sundries

[rm]

Yesterday was a long rough day. Today will hopefully be a shorter, albeit likely to require equal amounts of massive focus sort of day. Nearly all desk job stuff. Not exciting. You know, except for the part where it was really stressful. Thank god for Patty being funny and keeping me sane during various parts of it.

Tonight I am going to see The History of War at NYMF. Also, since yesterday sucks my weekend is going to be less constricted than initially thought. So if I feel inspired, tomorrow will be when I peak in to NYCC for a bit during the day. Although, in truth, I may just run away to Soho again instead. Something to inspire me before getting ready for my class reunion.

Sunday -- another rehearsal and shooting footage for the D&J funding video and whatever else we need for the website. When I got home from the office at 2:15am last night, I stopped myself (by muttering "you are not allowed to play auteur at two-fucking-am" over and over again until I put the case down) from looking at the D&J disc that rufus provided me with during a brief meet-up in Tribeca yesterday, but I'll try to glance through that tonight and make some notes.

One of the current tasks isn't to work on all my projects at once (I have some things staggered, that I know are more 2011 or 2012 or later or maybe or not ever or whatever), but to know what all the projects are. Part of that is looking at things and going "what is this story? why does it matter? and what is the vehicle for telling it?" Once I know that, it can go on the list, even if that's on a list that's "Maybe I'll never care enough." Part of this means looking at work that's incomplete, or was created in one context for a small audience, but can perhaps be shifted to a different context for a broader audience. Which means, I'm looking at something old and half-finished and realizing that the answer to it is writing is as a poly-romance (novel/play/musical/film? story, what are you???) that takes place in the film industry of the 1930s. Not saying it's a priority, but that's what it is. Which is buckets of funny. BUCKETS.

I've mentioned, recently, a bit about the summer where I only slept four hours a night, because I believed that was the path to making lots of art and being wildly successful or something (Yeah, laugh at me; it's okay. I know). Now that I find myself somewhat in that position again, but this time because I am making lots of art and success and everything else is super busy besides, I've finally realized why this shit is so hard. Or at least why it has been so for me.

Because when you're sleeping four hours a night, sweet heaven, do you need physical comfort. Which is why this was soul-sucking when I was single in 2003/4 and why it's grueling now with Patty away. This is totally doable with the soothing and confidence-inducing nature of human contact; It's damn fucking tiring without. But, hey, less than a month until I see Patty, and I'm going to sleep in tomorrow; I've earned it.

I've been randomly thinking about films I love that I can watch over and over again vs. those I can't. Now some, that's obvious -- they're just different categories of emotional experience. But let's look at bleak, grueling films -- I can watch The Children of Men over and over again (that sequence in the Tate Modern is the best thing in ever) no problem. But I can't even tolerate the thought of watching 28 Days again (not because it scared the crap out of me, but because of that scene where he finds his parents and that note that reads "we're sleeping now; we hope you're sleeping too.") or V for Vendetta (a film to which I am admittedly over-sensitive, because the night I came back from seeing it, was the night I got sick with celiac, and my getting ill and staying ill is linked in my mind to the medical torture sequences in the Valerie's letter portion of the film). Anyway, I love stuff like this, but it's always weird to me which ones I can and can't do over and over. I also feel like a coward about it.

Okay, the problem in this story isn't that the hotel staff member was cross-dressing, but that the staff-member was inappropriately in the guest's room and using her stuff! So CNN, your headline? Totally sucks.

Twin discrimination? I get her being frustrated by the idea of having to bring a second care-giver with her, that seems like something I could get my head around bending in these circumstances. But it's not some outrage to have to "pay double" if you have two children enrolled in the same class. There are two of them. Am I missing something? I may be missing something.

The man who repairs time.

New York's queer tango festival. I sort of want to say "choreographers take note!" because you can produce such different energies in a piece, if you aren't trying to recreate or play into heteronormativity, no matter the gender of your dancers -- especially, especially, especially with tango. *flaily hands*

Prison guard held in attack on inmate who is a trans woman.

The bullying conversations that have been opened up by "It Gets Better" and the tragedies that launched that project are so valuable. Today I want to ask people to remember that not all the cases of kids who have killed themselves due to anti-gay bullying were, themselves, gay. Sometimes they were just awkward or skinny or whatever else leads to these things. Once again, homophobia hurts everyone, and as long as gay is a dirty word, it will keep hurting everyone. And all of this is about sex-negativity and misogyny too. Notice how the female suicides of this ilk are usually the outgrowth of being called a slut. This is about words for women and the shape of desire.

I also want to say I am starting to see a certain amount of "[Dead kid #56356365] was a bully too." Yeah, probably. You know why? Because it's how you survive. Because if someone is picking on you, you find a target, any target, to ensure you're not at the bottom of the pile and you do the only thing you've been shown how to do by your peers: hurt. Our kids are in pain and they are afraid, and they deserve all the empathy and action we can muster. I don't have a great deal of compassion for people who have hurt me, but this is a failing. They did, after all, hurt me because they were afraid, not just of me, but of themselves. It's a terrible way to live.

