EEDA Newsletter Vol 5, Iss 9: Panic! At the Ballet
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Hi friends. I want to call out the madness that is existence right now. That we are still having to worry about work and spreadsheets and student loans while there is the genocide happening in Gaza as well as multiple other genocides around the world. And while Tennessee passes a bill to allow teachers and school staff to be armed. And while the relentless anti-trans legislation is, to put it bluntly, absolutely fucking terrifying. And while universities across the U.S. are making some really fucked-up decisions, including my alma mater.
Writing this newsletter and making our podcast feels silly, to an extent, as a lot of creative work can feel during times of terror. There is plenty of writing and videos and such out there that talk about the importance of art and joy during times of revolution and I encourage you to seek it out. For me, for here, I just want to say hey, shit is hard right now. Again. Still.
And I see you.
Here’s something that made me laugh really hard, partly because the guy that worked at the post office at my old job told me he went to see Shen Yun and he slept through the whole thing. Essay after the jump.
This past weekend we had a remarkable experience. We went to the San Francisco Ballet to see an encore performance of Mere Mortals, which the site describes as:
“Artistic Director Tamara Rojo launches the 2024 season with an immersive sensory experience where music and dance converge in a singular environment of mesmerizing light and visuals. The new work with music by Floating Points and choreography from Aszure Barton contextualizes the ancient parable of Pandora for our current technological world.”
The performance was an hour and six minutes long. It was gorgeous and captivating and the talent of the dancers was truly phenomenal.
And I had absolutely no idea what the fuck was going on that entire time. I suppose one of the great things about continuing to wear masks indoors is that no one could see the utter confusion on my face. After the show, Nicole and I walked silently back to the parking structure. Once we were in her car, she looked at me and said, “I don’t think I’m cultured enough to understand ballet.” I gently took her hand and replied, “Baby, I was so fucking lost every moment of that performance.” We both burst into laughter.
I’ll admit up front that some of this is my fault. I deliberately avoid reading articles or reviews before I see performances, just as I don’t watch movie trailers for films I want to see and I ignore any chatter about books before I read them. I like to approach most art completely ignorant. I want my experience to be unadulterated by external forces. This does not extend to art in museums or galleries, but otherwise, I like to go in with a fresh mind that has minimal information about what I am about to see, hear, or read.
Mere Mortals is one of the rare times that my method has come back to bite me in the ass. Most of the time, I can figure things out at least to some degree. I am a person who prides myself on being intelligent and insightful. All over the internet I’m “The Infophile,” for goodness sake. I am an insufferable know-it-all. To say my experience of this ballet was humbling is an understatement.
When I was younger, had I had this experience, I would have felt foolish or “st*pid” so I surprised myself when I was able to just think, “Wow, this is something so utterly outside of my scope of knowledge” and then move on. It’s refreshing to have the reminder that there are so many things I know nothing about and perhaps I never will and that’s okay.
In fact, I encourage everyone to do something or experience something completely out of your wheelhouse. The important part here is that it also needs to be something that you don’t actually care about knowing how to do or what the particular thing is about. There is something utterly freeing about being bad at something and not minding. It’s an important muscle to exercise, because there is no way that anyone can be good at every single thing or know every single thing, no matter how hard we wish we could. It could help you focus on the things that you are more invested in or maybe even help you find something new that you would like to know how to do or know more about. More importantly, being able to say, “I don’t know,” is an incredibly essential and underrated skill. So many of us put pressure on ourselves to have a response to everything and to know all the answers. Saying “I don’t know” is something that I learned and taught at San Francisco Sex Information and it was cemented in my mind in grad school when I was earning my library degree. “I don’t know, but let me find out,” is a phrase that is so powerful and we should all learn how to use it without shame.
That’s it for this week! You can shop many books I’ve mentioned in this newsletter at my affiliate shop, The Infophile’s Bookshop, and support independent bookstores. In fact, any Bookshop, Amazon, or Etsy links in this newsletter are affiliate links so if you shop through those, it helps support my work. Or you can leave me a tip on Ko-fi, Paypal, or Venmo.
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