Let's have us a conversation! accidental part 2

I wrote this as a comment on the last post, but I got an error from Blogger because it was too long :) so, you'll just get it as a regular contribution to the 'ol blog:

Look at this! What a great conversation :) I'm so happy, reading through all of this. Jessica, take your time.

Esther, you rock. Here are my thoughts after reading your comment:

First, I think the reason I shy away from the 'feminist' label is the same reason I shy away from a 'liberal' label. In reality, I'm both of those things, but I'm more interested in having conversations with conservatives and non-feminists than I am in just talking with people that think the same way as I do. If you sit down at a table with a bunch of conservative thinkers and say, "Hi! I'm a liberal. Let's have a conversation," it's not nearly as productive as just having the conversation without prefacing it with labels or expectations on either side. Lots of my friends are decidedly not feminists, but I want them in on the conversation because they have good, thoughtful minds and I think they could use good conversations like this more than anyone else I know. But once I say 'feminist,' they stop listening.

I love what Esther said about promiscuity and the possibility that media can, in fact, promote healthy sexual expression. Sex in the City is an interesting example too, because none of the characters on the show have really become celebrity sex objects in the way that, say, some of the cast of Desperate Housewives has. I think that's significant.

The only gender-opposite term I can think of for "whore" is "womanizer," and while it's not a positive term, it's significant that the female version isn't "Mananizer." Still, I think the idea that men are all congratulating each other for notches on bedposts doesn't work exactly like it does on TV either. That men care more about physical love than emotional love is just as destructive a blanket-statement as women caring more about emotional love than physical love. They're pseudo-scientific cultural cop-outs that I'm not interested in.

Here's another example to throw in the mix: Victoria's Secret. In theory (rather idealistic theory, yes), lingerie is a product that essentially exists for the purpose of helping women to empower their bodies and get in touch with their sexuality. In a healthy personal relationship, feeling sexy and having physical admiration for your partner is more than important; it's necessary. Physicality is deeply human and exploring our bodies should be celebrated. The problem is, you have to run a successful company in a capitalist economy, and when your product is sexual in nature, how do you advertise it? Their advertisements become primarily directed at the attention of men: Wear this, girls, and you could be as attractive to men as our models are! Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've never talked to a single woman who feels empowered by Victoria's Secret's commercials or magazines. They usually feel inadequate, which unfortunately a pretty powerful way to sell a product. To get you to buy their lingerie, they've taken the route of making you believe they possess a level of sexual capital that you don't.

That's the root of a lot of these problems, I think: when sexuality is culturally understood on a sliding scale, 1-10, as something you can compare from person to person, something that's not innately individual, the whole culture loses a really wonderful, important part of its humanity. Our culture has developed such an innately weird understanding of what we all have to offer as individuals. Have you ever gotten to know somebody that wouldn't have made you do a double-take in the street, but becomes OVERWHELMINGLY physically attractive to you because you connect with them in a powerful way? We have the ability to make connections that are real, and THAT is where deeply human physicality comes in. Evolutionary psychology tries to explain things like modern male fetishization of large breasts as some kind of subconscious disposition towards fertility or nurturing qualities, but I think that's silly. The double-takes in the street aren't deeply human, they're culturally learned, through a lifetime of bombardment from Victoria's Secret advertisements.

Lastly I'm SO glad you're all willing to talk with me about this :) I'm very aware that as much as I can contribute as a male feminist, I'll never really understand it the way you kids can (Inside joke alert: Jessica thinks 'kid' is a primarily male noun, so I'm on a quest to use it for women whenever I can.). So understand that my intentions are usually good, and correct me when I'm wrong, and let's keep talking.

I had to copy and paste this into Word in order to get it here, and as it turns out, it's longer than the essay I'm supposed to be writing. Productivity!

Love, Luke

let's have us a conversation!

I've never really talked about my feminism on this blog before, which is interesting. That's probably one of the few times I've ever called it "feminism," which is also interesting. Not sure I like the label and everything it implies.

It's on my mind today for a fairly stupid reason, but one that I'll talk about anyway because I've been reading Antony and Cleopatra for 3 hours and I need a break.

