will gerdes-mcClain

Dr. ~~~~~

ENGL-6026

1 May 2019

Introduction to My Work

               The focus of the semester, writer’s journals, was really useful for me. My goal for my writing, when I started in the MFA program this past fall, was to make a concerted effort to write about myself explicitly. This is not something I’m necessarily comfortable doing, and not something I’ve done in the past, so having these journals to read, with multiple writers doing this exact thing I’m trying to do and providing multiple models of how it might look, was pretty dope. I appreciated it. I also appreciated the directive to keep a journal throughout the semester, as I will almost always avoid doing anything unless obligated to, and this, combined with the focus of the class, was extra ill, because it obligated me to write regularly and it gave me a way to start posting on my blog regularly, as a bonus, since I used that to compose my journals. (I was kind of surprised at the idea that some people actually wrote theirs out with pen and paper—not because I think it’s quaint or anything dumb like that, but just because doing it that way takes away a lot of functionality that writing on a blog affords. Though I guess it does just open up a lot of options that typing takes away. Hm. Maybe I am just being condescending. Don’t tell people.)

The idea of writing about myself directly was meant to encourage me to be more genuine and sincere, but it turns out that that’s easier said than done (which I suppose I expected). I found myself, in my blog/journal posts, saying quite a lot of really honest, raw stuff, but I also consistently undercut that stuff by ending entries with jokes that, I guess, tried to end the thing by forcing attention back towards irony or absurdity, which are much more comfortable for me. I wasn’t doing this every single entry, but it was happening more often than not. After noticing that I was doing this consistently, I actually forced myself to do the reverse, ending a seemingly silly entry with a super raw, out-of-nowhere admission. It made little sense, content-wise, but that’s one of the things that’s nice about the journal format—you can do whatever, because there’s no clear rules, and the expectation is that you’re just trying stuff and riffing about whatever comes to mind.

The more frustrating side-effect of the continued attempts to be sincere was actually evident during our class sessions, where I really felt like I was being one of my worst selves. (My last journal entry that I’m including in the portfolio addresses this.) I was being really an ass, performing and just being terribly glib and lame. I hope I also said some useful stuff, but I was really surrendering to my worst, basest instincts to act like a sarcastic ass, and, looking back over my journal entries and how much I was really trying to avoid giving in to those impulses, it makes me wonder if that just made them come out in a different context.

This sort of explains the workshop piece I shared, which kind of careened back and forth between sincerity and irony, and in the end had no real point. I don’t necessarily feel bad about it not having a point—I submitted it precisely because I wasn’t sure if it had a point and I was interested if other people might see something in it that I was missing—but it is really frustrating to see how the piece bounces between sincere expressions of emotion and responding moments of discounting of that emotion. I’m a lot more comfortable suggesting emotion than owning it, and when I reread this first draft now, that’s what I see. As I revise this piece, and as I (possibly) continue to write entries for my blog, I want to keep working on this, focusing on being sincere and genuine and trying not to immediately deflate those moments as soon as I, like, do them.

I am suspicious of emotion. I distrust sincerity. I think they can easily lead us away from reflection and insight. On the other hand, I also don’t know how much further I can go with ironic detachment. It’s hard to see some things clearly from too far away, even if shit does tend to get a little blurry up close.

Am I the asshole?

I love my cats.  (•_•) ( •_•)>⌐■-■ (⌐■_■)

i’m glad the semester is almost over, because i’ve sort of settled into being one of my absolute worst selves in my prose forms class: glib, sarcastic, and obnoxious. and, last night, under the guise of being ‘honest,’ i made a truly stupid and thoughtless remark.

wait, hold on. let me start over.

fuck Jay-Z.

{}{}{}{}{}

i teach composition to first-year college students. as a general rule, they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. which is fine. they’re not supposed to know what they’re doing. it’s why they’re in the class, to learn what the fuck they should be doing. (it’s ridiculous that one or two classes is expected to teach a skill as complex and context-driven as writing, but that’s a whole other discussion.) it’s a skill they need, and it’s not one that just comes naturally. what frustrates me to no end, though, is how often they believe that it’s actually supposed to just come naturally, that being a good writer is something that originates from some deep magic inside of a motherfucker, and that’s all there is to it. you either have this magic, and you’re magically a good writing motherfucker, or you don’t, and you aren’t. teachers rarely say these exact words, but they do often discuss writing as though it’s a mystical, mysterious art that follows its own inscrutable rules. i know they do, because i talk to other writing teachers, and i’ve shared office space with them. these motherfuckers; i’ve heard them do it.

