Passover and More (Watch/Listen/Read)

Erika Writes:

Passover Prep

Preparation for Passover has been underway here, which has meant finding an even more careful balance between doing what needs to be done and resting enough. Sure, I can rest once the holiday begins, but who wants to celebrate a holiday when you’re already feeling worn out. Especially one celebrating freedom–something I’ve learned to appreciate in a very different way as managing disability has become a bigger part of my day-to-day decision making. 

And of course, with the ongoing Passover preparation, it means a lot more music to listen to than other things as I go through the tasks. But then… what to listen to? It turns out that a mix of playlists—some 90s music and some of my queer music favorites have been motivating me to get ready for Passover and helping me to write about the first time I kissed a girl.

All the physical prep work for Passover has left me kind of drained and needing a lot of rest. It wouldn’t be Passover without a viewing of “Let My Babies Go”, the Passover episode of Rugrats. It’s a remarkably accurate retelling of the story, and it makes me smile.

Ani DiFranco didn’t Make me Queer. Tracy Chapman Did.

I know there’s a meme that’s been making the rounds on Facebook and Twitter lately about how Ani DiFranco made girls queer, but I must have been ahead of the curve there. I’d fallen in love with Tracy Chapman’s first album at 13, and with the Indigo Girls not much later. While Nomads Indians Saints had come out about nine months before that summer, I think we wore out our tapes of their eponymous second album that year. “Closer to Fine” is still one of my go-to songs when I need to feel things, especially when I need to find equilibrium. (Not long after my Dad died, I can remember driving with that song turned up very loudly, on repeat, singing along with it and crying until I’d released that particular bundle of grief.)

I’m Bisexual Lady Stealthdyke

Bisexual erasure is a topic that’s come up in a couple of conversations this week, too. I could probably say a lot about that, but I did use the phrases “stealthqueer” and “stealthdyke” to describe myself. I have this idea for a story about Lord and Lady Stealthdyke, but I’m not a fiction writer and don’t know how to turn it from seed into story. Something Victorian. Emily Dickinson inspired, perhaps. Maybe someday. I’m still growing. Meanwhile, as I think about Emily Dickinson and Susan Gilbert, I’ll share this, which came up on one of my queer playlists.

Threesome

I also continued my “return to the queer 90s” theme with a viewing of the movie Threesome. The movie came out six months before I did. The student activity board actually featured it as part of the fall film series on campus that year. I’d have probably loved the movie just because Josh Charles was in it, but there was something more about it that I understood at the time, not just the way Eddy (played by Charles) was trying to figure out his own sexuality, but the complex relationship between the three characters and the unrequited love. It’s also an excellent example of the different ways sexuality is viewed along gender lines–the “it’s not gay if it’s in a three way” trope, for example. It’s still a favorite movie of mine. And an incredible soundtrack, too. I’m especially fond of U2’s cover of Patti Smith’s “Dancing Barefoot.”

Feel-good TV: The Good Place and Schitt’s Creek

I’ve also rewatched The Good Place. When I want something comfortable and familiar, I’ve been turning to The Good Place or Schitt’s Creek. Ethics, positive energy, I don’t know what it is, but it just feels nice. I watched season one of the Australian show Why Are You Like This again as well. I’ve yet to see anything about season 2, but I’m hoping it will come back. I definitely feel the generational differences between the characters on the show, but I also enjoy some of the ways they look at the world. And the earnest effort by Penny to make positive change in the world, even if her efforts often backfire. 

Fear of Flying by Erica Jong

Really, it’s been a “Return to the early 90s” week in a lot of ways. I began to reread Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying, which is a book that plays an important role in the story I told about kissing a girl for the first time. While the book itself was published in the 1970s, and is, in fact, older than I am, I first read it in the early 90s, nearly 20 years after its initial publication. And wow, was it educational. I find the content far less shocking now than I did when I first picked it up but the writing is still vivid and compelling and I still love the book.

It’s a book that was controversial upon release for the way it portrayed female sexuality, and while I’m sure the controversy about it had died down by the time I read it, it was still eye opening and educational for me. Reading Fear of Flying helped me develop my own understanding of sexuality. And the idea that I was allowed to be a sexual person. And that it’s okay to like it. (My adolescence, which spanned the late 80s and early 90s was filled with lots of scary, sex-negative messages. The fear and stigma surrounding HIV could be felt everywhere.) 

Poems for Passover

The 30 Days, 30 Poems project is still ongoing, of course, and so I’ve been reading a great deal for that. Halfway through the month and I still haven’t been able to get so many of the poets I was hoping to bring in posted yet. I was introduced to the work of Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai recently, and as beautiful as the poems are in English, I wish I could read them in Hebrew. There is a lot more reading to do, but the work is beautiful and I will enjoy exploring it. I was hoping to get Kyle Lukoff’s new book this week, but that didn’t happen. I’m sure I will get it soon, and I know that will be a treat. 

And as I prepare for Passover, I’ve listened to this poem a few times.

Adam Writes:

Happy Passover, everyone! And (continued) Ramadan Mubarak!

