Justice, in Three Acts

When I was 21 years old, I moved to Copenhagen, Denmark. After a short amount of time, I started spending some evening and early mornings having conversations with a Danish man while nude and horizontal. At the time, he worked for a very popular bar that was equal parts wholly unclean and wholly necessary for every single person in the city under the age of 35.

This bar was so popular that there was a long queue almost every night. Sometimes over an hour long. Even in the freezing winter months. Why? Because the inebriated masses need to pray before the debauchery altar and this bar was ripe with debauchery.

This bar was in an area many Danes considered dangerous. This was almost entirely due to its proximity to a neighborhood populated by immigrants. Its worth was debated by politicians by day, exalted by the inebriated (and horny) masses by night.

The bar had a security guard to both monitor the queue and protect the inebriated masses from the neighborhood — and themselves. This guard was a man, not very tall and incredibly good at his job. I know this because I often tried to cheat the line and he always caught me and because I once saw him break up a sudden violent fight quickly and efficiently then keep hold of one of the perpetrators while still keeping control of the line.

I also know he was good at his job because one day the Danish man I was seeing who worked at this bar told me a story. While telling, he was nude, I was nude, we were horizontal and I was just toying with the idea of what it meant to “be sexy’ and nude with another person. For this reason, I’m not positive I have all of these details correct but I will try to convey them as best as possible.

This is what the man told me. He said it was a story about justice:

ACT I

A funny thing happened this past weekend. A guy came into the bar — he’s been in before and he always gives off a bad vibe and keeps dodgy company of known criminals. So we keep an eye on him. Soon we start getting complaints that things are missing from various guests. We watch him a bit and we see that he is stealing. One of our guys goes to tell the security guard. The guard comes in and confronts him and then this other guy just loses it and makes a huge scene. Yelling and spitting everywhere and shouting really nasty stuff at people. The security guard tries to calm him down and restrain him and they start having a pretty wild fight. Someone calls the police. It looked like the security guard was getting the guy under control until all of the sudden the guy pulls out a knife. He starts threatening everyone and waving the knife. Somehow the security guard manages to get him to go outside, but by kind of coaxing him into a fight. So the guy is still acting completely crazy and yelling and threatening people on his way outside. Just then the police show up and the guy takes off running. One officer goes after him while the other stays to take statements from people and get more information. 

The next day, the security guard calls up the police station to ask if they caught the guy. The police officer says “As a matter of fact, yes. This is the guy with the knife, right? Funny story. We did find him. Much later. He showed up at the hospital, he’d been stabbed. By a different knife. He died.”

ACT II

About a year after this story was relayed to me, I was back home in California on a short visit. I was on a bus in San Francisco going south on Divisadero. As with anything in San Francisco, there were homeless and mentally ill people present and being actively ignored. One on the bus was a heavier, middle-aged Black man wearing a poncho. He had some sort of cooler on wheels that he was constantly and purposefully rolling into the legs of the woman sitting next to him. It looked like it hurt but she was actively ignoring him. This man in a poncho kept mumbling about justice. Sometimes just repeating the word over and over, making everyone uncomfortable and causing us to wonder if we were all about to be collateral in some unknown retribution. Eventually, he stood up and yelled, “SOMEBODY TELL ME SOMETHIN’ ABOUT JUSTICE!”

I looked at him and said, “I’ve got a story if you want to hear it.” He looked at me, nodded, then sat back down in his seat — no longer rolling his cooler. 

I then told him the story I just told you.

He listened attentively the whole way through. When I finished, he said, “Justice. Yeah, that’s justice. That’s beautiful.” He then thanked me as I got off the bus.

The next morning, I was in shambles from and evening of reunions and being an active member of the inebriated masses. I was slumped against the window at Kate’s Kitchen with two other friends who were also in shambles. We were nursing beers at 10am. I as debating whether or not I could stomach the breakfast plate I’d just ordered. Suddenly there was an intense banging on the window I was leaning on. The whole restaurant jumped, every single patron. A few drinks were knocked over. It was the man in the poncho, now sans cooler. He pointed at me through the window and yelled, “JUSTICE!” I pointed back and said, “That’s right, man. Justice.”

He threw up the Black power fist, nodded at me, and walked away. 

