(if you go to the link above for this, you can download this sourcebook and read it yourself! i highly recommend it, whether you live in minnesota or not, the information is pertinent and necessary to a conversation about restoring justice and work towards decolonizing all of the indigenous land stolen across the u.s. and around the world.)
I could probably write a blog entry about each of these, and perhaps I will, but for right now, I am working on absorbing the information and using that knowledge to further various discussions I am having in art, politics, history, and life. But if you’ve read any of them and want to chat with me about it, hit me up! Or if seeing this list inspires you to read any of them, then all the better. I think they are all excellent, informative, and thought-provoking resources.
Thanks to Simon, Scottie, Jane, and Josina for recommendations and loans on all of these materials. I am so lucky to be surrounded by such well-read folks.
i’m working on a new piece. thinking about nuclear power so much lately has brought a lot of childhood memories up surrounding my dad’s involvement in the coal industry. and while i am critical of fossil fuel power sources and the means by which fossil fuels are retrieved from their million year old resting places, i also have a lot of reckoning and digging into my own life experience and those of my close family members that conflicts with those critiques.
i always try to start from a place of empathy. or at least a place of observation. what are the stories that come up? who are those affected? what did it feel like? where do the stories reside in time and space? i also try to start with a micro view and move out to a macro viewpoint. slowly, like a very gentle zoom out.
some of the answers to those questions are complex. the strongest memories of my childhood come from 1988-1992. i moved from a child to an adolescent; i moved from a catholic school to a public school; i began to understand myself in bigger, deeper, and greater ways. it was also, perhaps, the first time i held sadness in my heart so deeply that it might have been depression. i wanted to fit in. i wanted friends. i wanted to be popular. the wants of a middle schooler. i started my period, i was mortified in gym class everyday that i didn’t shave my legs, i went bra shopping at dawahare’s with my mom, i had braces, and i perfected the use of hairspray and a round brush to get those big big bangs.
during that whole time, i lived in pikeville, kentucky. it is small. according to the US Census, pikeville’s 2010 population count is 6,903. in 1990, it was 6,324. every spring, pikeville has an annual celebration called Hillbilly Days.
while some of my friends were growing up in big cities or on the coasts, i was deep in those hills playing in the creeks, hidden cemeteries, and abandoned coal mines i found in my hollow (pronounced: “holler,” y’all). while some of my friends’ parents were taking them to protests against the gulf war, i was at hillbilly days collecting “support our troops” stickers. i didn’t even know people were against the war, though i remember being glued to the television with a mixture of horror and confusion watching footage of bombs being dropped on iraq without much discrepancy.
in many ways, i feel very very distant from that little girl. but she has a lot of stories still to share with me. so i am trying to be patient and open to hearing them. gathering them like precious eggs. and developing just the right mixture of content and context to release them into.
Doors at 6PM, Event starts at 7PM, with brief after-show reception.
TICKETS $5-15 pay what you can. And they are going fast. (You can get them here or fee free by calling 612-825-8949.)
Kevin Obsatz and Elliott Durko Lynch present the world premiere of their short film “Empire Builder,” with an evening of all-star short performances on the subject of parents and other generational complexities.
This event features performative contributions from an amazing roster of local artists:
Molly Van Avery
Charles Campbell
Jaime Carrera presenting “Realness” [excerpted version]
with Adam Miller & Kylelonious Potter
Heidi Eckwall
Jeffrey Lusiak
Megan Mayer with Mike Hallenbeck
and Kelley Meister.
The short film “Empire Builder” was shot on 16mm black and white film, hand-developed in buckets of photo chemicals, and transferred to pristine, glorious High Definition video. It will be shown on a brand-new HD video projector, installed at the Bryant Lake Bowl Theatre just in time for this event. The film documents a three-day odyssey to Milwaukee by train to visit Elliott’s ailing father in the hospital; it presents the events of the journey in flashes and glimpses, as imperfect and fragmented as human memory itself.
the first snowfall to speak of happened yesterday.
i had to remind myself that snow is way better than rain. because you don’t get as wet, it’s pretty, it’s quiet. even as i trudged back into my house to search for my ice scraper that i took out of the car probably last may or even july. even as my wrists screamed when the snow tucked into that warm, sensitive spot between the sleeve and the glove. even as i gingerly walked from place to place atop the thin layer of snow topping the thick layer of ice.
so, as winter emerges and takes over, besides adding more layers and wearing different shoes, i wanted to ruminate on other changes that may take place.
such as the brightness. covering everything is one of the most reflective materials (white snow, clear ice) makes for a very bright winter. not gloomy at all.
such as crows. the crows make their hardy way around the city, the only birds i’ll see for the next 4 months.