So, anyone else watch Glee? No? The stupid musical TV? Me either. Not after this last episode, anyway. I started watching it because in the first few episodes they took on some really interesting issues: homosexuality, comprehensive sex ed in high schools, etc. The show was surprisingly progressive, delivered in high-school-musical-esque packaging, and that interested me. Plus, in the first episode they covered Don't Stop Believin', which was pretty great. So I proceeded to give Glee the benefit of the doubt, long after I realized the music was going to be awful, long after I stopped being interested in the characters, long after the show's only saving grace (Jane Lynch's character) stopped making me laugh.

Finally, in last week's episode, whatever was keeping me watching the show disintegrated fantastically. All I could do was shake my head at the ridiculous quicksand the show fell into in its attempt to make an episode centered around female empowerment. It's not really Glee's fault - just about every TV show that has ever been touted as a feminist project has at some point walked on the wrong line of the empower-your-sexuality/objectify-your-body conundrum.

Feminist Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer was supposed to be a show that centered around a radical reversal of gender roles: take the voiceless, helpless female character from every horror movie ever and turn her into the only person in the world with the power to stop the bad guys. Problem: as the show gained popularity and Sarah Michelle Gellar became a celebrity, Buffy got skinnier and blonder, and the producers (even Joss Whedon himself) stepped back and amassed their fortunes as she became a sex object. Working within our celebrity/sex driven culture, true feminism doesn't really sell, but objectification sells under a feminist flag, and boy does it sell. As professionals in television, even those with good intentions, I understand why it's an easy precipice to fall over. Glee's infraction, however, seems at least a little more obvious to me. They wanted to make a feminist episode, and they picked Madonna as their epitome of the empowered female musician.

Madonna is a confusing feminist case, much like Buffy. She's a strong woman, with a lot of cultural power, but in the end it's all based around the sexualization of her image. We've been talking about the difference between Elizabeth I and Cleopatra in my Shakespeare class, their different modes of power. Cleopatra sexualized herself and was absolutely worshipped by the whole world for it, whereas Elizabeth I never married, never allowed herself to be sexualized. Cleopatra is, in the end, still sort of a feminist figure, in that she had complete control over her sexuality; the worldwide worship wasn't exactly objectification. I think the difference primarily lies in the mass media we're talking about. Madonna's sexual strength might actually be empowering if it wasn't subjugated by record companies to turn a profit. Some feminists (not myself, thanks. For obvious reasons, I can't support the near-complete obliteration of the male gender) consider lesbian revolution as the ultimate goal, , but even lesbianism is sexually fetishized in our culture, so media that tries to feature lesbians often gets sold in a sexual context. The root of the problem is this: Female sexuality isn't anti-feminist. But female sexuality as media, as an advertising tool, as an image-based way of grabbing our attention, fuels one of the most powerful (and elusive) anti-feminist cultural problems we have; the omnipresence of the male gaze.

So, how do we reconcile our personal quest for healthy individual sexuality with our culture's sexual media? Who knows. Let's figure it out though, okay? I have an idea for starters:

This summer I want to organize a night called "Great Songs of Misogyny: As Performed by Women!" I think it would be an interesting and non-abrasive, plus it's be a fun way to introduce some of my musician friends to each other. And come on, there are just so many songs to choose from :) My only request is that this gem of a song gets played at some point. And that is why I think this is a good idea; I absolutely LOVE that song, even though I understand how ridiculous the lyrics are. Music is about feel, and bad lyrics can rarely overpower an infectiously great piece of music. In the end, it would just be a night of really great music, with a potentially thought-provoking juxtaposition.

Okay, maybe we'll talk about this again at some point. See you!

Luke

p.s. One more thing: contrary to you may think after reading this, I don't dislike Joss Whedon, not at all. If you haven't seen Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog or any of his Firefly/Serenity project, you should. He's fantastic.

TIme can be Deceived, and other things I learned in Big Sky Country

"To beguile the time,/ Look like the time"

-Lady Macbeth

Macbeth Act I.5, l.62-63

Thesis: Time is a corruptible prison-guard. If you act like you've already got a way out, she gets curious and jealous and gives you the keys anyway, if only until you slip up and give yourself away. Still, temporary relief can be incredibly welcome relief.

Sub-Thesis: The local joke in Missoula is that their town is 5 minutes away from Montana. It's a microcosm of weird hippie college culture inside a larger ecosystem of weird (sometimes hippie) cowboy culture. A psychological and cultural anomaly.

Synthesis: My time in Missoula gave me an opportunity to act as though I wasn't dead in the middle of the space that I'm dead in the middle of.

Thank you, Jan, for the iPhone photos.