ACT III

I’m not sure if I think what happened in Copenhagen was justice. No, actually, I am sure. It wasn’t justice. I find that story incredibly disturbing. Yet it keeps coming back to me. There was a sense of reckoning and consequence for an ill act. This sense brought people to a reserved and somewhat celebrated acceptance of a traumatic moment in the past. 

A sloppy resolution to a violent problem did not bring happiness, but it acknowledged the danger and pain caused by the original offense. And the offender was penalized — quickly. That seems to bring calm. The man who told it to me treated it as a parable, a modern day Aesop’s Fable. When I shared the story with the man in the poncho, he softened. He called it “beautiful.” I think it may be because in the story justice wasn’t sought, necessarily, but it was delivered somehow.

I bring these tales of justice because the United States is to have the inauguration of its 46th president tomorrow at the nation’s Capitol building. Where the memory of an unrectified bloody exchange full of vitriol is still so fresh in our minds I’m hesitant to even call it a memory. There is a nation of people who feel entitled to justice or retribution for wrongdoings surrounding that event. Many of their conceptions of wrongdoings are in complete opposition to each other.

So can justice surface? How often are justice and morality not synonymous? Can something be just and fair and also completely unreasonable?

I’m one of the people who feel entitled to justice. But the kind of justice I want will not be the one I get. It will not be poised. It will not be respectful and thorough, apologetic and directly in proportion to the magnitude of the effects of the offense. It will be sloppy. It will likely be somewhat hidden. I’m fearful of all the collateral damage this justice might require in creating consequence.

All This is True, More or Less

I’m often asked who Kilgore Trout is. 

This is because I put “Proud disciple of Kilgore Trout” in my email signature, my social media bios and on my website. In fact, it’s at the bottom left of this page. When people ask this, I am typically imbued with joy at being the person to introduce them to Kilgore Trout. If it takes place online, I then question their ability to use the Internet for its first intended function: to seek and share information. But I tell myself such is life and then try to imbue myself with joy.

Kilgore Trout is a fictional character from the mind of Kurt Vonnegut. Trout is a ‘failed’ science fiction writer whose name is allegedly inspired by the inventor of the cap gun (Kilgore) and Theodore Sturgeon. Sturgeon is one of Vonnegut’s friends who was also a failed science fiction writer for a while until he became a wildly respected science fiction writer and even contributed to a little television show called Star Trek. Vonnegut was tickled that someone’s last name could be a fish. 

As Vonnegut’s many novels often cross reference each other, Kilgore Trout pops up a fair few times. My preferred instance of Mr. Trout is in Breakfast of Champions. It is my favorite of Vonnegut’s novels, though not his best writing. It is simply such a delight to read. If I’m completely honest about why I like Kilgore Trout so much, it’s because he doesn’t make sense. The timing of his death is weird and then doesn’t match up with his references in other books. His backstory is constantly changing — the only consistent fact being that he is a science fiction writer who has received absolutely no recognition despite a deep catalogue of supposedly profound work. As a character, he is sometimes the driving force in Vonnegut’s novels though he plays a minimal part. It’s almost as if Trout is the trick Vonnegut pulls from his hat to connect unconnectable dots. I’m sure many Vonnegut fans will disagree with me, but I’m also sure they have their own unread blogs elsewhere on this wild ride called the Internet. 

For me, Trout delivers the heaviest hitters of Vonnegut’s pleas for humanity and understanding in the absurd world — and certainly the country — that he lives in. For instance, his motto in the novel Timequake is “You were sick. Now you are well again. And there is work to be done.” A phrase that he invents to pull other people out of a collective depression, malaise and shock at realizing the magnitude of their worst actions. The phrase evokes sympathy and empathy and support and, at the time of writing this, feels all too prescient. Another example: “Life’s no way to treat an animal.” That’s what Trout’s tombstone reads and is a sentiment that sneaks up on me almost weekly — particularly while waiting in the customs line at the airport or while reading the news on any given day.

The greatest Troutism of all and the one that inspired me to take on the self-inflicted title of a disciple is one found in Breakfast of Champions. A main character tells him about individuals who grab poisonous snakes during church services to demonstrate their belief in Jesus — he says this to get a rise out of Trout. His response? “Takes all kinds of people to make up a world.”

