In our Watch/Listen/Read this week, Adam and Erika discuss how to find simple joy in difficult times. Favorite books. Favorite songs. Memories of favorite places. And of course their fake viola wars. These things bring joy in times of sorrow and difficulty.
Adam Writes:
So my eReader broke a few days ago. Thankfully I had it intact when I was on the airplane. I get that technology is imperfect. But it still bugs me. Or maybe it bugs me that it bugs me. I can never help hearing all these cliches ricochet throughout my head: It waited until the warranty ran out to break. It just has to show letters. How hard can that be?
Wheel of Time: Doesn’t Anyone Take a Holiday?
Before that I was reading the Wheel of Time on the airplane. Yes. Instead of sleeping. Yes, I tried sleeping. There’s something about a seat that reclines from a 90-degree angle to a 95-degree angle that is not conducive to restfulness. I know I’m not the first to make that observation, but I stand by it nonetheless. It was actually a joy to read on the airplane. Usually it’s not. But I was flying through the pages, heedless of my surroundings.
I’m actually taking a break from Wheel of TIme for a moment. I suspect I’ll finish it when I get back from India. It’s not just that came to the end of the books written by Robert Jordan and am not up to the part written by Brandon Sanderson based on notes and outline by Robert Jordan. Sanderson is doing a fine job of picking up the slack.
And it’s not just that I’m in India and I have more to do than read some two thousand pages of high fantasy. Although it is that, partly.
And perhaps most surprising, it’s not that I read several hundred pages of the series during an intercontinental airplane flight in which I got half a night’s sleep across some thirty hours and it broke my brain. Nah. I don’t sleep well at the best of times and it so happens that a side effect of that for me is that I recover from jet-lag pretty soon after disembarking from the airplane. Score one for the insomniacs!
The Case for Unions in Fantasy Novels
No, it’s actually a much simpler reason. The characters don’t get a break, so I have to take one for them. Confused? I will explain. The Wheel of Time is an almost-unbroken chain of cause-and-effect from the first book through the fourteenth. I don’t mean to say that I found it predictable. Or that anyone reasonably could. Just that the characters go from thing to thing. You never hear about them taking a weekend off from solving the world’s troubles. Or going to the beach for a few days and just chilling the hell out.
When two characters who haven’t seen each other in months sequester themselves behind closed doors to have sex, they are already fully clothed and back to work when any self-respecting lover would still be basking in the afterglow.
Even a series like Avatar: The Last Airbender, which runs at break-neck speed for three seasons, and which, in some ways, has a very similar plot arc to that of Wheel of Time, finds time for the characters to stop and chill every so often.
One of the major themes of the novel is taking time for simple joys.
SPOILER ALERT.
Rand very nearly dooms the world because he loses all sense of joy in his life. Finding that joy again is his major character arc through the second half of the series. So why don’t the other characters provide a foil by showing healthy balance?
Festina Lente: Hurry Slowly
The irony is that Wheel of Time is a classic slow-burn. For over ten thousand pages, the character get themselves ready for an apocalypse one painstaking challenge or dilemma or mini-boss at a time. The best quality of the series is that it gives the characters time to develop; time for us to get to know them at each stage of their development. And yet you only slenderly know someone if you never get to see them at rest. What are these people like when they let someone else carry the weight of the world for a few hours and they go on a fishing trip or play tiddlywinks with their nieces and nephews or other simple pleasures?
It’s not that we never see them knitting or taking tea and biscuits or making leisurely progress across the countryside. It’s that when we see them do those things they always have some ulterior motive for doing so. Some urgent matter they’re talking over from the neck up while casually lounging and knitting from the neck down. Or some piece of information they must wheedle or bludgeon out of a political rival while holding the cup-and-saucer with feigned casualness. Or some enemy they must avoid; the enemy expects them to gallop full-speed along the highways, and so they avoid suspicion by taking their ease along village cow-paths.
In each case, the appearance of relaxation is actually an act and thus is not actually relaxation. Rather, it’s an added difficulty on top of whatever already anxiety-ridden venture the character is already embarked upon.
