dialogue

Weekly newsletter 1.26.2021

Friends, 

I’m obsessed with words. In part, my obsession is rooted in fascination with etymology. When I was in 7th grade, my French teacher told us about wild nights in grad school when she and her fellow language students would deconstruct or literally translate words. She totally geeked out on the literal break-down of the word malheureusement as bad-happily. I’m not sure anyone else in the room laughed with her, but I’ve thought about that word for the last 30+ years. Most of my obsession, though, is rooted in my mother’s phrase, cited when people were locked in an inane argument: “Semantics is the problem with the world today.” Sure, it’s a little reductive, but it’s always pushed me toward precision in language, to mean what I say and to say what I mean. 

Words are useless when they float unengaged - unread, unheard, unrespondedto (not a word, I know...maybe there’s a French mot that captures it pithily). If you’re on social media at all, you’ve encountered lots of useless words - quotes and misquotes, rants and diatribes, declarations and deductions. From my perspective, it’s rare that our words are actually, authentically read and heard. We don’t respond as much as we opine or comment. It’s hard to get into other folx’ minds to understand the boundaries of irony or earnestness - this is understandable, as each virtual social medium isn’t really equipped to facilitate dialogue, leaving us with competing monologues. 

In the past year, I’ve been interested in the role of the hashtag. On social media, folx follow particular hashtags to gain exposure to familiar or new ideas, images, or resources. Some follow hashtags to disrupt; others follow to glean. In the last couple of years, I’ve taken to long walks, and I try to capture images of life in my neighborhood, in my city. Some images evoke feelings, others memories, others ideas. I found it trite to try to write about the images I’d post - it felt anywhere from cheesy to preachy - so I shifted to using hashtags. The hashtag affords a different form of communication, offering my take without (hopefully) telling anyone else what to think. It’s not poetry, it’s not prose, and perhaps it’s just a trend that will evaporate, but in addition to being a different way of narrating and documenting my life, I approach them as an invitation to intersect with others who might have encountered or who are seeking to encounter these ideas, images, or resources. Here’s an example. 

Dialogue doesn’t have to look as it did for Plato, but it does need to be authentic. Thanks for engaging me in this space - I hope that our dialogue through a newsletter, through social media, or, someday again, face to face, yields for us the connections and invitations to expand our worldviews that we desire. 

Updates

While watching last week’s Inauguration, my friend, arts educator Jennifer Katona, and I were each enthralled to see the things we love to geek out about on full display in our quadrennial ritual to transfer power and leadership. For Jenn, it was the arts in action, from Gaga to Gorman, exhibiting broad and diverse talents and yet magnifying the lack of support across the country in prioritizing arts education. For me, it was what the Inauguration as a ritual revealed to us. We captured our initial observations (read Jenn’s here and mine here), and we hope to continue the dialogue. Take a look and, if something grabs you, comment and join the dialogue. 

Registration for Symposia is open! The next two to launch are: 

• “Religious literacy: how to talk about religion without pissing anyone off” is a 6-week symposium on Thursdays that begins February 18

• “Good Stuff II: talking about listening, seeing, feeling, and other ings” is a 4-week symposium on Mondays that begins March 1. 

Full descriptions on my website. Symposia are limited to 10 participants and need 4 to run - if you’ve thought about participating, please sign up! If you’re eager for meaningful conversation away from the noise of current events, come join! For more details and to register, click here.

Guided meditations via Zoom continue! Mondays at 4:00pm PST. The aim is to practice being present - to ourselves, to others, and to the world. If you or someone you know could use a 20-30 minute dose of peace and quiet on Mondays, visit the meditation page on my site to sign up. 

Good Stuff

See
Portland (OR) author and artist Michael James Schneider goes by blcksmth on Instagram. Many of the images he posts are quotes, usually assembled through balloon letters, lights, or other clustered objects. The medium playfully catches your attention - who doesn’t love a wall-sized poster of a quote made from balloons! - but the ideas are profound, sometimes cutting, and sometimes really good advice in the interest of self-care. Some standouts: 

STRAIGHT MEN UNDERSTAND CONSENT WHEN THEY GO TO A GAY BAR

MY LOVE LANGUAGE IS TEXTING ME BACK

BE NICE EVEN TO PEOPLE YOU DON’T WANT TO F#CK

STOP SHRINKING YOURSELF TO MAKE OTHER PEOPLE FEEL BIG

THE MOST IMPORTANT ANSWERS WILL NEVER BE FOUND IN A SEARCH BAR

LEAVE PEOPLE BETTER THAN YOU FOUND THEM

STOP MISTAKING SHARED TRAUMA FOR COMPATIBILITY

EMPATHY WITHOUT BOUNDARIES IS SELF DESTRUCTION

WASH YOUR F#CKING HANDS

A GLOBAL PANDEMIC IS NOT A GOOD EXCUSE TO TEXT YOUR EX

The words themselves don’t carry the impact of Schneider’s art - see them in their full force, and the rest of his playful and profound art, on his Instagram page. 