That sentiment, right there,  is the reason I choose to follow in the path of Kilgore Trout. My life, too doesn’t really make any sense. I, too, have a wellspring of written works that absolutely no one reads (though they are by no means profound). My impact on other people’s stories and character development has no coherent pattern and oftentimes I seem to be the only thing that connects unconnectable dots. I’ve probably also been the only thing to disconnect very connectable dots (my apologies to a few past lovers, I hope your dots have found more accommodating harbors). Throughout the giant question mark that is my real life story, I want to employ the fictional Kilgore’s creed and understanding:

Life is tough, it’s unfair, and I am in no position to judge anyone else that is simply trudging through life the best way they know how. Knowing all of this will get me through as unharmed as possible.

Faith in a fictional being seems to bring their teachings into existence, after all. I’ll try to continue following in his path until I myself am a memory, my body lying in an ashen heap or beneath its own exacting epitaph. Just being one of a kind making up a world.

So it goes.

On Bill Callahan in 2020

There are many a ‘year end’ lists pouring in. This isn’t one of those. But it is adjacent. If there is one song I have suckled off of, fed from and sought both refuge and respite in — it’s Bill Callahan’s Say Valley Maker under his old moniker (smog). I’ve probably listened to it at least once a day since June.

Frankly, I don’t know where or how to start when writing this. I really, really admire Bill Callahan’s talents. Through them, I love the world more. When everything seems too fluid, so fuzzy, overly aggressive and as if it were a poorly written spy novel you read after it’s been discarded on a waiting room bench...Bill gives me something solid. He gives me something concrete. Honest. Understandable, but not easy. His music won’t automatically give you answers, but it will make your questions seem less ridiculous

In a eulogy (elegy, perhaps?) for Gil Scott-Heron, the writer Steve Almond suggested that one of the reasons Gil and those like him are so powerful is because artists project the voice we wish we could summon in ourselves. Their power lies not in that they feel what we feel, but that they say what we cannot bring ourselves to. It’s worth noting that Gil Scott-Heron covered Bill Callahan. Word for word. The song I’m New Here. Which was also the title Gil gave to the final album he made before he passed. That’s one hell of a thing.

But I understand why. Bill’s voice, his constellation of words, his thoughtful meandering, his lollying guitar...when they come together it’s as if they’ve mulled all of life over and sifted out the unnecessary bits. Leaving us with a distilled version of emotions that lack their original bitterness.

In 2020, Say Valley Maker acted as my proxy for both reason and human touch. I can’t recall how or why I was so drawn to it, but I awoke the day after the first protests for George Floyd’s murder and I thought of Bill. I came to this song. This Song. A song so simple and lilting, you might forget its’s playing. Bill’s voice as soothing as a friend’s in the distance as they approach your door.

Say Valley Maker is told from the perspective of a dead body floating in a roaring river.  It is a tale told from helplessness — of being wholly subjected to the power of your surroundings. And, as a dead body, no one has any interest in saving you. In fact, you can’t be saved. So here you are, unsavable and unable to fight.

With the grace of a corpse in a riptide

I let go

Those are the first lines. Giving up. Relinquishing with a backhanded mention of grace as if it were voluntary. This Callahan corpse will be battered against this riverbed but it is pretending, with all its dead might, that it is participating in this activity. Gracefully. As if it were not insane for an already dead thing to be aware of its very imminent death. 

If you’re reading, please listen to the song before continuing, the lyrics are in the description. I’ll wait here. 

Essentially, the wild water takes the Callahan corpse through a deep valley it never would have seen if it were living. The journey gives the corpse a nuanced perspective that morphs into a renewed sense of agency and a realization that love requires sacrifice, but is also best paired with understanding, leeway and room for error. 

The fact that Callahan’s corpse makes this realization in the middle of its journey — still at the will of the water, careening towards an unknown end, unable to make any sort of move or change for who knows how long — is the part that punches me in the gut. Squarely. Just to the left of my navel. Despite learning its lesson, the Callahan corpse has to weather more abuse and uncertainty in order to display its newfound agency. It’s not the learning that was hard, it’s the waiting. Say Valley Maker is a song that says: this will end. It will hurt. You will be buried. But, no matter how it ends, you will resurrect. Because you have learned.

If I had to condense the whole song (forgive me, Bill), it would be:

With the grace of a corpse, I let go.