consequently, i spend a lot of time in my class trying to dispel my students of these ideas. i try to convince them that writing is a skill that you build, that no one just writes well without failing, without being exposed to other writers, without any kind of training, formal or otherwise. they’ll tell me, cannily attempting to work the ref, that they’ve never been good writers, implying that i shouldn’t expect anything from them, because they just don’t have the magic, so they’re going to need my charity to succeed in the class. i try to help them see that writing is not ‘art’ (or not only art)– it’s communication, it’s how everyone gets anything done in the world, and this is why everyone is forced to take composition. you can do this, i tell them, because it’s about building a set of skills, and if you’re willing to keep working at it (and failing a lot), anyone can do it. i say a lot of shit, and they nod their heads and agree, because i’m the teacher, so what else are they going to do? but i know what they’re thinking: this motherfucker; what does he know? they’ve had a lifetime full of people, some of them experts, telling them that writing is this esoteric superpower thing that some people are able to do because god or what-the-fuckever gifted them a special talent, so why should they listen to me? i’m not even getting them feedback on their shitty writing in a reasonable amount of time.

what was i saying?

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=/=

so yeah, fuck a Jay-Z.

i’ve been annoyed with Jay-Z for a little over nine years at this point. he’s never been my favorite rapper, but he’s undeniably talented, and a couple of his records (The Blueprint and Reasonable Doubt) are straight classics. he’s got some problematic themes in his lyrics, but so do the lion’s share of mainstream rappers. what makes me crazy, however, is another tic that he shares with plenty of other rappers, but that Jay-Z has made a key component of his persona, his mythos: the idea of ‘One Take Hov,’ that dude who just hears a beat and makes it all up on the spot, who’s so good that he doesn’t have to sit down and compose. as he himself puts it in “Welcome to New York City,” “the man that write checks with the hand that don’t write.” it’s the myth of the freestyle. the idea that there’s motherfuckers that can step behind the mic and black out, just go straight off the top and blow your mind with some shit that no one else could even do if they had their whole lives to write a response. you know, magic.

Jay-Z is prodigiously talented. almost no one can do what he can do, and i regularly marvel at his gifts when i listen to his music. sometimes when i listen to him, i’m so amazed that i temporarily forget that there are, like, two dozen rappers i think are better than he is, because he’s that good. when he casually tosses out a couplet like “Catch us both coast-es, racin twin Porsches/Boxters with Glocks that’ll pop ya to make you ghost-es,” it’s some legitimately chill-bump inducing shit. which makes it beyond baffling to me why he would insist on perpetuating this bullshit myth. like, dude, can’t you just be amazing at rapping? can’t you just be one of the best to ever do it? i don’t think anything is lost if Jay-Z says, “yeah, i work hard on this stuff. long hours writing and re-writing, but that’s what it takes, because i want to be the best and i know i can be.” at the very least, can’t he just say “yeah, i put it together on the spot, but there’s hours of work that goes into the composing and coming up with ideas before i ever step foot inside a studio”?

there’s an old interview with Jay-Z. in it, he comments on the myth of his never writing anything down, joking that “I’ve inspired a generation of bad writers.” lol. what bothers me about that joke is that, more than inspiring bad writers, he’s almost definitely chased off countless potential artists who bought into the myth of Jay-Z, the myth that some innate, un-replicatable magic is what it takes to be a great rapper, and decided that they just didn’t have it. his self-aggrandizing, absolutely unnecessary myth-building shut the door on others being able to imagine themselves doing what he does.

you know what, though? maybe it’s true. maybe Jay-Z really is magic. it really is easy to believe it when you hear him rap, because the words spill out so effortlessly, like he really is just saying shit as it comes to him. it’s the opposite of rappers like Eminem or Freddie Gibbs or Pharoahe Monch, whose rhymes are so obviously, painstakingly labored over and constructed, and it’s quite something. let’s just say it’s true, that Jay-Z is magic. then lie, motherfucker. do it for the culture, you dick. at this point, what do you have to lose? no one’s going to go back and reassess and decide that you’re not talented, that your legacy is undeserved. fine, you needed to build this myth because it was a key component to your success. i don’t believe that, but whatever. but at this point, you don’t need it. don’t erase the work, dude. it hurts future potential talented artists more than it helps you. even if it’s true, if magic is real (it isn’t), fuck that truth. you’re the writing instructor that teaches students that they can’t write. you’re slamming the door on people by implying, purposely or not, that they can’t rap just because they’re not Jay-Z. that’s not empowering. that’s whatever the opposite of empowering is, like power-stealering or something.

boo, Jay-Z. boooooooooooooooo.

