BunnyBlinks » Friends

All About my Mother of a Daydream

Greg — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 11:23:03 +0000

A rough week at work led to a short break for daydreaming toward the end of my shift tonight. Recently, daydreams tend toward thoughts about my mom, who died last month. Tonight’s catalyst was “Manuela,” the name of the woman on the other end of the phone.

Enter (brain right) another “Manuela,” this one played by Cecilia Roth in Almodovar’s Todo Sobre Mi Madre. Toward the end of the film Manuela comes face-to-face with Lola, the baby daddy (now baby mami — it’s Almodovar, after all) of their son, who dies near the beginning of the film, so I can skip the spoiler alert.

Lola’s past actions and Manuela’s pain have led us to expect a confrontation marked by anger, rage, and hatred. Instead, there is calm, peace, and acceptance, although not reconciliation, since there is nothing to reconcile.

Anger is an abandoned possibility. Manuela would not choose to hate, and she understands that a person must decide to be angry. Anger, she has learned, does nothing for those you love, including (especially?) your own damn self.

Back to the then present moment, I opened up a web-browser to check my Facebook newsfeed. Cabby Dave had written a thoughtful post, “A Dishonorable Man,” about an easy target for the Madison Left, Dick Cheney. Scanning the post’s comments, I jumped to the words of Rebecca, my friend, life coach, and coworker:

Wishing an asshole like Cheney dead does, in fact, commit spiritual violence, which is why it’s a self defeating wish that plunges the wisher into his world. Not a world I want to be part of.

Whereas pain can be inflicted, anger is an emotional state we enter by choice, usually but not always a bad one. My job is filled with moments where understanding this can make the difference between comfort and exasperation.

My own mother, however, would have freely admitted she did not teach me this lesson. She would sometimes revel in her anger, refining it to a point whereupon she was clearly having fun, such as that time when out of nowhere and with great pride she announced during her last Thanksgiving dinner that she hoped Rick Santorum would someday “get caught fucking his cat.” (I think he preferred talking about “man on dog,” but whatever.) My mother was more like Manuela’s friend Agrado, who ruffled her costumes until they were real. She had fun faking it til she was making it, having learned to love it by the time she succeeded.

Super(star) Bowl

Greg — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:39:15 +0000

While watching the Superbowl, my friend Rebecca and I discovered that what went came out of the TV speakers as

went into our ears as

Marriage and Music Education.

Greg — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:06:00 +0000

If more and more people want to participate in a given institution, the institution had better welcome the new energy or risk crumbling.

Preventing large emerging groups of people from participating in “marriage” will ultimately do for marriage what keeping large groups of emerging musics from participating in music education did for music education programs.

(Hint: they aren’t exactly thriving these days).

Your fundamentals of music are likely not mine. Her fundamentals of marriage are likely not his.

I ain’t sayin’ we need to throw out moral codes.

But maybe it’s time for music educators to focus once again on the songs we’re actually singing, not just the ones that seemingly confirm the theories of harmony, counterpoint, and other distilled “elements of music” promoted for all sorts of weird historical reasons by a steadily shrinking group of increasingly anachronistic people.

Lord knows it’s certainly time for the “institution of marriage” to enrich the relationships we’re actually in, rather than dismissing the ones that don’t conform to the beliefs no doubt also promoted for all sorts of weird historical reasons by a steadily shrinking group of increasingly anachronistic people.

[self-editing note: It should—but I admit probably doesn't—go without saying that many of my friends and I belong to one or both groups of the aforementioned "increasingly anachronistic people." I would never wish to exclude you, them, myself, nor anyone else from either institution.]

A Visit

Greg — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 07:28:00 +0000

A good friend–and that’s the understatement of the year– is coming to visit next week. The 2+ years we’ve gone without seeing each other is a new record, and one I’m slightly troubled by, if only because it means we’re getting to that age where things move so fast we begin to ignore those “bff” pledges from way back when. Like me, he has one foot in popular culture and one in academia. And each of those two feet has its own one smaller foot in something and another in something else. It was with him that I learned to embrace everything, and to criticize it, too.

The timing of his visit couldn’t be better. It’s the first time in my life that I’ve come to find the weight of infinite open-mindedness unbearable. No, I don’t mean I’m questioning relativism. That was never an issue: being open to everything never meant avoiding making judgments of value. I am, however, reluctantly beginning to accept that most people settle down into a style, a career, a belief, a property, a spouse, a pattern. And they’ll try to box you in, too. Regardless if they succeed, they’ll nonetheless ultimately box you out. Not this friend, though. I can’t wait to reconnect.