Bend.

Take me.

Bury me.

I never really realized

Death is what it meant to make it.

Because there is no love on the hacked away plateau, in the unerring

So

Bury me

I’m gonna phoenix.

Why was I seeking Bill Callahan the morning after the world erupted around me? I don’t know. Maybe because this song is the most beautiful and abstract pep talk I’ve ever received. It’s a gentle rub on my cheek when I’m sad about something that’s not my fault. It’s a way of saying “you’ll understand when you’re older” or “this could all be for the best” without undermining my current pain. 

It is particularly striking to listen to this song in the context of being a human during a pandemic. It’s even more arresting to listen to this song in the context of being an American in a volatile political year that affects much of the globe during a global pandemic. It is another thing entirely to listen to this song as a Black American in a time of polarizing racial upheaval and demonstrations erupting around the world to endorse or condemn your existence during a raging global pandemic.  Our collective corpses being battered in a riptide that seems to only be gaining magnitude. We are prey to the whims of so many forces, and we pretend to be graceful in the churning water. And yet, somehow, to have deep within our bodies the knowledge that this will eventually end and — no matter how it ends — we will rise.

This post in no way does Bill’s artistry justice. I am in no way satisfied with what I’ve written here. I’m tipsy and alone and about to ring in a new year that seems already doomed to be a helpless corpse of its own. But it is what I can do to help amplify the projection I wish I could summon. The true grace his music emanates. The sacrifice with understanding — the action and patience — that is necessary to be a considerate human.

If for some reason Bill is reading this, I’d like to thank you for making the whole ordeal of life a little less lonely, a little more forgiving.

Again, listen to the song here. Purchase the album here.

This Is How the Teeth Sink In

Note: A version of this story appears on Salty.

I can’t help but think about the US war in Vietnam. I found myself writing that line in an email  last week. This was unusual.  Typically, I can easily help but think of the US war in Vietnam. It is somewhat of a twisted civic duty to not think of the US war in Vietnam. As a country, we don’t focus on our missteps.

The email was a continuation of a discussion I’d just had with a friend — a very good friend who loves me dearly and happens to be a white, cis, hetero male who was born and lives in northern Europe. Our realities are incredibly different though our affinities are strikingly similar. In the email, I was attempting to clear up some questions he had asked surrounding race relations in the United States. Specifically those with black folx. With me. He wanted answers, evidence, facts and figures that would outline for him a clear path to help him understand how the US got to where it is and how it could possibly operate as it does.   

I opened my correspondence to him like this: “In ruminating over our short conversation, I can't help but think about the US war in Vietnam. I believe this is because I got the feeling your questions wanted to unearth a clear absence of principles; of goodness (the US's motivations for the war). I, however, needed to declare my humanity (Vietnam’s). A want versus a need. An idea versus a personhood. These are very different debates — one resolved by evidence; the other by recognition and respect. There is a reason why this particular war was so bloody: the parties didn't understand each other yet both agreed there was a need for violence. Our conversation was a microcosm of the current unrest.”

 I’ve realized that many of my life’s conversations about race hold this parable — discussions as far back as I can remember of explaining the woes of a minority to a majority. It struck me that the idea of racism could be quantifiable and readily measurable when, to live it, is to find it all encompassing. Racism doesn’t merely happen to me, it has so proliferated my environment that it is me. A parasite that somehow also sustains the host. How does one apply metrics to an omnipresence? All we can offer, instead, is our experience and hope that people pay heed and acknowledge it. Though, I once read from Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. that a facet of discrimination is “being treated as an unreliable witness to your own experience.”

I seek to share some of that experience now in the hopes that some may listen and begin to understand that they haven’t understood. I operate in the blind hope that I will be treated as a reliable witness to that which I have lived (and am living) through. It is a testament to that omnipresence. It’s very personal. I wrote it a week after George Floyd was murdered.  

***

 This essay is NSFW. But most everyone is furloughed, unemployed or suddenly/accidentally freelance. Or you’re reading this from your new couch office with no bra. So, somehow, this NSFW essay is safe for anytime.

I haven’t masturbated in seven days.

For some people, this may seem normal. For those who don’t engage in such solitary activity, the statement itself may be seen as egregious. The fact of the matter is that, for me, this is unusual. I’m a daily kind of lady.