[<><><>]

in class last night, we were asked what we struggle with most in our writing. one dude said ‘revision,’ other people said other things. i decided to push my dumb ass into the conversation by saying something entirely useless, though i did think to preface my fuckery by acknowledging that i was ‘kind of embarrassed to say this, lol,’ so i could be sure everyone was paying attention and would know that i am the biggest fucking fuckhead alive.

i disclosed that i, too, struggle with revision, but i had to build on the point, so i mentioned that i never struggle with getting something down on paper, that that part is easy for me. my exact words were “shit just tumbles out of me.” this after people had shared the common writer’s anxiety of not being able to write anything. i decided to throw out there that “lol writing is easy for me i just sit down and it flows out of me like a magic river,” like that nonsense is helping anyone, including me. i tried to really hit hard how i struggle with revision, because i do, but it still felt like i was such a jerk for being so ‘honest.’ and it wasn’t even honest, actually.

beyond the fact that it’s just a super fucking ass thing to say, once i had an opportunity to think about it later, i realized that it’s fucking misleading, anyway. i’m always writing. my brain is constantly running through ideas, drafts, revisions in my head. it never stops for one second. by the time i sit down and actually write something, it’s usually gone through multiple false-starts, aborted full versions, and/or global/minor revisions in my head. if it ‘tumbles right out of me,’ that’s only because of all the agony and frustration that happened inside my head. and it still sucks. so i’m an obnoxious braggart and a liar.

however, this is me flattering myself that they were impressed and/or intimidated. that they believed my claim for one second. A room full of people trying to be writers know enough to know that this isn’t how it works, that it doesn’t just fall out of you, that writing is hard fucking work. Regardless, my embarrassment is the point— I felt to me like it was bragging, that’s what I felt like I was saying. fucking Jay-Z ass chump.

But who knows how they were taking it. it’s very possible they were just thinking yeah, that’s what shit does—it falls out of assholes…

!!!

i really need to think more before i talk. everything i say needs to carefully considered, calibrated even, so that it perfectly reflects my values and deepest, most sincerely constructive hopes for every other motherfucker that lives, even graduate students. it can’t be allowed to just tumble out of me, because when that happens i am a dumb, thoughtless fuck. it doesn’t come naturally to me, but i will never be better than Jay-Z if i don’t work harder.

///////

i worked hard on this blog post. realest shit i ever wrote, real fucking talk.

^_^

this dude’s out here waiting for the light to change so he can cross. he’s on the phone:

Dude! I swear to GOD~! She NEVER. SHUT. UP. I was just, like, “Can I get you another beer?” Longest night ever, I’m not kidding…I KNOW!! But she never shut up long enough to finish a drink, legit. No one caarrrrres; No. One. Cares. Longest night, seriously…Dude, I know I know…

i always wonder what my students are really thinking, what’s in their hearts. or, if not in their hearts, the kinds of things they think when they’re not busy trying to perform for me. i always want them to be their authentic selves in my classroom, in their writing for my class. i want the class to connect to their real lives, to be relevant to them. for them to be able to transfer the skills they build in my class to other areas of their lives.

dude, i know i know…

a fellow student told me about an exercise where you try to write a full story in six words (like “For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.”) . i’ve been thinking, for quite a while now, about how i might make a blog entry that is a single sentence. i’ve tried to do a single sentence entry, actually. my shortest entries are still around 100 words or more, and there might be one that was a single sentence, but it was like 300 words i think. the struggle continues.

The neighborhood I grew up in, Normain Heights, is World War II-themed. This is an odd way to say it. Along with the neighborhood itself, all the streets that comprise the subdivision— Guam, Normandy, Ardennes, St. Lowe, Palau, Bastogne and Leyte –are named after WW2 battles. My family lived on Bastogne, which was consistently the most mystifying for outsiders (followed, usually, by Palau, which I was actually never sure if any of us who even lived in the neighborhood were pronouncing correctly). Apart from mispronunciations, I regularly received mail with the street name misspelled, which seemed less understandable than the mispronunciations. The most common misspellings were either Bastone, seemingly spelling the word phonetically according to what it sounds like to a native English-speaker, and Bastonge, which I always took as a simple typo or, alternatively, reflective of the person being aware that there’s a ‘g’ in there but being unsure what to do with it. Occasionally, there was a more bold interpretation, like Bagstone or my personal favorite, Bustogus (I saved the envelope with that one, actually).

None of this is important.

