From a recent correspondence with my cousin, over recent LDS church actions in Provo.
Hey, my young cousin. I think much has already been said for you to think about.
Let me answer some of your questions directly -- beginning with your question about why I am playing devil's advocate, when the devil is (as you put it) "inherently evil" and, therefore, what makes me better than those leading the church whom I accuse of evil.
A lot of Mormons I know often indulge in an image of apparent self-victimhood, and I think it's pathetic. If members were actually challenged with legitimate criticisms, frank evaluations, and provocative questions, perhaps the church might have more to offer the world.
As it is, members often dismiss agression as if it is only agression -- and not the obvious symptom of an organization and culture deeply threatened by the maladjusted, anywhere it's found, and so by nature of its very structure creates its own fundamental discontent and opposition. The primitive Christianity, the social/cultural naivete, and the willful psychological ignorance of most Mormons in this state have led me to believe the church, despite rapid global expansion, doesn't deserve to survive another century the way it is now.
I openly accost the church precisely because there are those who, like you, like the church (and with good intentions) but choose to not distinguish its abusive management and corporate organization from the radical potential of its own spirituality, philosophy, and history (since acknowledging complexities might betray or undermine the nature of good intentions) -- thus, my opinions are not something they care to hear.
I am not playing devil's advocate. The devil, throughout Western religions and the arts (literature, music, even comic books, etc.), is a character heavily invested in certain traditions, archetypes, history, and meaning. Mormonism, however, has an entirely unsophisticated understanding of Satan by comparison. He's simply a bogeyman, and a scapegoat, and it seems his only real use is to be feared as "inherently evil," the real source behind every human failing, weakness, or temptation. In the view of any mainstream Christian, that's weak at best. No other Mormon I've known besides myself is at all suspicious of how often we tend to blame something on Satan.
The devil is the ultimate con man, the trickiest of them all, as well as a rebel forces leader. He's considered a freak, a monster, and the first outcast in the world. Why else, upon his birth in the novel, does Frankenstein's monster love Milton's Lucifer? There is an instant understanding from the monster, who is himself unnamed.
To me, the devil is less a god of evil and more a variation on the trickster figure, because there is both light and dark in him. Satan is a fallen angel with a bone to pick, but the devil is someone who challenges everything you think is true and forces you to grow stronger by taking up those challenges. That's why, to me, the last truly great devil Mormons had was Joseph Smith himself. He's not someone you want to completely trust, but it's not that he's simply to be feared, either.
No matter how many times the LDS church leadership does something incredibly stupid, like this new MTC building, I keep waiting for them to do something that will make me lose my mind at last and become a big problem for them; Mormons will rue the day I finally break, so it's probably a good thing I've been such a [slightly] polite pushover this long when they've spent this long pushing almost all of my buttons.
Simply put: the Mormons need a better devil than the one they claim to believe in, and I'm willing to put on those horns because that role must be played -- and, if I do say so, I qualify pretty well for the job. I don't intend to play the devil's advocate. Not at all. I intend to play devil, himself.
Your next question makes sense, cousin -- asking if I'm any better? Well, I'm not in this game to compete against other moral positions. I leave that to any self-proclaimed heroes, martyrs, or fools. If you've come this far, but you have not taken on the ambiguities and complexities of something or someone you love, you will only have a narrow understanding of them, entirely limited to what you've invented.
It's difficult for anyone to hear horrible things about something or someone they love, and particularly if it's spiritual in nature. But faith without questions is dead. Simple as that. A static testimony is a bunch of white noise over a pulpit, a D.O.A. sentiment.
The early church leaders believed in the utmost rigor in one's testimony, constantly keeping it dynamically alive with persistent study, questioning, searching. Last I knew, I've read the Book of Mormon four or five more times than any of my friends who all served missions instead of me. Testimonies need to be challenged to survive (which -- it turns out -- is what a good devil is around to help accomplish, if you consider Jewish rabbinical literature, for instance.)
Mormons cannot often take it when someone appears to be making their lives harder by criticizing the church, and there's at least one good reason why: they deserve better than the church is giving them and, knowing that, leadership has nearly the entire membership tranquilized, arresting nearly any spiritual development that doesn't happen on their terms. Last time that happened in this country, a young farmer boy from upstate New York decided to go see God about it and fight to make his faith his own -- and just look what happened to him.
Another reason: there are few to no good adversaries of Mormons. I'm looking into that.
Finally, my cousin, you asked if I have the right, in all fairness, to make people's lives harder.
As nicely as I can, you are woefully unprepared to demand what's fair.
You have always, compared to my lot in this world, enjoyed a certain amount of privilege (and while it's not entirely your fault you're in the dark as to why, there are things you can do to educate yourself). A happy marriage, family, getting paid somewhat fairly, being a return missionary -- all of these things, this culture and society will practically hand to you. It's all yours for the asking. But because of my choices, I've been fixed like a moth on a board to my proper place as "a bad apple." Something went wrong on my way out the factory. I will never have any of the blessings you have. My chosen [homo]sexual behavoirs and chosen cultural identity as a queer faggot, as well as my mulatto ethnicity, will always marginalize me to degrees you, unfortunately, aren't immediately aware of. Some choices have even been completely taken from me.
It may be tough to hear others hate on the only real organization and people you've ever loved but the church and its members have, throughout most of its history, continually made harder the lives of men and women like me, and most certainly in ways that make totally infantile any provocations Mormons feel they've "suffered" from people who oppose or criticize them.
I love women, I love the cultures of peoples who aren't white or from the U.S. I do not stop talking to someone because they have sex, do drugs, or read Marx. I don't discriminate between so-called "lifestyles" -- those are what the rich have, and I hate the rich. I love any number of things about being truly alive in this world, for as the scripture says, we are that we might have joy. And Mormonism has since its inception attacked women, non-white peoples, sexual deviants, non-nuclear families, knoweldge and wisdom, history, and any number of things that are far more profound than talking smack about a church. And one of these days, Mormons will finally lose all my good graces.
You don't like questioning something you love, or wondering if it's a horrible thing, but I've been questioning everything about who or what I love my entire life, and it has bore a hole in me through which I will fall for forever.
