…soft twist annnnnnnnd, SIGH. Cleopatras out for the pouring. Oh, how a virtual Cristal toast is delicious! “Ooh lala lalalalalala”. (note for the connoisseurs: I know those are not the best glasses. I just liked the sound of it.)
My last question – I’m not sure if you got it because my computer did something funky – was about Children of a Lesser God and aftershock as seizures. (Kelley’s note: Yep, here it is, sorry for the delay.) Well, if you got it, then what I’m about to say will make sense. And if you didn’t, then I’ll ask all over again later.
My comment is about that access you were talking about earlier. I didn’t give it much thought until I asked my seizure question. Outside of this pub, I would never ask you a question about seizures. Like, at a reading/signing thing… there’s no way I would raise my hand and say, Well, I have juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (JME) and I was just wondering about Scully’s aftershock episode…. etc., etc. I mean, even in the pub, it took me 4 or 5 questions to get to it. My last question was really my first. It’s just a thing I don’t talk about unless I have to (teachers, employers, new friends). Outside the pub, I probably wouldn’t ask any questions at all. I’d wait for someone else to ask the same question in my head. Lame, I know. So, for me, this kind of access is cool because I can ask what I really want to ask. I think a lot of people are afraid of asking “stupid questions.” But then you get to a point where you just say, “Fuck it, I want to know this”. Anyone else here a “But why?/Yeah, but what if?” kid in school? I had no problem asking all kinds of questions when I was younger. Pissed most of my teachers off. I feel a huge ramble session coming on, so I’m going to stop right here.
Congratulations!!!
Lindsey
p.s. In my need-to-know more kick, I discovered that there is cow blood in chewing gum. Fascinating.
Serious ick. Cow blood belongs in steak, not in Wrigley’s.
Virtual Pint is definitely a lower-risk experience than raising one’s hand at a public event. That’s part of the point. People are vulnerable even in the dream pub, but maybe not as much. And it’s a way for people to “see” me who may never come to a reading or signing. Here, just as at a public event, people can reach out to me if they choose, or get a sense of me without having to reveal themselves. But if no one raises their hand (in either scenario), then the conversation runs out of steam pretty quickly. No fun there.
One of the big perks of my aging process turns out to be a diminished fear of personal lameness. I am relieved. I was one of those kids who wouldn’t raise my hand unless I knew the answer, and was mortally afraid of having people think I was stupid. This same fear as an adult has sometimes kept me from taking a risk with someone I admire. Oh, they’ll think I’m dumb. I’ll look like an asshole. I want them to see me for the singular amazing person that I am, but to them I’ll just be another sappy fan.
And that’s quite possibly true. It’s a hard thing to know that some people have a bigger place in my emotional space than I have in theirs. And that I’ll never even have a chance to tell some of them how much impact their work has had on me, how much it means. How it has shaped some essential corner or curve of my self. The thing about touching more people is that there seems to be less and less actual contact. I go to U2 concerts because it’s amazing to share space with those four men, but does that mean I’m actually connecting with them? Only in the way that I am an atom of audience, a part of the larger whole that is really all they see. And yet that’s better (for me, for them) than watching it on TV.
What does it mean? I’m not sure, but it has something to do with connection and access and with my increased willingness to let go of what I think the experience should be, and just give it up to whatever the experience is. And take the risk: say the thing that is true for me, and if I look or feel like an asshole, well, it certainly won’t be the first time.
Access is an interesting and slippery notion. Nicola and I talk about it sometimes over beer. (They sure do drink a lot! Kelley and Nicola wouldn’t have made it without beer, would they, Dad? No, they wouldn’t, and that’s a fact.1) What I yearn for is to be best friends with the people I admire. What I actually think is reasonable to hope for is an open door to say something and have it be heard. So that’s what I try to offer here.
How arrogant is it to create this space? It’s some arrogant, to be sure (as well as fun). And I hope I’m being clear: I don’t think I’m such a celebrity that people should be lining up with their questions. But I’m on record as saying that the point of my work is to explore and to connect, and I hope that here there is an open door to do both.
1 With apologies to JRR Tolkien.
Door wide open for the sappy fans. Karina is a drooling sappy fan. *waves hi*
The more I age, the more grateful I am for all the crap I had to put up with when I was a kid. I’m really skilled at embarrassing myself and just going, “Oh, well…”
I was the kid with the hand glued to the ceiling. Always asking questions during class. And giving my opinions. I even had constant arguments with my fourth grade math teacher because she was explaining fractions all wrong. Oh, I knew my fractions, my engineer parents were big on fractions. They even sat down with my teacher and helped her figure them out. By the end of the school year, I thought the Miss hated me. But she didn’t. She told me it had been great to have a student who seemed to care more about math than she did. Teacher=people I admire. They usually like to know how much you care.
Once the bell rang, though, life turned into hell. I was also the kid who got her lunch stolen and the mean big boys locked her up in the utility closet during recess. I tried asking less—and even no—questions during class to see if they’d relax on the nerd bashing, but it just got worse. Then it was, “Did your brain die today, nerd?” Utility closet and no lunch. And because I had a sister and a brother, I stuck to the code of “don’t tell on them, just suck it up or beat them up.” I don’t like hitting people. The one time I did fight back in kindergarten, the boy ended up really hurt and I felt worse than ever. So I just sucked it up quietly. And decided I’d keep asking the bloody questions. At least then I had an interesting conversation to revisit in my head while I sat in the dark. It wasn’t all bad. Things got better in fifth grade, when the boys discovered I was really good at soccer and basketball. I was one of the three girls who played in the almost-all-boy teams.
In grown up life, I figure the worse thing that can happen is that people think I’m really weird and ask me to back off. Then I back off, put my enthusiasm on a leash *no cookie for the drooling sappy fan today, bad fan* and apologize to the person I made uncomfortable. Because that’s not why I’m here. That’s not why I still have my hand glued to the ceiling. I’m not here to make people uncomfortable. I’m here because I care.
I guess caring makes people uncomfortable, too. Oh, well…
I guess caring makes people uncomfortable, too. Oh, wellâ¦
My new theory is that everything makes someone uncomfortable (grin).
I think we’re all responsible for our own boundaries. Like your teacher (I love that you called her “Miss,” reminds me of Nicola’s stories about being an 8-year-old English Catholic schoolgirl). It wasn’t your job to protect her from her feelings about fractions. It’s never the child’s job to do this, although many of us as children end up protecting the adults around us because they seem so… fragile.
And still, as an adult, I’m glad and relieved that Miss was able to step up and be a real teacher, as opposed to a walking bag of insecurity ready to dump on the vulnerable/less powerful people around her. I’ve met both kinds of teachers (actually, in a more general way, it’s one of the ways I sort out the adults I meet, and I don’t hang with people who take out their insecurities on others).