Listen
I know the question that is burning inside you today: What, exactly, is a “kiki”? No? Well, it’s still worth exploring anyway. Since Paris is Burning, the unique language and mode of communication that developed in the Harlem Ball scene has become commonplace. Madonna paid homage to the Ball scene in “Vogue,” and now RuPaul’s Drag Race holds the reins on cultural lingo. Somewhere in between (2012 to be precise), the Scissor Sisters created “Let’s Have a Kiki,” a dancefloor hit that plainly explains for the unchurched a fundamental element of drag subculture and that captures the moment when drag was on the rise but before RuPaul reigned supreme over the internet. The video is a fun watch, too. 

If you stream music on Spotify, I’ve started a playlist called “Bill’s Good Stuff,” including music I’ve loved for a long time as well as things I’ve come across more recently. Feel free to add the playlist to your favorites! Bill’s Good Stuff Spotify Playlist

Read
Creation stories have been at the core of cultural development since, well, literally since the dawn of humanity. How we understand our origins bears on how we live our present and construct our future. Too often, we limit our appreciation of creation narratives to ancient texts - Genesis/B’reshit, Greek “myths,” the Popol Vuh, stories from the Puranas… - and we discount our ability to weave our contemporary understanding of the world into meaningful narratives that put our lives and our actions in ultimate context. Some modern and postmodern thinkers outright reject religiously-rooted or -infused narratives, adopting our reconstruction of the Big Bang in their place, and that’s too bad. Such hardness of boundaries ironically echoes the hardness of fundamentalist or literalist appraisals of ancient scriptures. Such hardness reveals the arrogance of a definite opinion or belief - our current understanding of the Big Bang is the only way to explain and make meaning of the origins of the universe? Hundreds of thousands of years of narratives and experience can’t tell us anything? On the other hand, the stories that have forged communities for thousands of years, the stories that connect us to our most ancient ancestors have no relevance for scientific inquiry? Such hardness also severely limits our ability to adapt our narratives, to absorb new insights and knowledge and experiences. 

I’ve never found much opportunity in academic endeavors for connections between the extreme factions of religious-literalists and scientific-rationalists, but pop culture often creates the space for questions of purpose and fact, of history and historicity, of reason and faith to coexist. As a genre, science fiction has been facilitating that dialogue beautifully, and since Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the arts have provided a home for dialogue and exploration of the tension between our scientific, ethical, social impulses. I’ve been a fan of Doctor Who since its reboot in 2005. It’s sci-fi, it’s campy, it’s deeply British in its humor and social commentary, and its villains are not-so-thinly veiled iterations of modern threats, giving its audience ample opportunity for existential reflection. The Doctor doesn’t reject earthly belief systems as much as he (well, in the current casting of Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor and finally, she) puts them in context. As the story goes, The Doctor has regenerated 12 times over the past thousand years and, through the extraordinary capabilities of the Time Lords of Gallifrey (the Doctor’s species and home planet) he has traveled through time to the start and end of creation. When the Doctor comments on the limitations or darkside of human society, s/he speaks from very broad experience (or at least, the broad experience that writers can engage).

Occasionally, the Doctor channels cosmological musings, playfully offering new ways to think about the origins of the universe in a way that engages viewers’ own beliefs and worldviews. In “The Rings of Akhaten,” writer Neil Cross gives the Eleventh Doctor (played by a fez and bowtie bedecked Matt Smith) a tender moment with a child wrestling with self-doubt and searching for the confidence to do what she needs to do (which, to the character and to any human pre-teen, feels like the whole world depends on her). The Doctor doesn’t bolster the girl by naming her skills and strengths - he helps her find strength and purpose in her uniqueness, in her difference, in her otherness by weaving a new creation story. Not too long after the episode, a colleague mounted a poster with this text at the door of her Science classroom, giving students something to reflect on as they entered and exited the classroom over the year. When prospective colleagues would take note of the poster while I was giving them tours, I took that interest as a very good sign, indicating a teacher who a) wasn’t afraid of letting a geek flag fly and b) could find wisdom beyond the confines of conventional sources. More importantly, I took it as a sign that this was an educator who understood that, as Ben Platt said in his speech to accept the 2017 Tony Award, “the things that make you strange are the things that make you powerful.”

Hey, do you mind if I tell you a story?
One you might not have heard?

All the elements in your body were forged 
many, many millions of years ago, 
in the heart of a far away star that exploded and died. 
That explosion scattered those elements 
across the desolations of deep space. 

After so, so many millions of years, 
these elements came together 
to form new stars and new planets. 
And on and on it went. 
The elements came together and burst apart, 
forming shoes and ships and sealing-wax 
and cabbages and kings.
Until eventually, they came together to make you. 

You’re unique in the universe. 
There is only one You. 
And there will never be another.