I gave the church my life, and nearly completely my love, and the church has done almost nothing but make my life harder -- and it'll continue to get harder as I get older, because it will always be part of me.
I tried to make a choice to be happy and follow what's in my heart; because of that, I will be punished.
You have the faith that what's in your heart is aligned with what God wants: turns out, God wants his kingdom fully of white/white-faced, politically conservative and heteronormative males, and I'm none of those things.
There is no family I will live with forever. I have no glories or blessings to claim, and my inheritance is dust on a wind, compared to yours. I am an eternal orphan, just a kid from yesterday. And so are many others I know who've been in very real pain because of the LDS church. Almost everyone I love most, Mormons cast aside and marginalize.
You ask if I have the right to make people's lives harder: we'd beg of you, what gives you the guts to even ask.
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Friday, December 2, 2011
white noise.
Soundtrack from "2011 One Year Later." Twelve months in songs. Until I'm better able to explain just what the hell happened this time. A few of these will have to do.
This was the season of my abyss. Abismo bendito. Year of the white noise.
1. "Nerve Jamming" by Bass Drum of Death
2. "Gimme Danger" by Iggy & The Stooges
3. "Derezzed [Remix]" by Daft Punk, as performed by The Glitch Mob
4. "Desarraigo" by Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, featuring Ximena Sarinana
5. "Lamha" by Bilal Khan
6. "Kings of the Wild Frontier" by Adam & The Ants
7. "It's A New Day" by James Brown
8. "En El Rio" by Vetusta Morla
9. "Pa Pa Power" by Dead Man's Bones
10. "Evil" by Grinderman
11. "Lotus Flower" by Radiohead
12. "Race Mixing" by Teenage Jesus & The Jerks
13. "Run The World (Girls)" by Beyonce
14. "Me Van A Matar" by Julieta Venegas
15. "Lost Highway" by Hank Williams
16. "Encantamieno Inutil" by Cafe Tacvba
17. "Not About Love" by Fiona Apple
18. "The Sniper At The Gates of Dawn" by The Black Angels
19. "Orange Claw Hammer [Live]" by Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa
20. "When Your Wishes Come True" by Utada Hikaru
21. "The Immediate Stages of The Erotic" by Mars
22. "Lucha de gigantes" by Love of Lesbian, featuring Zahara
23. "Let Me Go" by 3 Doors Down
24. "Be Here Now [Live At The BBC]" by Ray LaMontagne
25. "The Kids From Yesterday" by My Chemical Romance
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Thursday, December 30, 2010
2010: Year That God Was Dead
There's a.
There's a. There's a.
All children grow up...except one.
"Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce." So said Marx in 1852.
"At 12:01 AM, exactly one year ago, I remember I was standing on the edge of Arthur's Court - the neighborhood I grew up in. All the three story houses glowed with Christmas lights brightening up their grand backyards and driveways to accommodate boats and suburbans..."
In the very last moments of December 2008, I stood at the edge of my neighborhood facing a vastness more alien and assuming than I'd ever known, sensing somehow I'd later wish it was a year I could have skipped. Here, in the last moments of 2010, I indeed find myself wondering, but more about 2010.
And yet, both because of my choices and because of things outside my ability to choose, 2009 and 2010 will go down as an interwoven single thread of two strands, as if they are together one year. One terrifying, exciting, incredibly wasted year.
There's a.
Well, maybe not a completely wasted year. In the spring of 2008, I saw the ocean for the first time, the Atlantic Ocean. It was like an encounter with a god, or a black hole, or some cosmically and epically unknowable thing, and in May 2010 I flew over it to England. I learned a lot about myself while I lived in London for six weeks I never could have learned otherwise, and yet I'd never have pictured myself really traveling to and all over England...
"Small wonder that when a gay guy comes along weeks later claiming to have visions and revelations from God about my life, I don't believe him."
Oh. Wait. Because last year, I met somebody who did see me traveling to and all over England. And I didn't really take him seriously because that was prefaced with the phrase, "God revealed you to me..." I do have to wonder if I might have taken that young, black, and respectful guy more seriously if it was with a crystal ball. Or maybe the I Ching. Or...oh, fuck, what's the difference, right?
Because it's December (and, in the story of my life, it's apparently one of "those" Decembers), and it's the last moments of 2010, and spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and physically, I couldn't be farther away from where I was in the last moments of 2009. Which is to say: I feel I'm almost exactly where I was just as 2009 was moments away from beginning. Which is to say: I don't find myself necessarily wishing there was time to skip time, but that time in fact did skip, and I'm wondering where the fucking hell the past two years of my life went - other than, not to put too fine or metaphorical a point on it, straight to fucking hell.
What does hell look like, anyway? Well, I can tell you what it feels like: there's something, like a blink. Something goes out, then it returns, but slightly different, and it's difficult to see the difference until -
"Even now I try to remember the last three months and everything only comes in snatches. The checks bounced, the record player skipped. There was a power outage so brief you wouldn't have noticed except for that slight delay on all the clocks around the house. Absolutely nothing happened, and everything that did happen occurred all at once."
See, the thing is, when I start to look back, things really do start to repeat themselves. The first time it's pathetic and empty, and ultimately kinda sad, lost and nothing can be atoned for. The second time, though, it's all forced and hammy, theatrical and outrageous, and ultimately like the most banal comedy you can imagine.
"A mysterious alien thing too tiny to see has come from nowhere, invaded my throat and wrapped my body in so much continual pain that I'm prevented from even whispering."
I had such strange resolve when I found that the virus was back again, in my throat. I was weirdly resigned to enduring last year's pain again, even if it had to be for weeks again. And so the only thing that truly disturbed me was not that the sickness might have returned, but that it was over in less than a few hours of its discovery just by a slight brushing away. Like that, I was cured, it was over. That's also what happened last year...but it took much, much longer than a few hours for it to happen.
There's a. There's a. There's a. There's a. There's a. There's a. There's a. Th -
There's a kind of feedback loop, and just when you start to detect there's something wrong in the way you've been keeping time, reality quickly rearranges itself. You aren't in control. Of anything.
"Go to hell, Everything. You have confused the mother living fuck out of me."
