I had a really good weekend and I hope you can say the same. The weather - balmy and gratefully received. I've always maintained that, if the snow can hold out until the end of December, or better yet, January (with of course the mandatory dusting on Christmas Eve) then winter is a doable season, lasting an appropriate amount of time (three months). It's those years when we're sub-zero the first week of November with ice and snow that makes it a 5-6 month season - absolutely interminable and depressing. So, yay to a late start to winter this year!
Friday, singing with the gang at Schaller's - Christ on guitar behind me and really Christ, you need to learn more songs! Each week he insists on accompanying me on "The Nearness of You" and also "Look of Love". What if I don't want to sing those songs week over week? And "Nearness of You" hurts - it was the closest thing to having "our song" when I was with P. Each time I sing it I remember singing it to him - our eyes locked in love. I really need to not sing that song for a while.
Saturday great lesson with Mark, working on song selection for the show and then fun with Josh - dinner at Blind Faith, a mystery trip to a very cool bar in Edgewater to show him the original art decco decor (Alan and Carla introduced me to it) - Gino's North (not part of the chain). Then back to his house for our continuing Wes Anderson personal film festival. We watched The Life Aquatic - amazing! I'm such a fan! Yesterday time with Lucas and Convex in a laundromat (the only time I get to see her since she's in Urbana during the week) and last night 12 West Elm with Pam, Carla and Alan. So much fun and I must have been exuding hormones or something because there were four gents buzzing around me - Carla was amazed. I was bemused.
What's on everyone's mind, of course, is the school shooting in Connecticut. I learned about it cuz I stream headlines to my phone. And even though I don't have a TV, I read accounts on the NYT website. And I'm feeling a bit like a social anthropologist - observing the reactions, taking note of my own feelings and impulses, taking the temperature of friends and acquaintances, reading the comments on Facebook, etc. For what it's worth these are a few of the thoughts that have percolated:
- My first reaction was, "Oh, no...not again." And then curiosity. When I learned the scope and ages of the children I was, of course, horrified. Something about the children being under ten - imagining what must have been their uncomprehending reaction - their baby innocence lost in a day, in a moment.
- Mostly my thoughts have dwelled on what is it that animates us around these types of tragedies. I found myself hungrily reading each article for tidbits of first account news, impatient at the filler and the pontificating of experts. There was one article - a play by play of one set of parents receiving the news of the shooting independent of each other - each racing to the scene, getting stuck in traffic so parking the car and sprinting to the scene, the mother in high heels. Father got to their child first - she was fine and he texted the mother who collapsed with relief. Reading the article, I was relieved for them, but there was a smidge of disappointment that I wasn't reading a first hand account from one of the families who weren't so lucky. I wished to be inside the heads of the other ones - the ones who collapsed, not from relief but from anguish.
- Thinking about our complex, conflicted brains - the same brain that gushes with love and compassion is the same brain that is animated by violence and tragedy. I know I'm not unique in being titillated by disaster - I'm guessing most of you were following the play by play, being repelled by the details as they emerged but also hungry for those details as well. Do you want to know more about the boy - what makes him tick - what the mother's role was (a nervous gun collector). Are you waiting for the families of the deceased to share their stories so you can feel, almost firsthand, their pain? Something about getting really close to the tragedy, living it vicariously and then being able to step back, wipe your brow and say, "It wasn't me. My children are fine. My family has been spared...for now.." What!? Are we rehearsing in case something like that DOES happen to us?
- As I said, social anthropologist. I refuse to just observe my brain in action when it is misbehaving. I'm refusing to follow the lizardian script that's written for me. Yes, I'm drawn to other peoples tragedies - I get it - it's the way we're wired. Maybe there is some evolutionary reason/benefit why we get lit up when something awful happens to someone else. Maybe it's designed to keep us on our toes. Having said that, I refuse to indulge those impulses. It's also the reason why I got rid of the TV. The "news", at times like this, is nothing more than good theater. Heroes, villains, innocents, lives lost, lives spared. Yet, unlike fictional theater, it's toxic in its prurient probing, taking real life events as they unfold and crafting it into television drama to be consumed by bloodthirsty viewers.
- Blood thirsty - do you think of yourself that way? Guess is you are. Did you read The Hunger Games or see the movie? Did you tut-tut that the citizenry made a sport out of remotely watching a dozen children with weapons being dropped in a forest - victory to the last one standing? Did you tsk-tsk while, at the same time, loving every moment of it - watching and "disapproving" of the characters who got vicarious pleasure from seeing children kill other children - while, the whole time, getting your own vicarious pleasure from the violence?
- My personal solution is to acknowledge there is a reptile part of my brain that thirsts for blood but not to nourish it. No different from eschewing wheat and dairy because they don't contribute to my health. Delving into the details of this tragedy is not good for me - it animates a part of my brain that shouldn't be animated. So, I won't feed it - won't watch any of the vids, won't read the first hand accounts. I'll read the discussions of the pros and cons of gun control (that's healthy and productive) but I won't feast on the pain of others.
Your challenge today is being brutally honest with yourself about your own reactions to this tragedy. I hope you're self aware enough to get past the platitudes and look deeper at your own part in this. I'm thinking we are all accountable.
Peace,
Sarah
Picture=lizard brain
Hmmm, what's in your past that causes you to share, even in a small way, the guilt of that ugly massacre. I suspect most others DO NOT feel accountable, no matter how deep they dig, for the disgusting, disturbing mass murder of those children!
ReplyDeleteI think you're wrong - don't villify me. It's not a new realization that human beings are at the core often very primitive and that, despite our aspirations to be peace loving, the facts are that we are also war loving - we wage violence on each other and it satisfies something primal in us. To think otherwise is to deny the facts that are all around us. When I said we are all accountable what I meant is that we operate from these two places - wanting peace and security while, at the same time, embracing violence in the laws we endorse, the movies we see, the video games we let our children watch, the wars we wage,the weapons we protect the right to bear.
ReplyDeleteWhoever wrote this - dig a little deeper. If you are really passionate that the murder of these children is antithetical to who you are as a person then, what are you going to do to make sure it doesn't happen again? Will you support and fight for gun reform? Will you seek limits on violence embedded in the movies and games our children play? Will you rally for peace?
I resent the implication that there is anything unique about my childhood that makes my responses disturbing and aberrant. I'm speaking universal truths here. Humans have a monstrous side - it's in each of us. Talking about it is a good first step. What's disgusting to me is the hypocrisy of people who sit aloft and preach peace and love and treat incidents like this as if it is foreign to our species. Remember we are a single consciousness - we have to own the violence as being part of our collective behavior. It is NOT a one-off. We are all, therefore, accountable.
Sarah