I think I’m the opposite of a culture critic. Here I am writing a column basically every week about my media habits and at least six weeks out of ten, I’m rereading Pride and Prejudice or Lord of the Rings or another old favorite. And relistening to those Bach sonatas and partitas, or, if I’m feeling really jaunty and modern, Sibelius. Don’t get me wrong. Those books are amazing. And Bach and Sibelius are amazing. I will literally fight you (and, alas, probably lose, but it’s the thought that counts).

Creature of Habit

So this week I managed to stretch my boundaries and start… Sense and Sensibility. Oh, don’t give me that look. Mind your own business. No I’ve never gotten around to reading it before. What? You want to read the Passover Haggadah every year and I don’t say anything. Let me have this. Anyway it’s made me think about why I keep going back to Austen. I do like the guaranteed-happy-ending format of her romances. But most of the story is not taken up by the happy ending. Most of the story is taken up with people saying rude and sarcastic things to each other under the cover of politeness. And, finally, that’s what appeals to me.

I don’t know if I’ve told this story before in these pages. But when I used to teach the SATs, I would recommend certain books as a way to build vocabulary and teach reading comprehension. One of the authors whose works kept coming up was Austen. One time, I recall getting pushback from a student: “I tried to read Pride and Prejudice, and it was so boring! They just sit around talking!” I said: Try rereading a passage or two with this in mind: these people who are sitting in their beautiful parlors, chatting politely… HATE each other. They’re all scheming against each other. Practically at each other’s jugular a lot of the time. But are too polite to say so in so many words.

What Jane Austen has Taught Me…

I think one of the things Austen has taught me is that polite social situations are not only toxic but even subtly violent. She was the consummate artist of the micro-aggression, 200 years before we had a name for such things. Austen’s England was, like her novels, scrupulously polite over a core of violence. In Austen’s lifetime, Great Britain went to war in North America at least twice (She was born in 1775… remember that little dustup we had?) as well as about ten separate conflicts in India. Plus several more in Africa. Plus Napoleon, which, to be fair, wasn’t all on them.

You wouldn’t think to look at the tranquil English countryside of Austen’s works that, around the world, cannon are firing, bayonets are being fixed to muskets, and soldiers are dying of cholera before even getting to the battlefield. If any of this gets referenced in the novels at all, it’s in passing. Or it’s hidden beneath a veil. “So and so went to Town to conclude some business.” Business likely means trade. And trade likely means there are slaves involved. Or at least coerced labor that is slavery in all but name.

And through it all, Miss Bingley is sitting in the drawing room, commenting on how fine Mr. Darcy’s handwriting is (she probably thinks the “D” is particularly well-shaped) and Mr. Collins is impressed with how many courses Lady Catherine’s cooks are serving for supper. I’m obviously not the first person to make this argument. But it struck me with particular force this time through. And it’s made more poignant by the fact that Pride and Prejudice (the Pride-half, anyway) is about a man who… just keeps misreading social situations.

Happy Autism Acceptance Month, Everyone!

I find myself relating to Darcy more and more every time I read this book. The toxic masculinity that Darcy has to grow out of, sure. That should be familiar to all of us if we are sufficiently self-aware. But look at how much more eloquent he is in writing than in speech. I don’t mean when he engages in repartee in some salon. There, he can manage. I mean the scene where Lizzie refuses his proposal and he is caught up short for words. But then the next morning he presents her with a letter than he has apparently spent all night writing (except for the time it took to arrange his clothing and hair) and the letter does what his speech was unequal to the task of doing: it knocks Lizzie on her ass.

But it does more than that. The second half of his letter (in which he details the sins of George Wickham) is a well-deserved haymaker. But in the first half of the letter, he just admits that he was wrong and that’s it. He is sensitive, generous, articulate… where is this Mr. Darcy in conversation? All I can say is: I can relate.

Darcy and Autism

I have never received a formal diagnosis of autism but… I find myself nodding along when people talk about autistic behaviors and coping-mechanisms. We can’t all be as rich as Mr. Darcy. Quite literally the planet would not support it. And I won’t lie and say that self-awareness is free. It’s not. Introspection requires time and leisure. And both time and leisure cost money. Still, I hope that the lessons of a book like Pride and Prejudice become and remain available to us all. Yes, Mr. Darcy is autistic (as with micro-aggression, Austen is using describing something that later comes to be codified by psychologists and philosophers). But autism isn’t an excuse. His shabby behavior hurts people.

Pride and Prejudice is hands-down one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. But there are lots of funny books. And I do think that, ultimately, it’s Mr. Darcy who keeps me coming back. The hope he represents that an introverted person can grow out of his shell. The hope he represents that a toxically masculine person can be better than his upbringing.

It would be a significantly poorer book if Mr. Darcy were portrayed as the bad guy because he mistook social cues. Or if Mr. Darcy were portrayed as the good guy because everyone else doesn’t know how to navigate his needs. It’s the book that it is because Austen doesn’t write good guys and bad guys. She writes people who care about their fellow human and people who do not.

Against the unacknowledged background of slavery and blood diamonds and cotton and tea and the fourth Anglo-Mysore War and the fifth Xhosa War and…

Goddamnit, Jane.