That sounds a little like the way my little brother described Inception to me a few days ago, when he was telling me it was the movie that got him to think the most this year. I've heard similar from many others, and I wish I could say Inception was just as mind-challenging to me. But the funny thing is something far more pretentious challenged me more: the Joaquin Phoenix film I'm Still Here. I think it's a film that will haunt me for a bit longer. Along with other films this year like it, such as Black Swan, it's gotten me thinking about a lot of things I don't like thinking about.
"I suppose things don't seem all too different since the spring. I still write out my musings in the company of strangers who drag their American Spirits and their Marlboros, bitching about professors and bosses. I still improvise fragments of a blues tune in the shower when the roommates are out. I have a Pendelton whiskey in the freezer and a gradually emptying box of Lucky Strikes on my table. I check my mailbox even when I haven't ordered any cartel from Amazon to stick my fix. I measure out my indifference with myself and my life in Facebook sessions and regular size scalding cups of sweetened Americano. These all are symptoms of my summer waste. The buzzing, the static. I spent more time in love with all the distractions and decorations my Visa could afford my boredom."
In the blogosphere and elsewhere, I've heard the 00s called "The Decade of Broken Dreams." I can't help but wonder if we haven't gotten over it yet. As Americans, anyway. But maybe it doesn't matter, because I obviously can't. Obama's in office, and...and what? Wasn't that election time filled with, as Zizek notes, such Kantian enthusiasm for the future? It was infectious. I think everybody had that enthusiasm, and not just for the election - for our own individual futures. A week ago, I was with a friend who made an accidental turn down an old street; apologizing, he said, "Sorry, I guess it was 2008." I replied in joking, "Well, hooray - Obama just got elected." We laughed then, but I later wondered if there's ever anyone else who sometimes catches themselves wishing it was autumn 2008, and you're counting down to November 5th. Because I do.
Zizek certainly has much to say about that, but to me, it goes beyond just a failure of revolutionary tendencies, and I mean on a personal level. If anything, that was this year for me, and what makes films like Black Swan and I'm Still Here so haunting to me: I'm asking myself what happens after the party ends, after the world ends, and after God is dead. Who's excited and hopeful then? If you find there's no God, does it necessarily follow you find there's no Satan, either?
"I could see the beginning of things, and I could see myself in the middle of some eternally marching time machine, with a million plans and every possible kind of lie. And I saw how it could end, everything - the big capital End of everything."
That's what happens - you meet the Devil. And meet him I did, in London. Trouble is, he didn't take "Leave me alone, holy fuck" when I ran into him - he followed me across that gigantic ocean. Back here to Happy Valley, Utah/America, where young people were committing suicide.
There's a........
Ah, right. Suicide stories. Those too. "If there is a God, and He is loving - more to the point, a 'perfect' God, and His command is a 'natural' one, then how did it make any sense that a 'homosexual' even exists? I felt like an anomaly, some hiccup in the Great Eternal Plan, and marriage was a holy recreation of Beckett's frightening endgame. And it felt sickening to literally be a freak of 'nature' every minute of every day. The ultimate concern was not whether or not I could 'overcome' the attractions, but whether or not I could live happily with myself and my choice long afterwards. And, as ever in the Church, we are talking about forever here."
So here I am now, going on four years later. And not a lot to show for it, it seems. Kinda like I wasted years of my life away.
It's just suspicious, and not just the missing, god-shaped hole in my memories. It's the synchronicity. It makes you paranoid, uncomfortable. And it's everywhere. No pun intended - if the Devil doesn't get me first, Nothing will. Nothing maybe already did. Do I even remember anymore? Time has already broken down and in the future, be it twenty minutes from now, twenty hours, or twenty days, this entire entry has already become meaningless.
"But then something happened in the Neverland."
Right. There was that.
Everywhere and nowhere. Everything at once. And then nothing. Last December. I think I like to pretend it was terribly important, and I think I do that because it's easier than learning the real lesson of What Happened, which is the question I asked just before the apocalypse hit my retinas: "What's the difference between all these stories I keep telling myself?" And now I live in a world of the aftermath. Religion doesn't prepare you for this. And neither does atheism. Medicine, science, art - nothing prepares you for what happens next.
There's a bridge.
Ah...well. That much I have figured out, I guess.
There's a bridge. It's black, and cagey. And I'm at the end.
That's what the future looks like. It looks like goodbye. Like a few tears, then the punchline. Maybe birth, maybe death. Like history repeats itself - first as tragedy, then as farce.
All children, except one, grow up. "To die," he once said, "would be an awfully big adventure!" I hope so, Peter. I hope so.
There's a. There's a.
All children grow up...except one.
"Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce." So said Marx in 1852.
"At 12:01 AM, exactly one year ago, I remember I was standing on the edge of Arthur's Court - the neighborhood I grew up in. All the three story houses glowed with Christmas lights brightening up their grand backyards and driveways to accommodate boats and suburbans..."
In the very last moments of December 2008, I stood at the edge of my neighborhood facing a vastness more alien and assuming than I'd ever known, sensing somehow I'd later wish it was a year I could have skipped. Here, in the last moments of 2010, I indeed find myself wondering, but more about 2010.
And yet, both because of my choices and because of things outside my ability to choose, 2009 and 2010 will go down as an interwoven single thread of two strands, as if they are together one year. One terrifying, exciting, incredibly wasted year.
There's a.
Well, maybe not a completely wasted year. In the spring of 2008, I saw the ocean for the first time, the Atlantic Ocean. It was like an encounter with a god, or a black hole, or some cosmically and epically unknowable thing, and in May 2010 I flew over it to England. I learned a lot about myself while I lived in London for six weeks I never could have learned otherwise, and yet I'd never have pictured myself really traveling to and all over England...
"Small wonder that when a gay guy comes along weeks later claiming to have visions and revelations from God about my life, I don't believe him."
Oh. Wait. Because last year, I met somebody who did see me traveling to and all over England. And I didn't really take him seriously because that was prefaced with the phrase, "God revealed you to me..." I do have to wonder if I might have taken that young, black, and respectful guy more seriously if it was with a crystal ball. Or maybe the I Ching. Or...oh, fuck, what's the difference, right?