Thank you, Jacob, for the hospitality you pretended to hate.

Thanks to both of you for the love, friendship, and everything you bring out in me.

Thank you, Clark Fork River, for your presence. You were the universal solvent and catalyst through which this chemical sublimation took place. Thank you for your bridges, psychologically and physically forcing me to cross boundaries and confront the space around your edges everywhere I went.

Thank you, Montana, for your open country and your big sky, your striking mountains, your run-down mining towns, for your dusty antiques store that offered me up an underpriced, vintage, brandless guitar amp. Your kindness is not lost on me.

And it all amounts to this, my darling

Photo: Simon Williams

Alright, for the none of you that have stayed with me through this weird/long/fragmented essay-like thing that's happened spontaneously over the past four days on this blog, I have a little something for your aural enjoyment. I'm releasing this single, called "Stillness" (After a thematic section of Four Quartets), because in a way, I think that it's my contribution to this discussion about time and heartbreak and healing and circularity and the fullness of humanity. It's among my very favorite songs that I've ever written, so I feel kind of weird giving it to you outside of the context of an album release. All I can say is that the process of recording this, being back in the studio with Simon, has completely energized me. I'll tell you right now that a full-length Luke Williams record will be coming next summer. It's going to be stripped down, much less electric than the Ancient Eyes EP, looser, more raw. So for now, enjoy this little gift, from me to all of you who are so faithfully supportive of me and my musical endeavors.

And with that, I'm off to Missoula, Montana for some much-needed time by myself and with old friends.

I love you,

Luke

Stillness

Luke Williams - Guitar, Vocals, Banjo, Tambourine

Simon Williams - Vocals, Sound Engineering, Mixing

Clay Williams - Vocals

Scott Williams - Vocals

Alice Williams - Vocals

Lyrics:

Numb, my fingers and toes

Catch me before I sink down under

Trusting the breaststroke

To carry me home

I'm caught in the undertoe

Spinning sand and water

Tumbling I kiss the darkest abyss

Undulation

Soon will resume,

It comes from the moon

Movement without motion

Stillness containing so much, so soft

So condescending

Such visibility,

So much nothing

I can see for miles and miles

What a beauty, such a vision

Ample stalls can feel so empty

Vastness of a lonely prison, and

Like the winter solstice I'm

All aligned with nothing, nothing,

Frigid blue is all I hear, and it

All amounts to this, my darling

Time is a Circle, and Unredeemable

The reason that time has been so present in my thoughts lately is T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets, a collection of poems and lyrical prose from the man that is pictured above to be hanging out in my apartment with me and a disembodied hand. I had a professor ask me about seminal texts in my life, books that grounded me, changed me, books that I returned to. I was only introduced to Eliot about 6 months ago, but I've literally been reading this unassuming little book of poems constantly ever since. Much like Ray Lamontagne's "Trouble," It somehow inhabits a wholeness of human experience all at once.

Throughout Four Quartets, Eliot makes clear his obsession with time. Several other recurring concepts in the book have already made their way into songs that I've written this winter, but I think that time has been waiting for me, waiting for this week, to explode into every facet of my thought.

The book is laid out in four sections that archetypically represent the natural seasons. The first section, Burnt Norton, begins:

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past.

If all time is eternally present

All time is unredeemable.

Sort of cryptic-sounding at first, but it's pretty simple once you get past the initial syntactical confusion. Eliot is a passionate disbeliever of linear time. At the very least, he's a firm voice for the necessity of living outside of its grasp, of understanding and embracing circularity. I'm going to try.

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Through the unknown, remembered gate

When the last of earth left to discover

Is that which was the beginning;

At the source of the longest river

The voice of the hidden waterfall

And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for

But heard, half-heard, in the stillness

Between two waves of the sea.

Quick now, here, now, always -

A condition of complete simplicity

(Costing not less than everything)

And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well

When the tongues of flame are in-folded

Into the crowned not of fire

And the fire and the rose are one.

Thanks for the comfort, T.S.

Penultimately (I've got one last piece of this little blog-essay to give you tomorrow), I want to present you with the musician that first showed me what it felt like to encounter a piece of art that exhibited both sweetness and pain, that timelessness and fullness of human experience, like Four Quartets, like "Trouble." I tend to keep Kelly Joe Phelps hidden away from the world, because when my dad took me at 14 to see him play, I developed a really personal connection to the experience. I was taken in by much more than the virtuosity of his musicianship or the deep smokiness of his voice. Somehow the combination of his beautiful, mumbled lyrics and his presence as a performer really crept into the depth of my consciousness, through that back door that unlocks itself when you're in the presence of something truly great and your existence opens up, and you lose all sense of time.