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There was this kid, Andy, who lived on our street. His grandparents lived on it, actually, but he was often there, and he sometimes went to the same school as us. My parents were always telling me that I needed to be careful hanging around with Andy, that his parents were white trash and he was no good. I always thought they took him too seriously. (Plus, my mom seemed to believe that everyone is no-good white trash, which hurt her credibility in this area.) He was an idiot and a magnet for trouble, but he was harmless. I think my parents, honestly, recognized this, as they never intervened and kept my brother and I from hanging around with him. I think they felt sorry for him, actually. Andy’s older cousin, Robbie, who used to live with their grandparents, was rarely around anymore, as he had already started on a full-time career as a juvenile delinquent, while his other cousin, Danielle, still lived with their grandparents, and I remember my mom making a few cryptic comments, starting when she was around thirteen, indicating that she believed that every day Danielle remained not pregnant was a minor miracle.

Along with our other neighborhood friends, Matt and Stevie and Jeremy and Chris (all, according to my mom, varying degrees of white trash), we did stuff. We played wiffle ball a lot, and we were relatively serious about our shit. We carefully wrapped our bats in electrical tape to give them weight, the better to hit the ball for distance. It was an art, because you didn’t want it to be too heavy, as that might feel better to swing, but the ball wouldn’t pop off the bat in the same way. In the winter, we lowered the basketball hoops and purposely didn’t shovel the back half of our driveways (the driveways of most of the houses in Normain Heights were long enough to accommodate at least five cars parked in a single straight line) and played tackle basketball. Jeremy occasionally supplied us with pornography stolen from his uncle, who was paralyzed and had one of those wheelchairs that move in response to the user’s breath, and I was never totally sure why that dude needed so much porn, though I was grateful for the overflow. Matt and I briefly, furiously, collected baseball and basketball cards. We all had bikes, and we rode them. One time, while we watched the MLB All-Star Game, Andy set Matt’s living room carpet on fire. I don’t think he was trying to accomplish anything; he just set the carpet on fire. We called each other ‘faggot’ a lot.

We spent the night at each other’s house occasionally. A particular time, Matt, my brother and I spent the night at Andy’s grandparents’ house. We were probably around twelve, so it was around 1989. Since it was 1989, when we stayed up late we played original Nintendo games, mostly Contra. I liked staying at Andy’s, because his grandparents’ house was two stories and his bedroom was upstairs, so you always knew if someone was coming to check on you. But the reason you knew someone was coming was the reason I didn’t like staying at Andy’s; his grandparents’ house was one of those old houses where every move anyone made, in any part of the house, was audible in every other part of the house. In particular, if you even took a deep breath upstairs it would sound like the world was coming to an end downstairs, like the house itself was taking a deep breath.

They had a cat, and the litter box was in Andy’s room. It was rarely seen when I happened to be there, and I was never sure if it was because it was scared of strangers or if it was wary of Andy. Both explanations seemed equally plausible. What I did know for sure was that they never seemed to scoop the litter, and Andy was taking advantage of that fact to pelt the rest of us with cat turds while we tried to blast these faggots in Contra. Eventually, we all gave in and just had a big cat turd fight. Then we had to clean up all the cat turds, which was less fun. When I say ‘we,’ I mean Matt, my brother and I, because Andy just kept throwing cat shit at us. Matt got pissed and went home, which was a really reasonable response.

Finally, Andy’s grandpa yelled up at us and told us all to go to bed. Andy was irritated by this, as he was sure it was evidence that Danielle (whose bedroom was across the hall at the top of the stairs) had gone down and complained that we were being too loud. We turned the lights off and didn’t sleep, but we weren’t being too loud. Andy still had a lot of fight left in him, and he insisted that we go over to Danielle’s room, though he was noncommittal about the objective of this excursion. My brother and I weren’t into it, to which he responded by throwing more cat shit at us. He had remarkably good aim in the pitch-blackness, and the turds were, at this point, breaking apart from being thrown around so much, which was making them smell pretty bad again. Finally, my brother and I relented and agreed to go to Danielle’s room. Later, we both acknowledged that we wished that we’d left with Matt, but at that moment we felt trapped.

We tried to walk stealthily over to Danielle’s room, but the sound of the house creaking was deafening. Andy was confident.

“It sounds way louder out here in the hall than anywhere else.”

I was familiar with the house, so I knew that this wasn’t true. As we crept into Danielle’s room, she registered her opinion without pause, no delay in which she might be trying to figure out what was happening:

“Andy, what are you doing? Get the hell out of here!”

Inexplicably, Andy directed us to get under the bed.

Even more inexplicably, we got under the bed.

Danielle hissed at us to get out from under her bed, and, again, it might have just been my imagination, but it really felt like it wasn’t the first time she’d had to say this to Andy. I lay in-between my brother, who had slid under the bed first, and Andy, who went last.

At this point, Andy and Danielle’s grandpa yelled up at us from the bottom of the stairs:

“Get the hell out of there and back in your own room!”

