I, too, dislike it.

I come home with plans. Not in any particular order or priority, but plans nonetheless: finish books, write out reviews that have been stewing for weeks, copy out the pages of Jillian Weise’s poetry by hand to commit them to body-memory. Clean up my itunes library, process my laundry, write the emails that need writing, fuck, that I want to write because I owe them to people and miss my friends and mentors and don’t want to let people slip out of my life because of my own reckless, selfish negligence anymore.

None of it happens. I barely made it out of the office, spent ten minutes with my head on my desk contemplating sleeping there, the second time I’ve had this debate with myself this week. Then I coddle myself, swaddle myself, listen to indulgent music on the train and have someone deliver dinner because I should have one full meal today. I sit in bed and kill hours reading what other people are thinking about art and politics and psychology. I read six months of archives of a stranger’s blog, pick up my guitar for ten minutes and put it back down.

Yesterday I read this essay T.S. Eliot wrote about Hamlet, which basically says that Hamlet, and by extension any critical mind interested in Hamlet, is a pathetic half-breed artist who, despite his innate creative drive and sensibilities, is unable to create, and therefore becomes a critic of art. The worst kind of critic, the kind whose analysis always carries a biting resentment of the artist’s ability to produce. The critic who attempts to stifle confidence and the creative urge in others because he himself feels so helplessly stymied.

I don’t want to be that critic.

What I’m really trying to say, I think, is that my skin is far too thin for all this.

I come back again and again to the Maryanne Moore poem that is the title of my blog, the first line of which I have been contemplating as a tattoo since I discovered it as the guiding principle of my interaction with the world and its art and its people. “Poetry: I, too, dislike it.” Moore tackles the thing she loves most, the thing to which she has devoted her life, by systematically dissecting it, pointing out its every flaw and misuse and potential for harm, by “reading it with perfect contempt for it.” And by the end of the poem, she has justified for herself how that thing, poetry, can still be important, can still be her focus, can still be loved (“above insolence and triviality and can present for inspection, ‘imaginary gardens with real toads in them,’ shall we have it.”).

I don’t know how else to approach the world except from this same position: the things that delight me are flawed and likely unimportant in the grand scheme, and I am obligated to acknowledge that, and grapple with it, and ultimately to justify my delight and devotion by discovering in them some measure of significance.

And I don’t know how to do that without starting every conversation, internal or external, from a strong point of view. It’s like the difference between trying to write by staring at a black screen, and sitting down to revise a draft or beginning with a prompt or idea. How can you create anything without a structure to push against? This is, of course, why I have always been drawn to poetry and theater. In poetry you have rhyme or meter or tradition as structure, and creativity comes in finding the way to say what must be said within or in spite of the set form. In theater you have a script that is a static structure that must be made to breathe, again, in spite of itself. I need that same structure in everything, in opinion and argument and conversation and relationships. I need to start from someplace solid so I can push against something, so the conversation or relationship or thought can test the boundaries of the initial structure and accept them or revise them or live in them more fully and responsibly and actively.

I know that this way of being gets me into trouble. I know that I come off as aloof and argumentative and contrary. I know that this is because I always begin working from an assertion or conviction, even when I don’t have the facts to back it up. Because defending and refining the conviction, and understanding its opposition, allows the facts in question to come to light in their most genuine form. I know that this method only works when all parties begin in good faith, with trust and respect; that contrarianism without love is just nastiness; that you can't have tough love without demonstrated love.

I don’t believe truths throw themselves at you: I believe one must earn them, must fight for the right to know them. I don’t know how else to learn or how else to relate, and frankly I don’t want to. Happiness and comfort are false idols. I am interested in struggle and epiphany. I crave hard-earned, righteous, fleeting moments of ecstasy before returning to the trenches. I want to be pushed and to be comforted, but not in equal measure.

That's why I want those words inked in my flesh:

I, too, dislike it.

Because I am tired of being told that analysis and criticism are antithetical to creation: they are the precursor to creation. Because I am tired of being called negative: I am struggling to justify my joy and understand that which is beautiful. Because I am tired of the assertion that a real artist is unequivocal about hir craft: I am wrestling with the significance of my art in a world of immense suffering which art will not alleviate. Because I am tired of hearing that my sadness is unproductive: it is the thing that spurs me to action against injustice and creation against the void. Because I am tired of separating art from politics: every moment we devote to a task and every word we speak is a political choice, and I want to stand behind mine.