I’ve never been a huge fan of Jane Fonda, but she just seems to keep making appearances in my life. My first memory of her is on the cover of my mom’s copy of her aerobics record (yes! aerobics on vinyl! ha!).
Many years later, I was in undergrad in Savannah, Georgia. Jane Fonda was to be presented with the lifetime achievement award at the Savannah Film Fest in 2001, and as part of the festivities, there was a juried art show on the theme of “Jane Fonda: Life and Film” (or something like that). One of my professors was very excited and encouraged us to submit artwork. As part of that encouragement, she screened Barbarella for my class. I’ve never felt quite so awkward watching a movie in class as I did watching Barbarella.
In addition to Barbarella, the other notable Jane Fonda moment was the protestors! Every day of the film festival, a group of Vietnam veterans protested outside the theater with signs like “Go Home Hanoi Jane.” I learned that Jane had been very outspoken about the Vietnam war and even visited North Vietnam. I was baffled by the juxtaposition of these two images: Barbarella and “Hanoi Jane.”
I just recently watched two of her flims, 9 to 5 and the unfortunately-named The China Syndome.
I couldn’t believe it had taken me this long to see 9 to 5, because I was so enamored with the movie. The costumes and the three stars, especially. What a treat to have Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, and Dolly Parton in one movie, all looking so young and sweet.
After the 9 to 5 stint, I heard about The China Syndrome while doing research for my performance Dearest. I spent the last couple days watching it, fully enthralled by this thriller based around a nuclear power plant meltdown that premiered just a couple months before I was born in 1979, though I will say the editing of the film leaves something to be desired.
And while I did think the movie was extremely thrilling (I had to stop the movie several times during the climax because the tension was building too high for me!) and informative about nuclear power, I was curious about the feminist politics at play within the film. Apparently Jane Fonda’s character is relegated to doing “soft news” because she is a woman, and as such, she is also subject to leers, ass-slaps, and inueundos like you wouldn’t believe. But I didn’t see a lot of retaliation in the story either on the character’s end or through the storytelling to relieve any of the sexism and misogyny of its power. Just some vague moments where she’s trying to break into the “hard news”. Big disappointment. However, when watching the deleted scenes, there is a somewhat gratifying cut scene in which Jane gets supremely harassed by the main anchor man (“Wanna play cars?” he says before grabbing her chest with both hands and honking) and then pushes him into a pool. But it was a little too gratuitous on the sexual end to really be that gratifying. I do kind of wish I had a video of that to show you, all the same.
All in all, I’m still somewhat curious by the complexity and enigma that appears to be Jane Fonda. I guess I’ll sit back and wait for the next sighting.
Oh, and one more thing. The term “China syndrome” refers to the nuclear reactor melting down through the core of the earth all the way to China, a problematically Western-centric viewpoint of the earth to say the least.
i was going to write something political. something that brings together all the emotions that are surging through my heart, all the inspiration that’s been rushing around me as oakland brings it and i know my pals are in the throes of it, all the anger and outrage at the myriad of issues that just keep getting thrown at us. but i don’t have it in me.
i’m trying to squeeze that out into some art pieces.
so in the mean time, i will write about something sillier. a nostalgic story brought on by random web surfing…
so good. anyway, i was cruising around his website and noticed that he had made a lot of music videos, including AIR’s kelly watch the stars. i’d never watched the video, so i gave it a look:
it’s a pretty good video.
and then i was thinking about the first time i heard the song.
i had just moved to savannah, georgia. i’d transferred schools, from a huge state university in missouri to the smallish art school down there. i had to re-take most of my art foundation classes (like drawing I and II, life drawing, and even 2D design) because they didn’t transfer. so there i was, sitting in my drawing I class with a bunch of freshmen (i was in my 3rd year, and it seemed to me anyway that those 2 years made a big difference). and this girl befriended me. as part of wooing my friendship, she made me a mixtape. if i had known then what i know now – like for instance, i’m gay and she was probably hitting on me – things might have taken a different course. unfortunately, i was terribly naive, and despite the very sweet message she wrote inside (see below), i never did call her for a “listening session.”
