Grieving for Girlyman

I don't think it ever occurred to me that I could grieve for something other than a person.

As I've now written here many times, I saw Girlyman for the first time the night before my first day of high school. I remember not really wanting to go to the Indigo Girls (Girlyman was opening) concert because it was the idea of an aunt I don't like very much and I was so nervous to start school the next day. I feel in love with Nate's song about his grandmother, and only in writing this have I come to realize that that is largely because is many ways "Reva Thereafter" reminds me a lot of my own grandmother. I don't know that there are many musical groups that an 80-year-old woman, 50-year-old woman, and 20-year-old woman can consistently enjoy together, but we managed it. Girlyman has always been a bit of family affair for us.

I spent high school surviving on the power they gave me. I screamed songs at people that had hurt me as I sung along, we would have rousing choruses in the car, and it helped me to articulate love.

Several months ago, Girlyman announced that they would be taking a hiatus from touring and writing as a group to work on themselves and other projects. I was annoyed, but fine.

Yesterday, Girlyman announced that they were permanently breaking up and I find myself profoundly angry.

Who gives these four people the right to take away one of my greatest joys over the last four years, second only to my job and my amazing relationship. I can't even listen to old music now because it is too painful a reminder of something I will never get to have again. I never get to sit in an audience next to my two best friends in the world and just lose myself in the magic and the moment and the ability to feel.

Perhaps it's because I have always found it rather hard to express or validate my emotions, even to myself, and Girlyman was a space in which I could do that. They kept saying everything I wanted to but hadn't figured out how to yet.

"It's not quite gone, but it's not around. Must be somewhere different now."

Except it isn't. You made it gone. And I don't how or if I will ever get past that. And so now I am stuck grieving a thing I didn't know I could lose. And I don't think a new star is growing out of this supernova.

"Gone the supernova's over, burned out. Everywhere I look for it I strike out."

To Move Beyond, Must We Forget?

Twelve years ago I was sitting in a third grade classroom two miles from Ft. Detrick as my peers names were coming in continuously over the intercom saying their parents had come to retrieve them. Today, I sat in the Pentagon Memorial reading 184 names of people that are no longer with us. The youngest person on flight 77 was three. Her older sister was nine. Their parents were both on the place as well.

Walking back a friend mentioned that one of our peers was annoyed that the anniversary services are getting smaller and smaller each year. But isn't that natural, even appropriate? Those of us that are young adults now barely remember our 7-year-old selves; the U.S. is moving out of the wars 9/11 got us into.

We cannot move forward, thinking about the attacks less and less only to whip out a giant ceremony once a year to make ourselves feel like we aren't being irreverent. We can and should be moving on. And we shouldn't be afraid that moving on means diminishing the value of those lives or our sympathy for their sacrifice.

As a nation we cannot continue to pretend one a year that one day 12 years ago still plagues our day-to-day national consciousness. 

Bill O'Reilly, Blogs, and Summertime

I did this thing once, where I wrote this amusing blog. It is probably as good an update about my life currently as anything.

I'm about to wrap up my final week as an intern at the Feminist Majority Foundation in D.C. It's been a ton of fun and I get to do all sorts of exciting things like build websites and write things. So that was one of those things. 

The Face of God

I find, since college has started, summers are a time of tumult, change, passions (all of them, not just romantic), and courage. They are the moments we have to strike out and try new things and when we begin to find our way. They are free opportunities to explore the options life offers. They are also moments to reflect, on ourselves, on the progress of those around us. For the most part, people float through summers, undocked and adrift in the possibilities. In an unusual string of events involving some idiots, some opportunities, and a lot of luck, I have found myself decidedly grounded.

There is a line at the end of Les Miz: "Remember the truth that once was spoken: to love another person is to see the face of God." There is something very different between knowing love and seeing love. You can know love though hearing it spoken, reading it written, or witnessing or receiving actions that make it evident. But when all you have to do is look at someone to know love...

I have spent most of my life as an atheist  largely because I just don't care, but, seeing that every day could make a me a believer. 

Six Year Olds and Drag Queens

This morning for work, the professer I partnered with last semester and I took some of our students to Drag Brunch at Perry's in Adam's Morgan. It was a lot of fun, even though it's a little pricey and you need to get there pretty early. A great show, about ten ladies each of whom performed twice, and an impressive variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. Admittedly, men dressing up as women and dancing on me still throws me off a bit (I made the mistake of sitting at the seat along the walkway, a dangerous move), but that is, essentially, what I came for. Okay, well, actually, we came to sociologically observe an optimization of gender as a performative action, but whatever.