I have been struggling to find myself and define myself since leaving school, and especially since losing the relationship that was standing in for the structure of my life. These fragments I have shored against my ruins, out of which I must attempt to construct a self and a philosophy on art and love and righteousness and action. “I, too, dislike it.” That's what I've got. Nothing is sacred and everything we love must be justified and loved despite its flaws. I don't want that understanding pulled out from under me ever again. I want the words etched in my skin to make it thick and make me strong.

I, too, dislike it.

“The same thing may be said for all of us, that we do not admire what we cannot understand.”
We are obligated to try and understand.

“If you demand on the one hand, the raw material of poetry in all its rawness and that which is on the other hand genuine, you are interested in poetry.”
Words matter, insofar as they are offered in the spirit of genuine communication. I want access to every thought and feeling and argument in the world, and thus I must read poetry with a perfect contempt for it. I must split the baby, destroy everything I love and believe, in order to reconstruct a fuller truth.

I, too, dislike it.

Here are some things I believe. This is the structure from which I can begin to create. I would love to trouble this structure with you.

• I believe in the value of contradiction and paradox but not ambiguity.
• I believe in advocacy but never philanthropy, even when both mean fundraising.
• I believe in kindness but inherently distrust anyone who is “nice.”
• I believe in the concept of responsibility over the concept of rights.
• I believe in radical solitude, but also in our nearly infinite capacity for empathy.
• I do not believe in causation. I believe that faith in causation is callous disregard for human suffering, and a denial of one's own privilege.
  
• I believe in absolute beauty but not absolute truth.
• I believe in forgiveness but not absolution.
• I believe in unconditional love, but will not practice unconditional support.
• I believe we are responsible not only for our intentions, but also for the unintended outcomes of our actions.
• I believe that individual accountability and group responsibility are not mutually exclusive.
• I do not believe in conditional apologies.
• I believe that accepting love and help can be a radical act.
• I believe in the power of collaboration and mutual respect, but understand hierarchy to be a temporarily necessary evil.
  
• I believe in epiphany and the power of the subconscious, so long as it has been fed proper research and compassion. This includes an immense faith in the nap and the long walk.

• I believe that only that which frustrates us, which engages us, which challenges us, has the power to change us.

I, too, dislike it.

What about you?

Prop 8 speculation: just the thing for a rainy Saturday in January.

Gay Marriage supporters fear Supreme Court ruling was an omen -- LA Times

If every new motion, decision, and media-spectacle of the Prop 8 trials is this fraught with speculation and hopelessness, the outcome of the case will not matter, for we will all have collapsed in a heap of emotionally whiplashed, heart-wrung queer bodies. Which is a real shame, because the actual bodies and lives of queer people are the furthest things from discussion in any of this coverage. Our flesh-heap might merit brief coverage if it's real gory, on Fox News at very least since it'd be easier to spin our story than cover Haiti, which requires compassion and reporting and all that.

Unfortunately, I happen to side with the pessimists on the likelihood that our current Supreme Court will have the conscience or the gonads to overturn the independent decisions of 40 states to discriminate against a minority. For reasons beyond my understanding, SCOTUS has recently displayed a bizarre desire to limit its own power to overrule both state and federal over-reaches of jurisdiction. In a perfect world the Judiciary would be an excellent solution to the gay marriage problem, since the basic point of contention, the majority’s ability to limit minority rights to access government services and protections, has already been decided several times over. But this isn’t a perfect world and the court is stacked against us, and the specifics of the case provide any number of easy outs for Justices who have no internal compulsion to do the right thing.

That being said, the following was perhaps the most jaw-dropping excerpt of the linked article:

In their opinion, [SCOTUS] worried that opponents of gay marriage and their paid witnesses would face “harassment as a result of public disclosure of their support” for the ban. They concluded that the Prop. 8 defenders “have shown that irreparable harm will likely result” if video coverage of the proceedings were made public.