Finally, National Coming Out Day is coming up. Being out is a privilege and can have serious consequences, even when you wouldn't think it because of the year or the location or whatever. But, one of the good things about being out is that it makes it harder for other people to make gay a dirty word. Please consider the possibility of being more out this year.

Comments

[weirdquark]

I do know that when I was first training and learned the word Ergi it was specifically in the context of a negative slur against men who did Sedhir because men were not to be seen as "receptive".

What I find interesting about this is that there's a bit in the Lokasenna where Odin is insulting Loki because Loki bore children (as a woman). And Loki basically says, "shut up, I know that you've practiced witchcraft." And it's the kind of witchcraft where the man needs to 'take the woman's role' during sex -- in order to be more receptive, I guess.

So that sort of thing is still being used as an insult, but it's also something that the All-Father did. And one might also assume things about who else was involved when the All-Father was taking the woman's role given that a) Odin isn't going to do that with just anyone and b) Loki knows about it.

[wynkat1313.livejournal.com]

Yep, Odin practiced Sedhir (which he learned from Freya though the stories like to bury that fact as deeply as possible) and Galdr (magic with the runes).

depending on your interpretation of Odin, he might do magic alone. Certainly galdr is often a private magic, but there isn't much point in doing Sedhir by / for oneself, its community driven both in how its done and why its done. The only specifics we have of Odin being directly involved in Sedhir are from Voluspo where he wakes up the Seeres and pesters her with questions.Loki is never described as sitting chair for Sedhir, but I could TOTALY buy an argument that he stood chair - ie supported Odin while Odin when into trance for it... which would put a nice little flip on who is being receptive and who isn't.

And the child Odin is getting all in Loki's face about is his own magical horse Sleppnir which he wouldn't have for people to praise if Loki had not transformed into a woman and born him in the first place.

Its also interesting in the context of all of this that Loki is the most denigrated of the Norse deities. He is harassed and vilified all over the sagas and yet the end result of many of his actions allows or enables the other gods to have/do something which is important and memorable. There are whole swaths of Norse reconstructionsists that will not even honor him in ritual even though Odin swore blood fealty with him and claims him as brother. Loki is the only one who changes gender and gives birth, he's the one who holds a mirror up to them all and says "this is who you are", he pulls the rug out from beneath their feet and stands back to watch what happens. No one seems to like him, yet without him a ton of important things in the saga/norse world would not happen.

Also, to clarify, I was taught about the word Egri in the historical tense, not that it was being used by any of my teachers towards or about any of the students. The discussion happened because there were and still are a number of men, gay and straight, who are talented seers and we were exploring the historical context for the work. Still sucked to realize that the issue existed at all, but given the nature of ancient Nordic society, not entirely a surprise.

[weirdquark]

He is harassed and vilified all over the sagas and yet the end result of many of his actions allows or enables the other gods to have/do something which is important and memorable.

Yeah. I personally think Loki is awesome, though this is mostly because he shows up at my house a lot. (My roommate has been roleplaying Loki during D&D and other RPGs for years, and my a-cappella group is doing a series of Norse mythology themed songs mostly revolving around the death of Baldur. We have a duet between Odin and Loki about their relationship. It's really fun to sing.) While it's true that most of the trouble that the Aesir get into is Loki's fault, they also wouldn't get out of most of it without his help. Odin getting in Loki's face about Sleipnir is in fact unreasonable, especially since had Loki not distracted Sleipnir's father, the Aesir would have been screwed about the wall the Jotun was building.

Sometimes I think Odin is so pissy there because Loki just came in and confessed to killing Baldur in front of everyone and now Odin doesn't have the option of not punishing him because he can't pretend he doesn't know who did it.

There are whole swaths of Norse reconstructionsists that will not even honor him in ritual even though Odin swore blood fealty with him and claims him as brother.

Huh. But Loki is so necessary! Even leaving aside the blood-brother thing, which I would think should make him the most important being other than Odin, Loki is associated with fire. You need fire if you're Norse. It keeps you from freezing to death. You also sometimes need cunning and tricks.

And just so this comment still has something to do with queer issues, here's another interesting interpretation of Norse mythology my roommates have discussed which is never stated, and probably not actually what they were going for, but we think can be supported from the text: Odin and Loki have a son with the same name, Vali. Odin's son Vali was born with the sole purpose of avenging Baldur's death. Loki's son Vali is mentioned in the context of being killed and having his intestines used to bind Loki when Loki is imprisoned. The other parent of Loki's son Vali is never mentioned; and the mother of Odin's son Vali is often described as a giantess. Loki disguised himself as a giantess when the gods were having someone going around asking everything to weep for Baldur. Wouldn't it be interesting if the giantess that Odin raped was Loki, making Odin's son Vali and Loki's son Vali the same person?

Hey, do you have any source recommendations? In addition to the role playing and writing the Norse music, my roommate also is generally interested in studying Norse mythology and culture (and through exposure, so am I) so we'd be interested in well researched books with good citations. And if you know where we can get the Eddas or the other sagas with facing page translations, that would be awesome.