwright. I've blogged about one of my favorite scenes before, but tonight, I'm tangled up in Harper's final monologue. Maybe it'll ease my racing brain to reread it in public:
"I dreamed we were there. The plane leapt the tropopause, the safe air, and attained the outer rim, the ozone, which was ragged and torn, patches of it threadbare like old cheesecloth, and that was frightening.
Souls were rising, from the earth far below, souls of the dead, of people who had perished, from famine, from war, from the plague, and they floated up, like skydivers in reverse, limbs all akimbo, wheeling and spinning. And the sounds of these departed joined hands, clasped ankles and formed a web, a great net of souls, and the souls were three-atom oxygen molecules, of the stuff of ozone, and the outer rim absorbed them, and was repaired.
Nothing's lost forever. In this world, there is a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we've left behind and dreaming ahead.
At least I think that's so" (275).
(Forgive me, techno-nub that I am, I cannot format for shit. Anyone have any advice?)
Honestly, I don't have an argument for the play. I don't totally know what Kushner means when he claims a painful progress, or later, when Prior resolutely tells us that the world only spins forward. I'm a little worried about what overthinking the play might do to my overall appreciation of the piece. Plus, honestly, the writing does enough intellectual and emotional heavy lifting for all of us. What I admire most about the Angels in America is its willingness to struggle with religion. Kushner really gets America's terrifying religious history stuck in his teeth and manages to locate hope in pre-millennial New York City. His results are fascinating and alternately refreshing/terrifying. (Am I allowed to use "refreshing" to describe something that premiered 20 years ago?)
I'll conclude this late-night public reading first by demanding that you put the computer down and go read (or reread) the play. Second, I'll leave you with Perestroika's final monologue. In the epilogue, Prior and company are sitting on the rim of Bethesda Fountain in Central park. Prior closes:
"The fountain's not flowing now, they turn it off in the winter, ice in the pipes. But in the summer, it's a sight to see. I want to be around to see it. I plan to be. I hope to be.
This disease will be the end of many of us, but not nearly all, and the dead will be commemorated and will struggle on with the living, and we are not going away. We won't die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come.
Bye now.
You are fabulous creatures, each and every one.
And I bless you: More life.
The Great Work Begins" (280).
Incidentally, I saw a amazing performance of Perestroika in Silver Spring two years ago. Ah, that more theaters would stage this (admittedly really, really difficult) play.
I've been rereading Angels in America the past few nights. Cynic that I am, I understand that you might be tempted to roll your eyes. After all, every teenage gay boy with an HBO subscription and a chip on his shoulder likes to go on and on about how wonderful it is. And admittedly, in my most cynical moments, I find myself on the verge of dismissing the kind of identity politics which the play enacts. Maybe I'm just haunted by the ghost of 17 year old Will, who read Angels in America as the GREAT GAY MASTERPIECE. Gag me with a spoon.
And yet.
I really do think Angels in America (particularly the second part, Perestroika) contains some of the best (and most significant) writing by an American playwright. I've blogged about one of my favorite scenes before, but tonight, I'm tangled up in Harper's final monologue. Maybe it'll ease my racing brain to reread it in public:
"I dreamed we were there. The plane leapt the tropopause, the safe air, and attained the outer rim, the ozone, which was ragged and torn, patches of it threadbare like old cheesecloth, and that was frightening.
Souls were rising, from the earth far below, souls of the dead, of people who had perished, from famine, from war, from the plague, and they floated up, like skydivers in reverse, limbs all akimbo, wheeling and spinning. And the sounds of these departed joined hands, clasped ankles and formed a web, a great net of souls, and the souls were three-atom oxygen molecules, of the stuff of ozone, and the outer rim absorbed them, and was repaired.
Nothing's lost forever. In this world, there is a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we've left behind and dreaming ahead.
At least I think that's so" (275).
(Forgive me, techno-nub that I am, I cannot format for shit. Anyone have any advice?)
Honestly, I don't have an argument for the play. I don't totally know what Kushner means when he claims a painful progress, or later, when Prior resolutely tells us that the world only spins forward. I'm a little worried about what overthinking the play might do to my overall appreciation of the piece. Plus, honestly, the writing does enough intellectual and emotional heavy lifting for all of us. What I admire most about the Angels in America is its willingness to struggle with religion. Kushner really gets America's terrifying religious history stuck in his teeth and manages to locate hope in pre-millennial New York City. His results are fascinating and alternately refreshing/terrifying. (Am I allowed to use "refreshing" to describe something that premiered 20 years ago?)
I'll conclude this late-night public reading first by demanding that you put the computer down and go read (or reread) the play. Second, I'll leave you with Perestroika's final monologue. In the epilogue, Prior and company are sitting on the rim of Bethesda Fountain in Central park. Prior closes:
"The fountain's not flowing now, they turn it off in the winter, ice in the pipes. But in the summer, it's a sight to see. I want to be around to see it. I plan to be. I hope to be.
This disease will be the end of many of us, but not nearly all, and the dead will be commemorated and will struggle on with the living, and we are not going away. We won't die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come.
Bye now.
You are fabulous creatures, each and every one.
And I bless you: More life.
The Great Work Begins" (280).
Incidentally, I saw a amazing performance of Perestroika in Silver Spring two years ago. Ah, that more theaters would stage this (admittedly really, really difficult) play.
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