The Case for Fanfiction
I can understand the joy of reading fanfiction. When I’m armpits-deep in a series like this, all plot and no leisure, I’d like to read a few hundred pages about the extended cast of characters going to a beach or a bowling alley and just spending the evening drinking and gossiping and trying to navigate the awkwardness of their spiderwebbing sexual histories. I never really caught the bug for fanfiction, but perhaps it’s not too late and I’ll surprise you all. Perhaps.
Sunil Abhiman Awachar
Anyway I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that I bought a book the other day. Anuja took me to Champaca Bookstore in a wealthy district towards the center of town. (Vasanth Nagar, for those of you keeping track.) We took a rickshaw there (a motorized taxi with three wheels and only two seats for passengers in back). Traffic in an Indian city is not fun.
The book is called We, the Rejected People of India. It is a book of poems by a professor at Mumbai University. Given the subject matter, it bears mentioning that the poet is of Dalit ancestry, and the book is, among other things, a formal complaint against the rest of India for their cruel treatment of this “untouchable” caste.
It is a forceful, even wrathful collection. If there is any joy to be found it is usually in the vigor and vividness of the poet’s phrasing. This beauty comes through in translation. And it comes through despite the bleakness of the subject matter.
Poetry that Finds the Balance between Reasoned Argument and Primal Scream
The prison of the caste system
Has poisoned the possibility of growing
As a human being (from “A New Planet”)
Or this from “The Woman and the Cow”:
Mother,
In this great country
You were called Saraswati and kept illiterate,
You were called Laxmi and kept poor
But occasionally he is more ambiguous:
Poetry is a line of words
Which cannot be written easily but
Can be erased easily
I had to bring pounds and pounds of snacks on the airplane with me when I came here, so I’ll have plenty of room to bring books home. Too bad I’m not in my twenties anymore. I’ve started to pay attention to what books I buy. And to try to avoid not buying too many. It’s awful.
I’ll end on that note. There’s plenty else I could talk about.
The music I’ve been listening to.
The songs that have been playing on loop in my head in echo of my thoughts.
But let it be for now.
Erika Writes:
Riding the Waves of Fibromyalgia
I’m exhausted. Really worn out. Physically and emotionally just drained. The writing and research I’ve been doing have been hard work. Combine that with being on the verge of a full on fibro flare (which didn’t come with the usual warning signs, or if it did I was too busy to notice,) and I’m crispy like toast.
Self-Imposed Deadlines Can Bring Stability and even Joy in the Face of Chronic Illness
That’s one of the things I like about these weekly Watch/Listen/Read posts though. Because we commit to writing them each week, it forces me to plan for the time to watch, listen and read things that aren’t necessarily only related to the work I’m doing. I have to plan the time in my schedule to disconnect from the work I do, whether it’s for 2 Rules or not, so that I have things to write about and so that I pay attention to them enough to write a little bit. Sure, that’s why some weeks it’s a lot of silly YouTube videos while others it’s long theses on why Beethoven is disappointing. Some weeks it’s seriously examining the media I consume and some weeks it’s all the media equivalent of Pixie Stix. Sometimes it’s both.
Viola Good; Violin Bad (And Other Nuanced Positions)
Adam has written before about his feelings on Stradivarius violins, but as I sit here and listen to Bach partitas for violin and Telemann and Hoffmeister concertos for viola, I am swept away by the richness of viola sounds. There’s a warmth, like a good cup of tea and a pair of fuzzy socks that envelops you as you listen to the richness of the sound, and it’s that incredible alto voice without the screech and squeak of the violin. The word “mellifluous” was created to describe violas and cellos. Sometimes when you can’t concentrate on what needs to be done, going for an old favorite is just the right answer. This was one of my favorite pieces to play and to audition with–even after the really awful scholarship audition I had with it.
I was seventeen, I’d traveled to Washington DC the night before with my mother, and it was very cold. Obviously my viola had been indoors with me overnight, but the auditions were in a basement. I got to the audition with plenty of time, tuned my instrument, warmed up and was finally called into the audition room. I start playing and a minute or so into the piece all of a sudden my C string becomes completely undone. It didn’t slip just a little out of tune, it unwound itself halfway from the peg. I’d never had that happen before in an audition or performance, and I’d only ever had it happen with brand new strings (which I did not have on there. )It was a terrible audition–one of the worst of my life, and yet I still love the piece, and the joy from the violist while playing.
