Uproar – a quote every Wednesday

518: “I Needed You Once” (Split Fiction)

                “I needed you once, but not anymore.”
                […]
                “So, she’s finally gone? Good for you. ‘Cause that Dark Mio? Total party pooper.”
                –Split Fiction

                My partner and I are almost done playing through Split Fiction. We’re loving it. But one scene from last week keeps making me shake my head. So yes, minor spoilers ahead.
                Split Fiction ends up sending its two main characters into their own subconsciouses (one after the other). In each subconscious, the two heroines fight some part of themselves. You can guess the parts: Fear. Anger. Guilt. The common “negative emotions” of storytelling worlds. Mio helps push a massive cyber scythe (it’s all robot themed! The whole game has very cool artwork) into Dark Mio’s angry guts. Mio says: “I needed you once, but not anymore.” A few beats later Mio’s friend confirms, “So, she’s [Dark Mio’s] finally gone? Good for you.” Everyone’s healing path is their own, and there’s a place for letting go of ways of thinking that aren’t helping. But for me, I guess, there’s a difference between letting go and actively trying to murder. There’s a difference between trying to get rid of and trying to make peace with.
                I’m thinking here about developmental psychologist Gordon Neufuld, who points out that people in the US and Canada are taught to rely on “cut it out” language with kids—stop hitting, stop yelling, don’t bite. Neufeld says cut it out just isn’t a very helpful instruction: if you’re angry, there is an urge to yell. Maturity (he says) comes not from murdering the angry voice, but from adding in a counterbalancing voice: remember that you love your brother. Remember that hitting hurts, and you don’t want to hurt your friends. Beyond that, there will be plenty of times when you do still need your anger, your fear, your guilt. Even if right now you don’t need them controlling your every move.
                In Scott Pilgrim vs The World, doesn’t Scott end up having to fight Dark Scott— and instead they talk, get to know each other, realize they can be friends? That story makes more sense to me. Or feels more sense. I didn’t want to kill Dark Mio. I wanted to make peace with her, and see how she and Mio could meet, listen to each other—whole, strong, compassionate, angry when they need to be, caring when they need to be.

by Azlan

517: “Whispering” (John Green)

                “Being busy is a way of being loud. And what my daughter needed was quiet space…” 
                -John Green, “Whispering,” The Anthropocene Reviewed p. 196

                It’s been a busy kind of day. A loud kind of day. This to do, and there to drive, and that to hurry back home for afterward. So much of my culture asks me to live busy. To live loud. All that’s celebrated as though it’s the way to succeed, the way to be, and of course in many ways I’ve internalized it.
                And tonight, settling into stretching—before that watching the fireflies, but only for a moment, I was busy—I want quiet space. Quiet space so that even this feels a little misguided. Even whispering feels loud. Busy. Green talks about whispering as something that calls us to be quiet, to listen. And I like that. And I like sinking through that to silence. A quiet space, not soundless, and also not intent on communication. And so—

by Azlan

516: “Emphasis on Personality” (Chana Porter)

                “Trina moved into performance, both sound and video, involving her own body in the practice. She got a little bit famous and had some minor love affairs, made Deeba proud of her celebrity wife. Then she got bored of the art world; of its pageantry, its emphasis on personality.”
-Chana Porter, The Seep, p. 14

                Almost a decade ago (wow! Time sure washes along) I wrote about Julie Lythcott-Haims and the way passions are commodified into something we have to find—and perhaps sell. Six months ago my partner and I read Chana Porter’s The Seep. And I laid in bed, wondering if cults of individuality lead in part to this dead-end emphasis on personality.
                These days that’s often staged on social media: the influencer’s brand, and how whatever else they’re selling—investment software or skincare serums—they’re selling them. Their energy, fast and larger than life, homey and honest. I think it long predates social media: think of Hollywood stars. Think of celebrity artists. Think of politicians. Think of me, a teacher, told to develop my “teacher persona” and consolidate it into something authoritative and approachable and boundaried and wise and easy to understand and consumable. If individuals are so important, the most important thing around, then a distinct personality has to mean something.
                For me, I think, it means very little. I’ve been reading Moses Ose Utomi’s novellas, but I don’t think it’s his personality that I love. In part it’s the way his imagined world pulls at, reveals, and complicates the world I imagine to be true. In part its the sensory rhythm of sounds. And in person—well, is it really my friend’s personality I’m drawn to, the performance of a particular self? I think it’s more specific: this conversation. This walk together. This game. And more general: this shared gentle silence in which we care for each other. It’s at once more action and more being, and less a pageantry of self.

by Azlan

515: “Tell One Teammate” (Antoine Bauza)

                A player “can then tell one teammate something about the tiles in front of that teammate.” -Antoine Bauza, Hanabi