Because it's December (and, in the story of my life, it's apparently one of "those" Decembers), and it's the last moments of 2010, and spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and physically, I couldn't be farther away from where I was in the last moments of 2009. Which is to say: I feel I'm almost exactly where I was just as 2009 was moments away from beginning. Which is to say: I don't find myself necessarily wishing there was time to skip time, but that time in fact did skip, and I'm wondering where the fucking hell the past two years of my life went - other than, not to put too fine or metaphorical a point on it, straight to fucking hell.
What does hell look like, anyway? Well, I can tell you what it feels like: there's something, like a blink. Something goes out, then it returns, but slightly different, and it's difficult to see the difference until -
"Even now I try to remember the last three months and everything only comes in snatches. The checks bounced, the record player skipped. There was a power outage so brief you wouldn't have noticed except for that slight delay on all the clocks around the house. Absolutely nothing happened, and everything that did happen occurred all at once."
See, the thing is, when I start to look back, things really do start to repeat themselves. The first time it's pathetic and empty, and ultimately kinda sad, lost and nothing can be atoned for. The second time, though, it's all forced and hammy, theatrical and outrageous, and ultimately like the most banal comedy you can imagine.
"A mysterious alien thing too tiny to see has come from nowhere, invaded my throat and wrapped my body in so much continual pain that I'm prevented from even whispering."
I had such strange resolve when I found that the virus was back again, in my throat. I was weirdly resigned to enduring last year's pain again, even if it had to be for weeks again. And so the only thing that truly disturbed me was not that the sickness might have returned, but that it was over in less than a few hours of its discovery just by a slight brushing away. Like that, I was cured, it was over. That's also what happened last year...but it took much, much longer than a few hours for it to happen.
There's a. There's a. There's a. There's a. There's a. There's a. There's a. Th -
There's a kind of feedback loop, and just when you start to detect there's something wrong in the way you've been keeping time, reality quickly rearranges itself. You aren't in control. Of anything.
"Go to hell, Everything. You have confused the mother living fuck out of me."
That sounds a little like the way my little brother described Inception to me a few days ago, when he was telling me it was the movie that got him to think the most this year. I've heard similar from many others, and I wish I could say Inception was just as mind-challenging to me. But the funny thing is something far more pretentious challenged me more: the Joaquin Phoenix film I'm Still Here. I think it's a film that will haunt me for a bit longer. Along with other films this year like it, such as Black Swan, it's gotten me thinking about a lot of things I don't like thinking about.
"I suppose things don't seem all too different since the spring. I still write out my musings in the company of strangers who drag their American Spirits and their Marlboros, bitching about professors and bosses. I still improvise fragments of a blues tune in the shower when the roommates are out. I have a Pendelton whiskey in the freezer and a gradually emptying box of Lucky Strikes on my table. I check my mailbox even when I haven't ordered any cartel from Amazon to stick my fix. I measure out my indifference with myself and my life in Facebook sessions and regular size scalding cups of sweetened Americano. These all are symptoms of my summer waste. The buzzing, the static. I spent more time in love with all the distractions and decorations my Visa could afford my boredom."
In the blogosphere and elsewhere, I've heard the 00s called "The Decade of Broken Dreams." I can't help but wonder if we haven't gotten over it yet. As Americans, anyway. But maybe it doesn't matter, because I obviously can't. Obama's in office, and...and what? Wasn't that election time filled with, as Zizek notes, such Kantian enthusiasm for the future? It was infectious. I think everybody had that enthusiasm, and not just for the election - for our own individual futures. A week ago, I was with a friend who made an accidental turn down an old street; apologizing, he said, "Sorry, I guess it was 2008." I replied in joking, "Well, hooray - Obama just got elected." We laughed then, but I later wondered if there's ever anyone else who sometimes catches themselves wishing it was autumn 2008, and you're counting down to November 5th. Because I do.
Zizek certainly has much to say about that, but to me, it goes beyond just a failure of revolutionary tendencies, and I mean on a personal level. If anything, that was this year for me, and what makes films like Black Swan and I'm Still Here so haunting to me: I'm asking myself what happens after the party ends, after the world ends, and after God is dead. Who's excited and hopeful then? If you find there's no God, does it necessarily follow you find there's no Satan, either?
"I could see the beginning of things, and I could see myself in the middle of some eternally marching time machine, with a million plans and every possible kind of lie. And I saw how it could end, everything - the big capital End of everything."
That's what happens - you meet the Devil. And meet him I did, in London. Trouble is, he didn't take "Leave me alone, holy fuck" when I ran into him - he followed me across that gigantic ocean. Back here to Happy Valley, Utah/America, where young people were committing suicide.
There's a........
Ah, right. Suicide stories. Those too. "If there is a God, and He is loving - more to the point, a 'perfect' God, and His command is a 'natural' one, then how did it make any sense that a 'homosexual' even exists? I felt like an anomaly, some hiccup in the Great Eternal Plan, and marriage was a holy recreation of Beckett's frightening endgame. And it felt sickening to literally be a freak of 'nature' every minute of every day. The ultimate concern was not whether or not I could 'overcome' the attractions, but whether or not I could live happily with myself and my choice long afterwards. And, as ever in the Church, we are talking about forever here."
So here I am now, going on four years later. And not a lot to show for it, it seems. Kinda like I wasted years of my life away.
It's just suspicious, and not just the missing, god-shaped hole in my memories. It's the synchronicity. It makes you paranoid, uncomfortable. And it's everywhere. No pun intended - if the Devil doesn't get me first, Nothing will. Nothing maybe already did. Do I even remember anymore? Time has already broken down and in the future, be it twenty minutes from now, twenty hours, or twenty days, this entire entry has already become meaningless.
"But then something happened in the Neverland."
Right. There was that.
Everywhere and nowhere. Everything at once. And then nothing. Last December. I think I like to pretend it was terribly important, and I think I do that because it's easier than learning the real lesson of What Happened, which is the question I asked just before the apocalypse hit my retinas: "What's the difference between all these stories I keep telling myself?" And now I live in a world of the aftermath. Religion doesn't prepare you for this. And neither does atheism. Medicine, science, art - nothing prepares you for what happens next.
There's a bridge.
Ah...well. That much I have figured out, I guess.
There's a bridge. It's black, and cagey. And I'm at the end.
That's what the future looks like. It looks like goodbye. Like a few tears, then the punchline. Maybe birth, maybe death. Like history repeats itself - first as tragedy, then as farce.