Andy wasn’t bothered by this, telling us “He doesn’t know anything, don’t worry.” I was really wishing I wasn’t in the middle.

“God damn it! I mean it!”

Danielle, exasperated, exclaimed “Andy!” helplessly, sort of under her breath. Andy giggled, and I wondered if this had actually been his endgame.

“I’m going to count to five, and then I’m coming up there!”

I looked at Andy, careful to angle my head to avoid the rusty piece of metal sticking out from the bottom of the mattress. If he was having any doubts, he betrayed none.

“He’s just talking, he’ll go away.”

I started to open my mouth, possibly to ask ‘But what then?,’ but I was interrupted by Andy’s grandpa:

“One!”

“It’s fine, just be quiet.”

“Two!”

“Don’t worry, he ‘aint doing anything.”

I don’t remember exactly what I was thinking at this point. Most likely, I was trying and failing to make sense of the situation by connecting it to a similar experience I’d had in the past. Danielle exhaled audibly, the house responding in kind. I looked over at my brother, hoping to make eye contact and get some kind of confirmation that this was, indeed, a ridiculous situation, but he was staring, expressionless, straight up at the bottom of the mattress.

“Three!”

“Man, he ‘aint coming up here.”

“Four!”

“Alright, let’s go.”

Dumbfounded, I followed him as he scooted out from under his cousin’s bed. Danielle kicked at him as he stood waiting for my brother and I, and we all trudged, eyes on the ground, back to his bedroom, while his grandfather glared at us. As I cleared any remaining stray cat turds from my sleeping bag, I tried to make sense of what we’d just done. Another piece of cat shit bounced off of my shoulder, but I was over it by this point. I zipped myself up in the sleeping bag, leaving a small opening for air and hoping that it didn’t occur to Andy to put anything besides air through it.

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The next morning, we all sat around the kitchen table eating breakfast. I hadn’t showered, because I wanted to go home as fast as possible and that seemed like a good excuse to leave as soon as we finished eating. The kitchen was sweltering from the heat of the stove and the sunlight crowding its way in from every direction, and smelled like burnt white toast, because that’s how Andy’s grandpa liked it. As he came into the kitchen, his giant, pale belly spilling over his unzipped and unfastened jeans and his unbuckled belt flapping and clanging as he walked. He poured a cup of coffee and, as he sat down, looked squarely at Andy. Both lenses of his bifocals had clear smudges all over them.

“What the hell were you doing up there last night?”

I wondered about the answer to this question to, actually. Andy looked him square in the eye, and answered without missing a beat:

“What are you talking about?”

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None of this is important.

Good afternoon,

If you are interested in applying for an assistant editor position with **** * *******, please send an email to YOUR MOTHER (editor@eatshit.edu) expressing your interest and answering these two questions:

1Why are you the right person for this job?

2What are your qualifications?

We realize that you are probably not trained as an editor so that does not need to be how you are qualified. Let us know about your good qualities. Please send the email by Friday, April 26th.

Thanks,

*Low Growl*

—————————————————————————————————————————

Dear Mom,

• Why am I the right person for this job?
  • Because I invented all of this. There’s no one else.
• What are my qualifications?
  • I’ll answer this question with a list of my strengths and weaknesses.
  • Strengths
    1. I am saving myself for divorce.
    2. I’ve been told that I have a ‘way with words’ (whatever in the world that means).
    3. I have very little conscience or empathy, and even less of a moral compass. (These qualities aren’t mentioned explicitly in the list of responsibilities for the position, but reading between the lines I felt like it was strongly implied that they are desirable.)
    4. I am out here tryna make a difference.
  • Weaknesses
    1. If I get the position, I will absolutely spend the whole year (and beyond, probably) really aggressively, mercilessly rubbing it in the faces of those who didn’t get it.
    2. In the past year and a half, I’ve accidentally wandered into the women’s restroom, when I was intending to go into the men’s restroom, three separate times. It has been an accident each time—I’ve sincerely panicked and rushed out as soon as I realize what’s happened, hoping no one is there to notice my mistake—but three times in eighteen months feels like a lot. I’m starting to wonder if I’m doing it on purpose. And if I am, that can’t be good.
    3. Honestly, I’m pretty terrible at reading between the lines. It often causes problems.
    4. Barbara Applebaum defines white culpable ignorance as “a white refusal to know what one ought to know because to know would implicate one in the perpetuation of systematic injustice.” Instead, white people who take part in culpable ignorance bolster the system of racism by “agreeing to misinterpret the world.” The manifestation of privilege in the construction of white ignorance is indicative of the power that heightened social position wields. Not only can white people choose not to see, hear, or acknowledge something that stares them in the face, they can also not know and believe that they do have a realistic perception of the world surrounding them. White people are allowed to continue believing their perspectives are accurate because white ignorance is maintained collectively through the epistemology of ignorance. An epistemology of ignorance is a “systematically supported, socially induced pattern of (mis)understanding the world that is connected to and works to sustain systematic oppression and privilege. In other words, there is a “culturally sanctioned discourse of evasion that protects the interests of the privileged and their moral composure.” (Roberson, “An Act of Bearing W(h)it(e)ness: Exploring the Past, Present, and Future Struggle to Desegregate Public Schools in Central Arkansas”)
  • Strength/Weakness (not sure about this one)
    1. There is an impossibly dark, bottomless emptiness at the center of me. I am in constant terror of disappearing into it, and this frenzy drives my every action. I know, in my mind, that I will never escape it. But I also know, in my heart, that I will never surrender to it.