                The tile game Hanabi unfolds a lot like solitaire, except you’re playing with a team—my favorite is two people—and no one can see their own tiles. Instead, they can see everyone else’s. Then players share information through specific rules so everyone knows (or can guess) what to play next. It’s wonderful.
                And, okay, maybe I’m biased, because communication games have been my favorite for a long time. My partner and I have been playing a lot of them lately. Hanabi, and Sky Team. Maybe it’s because in these kinds of games everyone can only win together. It’s a shared thing, the game we’re playing. Maybe it’s because communicating is really hard. Figuring out when everyone’s free to come together and play a game? That’s hard. Coordinating schedules for summer visits to family far away? That’s hard. Working out the gentle intricacies of this is what I’m hoping for, this is who I am, this is how I can meet you—it’s hard. I spend a lot of time thinking about to share with the people I want to share with. And then sometimes there’s a delightful colorful game that makes magic out of all that with these tiles that, tic, nudge each other and smile.

by Azlan

514: An “Archive of Feelings” (Jack Halberstam)

                “In this other archive [of feelings], we can identify, for example, rage, rudeness, anger, spite, impatience, intensity, mania, insincerity, earnestness, overinvestment, incivility, and brutal honesty.” -Jack Halberstam building from Ann Cvetkovich’s idea of “an archive of feelings,” “​​The Antisocial Thesis in Queer Theory,” p. 824

                I think the archive of feelings I’m thinking from, the feelings I habitually sit inside and move from, has a lot to do with where I am. And so I’ve been thinking about how I make that archive from the people I’m around. How I open myself to these connections. How I don’t.
                I’ve spent the last three days at an academic Research Institute— in depth discussions for hours each—and the evenings at my friend’s house, petting their dog, sharing food, laughing and reconnecting and feeling sleepy. The Institute is a combination of making new, inspiring connections with other scholars, and performing a kind of professional expertise. The evenings are fur covered, with deer grazing just outside the window, muh to the dog’s excitement. Or nervousness? Or interest? After three days of this I’m thinking about the archives of feelings into which my experiences grow.
                My friend, intent on putting up another stretch of wall paper. Fixated, they’ve described it. Determined, I might say. I get that way about a thought or a task sometimes. It’s intense/painful/pleasurable/frustrating/presumptive, like needing to sneeze, but the sneeze comes out as sustained meticulous effort.
                My partner, sitting next to me beneath a blanket. A little while ago (when she was in bed) I asked her how she was and she texted back an image of Boo from Monsters Inc looking almost asleep. And I’ve felt that— the image more than the words. At peace/exhausted/overwhelmed, in place, slow, like happy snot sinking into soil.
                A colleague, leaning forward to share a connection they’ve just started making between two kinds of understanding, a connection they’re inviting us to make. Excited/curious/unsure. A colleague and a friend, leaning back, silent, unwilling to pretend the kind of expertise they’re hearing performed. Angry. Silent. Ready to connect another way.
                I think that, from all these, I learn ways I might be. Ways I am. I sit into them, the ones that don’t fit so well, the ones that do, the ones that bend toward a new kind of fitting.
                The dog, paws up on the windowsill. The deer outside. Where do I graze, like she does, tasting world?

by Azlan

513: “Woohoo, overtime!” (Starcraft 2)

                “Woohoo, overtime!” –Starcraft 2

                Well, it’s happening again. I want to reinstall Starcraft 2. The thing is, I never really want to be playing it…but when I’m not playing, sometimes I feel this building wish to start.
                I think it works like this.
                Even when I was 12 and 13 and 14, the part that drew me to a lot of games (Age of Empires II, Starcraft, Warcraft III, Age of Mythology) was “base building.” You’re dropped on an island, or an alien planet, or in a forest. You have a few villagers or SCVs. There are resources around, waiting to be stripped, and so you expand your little settlement to include more workers, then more refineries and other buildings to help with resource extraction, then a new command center to make new workers to gather more resources on another part of the map. The goal was to create an army, but honestly, that wasn’t the part I wanted. I wanted the workers. The town centers. The ever-growing pile or resources. The controllable world in which I knew the steps to take toward more and more, and therefore toward enough. Toward safety. Toward plenty. Toward something, which was always actually out of reach, outside of the code, as the game gears for war and the erasure of some constructed Other. And finally a dead world stripped of all its minerals and vehicle-powering gases.

by Azlan

512: “My plans are all unmade!” (The Goes Wrong Show)

                “Aaah! Thus with this wound, my plans are all unmade!” –The Goes Wrong Show, “The Most Lamentable…”

                If you haven’t watched it, The Goes Wrong Show puts on plays that—well—wonderfully, and terribly go wrong. Swords swung into theater lights. Scripts aflame. Doors that are supposed to open left locked, and actors stumbling through paper walls that had been painted to look like stone.
                I’ve been talking with scholars lately about their research, and about the strange expectation that they should be able to outline their results or contribution or significance before they’ve started re-ing or searching. How that expectation is even stranger for any research involving community collaborations. How would I know what we want to look for, what we want to do, before we get together to talk about it? Today, sitting on the floor, eyes still half teary from chuckling, all that melds with the silliness of “The Most Lamentable.” Because my plans (such as they are) so rarely go as planned. (A chuckle. I’m even bad at cooking from recipes!). Because in the mad escalation from one mistake to another, one catastrophe to another, there’s a chance to turn from looking for control to playing with a moment. (More chuckles). Nothing on fire—yet—in this writing, but I want that play. And this isn’t quite what I meant to say. Oh dear. I’m stumbling past the point, or around it, or through a painted wall, and then who knows where we are?