All children, except one, grow up. "To die," he once said, "would be an awfully big adventure!" I hope so, Peter. I hope so.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Satan Stops At Bethan Green [England Season]
"You know I've seen a lot of what the world can do
And it's breaking my heart in two..."
And it's breaking my heart in two..."
My father takes my mother's hand. I think she's crying. We don't know it yet - and by the time my parents do, I'll have crossed the dateline and time-traveled into tomorrow - but all this rain coming down is going to become a snow storm. The airport murmurs. Say it, Cat.
"But if you want to leave, take good care
Hope you make a lot of nice friends out there
But just remember there's a lot of bad and beware -
Ooo, baby, baby, it’s a wild world..."
Hope you make a lot of nice friends out there
But just remember there's a lot of bad and beware -
Ooo, baby, baby, it’s a wild world..."
Leave synchronicity to 4 AM car radio, right?
When I was a child, my mother tells me, I was a smiling, laughing child. But he is not someone I can remember. Now, my latest stories have ancient charms, and my older stories are in newer drag. And where are these families? Ah...there is so much hostility in me. And the devil needs a new name. Why not a “yes” and a remembering? Must I forget? What can I love? What will I find to love? Such questions at 30,000 feet, tracing a line to a star.
A map. The changing clocks. The concrete offering stability. The sky a window above a window, light finding such ways down, down, to the elaborate wandering here. In corners the rascal beards, reptilian noises...
A map. The changing clocks. The concrete offering stability. The sky a window above a window, light finding such ways down, down, to the elaborate wandering here. In corners the rascal beards, reptilian noises...
MIXTAPE TRACKLIST: “GLOUSTER ROAD”
1. “Devil” by Stereophonics
2. “Deadwood [Live In Belfast]” by Matthew & The Atlas
3. “Zero [Live On Letterman]” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
4. “There’s No Other Way” by Blur
5. “London, London” by Cibelle feat. Devendra Banhart
6. “Gary” by Stages of Dan
7. “The Boyfriend Song” by The Momeraths
8. “No Way” by Pearl Jam
9. “The Last Kiss” by Thomas Tantrum
10. “Last Day of Magic” by The Kills
11. “Zorbing [Live On Jools Holland]” by Stornoway
12. “So Here We Are (Four Tet Remix)” - by Bloc Party
13. “England [Live At The Brooklyn Academy of Music]” by The National
*EXTENDED "DEVIL'S CUT":
1. “Devil” by Stereophonics
2. “Memory Of A Free Festival, Pt. I (Old Brompton Edit)” by David Bowie
3. “Zero” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
4. “Woah, Billy!” by Lucky Soul
5. “Mother’s Best Child” by Stages of Dan
6. “London, London” by Caetano Veloso
7. “There’s No Other Way” by Blur
8. “Within The Rose” by Matthew & The Atlas
9. “I Can Change (Stereogamous Remix - Short Edit)” by LCD Soundsystem
/ INTERMISSION
10. “Wide Eyes [HibOO d'Live Version]” by Local Natives
11. “A Single Cup of Tea (Bedroom Demo Version)” by The Momeraths
12. “No Way” by Pearl Jam
13. “That’s The Way” by Led Zeppelin
14. “Last Day of Magic (London’s Listening Edit)” by The Kills
15. “Zorbing” by Stornoway
16. Exit Mix: Bowie’s “Memory Of A Free Festival, Pt. II” + “So Here We Are (Four Tet Remix - Camden Edit)” by Bloc Party
17. “England” by The National
*features more local London music stretching from Camden Town to Islington, like Nate Maingard, Lucky Soul, and Yan Yates, but also random bits from Belle & Sebastian and The New Pornographers (even a weirded out Snow Patrol) that also made an impression on me during the "Satan Stops At Bethnal Green" story. Also includes a live version of my theme from 2010, "Wide Eyes" by Local Natives. This is the mixtape I edited and created myself and burned to a CD given to me by the Atherton Lin boys.
11. “A Single Cup of Tea (Bedroom Demo Version)” by The Momeraths
12. “No Way” by Pearl Jam
13. “That’s The Way” by Led Zeppelin
14. “Last Day of Magic (London’s Listening Edit)” by The Kills
15. “Zorbing” by Stornoway
16. Exit Mix: Bowie’s “Memory Of A Free Festival, Pt. II” + “So Here We Are (Four Tet Remix - Camden Edit)” by Bloc Party
17. “England” by The National
*features more local London music stretching from Camden Town to Islington, like Nate Maingard, Lucky Soul, and Yan Yates, but also random bits from Belle & Sebastian and The New Pornographers (even a weirded out Snow Patrol) that also made an impression on me during the "Satan Stops At Bethnal Green" story. Also includes a live version of my theme from 2010, "Wide Eyes" by Local Natives. This is the mixtape I edited and created myself and burned to a CD given to me by the Atherton Lin boys.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Futures 2010
Written on Wednesday, December 31st, 2008. What I believed I would say in December 2009:
"...If love came, I wasn't fooled again. I didn't go searching for it; it only came to me, and in whatever form I took. What was most important was the love I could find in revisiting old friendships...and with any hope, one in particular has ideally and finally arrived at the place I've always wanted it to be. With any further hope (and likely a lot of luck had something to do with it, too) there was at last a place I reached with my father, and most importantly with my mother. I have come to be comfortable with where I stand about God. My choice to either stay or leave the LDS church was not coercion or performance. I made my choice based on what I want most and what I need most. I didn't come to some kind of all-encompassing, self-righteous enlightenment. I only reached a point where the questions were no longer so pressing, or so urgent. I'm satisfied with what I found, even if I still haven't found what I'm looking for."
"...If love came, I wasn't fooled again. I didn't go searching for it; it only came to me, and in whatever form I took. What was most important was the love I could find in revisiting old friendships...and with any hope, one in particular has ideally and finally arrived at the place I've always wanted it to be. With any further hope (and likely a lot of luck had something to do with it, too) there was at last a place I reached with my father, and most importantly with my mother. I have come to be comfortable with where I stand about God. My choice to either stay or leave the LDS church was not coercion or performance. I made my choice based on what I want most and what I need most. I didn't come to some kind of all-encompassing, self-righteous enlightenment. I only reached a point where the questions were no longer so pressing, or so urgent. I'm satisfied with what I found, even if I still haven't found what I'm looking for."