This is one of those free speech debacles that really ties one’s brain in knots. While in the abstract I appreciate SCOTUS’s protection of representatives of an unpopular opinion from disproportionate retaliation, and their understanding that cameras in the courtroom would have a chilling effect on free speech for witnesses for the defense, my gut reaction of anger and disbelief reigns supreme. The most common misunderstanding of “free speech” is, in my opinion, when bigots aver that “freedom of speech” means “freedom from consequences of speech.” Conservatives usually love accountability, except when it applies to wealthy hate-mongers instead of “Welfare Queens.” I’d never advocate violent retribution against the bigots willing to testify against my basic human rights, but I’d sure like to be able to boycott their businesses and thumb my nose at them on the street and such. Which we will still do without live-camera coverage, but I don’t quite see why these people are receiving extraordinary protection from the civil repercussions of their own sworn testimony.

There’s also a certain irony in the claim that the witnesses for the defense will suffer “irreparable harm” from the distribution of their testimony. I think we should all be a little more interested in the “irreparable harm” caused to millions of queer Americans by systemic inequality, lack of access to services, and dearth of protection from the constant threat of emotional and bodily injury. You know, the irreparable harm to a family that can’t legally adopt their kid or the Queer who dies in a hospital bed alone because hir partner has no legal recourse. But hey! Who asked me.

Anyway, the one thing I can’t really get my head around at present (ha! so untrue, but my heart will give out if I write about this for too much longer) is why it matters so much if Judge Walker sets clear rules for proceedings or not. Everyone knows this case is getting appealed up to SCOTUS regardless of the result, and given the high court’s unusual early-intervention with the trial already, they’re clearly not going to abide by the usual rules of the game, wherein appellate courts don’t reexamine evidence, just rule on the legality of decisions, the validity of the applied precedent, etc. Whatever Walker does in that courtroom will be purely incidental to the final decision of the case, as far as I can tell, although it will determine the specifics of appellate strategy.

Anywho. Another great day to be a gay American in the era of Hope and Change.

"The Phantom Menace" may refer to the Patriarchy. Correct me if the film points to any more plausible thesis.

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review (Part 1 of 7)

What I did with my afternoon: watch this 70-minute takedown of The Phantom Menace, compare it with Nick Davis's review (a startlingly solid B- if you can believe that), youtube other Star Wars documentaries, marvel in the brilliance of the original trilogy, and wish I could analyze movies and their making like the pros.

Normally I wouldn't share or recommend a video like the review above, because the creator deems it necessary to mix in a lot of tasteless and triggering "gags" that position the narrator as an abusive, misogynistic sociopath, which a) does nothing to help the ever-beleagured public image of people who like Star Wars/Sci-Fi* as socially-inept jerks, and b) is the most tired strategy for producing an easy chuckle outside of the Poop Joke.

But the fact that the review melds dramatic criticism of plot and character, meticulous cinematographic analysis, and careful research of the process and reception of the film with a shtick-y narrator and cheap editing tricks to produce a biting, compelling, and often genuinely funny attack on the film makes me willing to hold my feminist objections at bay for a hot second and tell you to watch the thing.

In combination with my recent [slightly manic, sorry] obsession with that Le Guin essay, I am wondering today how it is possible, in one lifetime to, consume and analyze art, create effective art, keep up meaningful relationships, and have any sort of impact toward improving the welfare of humanity (which one must feel compelled to do as the result of all the former pursuits, which reveal a flawed world of injustice and pain but usually some hope for redemption). I know this work/life/art balance conundrum is not a new thing, but it's taking on new relevance for me as I cast off the wonderful shackles of coupledom and still can't find time or brain-space for art, work, and friends.

[What does this have to do with the video? I guess that it is, in itself, an overt balancing act between the critique of art and the creation of art, produced by (I believe) a single artist, in which both the referent art and the critique-art attempt to complicate the high art/low art dichotomy by exploiting the peculiarities of their respective media, with varying degrees of success. Although, notably, the video artist is male, which may undermine the validity of this comparison to Le Guin. But I'm going to roll with it anyway.]

I think the answer to the balance question has something to do with the power of culture to change minds and circumstances, and the power of the individual the influence culture, but I am also wondering if it does not specifically have to do with science fiction -- that is, art (of whatever medium) that challenges the basic assumptions, environments, circumstances and ideologies by which we live. Art that is currently dismissively labeled as "genre" because it challenges the status quo in emotionally compelling, widely accessible ways.

Unfortunately, I suck at film analysis and have never thought up a half-plausible science fiction premise (let alone plot) in my life. But maybe those are two things I would like to work on. Even if the genre (sci-fi) and the medium (film) never become the vehicles for my own creative pursuits, I think there is a tremendous power in each (and both) which, if I could better understand, I could harness to make art that is more meaningful, accessible, thoughtful, revolutionary and joyful.

