Twenty-Twelve has been quite a year. In the spirit of new beginnings, you can now find me here: http://rachelannbrickner.tumblr.com/.

VOTE

So nervous for this election. Feels like the first day of school. 

“One thing that is always true, if you let it be, is that writing a book, or making a movie, or being a writer, is a series of small humiliations. It’s basically in how you take things. There will always be a club you can’t get into. You never get to stop paying your dues. Even when you get in the club, the door changes, the new person guarding the rope doesn’t recognize you. The new person is an editor at a magazine you’ve written at for years. That’s part of why I love actors. It’s such a pure art form, to put oneself out there for ridicule, to be made fun of, to be shredded as if mauled by a tiger. The endless auditions where you are asked to cry, or take your shirt off, in front of strangers. And then they don’t call you back. Sometimes they say they’ll call you back, but they still don’t. Emotionally, acting has to be the most difficult thing. To maintain ego in the face of constant rejection. Acting is a metaphor for life multiplied. Acting is filled with rejection, at every level. But you have to always go all the way, otherwise there’s no point, and you won’t do well if you don’t. That’s true of all of the arts, depending on your definition of art. And then you have to feel safe, and raw, let your skin down around your ankles like a banana’s peel, stand naked and bleeding, and then go again.”

Stephen Elliott, The Daily Rumpus, 10 October 2012

Wholeheartedly

Recommend this to you. It made me swoon.

It’s been very busy: started a new job, visitors, went East, found myself a runner, one draft of a screenplay later, the compulsion to wear heels, hair’s longer than ever, haunted by a story of a middle aged man, Faulkner obsessed, in the middle of five zillion books.

Strangely, this fashion documentary reminded me of the alacrity someone else’s love of storytelling gives me.

Weekend song #3

Finally got around to listening to the new Liars record, WIXIW, going round and round.

“Even here down under, on the other side of the world, I run into an American who begins complaining about what’s happening to our country, how awful our politics has become, how hopeless everything seems. I stop him before his rant turns into a wail. ‘What are you doing about it?’ I ask. ‘Well,’ he sputters, ‘nothing. Nothing can be done.’

Nothing can be done? Bullshit. If those who spent the better part of their lives seeking civil rights, voting rights, women’s suffrage, the right to unionize and collectively bargain for better wages and working conditions, laws protecting the environment, a 40-hour workweek with time and a half for overtime, pure food and drug laws, Social Security, unemployment insurance, an end to the Vietnam War, and countless other sensible and necessary reforms had the same view, our nation would be in far worse shape than it is today. Cynicism is the greatest enemy of reform.”

Robert Reich, 2 August 2012

Meaningful distraction

Looking forward to reading The Principles of Uncertainty.

Weekend song #2

BB Hardcore sent this to me today and I am mesmerized, not only by this entrancing cover of one of my favorite teenage songs, but also because Dietrich is looking so beautiful here. It may be time to dig back into her filmography. If you haven’t seen Blonde Venus, you totally should — a blond afro and somewhat (okay, I find it to be kind of a lot) offensive dance and song sequence called “Hot Voodoo” being one of the many reasons why.

Emotion and Robots

       This was a fun little read. A great introduction on how emotion has been studied — what is currently known and unknown — and how emotions serve, yet are also capable of paralyzing or endangering us. I was most interested in Evans discussion of emotions, consciousness, and robotics. It was the most fascinating section of this small book (meaning it freaked me out the most), and it’s something I’d be interested in reading further about (there’s suggested further reading at the end of the book!)

The Commitment

Dan Savage’s The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and My Family was published in 2005, the same year Savage and his boyfriend of ten years finally decided to tie the knot in Canada, unable to legally wed in their home state of Washington. In 2012, Amendment 1 passed in North Carolina, banning gay marriage, and a President of the United States declared for the first time that he endorses same-sex marriage. This is the noisy carrefour at which our country stands concerning equal rights, the noisy carrefour Savage’s narrative brilliantly captured seven years earlier.

I’ve been a dedicated fan of Dan Savage’s column Savage Love and his hilarious and informative Savage Love Podcast for several years. However, I never read any of his books until The Commitment. Shortly after turning the first page, I found myself awake late into the night, laughing out loud at Savage’s neurotic retelling of a cross-country road trip he, his boyfriend Terry, and their six-year-old son DJ took to meet Savage’s family in Saugatuck. He gives us a comical story about how he ended up walking their one-eyed, deaf, slightly brain-damaged poodle (the choice of their ostensibly straight son DJ) in Billings, Montana, followed by:

“On that night in Billings…I took an objective view of the situation: a gay man walking a deranged and deformed toy poodle near midnight in a redneck part of a redneck town in a redneck state—my chances for survival looked bleak. Oh, I like to think I’m not at all that gay looking. I like to think that I can pass for straight when I must. Passing is something all gay men need to do from time to time. However out you are, however over it your mom is, there are times when even the biggest fag doesn’t want his homosexuality to be an issue.”

Although sardonic, Savage still pointedly expresses the real fear he feels in certain parts of America as an out gay man. All of his imagined fears end up being nothing but that—imagined—which for me, points even more emphatically to the real threat and lack of acceptance those who identify as “gay,” “bisexual,” “LGBT,” “queer,” or “other” are forced to often feel. In a country that does not legally validate or protect the union of anyone other than those who are straight identified, Savage begs the question, why bother with marriage?

Through the various partnerships on display in his family as they vacation in Saugatuck (and I should also note, take DJ to a program where he would see and meet other same-sex parents and their children), Savage explores the contradictions rife in heterosexual-only marriage. His straight brother Billy, for example, has a girlfriend, but is adamant he will never get married or have children; Savage on the other hand has been practically married for almost a decade, having begun a family with his boyfriend. If anything, Savage’s straight brother lives “The Gay Lifestyle” as much as Savage lives “The Straight Lifestyle.” He explains:

“The Straight Lifestyle was only ‘straight’ because gay people weren’t allowed to form lasting relationships, or to have families, things we weren’t allowed to do because for centuries straight people insisted we were incapable of it. And how did straight people know we couldn’t form lasting relationships? Because we didn’t form them. And why didn’t we? Because discrimination, hatred, and bigotry warped our lives…And our relationships—all conducted under the threat of imprisonment, some conducted post-lobotomy—because these relationships weren’t perfect in every possible way, that imperfection used to justify the very persecution that warped our lives in the first place.”

There is a central question in the The Commitment that Savage must ultimately face when pressed by fellow advice columnist Carolyn Hax, “Do you believe in marriage, or don’t you? Do your values demand it, or not?” Savage answers, “yes, I do believe in marriage. I do.” But what difference does it make when one lives in a state unwilling to validate the kind of marriage he would be entering into? It matters because as Savage’s Catholic, preacher mother says, “Jerkos have told you both that you’re not worthy of marriage. You could flip off the jerkos by doing the right thing and getting married anyway.”

I love The Commitment because it is ultimately a story about characters forced to reckon their inner desires and fears with a world that is often working against them. It forces the reader to ask themself important questions about what they believe in and what they would do if their truest self did not line up with the current zeitgeist. I love The Commitment because I cried when Savage and Terry’s son says, “You and Dad have to stay together forever…I want you and Daddy to promise, to pinky promise, to seriously and forever promise, and no breaking your promise,” even though he thinks his dads shouldn’t marry throughout the majority of the book because boys don’t marry other boys—at least not very much yet. I love The Commitment because it is a book that reminds me of the importance of family and the right to choose who it is you will love, cherish, and honor as long as you shall live.