-----------------------------------------------------
Friday, December 31st, 2010:
Love came, as it usually seems to, in the summertime. But this time was different because, this time, I refused to settle. What growth came of that relationship matters only in that I learned more about myself and whether or not I'll ever find "The One" - any futures for that relationship are either already determined, and were from the start, or they've have already twilighted away and it was just another sunny experiment. And that's okay.
Friday, December 31st, 2010:
What. A year.
I'm so close to finishing my major. I might need to take a few classes in the spring, but after that, it's basically in the bag. Math class was both easier and harder than I thought it'd be. My graduation present to me is a vacation. Ticket to anywhere, Japan maybe. "I never really gave up on / Breaking out of this two-star town." I can almost taste it.
I finally got eating right. Raw foods - what a novel concept. If I'd known it would've felt this good, I might've started earlier than this year. Investing in a vegetable juicer instead of buying chicken strips at the cafeteria...what an idea. It was a rocky start, and I probably still have a bit to go before I can give up fish - to be gay is to love sushi, after all. But once I got over the cheese hamburger crave, it was surprisingly easy to get used to.
Finally, a screenplay. With luck, a couple. With more luck, a film. Whoda thought. I think that all the stories I've kept inside since I was young are gonna finally get the chance to be shared, now that I'm getting my ass off the proverbial couch. Speaking of which...it's so nice to have gone a solid year with no TV.
Got in touch with my feminine side and woke up all those sleeping princesses I grew up loving and even dressing up. "Lady Matilda"...Don't know where to go with it, but dressing in drag is not nearly the scary, vain and bizarre thing I always thought it was. It was actually a lot of fun. I don't know if I'll ever tell my mother, though.
Love came, as it usually seems to, in the summertime. But this time was different because, this time, I refused to settle. What growth came of that relationship matters only in that I learned more about myself and whether or not I'll ever find "The One" - any futures for that relationship are either already determined, and were from the start, or they've have already twilighted away and it was just another sunny experiment. And that's okay.
So many of the things I've always wanted to happen for me...actually did happen this year. Finally saw U2, finally went to the Festival of Colors, finally learned a song on a twelve-string guitar, finally finished East of Eden. (And I'll be damned if I didn't whittle down at least a couple of pages of the rest of my reading list.) And I can say all of that in Spanish and Japanese. But this year had so many challenges. It was difficult to make choices about my past, even though I've been anticipating it for so long. I don't know what can be said about those I've known the longest in the Mormon Church. I'm sure that I've offended some, and I know that in one particular case, I may never be able to see or talk to him again.
But at least I've done everything within my power to let those who care and were concerned that this was the only way. I couldn't figure out my spirituality by investigating Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, etc. without also giving scientology, astrology, magick and all manner of paganism a fair chance as well. (At least I can finally read someone's cards.) But none of that would have meant much if I hadn't also, with equal measure and all the full furvor of my teenage years with Talmage, Nibly and C.S. Lewis at the bedside, studied out atheism. I've been exposed to it for the past few years, but at no other time in my life did I really read and reason with it as this year. And what a learning experience.
I know I'm all over the map. (My poor mother.) But this is the way it had to be. And the reasons are rooted in the mere existence of my creative voice - a voice I'm still trying to find and control: my identity is constantly shifting. I'm here one day, then the next day I'm completely gone. I don't know who I am, and I never have. It may be another while, maybe even years, before I can know. But I might never discover who I am or where I came from, and this has always been my struggle. I was called "Paradox Kid" in junior high. But this year, I finally broke through the shapelessness of myself by coming to an understanding with how my memory works to influence my personality, and how I can create something out of that ocean always inside me. Hard work, but I can confidently say I got somewhere.
And there's still so much more work to be done. More places to go and things to do and people to see. I have to continue to find how my voice works, and what I can do. So bring it on, 2011. Matthew A. Jonassaint never knew so little, or looked so good.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
2009: Year That God Forgot Me
New Years Day 2010...
At 12:01 AM, exactly one year ago, I remember I was standing on the edge of Arthur's Court - the neighborhood I grew up in. All the three story houses glowed with Christmas lights brightening up their grand backyards and driveways to accommodate boats and suburbans. The city mayor lives two houses away, and just behind us an orthodontist who owns two German shepherds and was the first in our neighborhood to have a plasma screen TV. A bit to the left is a director at NuSkin and a few doors down from there is the owner of a Zion's National Bank. His wife owns a classy dance studio in the basement. If you go further down the street, you'll find a Marine family, a BYU professor family, and a chiropractor family. A fenced up majestic world, carved from pristine whiteness and heft of landscape, winding lovely in righteous twirls, made of houses and covered with ice.
A year ago, I stood standing at the edge and mused to myself aloud that I'd be standing here again in 2010 wishing that 2009 had never happened. Just a feeling. Likely brought on by a decade's worth of college cynicism and all-around broken national faith in the future. I guessed that I'd look back on 2009 wondering if it was a year I could have skipped.
At the time, there was little sign of what 2009 would bring. Admittedly, I was still angry and scared at what my breakup with my first boyfriend might mean, with all its deconstructions and devaluing of everything I was raised to believe I was not capable of ever having, or feeling. My only job was to act out what was assigned to me. There was an agenda to follow, after all. But then along came a redhead in a pickup truck, who could play the cello and give you such a kiss, and he denied me - my friendship or my past with him - for a better but dying man, ex-Army and hiding in the mountains. And all those hand-me-down ideas about everything had to change.
So 2009 didn't look like a recovery period or a time to resort priorities. It looked like a Nothing. But I hoped things would turn up. I sensed change coming. And as I was accustomed to, I believed this change would come about from some temple castle glowing in mountainous dark night, or a promise at the end of "that" small blue book, or a lonely faithful moment on my knees at my bedside. Or maybe Erik would come back and make everything right again. Or maybe nothing would happen at all. But I couldn't have guessed it would actually be a long, timeless and spaceless chain of the weirdest and worst times of my life.