 I know exactly why this is. I know exactly why it happened and, try as I might to change it and let my cooped-up, living-alone-in-the-time-of-corona body receive a much needed release — I can’t. I have decided I will to try to explain why and shed some light on one of the many nefarious ways in which racism claws into and plagues the minds of those it was created to terrorize.

Allow me to first establish something: my body, like all bodies, is beautiful. In sexual situations (even with myself), I find myself to be a gift waiting to be unwrapped. I know he was a gay man, but when I hear George Michael sing I know not everybody has got a body like you, I take it to be a personal message just for me.

My skin has red undertones that look good in any light and against any color. I am incredibly soft. I have beauty marks in adorable places and a spattering of freckly pigmentation encircling my nipples that one partner once said was “the most arrestingly beautiful pattern” he’d ever seen. I was born with a uterus, which means my body is a miracle that houses, grows and nurtures life. I feel privileged and lucky to find it a delight to live my life in the body I was given. Usually. 

Some years ago, I decided to watch 12 Years a Slave. I cannot for the life of me remember why I decided to do this. I made an unofficial rule when I was 17 to shy from slave-era media. But I watched it. I’m guessing because it was Steve McQueen. It was the first slavery-centered media I had watched since the Roots episodes in high school US History.

There’s a scene in the film — as there has to be in every retelling of slavery — in which there is a line of black people standing naked before a white man/audience and being judged for physical prowess, sexual promise or simply for an afternoon exercise in ridicule and power. I watched this scene. I pressed ‘pause’ on my computer. I stripped completely naked. I turned on all the lights. I stood in front of my mirror. I stared at myself.

 And then I cried.

I hadn’t seen any slavery representations as an adult with a womanly body. Suddenly, I saw my body reflected in these scenes. I saw evidence of myself in these women entombed by an unfathomable practice who were seen as animals and used for nothing more than physical labor and vessels for rage manifested in rape. I scanned my body and I saw theirs. Never mind the fact that there is no US slavery in my bloodline. My family’s presence in this country started in the 20th century. But those are details and my body is flesh. Flesh that is identical to the ones I’d just seen lined up, paraded around and mocked for the simple pleasure of another body that did not resemble it at all.

After watching the film, I couldn’t masturbate. Not at all. Not even the tiniest bit. For a month.

 I was 24 or 25 then; my libido evidently hell-bent on procreation. I was young, horny and felt invincible. Yet, when I watched this film, the concept of my body became dirty, barbaric and unreal in its mortality. I could only see what they could see. A shameful body. A peculiar, exotic, mammalian body. One that was to be used and not touched. Beaten and worked and impregnated but not celebrated or stimulated or given pleasure.

This is the trick of racism: it dominates in ways it does not even know it is winning. It is in the way you regard your body knowing absolutely everything you know about yourself is to the contrary; contending with even fictional representations. Racism wins in the perpetual knowledge of and the necessary realization of its presence. Many revered writers and thinkers have worked to explain the immense weight black folx bear knowing that they are destined to be hated and that their mere presence is believed to threaten the sanctity of the places that make America what she is.

But there is something I find implicit in their writing that I have come to discover is not clear for those without darker skin. I will try to make it plain: it is not only to know that your body threatens the sanctity of America, it is to hate your body for transgressing against your home. Discrimination thrives, at its core, as one of the purest and most painful forms of unrequited love. The majority not loving you and, in turn, the difficulties in loving yourself.

I am a peaceful person. I do not like things that breed contempt. So, I find myself at an impasse. How can I not despise my own body, my own skin? How could I not feel betrayed somehow by the way my body makes a world full of people feel so incredibly threatened? How could I not feel it was actually me, I, this vessel through which I live my life, that was to blame? And, in turn, how could I not come to the conclusion that it is meant to be beaten and worked and shamed for the transgressions and fear it has incited?

 On May 31, I tried to start my Sunday off as I usually do: a little morning masturbation with intermittent, very casual yoga poses. But I couldn’t. For the fifth day in a row, I couldn’t. I’d seen other bodies repeatedly cast aside, run over, screamed at, tear gassed, charged at, shot at, beat up, crying, sobbing and bleeding...all because of the existence of my black body. The disgust crept over me as I lay there, warm in the rays of an ignored mid-morning, perfect-for-self-satisfaction sun. Well, actually, the disgust didn’t really creep. It panged deep in my belly and splintered through me to the edge of my limbs. The way safety glass breaks in the center of a room and shatters immediately to every nook and cranny it can find. Nuzzling shards deep in corners even the kitchen itself had forgotten existed. 