by Azlan

511: “Tears Are Precious” (Moses Ose Utomi)

                “Tears are precious, his mama always said. Don’t waste them on your enemies. Save them for your friends.”
                -Moses Ose Utomi, The Lies of the Ajungo, p. 4

                What this means, in the context of Moses Ose Utomi’s wonderful little novella, is complex. Layered. I’m still tracing all the many things it makes me think. But as I struggle with this year’s worries and fears and sadnesses, the line keeps coming back to me. It’s becoming something of a practice.
                I think most of my daily hurts are also kinds of loves. When my friend says (for instance), There’s so much to do, I’ve been literally slapping myself to stay awake, I hurt for them. Because of how much I care for them, because of the place where I see them to be. And so with my family, with my town, with my country. When I tell someone I’m sorry it’s been a rough day, and they answer, not really rougher than others—it’s just, day by day, I could talk about it, but I usually don’t—it’s hard for me to know what to say. What to do. Especially when I don’t know how to help, and then I feel helpless. Thinking back to Utomi’s lines, while I feel the wrongness of the situation they’re in—or the wrongness of the people who are hurting them—I’ve been wondering what happens if I consciously turn towards this person. My friend. The one I want to help protect, care for, cry for. Or with. This, yes, but more than this—you.

by Azlan

510: “A Community’s Emotional Lives” (Billy-Ray Belcourt)

                “I would write a book that reflected a community’s emotional lives rather than just my sensory experience of the present. […] In talking to those who came from where I came from, I also hoped light would be shed on the person I was or the person I might become.”
                -Billy-Ray Belcourt (Driftpile Cree), A Minor Chorus, p. 29-30

                I’ve been wanting to write a post on this quote since October or so. And I haven’t been able to. It’s funny: there are few books I’ve picked up and fallen in love with more deeply than Belcourt’s A Minor Chorus, and still, in the months since I started, I haven’t finished. I think that’s because I realized this book would be useful for my research, and that pushed me toward reading to finish it, and that’s not how I’d started reading. Not how I wanted to read. I wanted to respect it as what I first recognized it to be, which might be something like a meeting place.
                All this is on my mind tonight because I just ran over to my friend Vuyo’s apartment to drop off A Minor Chorus and Belcourt’s This Wound is a World. Vuyo’s thinking through some of her own writing, and these will join the conversations on her page. And all of a sudden this book—which stopped feeling alive to me when I wanted to take something from it; which I had gotten far away from, so even as it sat on my bedside table or my bed or my dresser or my kitchen table, I didn’t read it—this book feels really close. I want to read it, just as I’ve left it with my friend. I think it’s because the book’s enmeshed, again, for me, in a community of relationships. Mine. Billy-Ray’s. Vuyo’s. And more than why, there’s a poignant reminder in the nearness and farness, the wish to read at the moment when the book’s with a friend. Maybe some kinds of being apart weaving through some kinds of being together is part of understanding yourself through a living community. Maybe the emotional lives I’m thinking about unfold in the ways we both have and don’t have a touch of one another. Like a book I’ll fall in love with all over again when it comes back, after missing it, after enjoying the thought of it in my friend’s hands, talking with her.

by Azlan

509: “Become Slow” (Thích Nhất Hạnh)

                “Breathing in, I notice that my in-breath has become deep. 
                Breathing out, I notice that my out-breath has become slow. 
                Deep, slow. 
                Enjoy.”
                -Thích Nhất Hạnh, in this guided meditation

                A long time ago, in trying to help her two kids stay calm and engaged on long car rides, my mom brought along cassette tapes of guided meditations from Thích Nhất Hạnh. I don’t think I remember them. But I absolutely remember being told how much we objected to them. It’s part of our family lore: my mom puts in the tape, and then young voices from the backseat are shouting no, no, we don’t want this tape, turn it off.
                All that makes me smile. Perhaps because, one, as life goes along I connect more and more with my mom, trying to support her kids as they shout back nos (which she listened to, by the way—turning off the tape, though I think she tried again after a while). And two, because I recognize the love in it, the love that tries and struggles and offers and sometimes doesn’t go how you expected (and keeps trying). And three, because my partner and I just shared the Thích Nhất Hạnh guided meditation linked above. Listening to his voice—I was wrong, I do remember it, as we remember childhood before the actions and images of storied memory—I enjoy breathing. Enjoy it like leaves drinking in the sun. Enjoy it as lungs sipping at the sky.
                Breathing in, I notice that my in-breath has become deep. 
                Breathing out, I notice that my out-breath has become slow. 
                Deep, slow. 
                Enjoy.
                I love how some seeds take a long time to grow.

by Azlan