I never knew I'd find myself little more than a month later on the floor of a bar, convulsing after that "one more" menthol American Spirit. Propelling curses and reckless shame at a ruined castle keep, a snowing sky and invisible God. Racing down the highway in too much black pain to think about anything except the week-old memory of a friend coming home from the streets of New York, with his honor folded neatly for everyday wear. Even after swearing then to abandon the bottle, months later I'd be back on the floor, vomiting, shivering, shirtless. In a personal place without emotion, without beauty, and without time. And cradled on that damn floor by people who really shouldn't care about me.
A penthouse apartment, an abandoned field outside of town. Secrets, and even more secrets. A dark blue hotel room, a Wisconsin bathroom. She takes a long drag on her cigarette, looks at me, and says with a cackling laugh, "You look a bit overwhelmed!" As the banker turns me away, I mutter, "I guess I won't get that ticket to New Orleans." There are sounds of vomiting from my bathroom and now he's begging me to see his boyfriend, but he can't stop laughing so much. She's telling me in a rowdy campus hallway that prostitution is now the only way she'll make it through school. There's a sickly old voice with gray whiskers around the mouth and jeans stiffened by dirt, telling me to get out of the car and keep quiet, so as to not wake neighbors. "Matthew," she says, her voice glassy and strained, "Brother Pratt's been arrested. For raping a girl." I hear furious yells through the walls and the Guinness to get me off the floor and the hell out the door. The surging crowd lifts the girl above swaying heads to latex glove hands, and the medics carry her away strapped to a board as mud splashes and the band plays on.
The train rushes by and I feel walls around me tremble. A mysterious alien thing too tiny to see has come from nowhere, invaded my throat and wrapped my body in so much continual pain that I'm prevented from even whispering. He puts his hand on the cool steel of his gun as he reassures me he knows the gospel of Christ as taught by Joseph Smith is true, but can't say the same about the Mormons. There's a firetruck outside flashing all my living room in blacks and reds with a pulse. She only lets herself look at the Kansas City photo for one moment before gently closing the drawer, and no one ever sees it again. "You're such a good cuddler," says boy with a body he stole away from Greek gods, and I taste his salty-sweet tongue on my side of the bed. I'm sinking into a chair and feeling the uncountable elephants in the room when the boy in the bandana has finally had it up to here with curiosity and yells at my face with a weird smile, "DUDE, are you FUCKING HIGH YET?" The midnight sky is scarred for one blinking moment as a ball of fire strings to a hot white light and falls down, down to the western horizon. She can't look at me, only at the ceiling, and she says, "A lot of people are about to die."
I still don't know how I got a straight divorced man to make out with me in the lobby of a Hilton. I've been dragging so much secrecy, guilt, loneliness and anger inside of me that finally when on Halloween I watched a David Bowie get handcuffed and led away, after both of us had been turned away from a house of God to hands of the law, something inside me finally snapped. Cave paintings, comic books or stained glass windows? Birthday parties, pride parades, church sermons and elections...or masks, makeup, theatrics and temptations...what's the difference. Small wonder that when a gay guy comes along weeks later claiming to have visions and revelations from God about my life, I don't believe him.
Go to hell, Everything. You have confused the mother living fuck out of me.
But then something happened in Neverland. About a week ago, after days of not eating or sleeping, I finally collapsed on my bed...but I actually went somewhere. I could see the beginning of things, and I could see myself in the middle of some eternally marching time machine, with a million plans and every possible kind of lie. And I saw how it could end, everything - the big capital End of everything.
I can't explain it. And I can't talk about it, not yet, anyway. But I'm wondering if this year is closing on more than just a decade of my life. I wonder if it's closing on an entire era of existence, an entire way of life.
A boy lives in the house at the very very limit of Arthur's Court, where the large fence meets the city streets. He moved from Riverside, California when a great friend of mine had to move away. Riverside moved into his old house. We became very close, and maybe too fast. He was someone I loved more than my own life. But this world tells us that love can very rarely be nonsexual if it's with someone we're not related to. And this world tells us that if it is a feeling towards someone the same gender as you, it's either love, sexually, or it's lunatic crime and sin. So with religious fervor, I pulled that old sleight of hand, and I fell in love with a beautiful, strong, handsome and virtuous idea of him, of who he could be for me. But Riverside didn't have enough strength to keep up with my little magic trick. In a few days now, he'll leave on his LDS mission to jungles below the equator. And without knowing it, he'll take a lot of my old and dying intangibilities with him. A door is closing.
When I was a sophomore in high school, the stage technicians and actors used to call me Moses, because I was in charge of opening and closing the giant red curtain, and in order to do it I had to use a wooden two by four on this old machine. I remember watching, memorizing every blinking instant of the final moments in each scene, and how every time it never plays out quite the same way. It's the same words, the same clothes and the same boys and girls on a very wide and black stage, and out in the outside blackness is an ogling audience. The moments are composed of musical notes and chapping paint and makeup powders, always the same because of practice, always different because of time.
And just before time and audience can pin it all down into some singled finality, I shut the curtain on everything, and the illusion can be preserved for me alone, behind the curtain, where everyone is frozen for that exact second before the abrupt rushing around to the next performing instant for the darkness. So I memorize the moment for tomorrow. And then it ends.
At 12:01 AM, exactly one year ago, I remember I was standing on the edge of Arthur's Court - the neighborhood I grew up in. All the three story houses glowed with Christmas lights brightening up their grand backyards and driveways to accommodate boats and suburbans. The city mayor lives two houses away, and just behind us an orthodontist who owns two German shepherds and was the first in our neighborhood to have a plasma screen TV. A bit to the left is a director at NuSkin and a few doors down from there is the owner of a Zion's National Bank. His wife owns a classy dance studio in the basement. If you go further down the street, you'll find a Marine family, a BYU professor family, and a chiropractor family. A fenced up majestic world, carved from pristine whiteness and heft of landscape, winding lovely in righteous twirls, made of houses and covered with ice.
A year ago, I stood standing at the edge and mused to myself aloud that I'd be standing here again in 2010 wishing that 2009 had never happened. Just a feeling. Likely brought on by a decade's worth of college cynicism and all-around broken national faith in the future. I guessed that I'd look back on 2009 wondering if it was a year I could have skipped.