Thank you for deciding to accept the inevitable and giving me this position.

Love ya lots,

ya boy ****

• _{“but you sure struggle to face the task at hand:}
  • _Late
  • _Off-target
  • _{Generally pissed off}

          _{Although, I guess I’d rather you take your frustrations out in your writing than in a 7-11 with a semi-automatic machine gun”   ̿’̿’\̵͇̿̿\з=( ͠° ͟ʖ ͡°)=ε/̵͇̿̿/’̿̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿}

• _{“I think I do not have enough knowledge to read this.” ◉_◉}
  
• _{“This essay deepens your analysis without sacrificing any of your trademark wit.” ♪~ ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ}
  
• _{“Tooo deeeeep. Cannot cope.” ರ_ರ}
  
• _{“I stopped reading the footnotes after a couple pages.” ┬┴┬┴┤(･_├┬┴┬┴}
  
• _{“I recommend the work of Fredric Jameson, particularly The Political Unconscious. I really think it will allow you to deepen your thinking about these ideas.” ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ}
  
• _{“though the canny move here would be to link this to an authorial choice, rather than to characterize it (however accurately) as laziness or apathy on your part” [̲̅$̲̅(̲̅ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°̲̅)̲̅$̲̅]}
  
• _{“Remove the footnotes. They add nothing of substance.” ﴾͡๏̯͡๏﴿ O’RLY?}
  
• _{“I loved it. I would read a whole book of this, seriously.” ~(˘▾˘~)}
  
• _{“SEVERAL missing pieces of writing…Even a SLIGHT effort would have improved your grade!”     (´・ω・`)}
  
• _{“Approved by L*** I*****, 2/21/06” ヾ(⌐■_■)ノ♪}
  
• _{“This isn’t acceptable, I won’t publish this. You can write something new or take a zero for this project.” (;´༎ຶД༎ຶ`)}
  
• _{“You crack me up!” (▰˘◡˘▰)}
  
• _{“I trust this narrator. They come across as really perceptive, like they have a good bullshit detector, so I am willing to go along with whatever they’re telling me.” (^̮^)}
  
• _{“Looks like an ‘L’” ب_ب}
  
• _{“The footnotes really reminded me of David Foster Wallace. If you haven’t read “Consider the Lobster,” I think you’d really like it.” ¬_¬}
  
• _{“Though it doesn’t come together at the end in the way you obviously intend, it’s clear what you’re going for, and it is an interesting idea.” ٩◔̯◔۶}
  
• _{“Your refusal to take a stance is so uncompromising that it somehow starts to border on heroic.” Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ}
  
• _{“Re-do— see me” ┬─┬ノ( º _ ºノ)}
  
• _{“Please use Times New Roman, or some other standard font.” 〆(・∀・＠)}
  
• _{“I don’t get it, but I think it’s because of me, not that the essay is bad.” ☼.☼}
  
• _{“The constant profanity adds nothing, and it’s not funny. This is very disappointing.” ಠ╭╮ಠ}
  
• _{“Include a title.” (☞ຈل͜ຈ)☞}
  
• _{“Actually, I like the footnotes. They’re not necessary, but they’re like little easter eggs for the reader. They really add to the experience.” ( ಠ ͜ʖರೃ)}
  
• _{“It’s all so much, it ends up being kind of disorienting. I want to connect with this, and there is so much interesting information about this weird, fascinating world, but there’s no way in for me. The sheer amount of information, and the lack of clarity about the narrator’s relationship to this world makes it impossible for me to gain a firm grasp.” （╯°□°）╯︵( .o.)}
  
• _{“I hesitate to say this, but, as I read the essay, one word kept popping into my head over and over: Asperger’s.” ಥ_ಥ}
  