I don’t know how long this will last. Each time I wonder if it will be permanent. I wonder how long I will even go without looking at my body in the mirror — “denying myself the pleasure of my own company” in exactly the pathetic, cowardly way Zora Neale Hurston intended it.

But this is what racism does. This is how it lives. This is how the teeth sink in. It’s not that I cannot masturbate out of sadness or exhaustion at the state of the world. It’s that I know that my body is the cause for that exhaustion, and that cause should not be rewarded — no matter how innocent, how incredibly deserving it is of joy and crying out to be loved in a way that only I can love my body. 

So, I’ll wait. Until another problem comes along to distract and I can heal enough to unwrap the gift of my body and find solace in myself. Loving of myself. When the world is not yelling and crying and frustrated — debating the humanity of my mere presence.

Corona Keeps Me Young: An Upside

I’m wearing glasses every day. I rarely wear a bra.

I look in the mirror every 20 minutes and wonder if my body has changed.

I lay awake at night thinking about boys and what it would be like to kiss one.

I wonder what sex will be like.

Meal times mean nothing.

I have a lot of books but only ones written by Roald Dahl are open.

I fantasize about sitting in the sun with a group of friends drinking alcohol. I imagine it will look like an Applebee’s commercial.

I wish I could hangout with my friends without permission.

The freedom of an afternoon bike ride.

My radio is constantly on. My door is always closed.

I fling myself on my bed while on the phone. I lay on my stomach, I twirl my hair.

Oreos and Wild Berry Skittles.

I think I can write poetry. Moreover, I think it is good. I am sure I will be a poet when I'm older.

I am surprised by body hair.

Occasionally, I have to wait for the Internet.

New York City seems sad, wild and scary.

My parents are checking in on me in a way that is caring but I feel is unnecessary.

My friends are chronically available.

I dance in my room. Alone. A lot.

I want to go outside, but I’m afraid I’ll get in trouble.

My period is kind of an exciting event.

I paint and repaint my toenails.

I am 30 13.

Realizations in the Light of Theo Balcomb

Have you ever had the feeling that you’re in a room you have absolutely no right to be in? That was me tonight. But the most unusual aspect was that I was invited by the person being honored. 

Her name is Theo Balcomb and she’s the creator and head of The Daily from the New York Times. The podcast , which started in 2017, was celebrating reaching a billion downloads–yes, you read that correctly, not streams, downloads. One billion. Now, tonight, when I watched her face in a way that would be awkward than if she weren’t being given accolades, it made so much sense to me as to why she had garnered the admiration from the US’s most storied news source as she did. 

To explain that, I have to explain what I know of her. I’ve known Theo for a shockingly short amount of time. Particularly for having been invited to that evening. Even more so, I have never known her in a professional context, so that is not how I shall speak of her. I’ve only known her as a person. As a person, she has greeted me with nothing but overly eager eyes and extremely welcome ‘hello’s’. She has responded to what I have had to say, from tellings of origins of depression and the complexities of being a black American woman abroad to frustrations of New York City wine distributors and opinions on Nicky Cage, with an outrageously fair and even ear. The things I had to say were certainly neither always fair nor even. Oftentimes her listening was decorated with an understanding nod that never corroborated sentiments (though I fucking hope she shared them sometimes) but rather let me know she was there, she was listening. That’s honestly as I know her: a welcome person who is both a safe space and welcoming receptacle for whatever bullshit I want to throw her way under the pretense of “this is my life.”

I guess the best way to say it is that she isn’t exactly like but also not entirely unlike a mother figure saying “I’m listening.” When people go to their mother figures, it’s not to find a partner in crime. It never has been. It’s to find someone who will openly and willingly hear your side of the story–even if you‘re wrong. It’s about speaking to someone who cares even though they may not entirely relate or understand. 