At the time, there was little sign of what 2009 would bring. Admittedly, I was still angry and scared at what my breakup with my first boyfriend might mean, with all its deconstructions and devaluing of everything I was raised to believe I was not capable of ever having, or feeling. My only job was to act out what was assigned to me. There was an agenda to follow, after all. But then along came a redhead in a pickup truck, who could play the cello and give you such a kiss, and he denied me - my friendship or my past with him - for a better but dying man, ex-Army and hiding in the mountains. And all those hand-me-down ideas about everything had to change.
So 2009 didn't look like a recovery period or a time to resort priorities. It looked like a Nothing. But I hoped things would turn up. I sensed change coming. And as I was accustomed to, I believed this change would come about from some temple castle glowing in mountainous dark night, or a promise at the end of "that" small blue book, or a lonely faithful moment on my knees at my bedside. Or maybe Erik would come back and make everything right again. Or maybe nothing would happen at all. But I couldn't have guessed it would actually be a long, timeless and spaceless chain of the weirdest and worst times of my life.
I never knew I'd find myself little more than a month later on the floor of a bar, convulsing after that "one more" menthol American Spirit. Propelling curses and reckless shame at a ruined castle keep, a snowing sky and invisible God. Racing down the highway in too much black pain to think about anything except the week-old memory of a friend coming home from the streets of New York, with his honor folded neatly for everyday wear. Even after swearing then to abandon the bottle, months later I'd be back on the floor, vomiting, shivering, shirtless. In a personal place without emotion, without beauty, and without time. And cradled on that damn floor by people who really shouldn't care about me.
A penthouse apartment, an abandoned field outside of town. Secrets, and even more secrets. A dark blue hotel room, a Wisconsin bathroom. She takes a long drag on her cigarette, looks at me, and says with a cackling laugh, "You look a bit overwhelmed!" As the banker turns me away, I mutter, "I guess I won't get that ticket to New Orleans." There are sounds of vomiting from my bathroom and now he's begging me to see his boyfriend, but he can't stop laughing so much. She's telling me in a rowdy campus hallway that prostitution is now the only way she'll make it through school. There's a sickly old voice with gray whiskers around the mouth and jeans stiffened by dirt, telling me to get out of the car and keep quiet, so as to not wake neighbors. "Matthew," she says, her voice glassy and strained, "Brother Pratt's been arrested. For raping a girl." I hear furious yells through the walls and the Guinness to get me off the floor and the hell out the door. The surging crowd lifts the girl above swaying heads to latex glove hands, and the medics carry her away strapped to a board as mud splashes and the band plays on.
The train rushes by and I feel walls around me tremble. A mysterious alien thing too tiny to see has come from nowhere, invaded my throat and wrapped my body in so much continual pain that I'm prevented from even whispering. He puts his hand on the cool steel of his gun as he reassures me he knows the gospel of Christ as taught by Joseph Smith is true, but can't say the same about the Mormons. There's a firetruck outside flashing all my living room in blacks and reds with a pulse. She only lets herself look at the Kansas City photo for one moment before gently closing the drawer, and no one ever sees it again. "You're such a good cuddler," says boy with a body he stole away from Greek gods, and I taste his salty-sweet tongue on my side of the bed. I'm sinking into a chair and feeling the uncountable elephants in the room when the boy in the bandana has finally had it up to here with curiosity and yells at my face with a weird smile, "DUDE, are you FUCKING HIGH YET?" The midnight sky is scarred for one blinking moment as a ball of fire strings to a hot white light and falls down, down to the western horizon. She can't look at me, only at the ceiling, and she says, "A lot of people are about to die."
I still don't know how I got a straight divorced man to make out with me in the lobby of a Hilton. I've been dragging so much secrecy, guilt, loneliness and anger inside of me that finally when on Halloween I watched a David Bowie get handcuffed and led away, after both of us had been turned away from a house of God to hands of the law, something inside me finally snapped. Cave paintings, comic books or stained glass windows? Birthday parties, pride parades, church sermons and elections...or masks, makeup, theatrics and temptations...what's the difference. Small wonder that when a gay guy comes along weeks later claiming to have visions and revelations from God about my life, I don't believe him.
Go to hell, Everything. You have confused the mother living fuck out of me.
But then something happened in Neverland. About a week ago, after days of not eating or sleeping, I finally collapsed on my bed...but I actually went somewhere. I could see the beginning of things, and I could see myself in the middle of some eternally marching time machine, with a million plans and every possible kind of lie. And I saw how it could end, everything - the big capital End of everything.
I can't explain it. And I can't talk about it, not yet, anyway. But I'm wondering if this year is closing on more than just a decade of my life. I wonder if it's closing on an entire era of existence, an entire way of life.
A boy lives in the house at the very very limit of Arthur's Court, where the large fence meets the city streets. He moved from Riverside, California when a great friend of mine had to move away. Riverside moved into his old house. We became very close, and maybe too fast. He was someone I loved more than my own life. But this world tells us that love can very rarely be nonsexual if it's with someone we're not related to. And this world tells us that if it is a feeling towards someone the same gender as you, it's either love, sexually, or it's lunatic crime and sin. So with religious fervor, I pulled that old sleight of hand, and I fell in love with a beautiful, strong, handsome and virtuous idea of him, of who he could be for me. But Riverside didn't have enough strength to keep up with my little magic trick. In a few days now, he'll leave on his LDS mission to jungles below the equator. And without knowing it, he'll take a lot of my old and dying intangibilities with him. A door is closing.
When I was a sophomore in high school, the stage technicians and actors used to call me Moses, because I was in charge of opening and closing the giant red curtain, and in order to do it I had to use a wooden two by four on this old machine. I remember watching, memorizing every blinking instant of the final moments in each scene, and how every time it never plays out quite the same way. It's the same words, the same clothes and the same boys and girls on a very wide and black stage, and out in the outside blackness is an ogling audience. The moments are composed of musical notes and chapping paint and makeup powders, always the same because of practice, always different because of time.
And just before time and audience can pin it all down into some singled finality, I shut the curtain on everything, and the illusion can be preserved for me alone, behind the curtain, where everyone is frozen for that exact second before the abrupt rushing around to the next performing instant for the darkness. So I memorize the moment for tomorrow. And then it ends.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