Yesterday, I went to the post office. I haven’t spent a lot of time out in public places in several weeks, due to the mycoplasmal pneumonia, so it was sort of an exciting thing to do. It’s almost as if I have been on vacation or traveling for a while, because everything outside my apartment seems new, different, and immensely interesting–a whole new world. I know that sounds odd, but that is truly how it feels in moments, albeit brief and fleeting.
Upon walking into the post office, I notice immediately that there is a lot of conversation happening. It takes a second to realize who is talking to whom, but quickly I realize there is a mild altercation erupting between a young Somali woman and an older African-American man. They are not near each other in line, and so that is why I didn’t realize who was interacting when I first walked in. And since it was taking me a minute to take in this flurry of activity, I also didn’t catch the first things that were said. But what I did hear was this:
-”Why don’t you go back to where you came from? something unintelligible
-”I live here, and you are also from Africa and don’t you forget it.”
-”I was born here in St. Paul.” And then he laughed. And the young white guy in front of me chuckled too. Like they had some strange inside joke about being Americans that this woman clearly did not have.
I stood there clutching my packages to my chest, my eyes becoming slits and my fierce look turning my mouth into a tight line. My breathing was quick and my heart was racing. Clearly, I didn’t think anything was funny about what he said. And I wanted to say something to the woman or to the men to state my opinion on the matter. But I am not bold like that. Especially having been wracked with illness for weeks, I felt weaker in spirit and body than I normally would.
They did not say anything else to each other. And the silence that usually sits over people in the post office or other government queues settled back over us all. I spent the first few minutes wondering what I could have said, after the most obvious moment to say something had passed me by. And then I spent the rest of the time contemplating my life, the lives of everyone in that room, the places people intersect, and why intolerance seems inescapable.
A couple days ago, I watched this moment of footage from one of the Republican debates:
I felt hollow and cold hearing that triumphant cheering, as I sit here, uninsured and (for all intents and purposes right now) unemployed, recovering from an illness that probably would not have killed me, since it is not the kind of pneumonia that usually does, but it could. It was possible. And I was awfully sick. And I wondered if that person would cheer if I had died. Yes, he probably would have. Why is that?
Why is compassion for others people feel increasingly rare?
Actually, I know the answer to that question. The answer is that it is just my own feeling. My own interpretation.
And while I am not a history buff, I am a rather big nerd who did enjoy my history classes. And I am quite a reader. Especially lately, as I plowed through several depressing novels (my favorite kind) whilst convalescing. After the deep sadness (and strong memory associations from my own childhood living in Appalachia and then as an adult in the South) of Bastard Out of Carolina, I picked up Toni Morrison’s A Mercy.
A Mercy is set in the 1680s, and the action takes place in the colonies of Maryland and Connecticut (though I don’t think they are specific about the latter–that is my guess). The novel is filled with the stories of slaves, indentured servants, masters and mistresses. The indentured servants are both from Europe (sent to the Americas as punishment or to work off debt) and from the new world (including white Europeans and native Americans). Also, there is one free African man, a blacksmith.
Reading about American history is always a saddening task. I love fiction, because I love being able to place myself inside the stories. And so, while I know it was not a specific historical account, the book, of course, was an incredible and well-researched (as all of her books are) look into American history. And what I saw there was very little compassion. People treated as animals, as livestock, as chattel, as less-than-human. (And of course, also very much compassion, as her characters are thoroughly human. But primarily, it was the moments where compassion was lacking that resonated in my daily life.)
With a history like this, it is no wonder at all that compassion is fairly low on the list of “American values.”
My dear friend Mr. Strikeback is a historian and scholar. We spoke recently about his PhD advisor, Anne Enke, and how she looks at history by finding the stories of the resistors. Often when looking at history, we use our powerful hindsight perception. We see failures and successes through that lens. However, the voices of resistance become obliterated using that lens. In order to ground ourselves, today, in hope for a future, it is helpful to look closely at history to find those moments of resistance. To see that not everyone agreed with slavery, to see that not everyone agreed with war, to see that not everyone agrees with the death penalty or nuclear proliferation or even the bailout of Wall Street (yes, I see the resistances happening right this very moment! And I am so grateful.).
As a post-script, yes, I have read Mr. Zinn’s incredible People’s History. Resistance celebrated again and again.