*See also: readers of comic books, players of video games, etc., with a heavy cross-over with bloggers, queers, new-agers, and anyone else who prefers art/recreation/communication/lifestyles that differ from and therefore challenge dominant culture, which has a vested interest in stigmatizing the above groups in order to maintain its dominance and the very hierarchical thought system which allows "dominance" to be accepted as the natural mode/consequence of relation between and among individuals, groups, ideas, and nature.

2009 wrap up, because one must.

2009... ah.

Well, I’m probably in a lousy position to write about 2009 with any sort of balance or perspective, but that’s what year end wrap-ups are all about. Projecting your current predicament back over a year, or decade, or lifetime. Much like therapy.

In 2009 I

• wrote a collection of poetry which made me truly proud, earned university honors, and totally escaped the interest and reading of my family (for better and worse).
• found the sort of group of friends I’d wanted to find all through college, and spent six or so fabulous months with them, writing and match-making and dancing and eating.
• wrote 50+ cover letters in the face of constant anxiety attacks about the future.
• turned down three job offers.
• accepted my first full time, adult job.
• moved to New York City, most overwhelming place on Earth.
• played out an inevitable relationship to great success followed by great failure, with the hope of another shot at both.
• lost my cat, Sadie, who got me through some very dark times and wore a tutu like a champ.
• started a blog I feel good about sharing with the world.
• started therapy, medication, and possibly started taking care of myself.
• co-produced a night of jazz and slam poetry, something totally new to the university and totally awesome by all accounts.
• performed my poetry for the first time, and promptly forgot how good that can feel.
• lived, briefly, with two straight boys.
• missed Chicago more than I ever would have thought possible.
• watched a friend endure a horrible accident and hospital stay, realized I could do nothing.
• cooked more, for more people, and realized what a wonderful thing that is.
• started building real relationships with my siblings as people.

In 2010 I will

• write more
• spend more time alone because I want to
• spend more time with friends because I want to
• read more books
• talk to my brother and sister every week
• explore cities by myself
• pack my lunch
• keep my space cleaner
• do better at working during work time
• take steps towards law school
• make casual friends
• re-learn to just hang out
• spend time with children
• make it through another year.

cum hoc ergo propter hoc

I've been considering working these words into a tattoo for about a year now. Cum Hoc and Post Hoc are logical fallacies of causation: roughly, that correlation suggests or constitutes causation. There are philosophers that go so far as to argue that causation itself is a logical fallacy, based on our unproved assumption that the future models the past. I don't know if I'd go that far, but I find deep questioning of our collective reliance on causal thinking appealing. Causation allows us to wrap things up neatly, to feel we understand how the world works, to believe negative outcomes can be easily fixed or avoided.

This is especially damaging when dealing with issues of privilege. In a thousand small ways, we harbor the belief that good things happen to good people, and conversely, that those who suffer brought it on themselves. This allows for an enormous degree of indifference and cruelty, especially toward the poor, the sick and disabled, the fat... any group in which membership should be morally neutral, attributed to chance and circumstance, rather than some underlying moral turpitude.

One of the major arts in education groups here in New York released results from a study that found a strong correlation between arts education and increased high school graduation rates. I think most readers would find this utterly unsurprising. The surprising part was that, despite presenting absolutely no evidence of a causal link, this group made recommendations to increase arts funding in order to increase graduation rates.

Why might schools with good arts programs have high graduation rates? Because they are better funded. Because they have a better staff to student ratio. Because parents who have time and energy to advocate for arts are likely to be operating with a high level of privilege across many categories, and have more time to support their children's education. You know what? I might even believe that arts programs act as incentives to come to school, and allow challenged students to shine, helping them stick it out through graduation. But the survey didn't prove it.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could correct our utter failure of an education system by throwing a few million dollars at the arts? Wouldn't that fit right in with our liberal priorities, our notions of well-rounded education? It's certainly more convenient than addressing the massive economic and power imbalances in public school education. It's easier than tackling poverty.

This is still just a jumble of thoughts, I guess. I just wonder if there's an underlying theme here, some sort of connection between causal thinking and privilege that I'm not yet capable of articulating. I do know that it helps me to think reasonably when I'm asking big questions about why bad things happen. The answer is always multi-faceted, always bigger than a simple trigger and heap. To ignore confounding factors, systemic inequality and plain old chance is to enforce dangerous notions of Personal Accountability as the ultimate truth. Maybe: To think progressively is to challenge convenient notions of causation.