  • _{“Yes.” ｡゜(｀Д´)゜｡}
    
  • _{“Exactly, I had that thought, too.” °Д°}
    
  • _{“Yeah, maybe not Asperger’s, but something similar.” ༼ つ ಥ_ಥ ༽つ}
    
  • _{“Definitely on The Spectrum.” (/) (°,,°) (/)}
    
• _{“The footnotes, honestly, seem like they should just be essays of their own. They were often very interesting, but I kept wondering why I needed to know this information—why is it important to the essay I am actually reading?” (>ლ)}
  
• _{“I have these thoughts all the time, so I thought it was really cool that you actually wrote them down and owned them.” (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞ ☜(ﾟヮﾟ☜)}
  
• _{“So funny. I literally laughed out loud multiple times while reading this.” (•_•) ( •_•)>⌐■-■ (⌐■_■)}
  
• _{“On the other hand, your central Odysseus = Teen Wolf analogy is darn near irresistible.”  (ᵔᴥᵔ)}
  
• _{“It feels like I’m in someone else’s head, but not in a good way.” ¯\(°_o)/¯}
  
• _{“You’re a maximalist.” ☜(˚▽˚)☞}
• _{“A giant declarative mouth.” °Д°}

i am at a party right now. There are eight people in the room I’m in, including me. This is not any kind of comment on anything, but six of us are on our phones right now. Two people are having a discussion with no phones out, three people are having a discussion including phones, and then the other three of us are just straight on our phones. just a status update. There is room here for me to be me.

When I was little, I spent a lot of time at my dad’s parents’ house. Despite the fact that my grandpa was a professional musician in his youth, they didn’t listen to as much music as you might expect, though I did hear a good bit of country music at their house. My grandpa had a lot of old records and 8-tracks, and his tastes were, I guess, what you’d expect from an old man in the 1980s. He liked George Jones, Merle Haggard, along with stuff like Alabama, the Oak Ridge Boys or the Statler Brothers. One of the newer artists that they liked was Randy Travis, whose music was benign and conservative and whose baritone voice and traditional style appealed to my grandparents.

I went through a brief, but mildly intense period of being into country music when I was in my early twenties, and while artists like Randy Travis were not were my tastes were taking me— I preferred more idiosyncratic artists, like Dwight Yoakam and Lyle Lovett —I did still listen to country radio, which still played Randy Travis and I found that hearing his distinctive voice actually gave me a strong feeling of nostalgia. I don’t even know that it was a specific, personal nostalgia, or if it was just a generalized thing, a kind of haze caused by Travis’ voice, which really does sound like he’s singing to you from some simpler time, where there’s always enough lemonade for everyone and never any small hint racism (but also no people of color, either, besides maybe the black guy from Walker, Texas Ranger).

Hearing Randy Travis again, I was mostly taken by his voice, and, while his music wasn’t exactly my thing, I also had to admit that, honestly, he has a couple jams. While I couldn’t abide the sickeningly sentimental ode to an old dead great-grandpa, “He Walked On Water,” for example, I also couldn’t resist the combination of Travis’ voice and catchy tunes like “Diggin’ Up Bones” or “If I Didn’t Have You.” My favorite, however, is his biggest hit “Hard Rock Bottom of Your Heart.” It’s possibly one of my favorite straightforward country songs period, not because it’s that great, but because it simultaneously makes me smile and want to sing along and also really want to, like, punch myself in the head for liking it, because it’s so fucking bullshit.

“Hard Rock Bottom of Your Heart” is one of those asshole country songs where the guy has cheated and is now making a big dumb show of how sorry he is, and we’re supposed to feel bad for him because he’s suffering and laying his heart on the line. It’s possibly the most bullshit of all the bullshit songs from this sub-genre (though I am nowhere even remotely near qualified to make such a claim, so what I’m actually saying is that it’s the one I’m aware of that is most bullshit to me personally). It’s really gross, with the typical sentimentality, which of course insists on reconciliation, curdling into entitlement on the part of the dude. The song is, basically, sung from the point of view of someone who has listened to too many country songs and apparently can’t believe that the woman he’s wronged isn’t submitting to what he sees as the natural, inevitable outcome of the situation they find themselves in. The title of the song is it’s central metaphor; the woman (and while it doesn’t have to be a woman, obviously, I’m just going to proceed as though it’s intended to be, mainstream country music’s politics being what they were/kind of still are) who the singer is addressing is making him feel like his efforts at reconciliation are being thrown to the ‘hard rock bottom’ of her heart. Like he’s being wronged.