I think this is why I was staring at her face all night. I mean, she is good-looking and was THE lady of honor so it’s not weird, but I think shortly after she took the stage to commemorate the rest of the team, it became clear to me as to why she was there. Why it was HER. Again, I don’t know Theo in a professional context, but I know the environment she creates. If she looks at the news–and all the peripheral pieces of it that make the Daily what it is–the way she looks at me, she gives people meaning. She gives details in a story meaning. She cares about all the random facts that came together to make something that thing. It is for precisely that reason that she can highlight it. She gives stories dimension. When she looks at me, no matter what bullshit story I’m telling, I feel multi-dimensional. I feel important. 

Tonight, I saw within that room, all the ways she has made her gaze, her outlook, transfer through other people. I’ve seen how she’s given the news dimension. How she’s given people so removed from our everyday a depth that we’ve swum in. I saw how she has inserted bits of herself into the stories and that is what have made them more human.

As I said in the beginning, I had no right to be in that room. But I feel so privileged for having the opportunity. If that doesn’t sum up her podcast, I don’t know what does. 

Thank you, Theo. Thank you. 

Necessary Monsters

There is a website I take great joy in. I visit it periodically when I need a little creative nudge  and want to dip my toe in a rabbit hole of the absurd. On their “About” page, they have a quote from Jorge Luis Borges about how the dragon was imagined by man as a way to test our limits. From the depths of our creative mind we created an idea of something so evil and foreign that it takes great courage — and likely teamwork — to face. Borges calls dragons “a necessary monster.”

The site is called the Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments. It is exactly as it sounds. It is a lovely dive into instruments that don’t exist yet have been created — somehow. What draws me to this site is that it is an archive entirely concerned with what could be not with what is or was. In a way you could call it a museum of optimism.

 In reading of these instruments – the sound machine, the cat piano, the torture tron, Euphonia or the ocular Harpsichord to name a few – they become real. I create their non-existent sounds in my head. It forces me to conjure sounds I’ve never heard before, an impressive and difficult feat. Because imaginary sounds aren’t just louder versions of what you already know, they’re not discordant mash-ups of what already exists…but something else entirely. You have to imagine something you’ve never known, something you’ll likely never encounter.

I feel like it’s this push that relates to Borges’ necessary monster…it forces us to confront ourselves, acknowledge boundaries and, perhaps most importantly, conjure what lies beyond them.

I turned 30 earlier this month. It’s not a big deal but it’s also a big deal. Perhaps that’s why I’ve found myself contemplating imaginary boundaries made real as of late.  Like many of these instruments, the importance of this birthday is no more than any other birthday. But by naming it, it becomes something else. 30 signifies an entrance into real adulthood, it’s a nod to youth’s demise and a milestone by which many people feel they should have “it” figured out.

Are these imagined milestones also necessary monsters? They force us to confront ourselves and acknowledge our boundaries — we take critical inventory of our lives and what we’ve built. But it also forces us to conjure what was expected of ourselves, to look beyond. In my imaginary things logic, a milestone should result in concocting all the possibilities of what could be.

My life as a 30-year-old with a house and a perfect job doesn’t exist any more than the ocular harpsichord. But in imagining it, my mind is required to define it. And to think beyond it.

In imagining a dragon, you must also imagine its weaknesses. You imagine the whole thing. We don’t realize how hard at work we are when creating a dragon. It’s peculiar how much man reflects the most vulnerable parts of our mortality in the image of a dragon: fire, size, flight, crazy teeth, living in dark caves, etc…all very real threats to human capability. We concoct a literal mortal enemy. It shows us what we’re afraid of, but it exists only in our heads. Where we fight it–tooth and nail, flaming torches and fearless princes–until we overcome.

If the fear of facing this new era is also what makes me work harder, better, smarter towards living my imagined joy, then I kind of like it.

Is this thing on?

“Start a blog,” they said. “No,” I said. “But really,” they said. “Okay,” I said.

And here we are.

I’m new to the whole thing, but I want to use this space to write about things I feel excited about or intrigued by in both my professional and creative fields. Sometimes it may just be links. Other times it might be reactions to other articles or published works. Still others may be full on essays exploring a topic that I wanted to comment on in a domain where I make the rules.

I’m not sure what’s going to happen. But I’m excited to find out. If I ever say anything that stirs something up in you, please feel free to send me an email. I’d love to get your thoughts.

/ Nereya