An update on Sadie's health

Hello All

I thought I’d give you a bit of an update on Miss Sadie, who has been doing spectacularly poorly lately. She’s been staying at the vet since Tuesday, where they admitted her to try and identify the cause of her jaundice, weight loss and weakness. Since then we’ve been through a host of diagnoses, conflicting and complementary. At this point they’re treating her for a blood parasite (which doesn’t show up on any of her panels, but a tech thinks he saw on the blood slide), and she has a feeding tube to deal with her Fatty Liver Disease, which is the big danger.

Fatty Liver basically means a happy, round cat got unhappy and stopped eating. Sadie didn’t take well to my mother’s house or the week with a cat-sitter. She may also have been feeling lousy because of this parasite. Whatever the reason, she stopped eating, and her liver clogged up from processing her body fat into food. Lack of appetite is a vicious cycle in cats, and it’s pretty impossible to get her to eat at this point. The only treatment for Fatty Liver is to get the metabolism back up, to nourish Sadie and flush out her liver, hence the feeding tube.

I’m going home to collect her tonight, and moving her to a sunny new apartment in Hell’s Kitchen tomorrow, where the feeding regimen will begin. The vet is recommending a 4-times-a-day feeding schedule, meaning ever six hours Sadie and I have to wrestle some mush and meds down her tube. Eventually this comes down to 3-a-day, and in the long term she (hopefully) starts eating again on her own. Her prognosis isn’t good, even with this near-constant care, so I’m banking on her being young and more resilient than the doctors give her credit for.

It’s been a rough week around these parts, but nothing compared to what the kitten’s been going through. Keep her in your thoughts if you can, and if anybody around New York is interested in visiting (or helping me with lunchtime feedings, I have no idea how this is going to work with my full-time job) drop a line. We’d both appreciate it, certainly.

1 train, 11PM Sunday

A woman walks on the train wearing thin old clothes, but clean. She passes her eyes up and down the aisle before launching her speech, which begins the way of each jolting train pitch: Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize for the interruption. She goes on to explain that she is hungry, has nowhere to sleep, is trying to provide for her little ones. That she is looking for a job but cannot find one. A man begins shouting back at her, loudly enough for the whole train to hear. At first he offers the usual epithets: Get a job. Leave us alone. I heard this story from you last week.

The woman continues, doggedly avoiding his glare, but her detractor grows louder. The woman informs the train that she was just like us, that she never thought she would be begging on the subway, that she would gladly make use of anyone's leftovers or candy bars. The man begins shouting louder: I heard this last week, get a job. Another man shouts back, says let the woman talk, don't you have a heart? The man does not seem to. No one is buying your crap, he says. They defend you because they've never heard you shill before. Last week you were blind. The week before you had one leg.

Finally she locks eyes with the man: And I suppose you gave me yours then, two weeks ago? And it has only just grown back. Generous soul.


Having collected a meager handful of change, the woman storms off at the next station. The yelling man gets off with me on the Upper West Side, and I climb the stairs to the street behind him. He walks with a limp. His legs are swollen and pocked -- I have seen this before only on homeless men and women, who cannot get their medication or basic nutrition. The man hobbles down the street in black jean shorts and a black shirt which do not look dirty except from very close, and re-cocks his bright white baseball cap atop his head, the brim flat and strong and new.

***

I walk home and think sickly of my own discomfort. We ask our government to care for people like these two so that we can ride the train undisturbed; so the veracity of their suffering is someone else's to decide. We do not care that this woman eats, so much as that she stops asking us for food. Let her go to a beuareu, an agency, a line. Let her be cared for and out of sight.

It is amazing to me that the rich do not want this too, do not want the poor off the street and train and out of the way. It would cost no more than landscaping: a surface level renovation at most. But the rich do not ride the trains and do not walk the street, and there are no poor behind wrought iron gates nor at the top of office buildings. Is this why the middle class votes blue? To help those who need it, and thus delineate ourselves as those who do not. To vaguely support the bringing up of others and never again feel its sharp discomfort.

This is what free speech means to so many: the right to beg where one pleases. The right to talk back to beggars. The silent desire of two dozen train riders for silence, for peace, for keeping dignity and disgrace safely under wraps, elsewhere.