Art to Give us Strength through Difficult Moments
I need that joy this week. Joy and humor. In writing all of the intense stories I’ve been writing lately about “Don’t Say Gay” and Ukraine and Texas turning people into criminals for providing life saving, gender affirming care, I need as much lightness as I can find. I’ve watched countless “It Gets Better” videos including Sir Ian McKellan. An actual gay wizard… not ret-conning and afterthoughts like some other authors.
But I’m not sure there’s been more queer joy for me this week than Kate McKinnon on the Don’t Say Gay bill. And if you don’t recognize the song she sings at the end, it’s Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water,” which is based on a true story.
“Bury Your Gays” vs. “Bury your Gay Stereotypes”
After spending time discussing and dissecting the bury your gays trope, I needed something to counter that. The movie G. B. F. did a good job at centering a queer character who vociferously objects to being reduced to a stereotype (in this case the gay best friend). It’s not a bad movie, nor the best ever. If we’re breaking down tropes, we could really spend some time talking about the way that queer romance automatically seems to raise the rating of a movie and how this one was probably PG-13 for content except that since there were boys kissing other boys it suddenly became that much more adult.
Seriously. To Hell with Disney.
Then again, we live in a world where the Disney CEO puts out a statement saying that the best way they can support the LGBTQ community is by not coming out against Don’t Say Gay legislation but rather by making lgbtq+ friendly content. But their own employees call that into question. Apparently every LGBTQ-friendly scene in a Pixar movie gets reduced to the bare minimum or removed completely.
There is no Joy like the Joy of a Bollywood Dance Party
And sometimes a Bollywood dance number is just right for taking my mind off of things. Thank you Netflix for allowing me to indulge this love so much more easily than having to actually go and rent videos. The only negative is that, when I watch, I’ve got to be able to pay enough attention to read subtitles when I watch them. Anyway. I ended up watching Three Idiots, which is a coming of age story and satire about the Indian education system. And there’s catchy music.
Pining for the Pines
My homesick self also watched Invasion of the Pines, which is a short documentary about a July 4 tradition on Fire Island. I love this tradition, and it’s another reminder that civil disobedience can be celebratory. And If a community keeps it up, it can become a tradition. Fire Island is a barrier island off the coast of Long Island. It’s a fascinating place with no private cars–people get around on foot, using wagons to transport their things.
Among the communities on the island there are two iconic queer communities–the Fire Island Pines and Cherry Grove. In July of 1976, after a bar in the Pines refused to serve the Cherry Grove Homecoming Queen (who had arrived in drag. ) As a result, an entire crowd of drag queens dressed up, hired a water taxi and descended on the Pines in protest, led by Panzi. The Invasion of the Pines is now an annual July 4 event, where people gather in drag at The Ice Palace (part of a resort on the island) and travel via water taxi from Cherry Grove to the Pines where they’re received by screaming visitors and fans.
It’s turned from protest into celebration, and it’s a special kind of beautiful. The documentary runs under ten minutes, I think, and you can watch it here. I hope you find the joy in it that I did.
Vampires
When I’ve managed to pull my head out of research this week, it’s been mostly for vampires. Sexy ones, not sparkly ones. It’s been a long time since I’ve read them, but Poppy Z. Brite’s stories are just delicious. And I needed short stories this week so why not go for short and sexy, right?If I’m drowning in trauma, I need things that feel good. It’s self care. It’s time to replace my copies of Love in Vein I and II, but they’re still just as delicious as when I read them at 20 years old, curled up with a girlfriend, reading the good parts aloud to each other. And there are lots of good parts.
Spoken Word Poetry
I’ve been reading (and listening to) Sam Sax again, too. As I’ve been working on the first piece I’m intentionally writing as a spoken word piece, it’s been good to listen to him, to read his work and to read it aloud. And since March 10 was National Women and Girls HIV Awareness, in addition to remind you of what I wrote about the fortieth anniversary of the first reports ofclusters of pneumonia cases, I bring you On Prep or on Prayer
-On PrEP or on Prayer [spare us your burial rites. ]
-On PrEP or on Prayer [when I say pre-exposure prophylaxis ]
I’m hoping for a few more Pixie Stix next week. I’d love to know what you recommend.
