tara, robot king

Something worth forty minutes.

nobody@vox.com(tara) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:58:33 -0500

I'll be honest. I've been ignoring the Democratic race. I try not to read articles about it, because, as the race has worn on, it's felt more and more like the usual problem: people hoping and dreaming that a single person--especially in the Oval Office--will fix our country, and by extension, the world.

There is no single person who can do this. I feel quite strongly about this. No single person can fix everything. You can prohibit the consumption of alcohol, but the will of the people will (and did) prevail. Obama cannot solve our problems. Hillary cannot bring back the thousands of dead in Iraq. Al Gore cannot stop the extinction of the polar bear. The hubbub over every detail of Clinton and Obama is distracting us from ways we can actually help out.

Volunteer at a community garden, or a daycare for struggling single moms. Go for a bike ride with a friend, or start a vegetable garden, if that's your cup of tea. Shop locally. Give someone bus fare. Pay your credit card off. Get excited about the presidential race, but don't forget that the work doesn't stop on November 4, 2008 and it won't stop on January 20, 2009. The next day, there will still be poverty, struggle and racism in America, no matter who is elected.

I say all of this grand bullcrap to explain why I'm posting Barack Obama's speech, "A More Perfect Union". My opinion about Obama and the Presidential race isn't important. It's important to hear this speech, in its entirety. Not because I want you to vote for him, but because it's a really good and deeply important speech.

It is a speech with the potential to shape a nation. I know it's long. I know it's contrary to our 45-second attention span. I had to pause it and come back to it. But please, read it, or listen to it:

A More Perfect Union

Here is the full transcript of the speech, if you're a reading person instead of a listening one.

And finally, let me know what you think.

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Frustration, angst, despair.

nobody@vox.com(tara) — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 16:26:36 -0500

It's not all that bad, I guess.

On Saturday night, Paul and I got roped into helping out a family who needed a jump. I say we got roped into it cuz some random guy and his friend stopped us and started blathering about loosened terminals on batteries and Mexicans and... In any case, we went to help. There was a serious language barrier and my life-long Spanish lessons came in real handy. I wish I could say the story ends on a happy note (ah, community within the big city! Friendliness across race and class and gender!), and it sort of does. We managed to jump start the car, and I got to remember that I do speak Spanish and that it is a useful skill.

But the fact remains: these women didn't want the two guys who originally stopped to help them. I can't blame them--two women on a dark street with some strange guy and his friend reaching around under the hood of the car. They were asking me if he was trying to take the battery out, what he was trying to do, and I explained as best I could (I guess I missed the lesson on obscure car parts). But as we were pulling the car over to give them a jump, the two guys were striding off and pissed. Why? They were trying to help out and the damsels-in-distress wouldn't let them, because they were afraid of them.

I don't need to turn around and champion the cause of oppressed men everywhere who can't help out a lady with a car problem. It just reminded me of how fucking complicated it is to live in the world with other people. Premium White Morsels is driving me nuts for the same reason, because it's this hugely complicated situation, distilled into a black box with three performers, and we're pretty picky about how we do what we do. It is frustrating to come to terms with this piece as a failure, but when you set out to change the world and make things Right in just nine months, of course it fails. I still love it and I still want (need) everyone to come see it. But it's not what we had hoped; it's something else entirely. It sort of vaguely resembles the thing we had hoped for. In any case it is bending my brain in halves and quarters and clover-leafs and mobius strips. It is something to behold.

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Premium White Morsels: An Introduction.

nobody@vox.com(tara) — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 22:59:31 -0500

So, news has been slow on the Mad King Thomas front because we've been working on the same dance for the past several months. And it doesn't open until November.

It's called Premium White Morsels.

I don't know how to sum up what it's about but here are some related nouns:

whiteness feminity cat-calling racism frustration politeness Martha Stewart failure expectations Puritans Christianity sexuality hair mythology confusion seeking Madonna unicorns princesses politics anger

It's been a really hard piece so far. We are in it....as human beings, rather than as iconic images. That's a big change. It's one thing to swagger like a cowboy, it's another thing to get up on stage and talk about your own personal self.

And we I have no shortage of anxieties about this thing:

It's self-indulgent
It's not sufficiently anti-racist
Too didactic
Not funny
Too funny
What exactly is the point of it?
Yep, still talking about the Victorians. We can't help ourselves!
So...is this dance about revealing the construction of whiteness, or is it about Madonna?
Young Jean Lee already did this, and did it way better.

I've had my head in blogs like Racialicious for the past year. I've read and watched and thought. I've been on the bus, I've watched my interactions, I've watched my thought patterns, I've watched my language (and yours). Haven't really found an answer, and maybe that's alright.

I guess it would kind of be lame if I said, "Hey guys I was thinking about race relations the other day in the shower and I found the answer: Let's all be really nice. You can all stop arguing now." That's how it feels sometimes. I mean, where do all the pieces land once you've divulged every racially charged interaction you've ever had to each other, and then you try to make a dance about it?

Dance seems sort of perfect for it--the body cannot be denied in dance. For all we might do, it's so brutally us up there. You just can't get around that.

Speaking of Racialicious, from a recent post:

Their thoughts reminded me of the complete and utter discomfort we as a nation have with discussing the truth about our history. ... While we [people of color ] are expected to take the literal lashings of the past and the figurative tongue lashings of the present, modernity has given way to a society that is anesthetized, temporarily asleep with lies as its lullabies, comforted by its own ignorance and shifting of pain to those who are forced to remember. There is a privilege in having a charted history, but even more so in the ability to assert that what little remains of history for others is not worth your time because it’s too painful to acknowledge.

I think what drives us to make this piece is that sleepy society, the way we were taught as children that racism had been somehow solved in the 60s and it would only get better from here. I choose to believe it will get better from here, but it certainly wasn't "solved". Peter Rachleff said once that the privilege of being white is that you never have to be uncomfortable (you can see this exact interview in the American Anthropological Association's Race exhibit, although I had the privilege to be his student at Macalester). So there is no complaining about discomfort. That's how it goes.

Wendi also says, in the post quoted above:

As Paul Gilroy (author of The Black Atlantic) and other academics who study diasporas have asserted, the arts offer one opportunity to confront the past and share it with those with little to no experience or involvement therein. But as art can be so easily dismissed, exploited, or improperly interpreted in the artist’s absence, I wonder what else is out there.

I take Young Jean Lee and Kara Walker to heart. It's gotta be possible, even for three white girls.

Solving Racial Tension Through Dance?

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