Piece by Piece - Kelly Joe Phelps.

piece by lonely piece the mountainside tumbles away
back down to the river bottom lined with pocket worry stones
a hundred years in hand worn smooth by long grandmother nights
sitting by the rocking chair waiting for the world

oh, if I could roll back all the years and talk to my daddy's dad
about all the fears I’m leaving in that maybe he had had
I might get some light to shine down this dusty old dry well
hear the bucket hit the bottom and the rope come rolling by

when three hundred years has been the time from whence it came
why hadn't someone yet figured out to lower down the gun
and shoot out the middle of this clawing, staring eye?
hear the bucket hit the bottom and the rope come rolling by
sitting by that old rocking chair waiting for the world

It's only Time, it will go by

Thanks to Julia for pointing me to this Ray Lamontagne song. It fits perfectly into this internal conversation I'm having. I don't have any clever interpretations of this song, no connections to make at the moment. Just the hypnotic melody, and the lyrics, they speak for themselves:

Don't let your mind get weary and confused
Your will be still, don't try
Don't let your heart get heavy child
Inside you there's a strength that lies

Don't let your soul get lonely child
It's only time, it will go by
Don't look for love in faces, places
It's in you, that's where you'll find kindness

Be here now, here now
Be here now, here now

Don't lose your faith in me
And I will try not to lose faith in you
Don't put your trust in walls
'Cause walls will only crush you when they fall

Be here now, here now
Be here now, here now

Time is a Salt, according to Shakespeare

"Your lordship, though not clean past your youth, have yet some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltness of time in you."

- Falstaff, to the slightly younger Chief Justice

from The Second part of King Henry the IV

Act I, scene 2, l. 93-95

Falstaff is the quintessential voice of humanism, wit, and the common man in the Shakespeare canon. He is a constant voice for individual life over patriarchal nationalistic honor and, and he refuses to reminisce with his friends about joy in bygone days; his joy is eternal and almost zen-like. He lives in the moment, man. But time - and a brutally excessive drinking habit - have given Falstaff the gout and painful boils, among other innumerable diseases. It's also found him in his 70s, joyful but acutely aware of his naturally-imposed limits. Falstaff evades the recognition of time because he understands that, in the end, it exhibits only saltness and deterioration, contributing nothing essential to his life.

"Well, thus we play the fools with the time, and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us."

-Prince Hal, on his inaction.

from The Second Part of King Henry IV

Act II, scene 2, l. 133-134

Foolishly spent time is time spent being mocked by our ancestral collective wisdom. So the question is, what is time spent foolishly? How can we possibly know? It seems like more often than not, I get advice that sounds like "All you can really do is wait." It's the trite old expression "time heals all wounds," but when all I do is wait and expect answers, I feel foolish. I feel like I'm playing the fool with time. I guess it's possible that the spirits of the wise are jaded, that they forget what it's like to be human, to feel, to have your understanding constricted to patient grains of sand at the midpoint of an hourglass. They mock us in their wisdom because they are proud, because they've already paid their dues and waited and expected answers and felt foolish and maybe they got them and maybe they didn't, but either way they're not waiting for anything anymore.

They've stopped wondering if they'll always feel this way/so empty, so estranged.

But you and I haven't stopped wondering, Ray. Understand, I don't compare my life to yours. You've been to hell and back so many times/you must admit I kind of bore you. And I'm appreciative of that. I hope I'm never so acquainted with that journey as you are. If I'd been born just a few miles north and a few years earlier, we would've gone to the same high school, but you ditched class and got in fights and it took you so long to ever pull yourself together. You would have had no sympathy for me, overprivileged, overconfident, idealistic, and I know that. Even so, your music means something significant to me, so thank you. Thank you for your inspired confusion of physicality, early morning beauty, sexuality, emotional hardship, and thunderstorms. In the end, there's a lot of things neither of us understand/why so many people lie.

I had a great conversation with Kimberlee about Ray Lamontagne's album "Trouble." It's inspiringly hopeful and desperately sad, often at the same time. The whole thing just feels so incredibly human.

I think the word is "timeless," and that's of interest to me now more than ever.