Motherfucker, you cheated. You created this situation by abusing trust and failing to be faithful. These things do happen, and it’s rarely uncomplicated, but your feelings are not ones that need extra attention here. And you want to come at us with this sentimental-ass goop about how bad she’s making you feel for fucking another woman? I know that this phrase wasn’t invented yet, but miss me with that bullshit, dude.

The lyrics are so ridiculous, it seems like they can’t possibly be serious:

Since the day I was led to temptation
And in weakness did let your love down
I have prayed that with time and compassion
You’d come around

The first two lines are literally the only time that the song discusses his betrayal. And then this fucking guy gets right into it: “When you gonna stop trippin, girl? I mean shit, I said my bad.” He’s having to pray, because she just won’t ‘come around.’ My dude is so serious. And then the chorus:

And I keep waiting for you to forgive me
And you keep sayin’ you can’t even start
And I feel like a stone you have picked up and thrown
To the hard rock bottom of your heart
To the hard rock bottom of your heart

Sounds rough. I’m sure the last thing you got to the bottom of was softer, so there’s that. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Now this home we have built is still standing
It’s foundation is on solid ground
And do we roll up our sleeves and repair it
Or burn… it… down?

Seriously. My guy’s out here trying to suggest that it’s her responsibility to roll up her sleeves and repair shit. Unless, you know, she just wants to be cold and burn it down. (You know, whatever’s left that he didn’t already burn down when he fucked someone else. 🤔)

Here’s the bridge:

We can’t just block it out, we’ve got to talk it out
Until our hearts get back in touch
I need your love I miss it, I can’t go on like this
It hurts too much

This fucking guy. He’s hurting, and it’s too much. 😂

I  really like this song though, and it’s partly because of how off-the-hinges absurd it is. There are tons of syrupy, sentimental nonsense songs like this in country music, but this is one that really sticks out to me, partly because it’s a legit good song, sung by a fantastic singer, and partly because it’s so bananas that it seems like it has to be a joke. But it isn’t. It’s an example of country music being as dumb and thoughtless as it can be, which is just as dumb and thoughtless as any other kind of music, of course, but doing it in their own special way.

Alan Jackson, actually, has a great example of this kind of song done in a serious, thoughtful way, like the person who wrote it is an actual adult. And it’s also a really great song, too. (And Lyle Lovett had something to say about forgiveness, as well.) (Actually, so does Dwight Yoakam.)

(Also, it’s probably more than a little uncool, because Randy Travis did suffer a massive, debilitating stroke after this happened, but some joke about how we can’t just block this out.)

i’m supposed to ask you about giving encouragement to people. like how you do it, i guess.

it’s easy. this is a dumb question, i know you know the answer.

yeah, but i think we just talk it through, and just in talking about it we can find insight. i know you know that.

yeah yeah. i mean, i just listen to what they say and hear their anxieties, and i can see that some of the things they’re thinking are not useful or incorrect, and i try to think of how i can suggest different ways to see the situation, or i just try to explain to them how i don’t agree with their interpretation of the situation and why i think they’re mistaken.

THAT MAKES SENSE.

ikr?

so i guess the question then is why you can’t do that for yourself? or why i can’t do it for myself.

do you listen and hear your own anxieties?

motherfucker, please.

do you recognize that some of the things you are thinking are not useful or incorrect?

the thoughts cross my mind, but i don’t ‘recognize’ them.

because they aren’t your regular thoughts, so you’re not used to them? or because they aren’t logical?

you are such an asshole right now. because when i consider them, they do seem like, logically, plausible, but they don’t feel like the real explanation. in my mind, they don’t have the ring of truth in the way that the more negative thoughts do.

why don’t they have the ‘ring of truth’? you seem to suggest that, when you give encouragement to others, you feel that you’re pointing out where their thoughts are ‘mistaken,’ that you’re helping them see the truth.

the truth i see. a more positive truth.

and you say that you consider these more positive thoughts for yourself, right? these alternate explanations.

YUP.

why is it different, then? you believe you’re very convincing when you give support and encouragement to others, so-

i don’t know, but i hope so.

yah, so why can’t you be this convincing for yourself? what’s the difference?

fuck your mother.

okay.

the difference is that, when i give encouragement to others, it’s the truth. it’s the truth i see, anyway. i believe what i’m saying, so it’s easy to be convincing. when i talk to myself, i know it’s a lie. i can’t lie to myself.

bro, that’s a lie.

okay, yeah. i can’t lie to myself about that.

why is it a lie?

…

because i suck worse than anyone. so bad i can’t lie about it. i’m exceptional.

this is really good stuff.

do you think?

i’m not sure. seems generic, actually. we could ask Herself?

don’t look at me, i’m not part of this. i need to protect my personal time.

sorry.

sorry.