And I can't begin to tell you why,
And I stumble when I begin,
It's cause I don't understand anything.
- Everything But the Girl
"I Don't Understand Anything"
Silence and invisibility go hand-in-hand with powerlessness. - Audre Lorde
Welcome to week fifty. It’s going to be a heady semester, as I conclude the second year of my MFA. Playwriting workshop, yes, I will write another play. A new play. That’s what we do with those. I have no idea what it will be. Isn’t that exciting? Let’s call it exciting.
Also, I am taking a course in illness narratives. My God, really Dave? Yes, really. I love non-fiction, I love memoir. And I have experience with illness narrative. Kind of? Is my solo performance an illness narrative? I guess it is.
Ben Watt, half of the duo Everything But the Girl, wrote the book Patient: The True Story of a Rare Illness, describing his experience surviving Churg-Strauss syndrome which left him with virtually no intestines.
Following this ordeal, but before writing the book, EBTG created Amplified Heart, an album my wife and I listened to a lot while we were falling in love. She says Amplified Heart is itself an illness narrative, and I believe she is right.
Last week, my son and I saw Tig Notaro at the Agora. I first became aware of her when she was featured on This American Life, nearly ten years ago. It included audio from the night she went on stage, four days after receiving a diagnosis stage two breast cancer, and began the set by announcing, “Hello! I have cancer.” It is a legendary set of stand-up comedy, and a brilliant illness narrative.
This weekend I read The Cancer Journals by Gamba Adisa (Audre Lorde), self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet” and former Poet Laureate of the state of New York. In this brief memoir she lays out her thoughts following a radical mastectomy, with a particular emphasis on societal pressure for women who had undergone such traumatic surgery to wear a prosthetic breast(s).
As she points out, wearing a prosthetic does nothing to delude the wearer of what they have lost, it only exists to comfort the viewer of the person who wears it. People do not wish to see the effects of illness, and by the same degree many would prefer not to read about it, or see it performed on stage. But that’s what we’re doing.
Silence and invisibility go hand-in-hand with powerlessness. - Audre Lorde
Welcome to week fifty. It’s going to be a heady semester, as I conclude the second year of my MFA. Playwriting workshop, yes, I will write another play. A new play. That’s what we do with those. I have no idea what it will be. Isn’t that exciting? Let’s call it exciting.
Also, I am taking a course in illness narratives. My God, really Dave? Yes, really. I love non-fiction, I love memoir. And I have experience with illness narrative. Kind of? Is my solo performance an illness narrative? I guess it is.
Ben Watt, half of the duo Everything But the Girl, wrote the book Patient: The True Story of a Rare Illness, describing his experience surviving Churg-Strauss syndrome which left him with virtually no intestines.
Following this ordeal, but before writing the book, EBTG created Amplified Heart, an album my wife and I listened to a lot while we were falling in love. She says Amplified Heart is itself an illness narrative, and I believe she is right.
 |
| Ready for Tig Notaro! |
This weekend I read The Cancer Journals by Gamba Adisa (Audre Lorde), self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet” and former Poet Laureate of the state of New York. In this brief memoir she lays out her thoughts following a radical mastectomy, with a particular emphasis on societal pressure for women who had undergone such traumatic surgery to wear a prosthetic breast(s).
As she points out, wearing a prosthetic does nothing to delude the wearer of what they have lost, it only exists to comfort the viewer of the person who wears it. People do not wish to see the effects of illness, and by the same degree many would prefer not to read about it, or see it performed on stage. But that’s what we’re doing.
No comments:
Post a Comment