Anyway, in the corner of the room there was a little boy. The first time I noticed him he was handing a dollar bill to one of the performers which made me whip around and stare wide-eyed at my professer, which was supposed to communicate "What the hell? Why is there a little kid here?" She got the message, but just sort of shrugged and ignored me. As the show went on, the boy continued to be sent down with bills. The point, let me clarify, is that you give queen a bill and she dances on or at you for a moment. Many of the performers clearly did not know what to do with the kid, obviously you can't dance on him. One of the queens, Justin, who talked to the audience for a while called the kid over.

"What is your name?" Justin asked.
"Isaiah," he answered.
"And how old are you, Isaiah?"
"Six."
"Are you having fun?"
"Yes."

Good, because it's important that the six-year-old be having fun at the sex parade.
I turned back around to my professer, making another face. Instead of the "Wow," I expected, she said that his parents were probably here a lot and it just isn't a big deal to them or him.

Now I have mixed feelings. On one hand, yes, I think sex is absurdly under-discussed and, quite frankly, over-sexualized in our society. And part of me feels like this restaurant is a really open, friendly, and welcoming place where there were all sorts of patrons, performers, and staff. But the other side of me questions the appropriateness of a drag queen bouncing splits on the ground with gigantic fake breasts falling out of a few bedazzled coverings three feet away from a six-year-old. And I wonder why his parents thought that would be good. I wonder more why they think he should be the one to run over and hand the performers money.

I know I want to say that it is great that we can be that open about sex and the human experience, but I don't think I believe that. There's a difference between explaining the emotions and biology associated with sex and letting a Kindergartener watch porn. At least, they stil seem different to me.

Do you hear the people sing?

I first heard the song of angry men a few days after I turned 12. It was a birthday present to go see my first real show. My grandma, mom, and I went to the National in Washington, D.C. on a school night and saw Les Miserables. I was taking French at the time and I suppose they picked it for being one of the more "serious" shows touring at the time. I was absurdly excited and sang the entire way home. I also remember that some character made a sex joke and I thought that was pretty impressive. It started to snow on the way home, which later became a theme for my mom and me seeing shows. It also meant I usually went in to school late the next day, which was helpful. Les Mis has never stopped fascinating me, or making me cry. Over the next few years I saw the movie version (which isn't a musical) in French classes and listened to the soundtrack pretty frequently. It has always struck me for its passion. Any good show should have passion, that isn't my point, but the pasion of two or three people and the passion of a nation are very different things. Les Mis makes me sad that I wasn't alive to fight the French Revolution because half way through the show I'm ready to leap up on stage, risk my life, and stand on the barricade. Last fall, the movie came out. I have some issues, but, overall, it captured me in just the same way. Tonight, I will go see the musical production again, at a theatre I have grown to love. Every time I revisit something I love, I worry for a split second in the midst of excitement that perhaps it will have lost its magic. But that isn't how magic works. Watching Brigadoon emerge out of the Scottish highlands is still just as impressive and magical now that I know it's on a sound stage in Hollywood as it was when I was five and very possibly really thought there was a town like that across the ocean in what, accurately or not, I consider my motherland. So, will you be strong and stand with me? I want to see the world beyond the barricade, over and over and over again.

Searching for Silver

I often find myself surprised by the moments and people who give us the most strength. I would never have expected a young woman I've met once in my life and tend to think isn't that impressive to become the silver lining that puts a sparkle in what will undoubtedly be a long, dark tunnel, but she did it. And she didn't even do anything for me: all she did was ask for a phone number and make a few Facebook friends. I would never have expected the people who keep me sane and give me hope to be people I've exchanged just a few sentences with in my life and mostly see from the distance of a front row, at best. But that's the power music has. I debated with a friend once about the difference/similarity between music and books. We each argued (I for music, she for books) that it was an escape. I think that was a poor assessment. Music doesn't take me away, it brings me back to the present. When my mind races and life is overwhelming, music grounds you to the singer and the instrument and the message and the moment you're in, and isn't identical to your life and your problems, but it's just close enough that you can think about them without them killing you. Funny, that the people who help us the most will never know.