Tag: failure

526: “I Still Can’t Tie A Square Knot” (K. O’Neill)

                “I still can’t tie a square knot properly…”
                -K. O’Neill, A Song for You & I, p. 24

                Earlier today, when I was going to write this piece, I thought I would respond to Christopher Huang’s Unnatural Ends. So I went to our bedroom where the book’s resting. (My partner and I were reading it aloud last night). I closed the door behind me, which I almost never do, but my partner was in there resting, and we had friends over who were staying a bit late. Then I turned to go. And the door wouldn’t open. I tried the doorknob again. Wouldn’t open. Tried the doorknob the other way, and again, and then after a bit I called to our friends from across the house. They came to try the door from the other side, and it wouldn’t open. We tried the door with the key just to check. Wouldn’t open. Now we’ve escaped by disassembling the doorknob mechanism and pulling out the lock. I’ve looked at the pieces, and oiled them till they all slide nicely, and wiped the oil from my hands, and I still don’t know why it wouldn’t open, or for that matter, as I push around the nicely oiled pieces, quite how it’s supposed to work.
                I don’t know so many of the things that move around me. And it can be frustrating, or at least, I spent some of the last hour frustrated, but it’s also a delight. Here’s this clever trick hidden in the mechanism behind the door knob, moving every day beneath my fingers, and me never knowing what it is or how it works until something small slides a different way and I’m left standing, looking, baffled by one of the world’s little sliding pieces.

by Azlan

499: “Frivolous, Promiscuous, and Irrelevant” (Jack Halberstam)

                “Being taken seriously means missing out on the chance to be frivolous, promiscuous, and irrelevant. The desire to be taken seriously is precisely what compels people to follow the tried and true paths of knowledge production around which I would like to map a few detours.” -Jack Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure

                I’m writing a book for my PhD dissertation. I know, I know, but I couldn’t fit in the bird bath (it looks so fun!) and you have to do something. So earlier today I’m at a cafe with my advisor, chatting about my constantly changing book ideas. She laughed at me. I would laugh at me. What this book is and what it’s about has been changing week to week. We laugh together, and she says, “Well, what book do you want it to be like?”
                And I think about Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure. 
                Now I’m not going to write anything like The Queer Art of Failure. For one thing, Halberstam is brilliant. For another my pages tend to have more personal story stuff than that book. But I did tell my advisor, You know, I wish what I was writing was funnier. 
                Since then I’ve been thinking about why my pages aren’t funnier. And I could say, well, the book’s about difficult things, and that’s true, but so is Halberstam’s. And Halberstam’s is funny as me trying to think my way out of overthinking. (By which I mean, very). I think part of the seriousness in my pages is that I’ve bought into exactly what Halberstam is warning against, what they’re so gleefully refusing: this idea that I want to be a success, and I know what that means, and so I’ll go along the paths I’m supposed to until someone severe and somber says, “Yes. Look what hath you wrought.” And that’s rot. Which is to say: this week I looked at someone who’d made their neck and chin look like a burger. This week I showed that to my friend, and now to you. This week my friend and I talked about her work, which means we talked about how our medical systems fail to support her and her relatives. And we got angry. And we got sad. And we laughed, too, because in person that’s easier, even with the angry and sad, and I think laughter can be pavement for the detours that lead to where we hope we’re headed.

by Azlan

456: “Missing Out On The Chance To Be Frivolous” (Jack Halberstam)

                “Being taken seriously means missing out on the chance to be frivolous, promiscuous, and irrelevant.” -Jack Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure

                In the last years, I’ve done a number of community facilitation projects, and one of the questions funders often ask is how many people is this reaching. And it’s a good question. It’s important. But in systems where I’m taught to want more and more views, more and more likes, more and more influence, I also find myself thinking about the chance to make something with and for these fifty people here. Sometimes making something for “a wider audience” is missing the chance to make and live and share and let go of something with a little group, here.
                So to put it one way, Halberstam has me thinking about all the “goals” or “characteristics” I pursue because I learned somewhere that I’m supposed to—and about all the sillinesses or particularities or otherwises I could be pursuing. Or not pursuing. Lounging into. Growing. No longer resisting. To put it another way, I try to be responsible, but I also like the irresponsibilities of a bouncy ball parading down the stairs. I’ve been carrying a bouncy ball everywhere for a while now. My niece and I decided it was our friend, though in all my seriousness, I’ve forgotten what name we gave it. Am I so sure I want to miss out on being silly?

by Azlan