You know what the real thing is about being in your mid-40’s? You can do everything you used to do in your 30’s, but you cannot bounce back.
I was in Chicago at the FemCatholic Conference last weekend, and it was completely wonderful. Met Mikayla Dalton, Corita Ten Eyck, Theresa Scott, Leticia Adams, Donna Provencher, Jenne O’Neill, Aimee Murphy, and so many others in real life for the first time, and I spent lots of time with my wonderful friend Elisa Low. And Nora Calhoun, and Hope Peregrina and Ben Zelmer, and Samantha Povlock! And Shannon Wendt and Meg Hunter-Kilmer and ARGH the woman at the Femm Health table whose name is escaping me at the moment. And so many other brilliant, interesting, driven women I admire so much. I felt so out of my league.
Anyway, now I’m lurching around like a reanimated but still desiccated mummy, dizzy and incoherent, picking ridiculous fights with people I care about, and complaining about how bad my head feels and always feels, and I just can’t seem to snap out of it. I blame feminism. And airplanes. And train madness! (I did not take a train.)
Oh, if you want to hear my talk and all the talks at the conference, you can stream and download the whole thing for $49. My speech was called “When Women Say Yes: Consent and Control In Sex and Love.” It was about . . . a lot of things.
Also, I’m sorry we haven’t put out a podcast since the middle of February. Soon, I promise! I’m sorry! You could listen to that one again if you wanted to. Sorry.
Anyway anyway, I don’t want the algorithms to forget me completely, so here are some quickie reviews of things I’m enjoying while busily burning through all my social capital:
Listening to Hadestown
My daughter Clara turned me onto this musical. Originally a New Orleans jazz-style folk opera concept album about Orpheus and Eurydice by Anaïs Mitchell (I know. Stay with me), it’s now a musical that’s premiering on Broadway this month. You guys, it’s so good. Entirely successful world building. I am a sucker for anything based on Greek mythology, but become irrationally enraged with anything that doesn’t do it justice. This one is just weird enough to work.
From The Theater Times:
[Mitchell’s] version isn’t totally pin-downable about where and when it’s set–it’s mythic, after all–but there’s a Depression-era vibe to above-ground scenes, where penniless poet Orpheus and his lover Eurydice struggle to survive. It is hunger that allows the wealthy Hades to tempt her down to the underworld–to an economically secure but soulless industrial town, where men may be guaranteed work, but forgo contact with the natural world. Naturally, it is Hades who gets rich from their labor.
You will not believe “Why We Build the Wall” was written in 2010.
But this isn’t about politics; it’s about mankind. “Wait For Me” just about killed me.
All in all, just a fascinating, captivating, completely original work. Perfect lyrics, songs that stay with you. Such good stuff.
What I’m reading:
The Ghost Keeper by Natalie Morrill
It is not a chick book, despite what the cover might suggest if you are one of my jerk sons. I keep plucking people by the shirt sleeve and shakily asking if they’ve read this book yet. I don’t know why I haven’t heard more about it. It did win the HarperCollins/UBC Prize for Best New Fiction, which is a good start. I’m working on a review for the Catholic literary mag Dappled Things, where Morrill is fiction editor.
This is seriously brilliant lyrical writing, on a level with the best of Michael Chabon or . . . I don’t know, I don’t want to be crazy, but I keep thinking, “Edith Wharton, no, E.M. Forster, no, Faulkner . . . ”
It follows a Jewish Austrian boy with a very particular vocation that keeps pulling him back. He grows up and starts a little family, and they are so happy, until the Anschluss.
The book follows them before, during, and after the war, and I’ve just gotten up to the chapter that describes another, related love story, but an infernally inverted one. And then they all need to figure out: What is love? What is loyalty? What is forgiveness? GOSH. I haven’t finished it yet, but even if it totally mucks up the ending (which I don’t anticipate!) I’ll forgive it, for all the moments of gorgeous tragedy and piercing joy. Do not read on airplanes unless you don’t care if you get stared at for gasping audibly while you read. Wear a sweater; you’ll get chills.
And we’re watching:
Well, we’re still watching The Sopranos. This is the second time around for me, and it’s even better than I remembered. It’s so much funnier than I remembered. It’s a little scary how much more sympathy I have for Tony this time.
I also think they should have won some particular prize for the depiction of dreams.
I guess the common thread in all these things is a sort of lyrical dreamlike quality, realer than real life.
That reminds me, what movie or TV show has the best, most accurate portrayal of dreams? It’s so easy to get it wrong and overplay your hand.
Thanks for recommending The Ghost Keeper. I know Natalie, a little, and she is a really fine person indeed. Canada is proud to boast of her as our latest literary lion(ess).
I am a sucker for jelly, jams, and honey.
I’ve been thinking about checking out Hadestown for a while now. I’m usually hesitant to listen to a musical if I can’t also read the libretto, because I don’t want to miss the spoken scenes, but from what I’ve seen online it looks like maybe Hadestown doesn’t have any? Even if it does it sounds like the story is communicated without them!
As for dream sequences, I’ve always admired how Adventure Time handled them. Granted, even the “real” setting of that show is on the surreal side, but for me the dreams always captured that nonsensical atmosphere with a tenuous-at-best connection to reality that I’ve experienced in my own dreams.
The last dream scene I watched was that Star Trek: The Next Generation episode where Data begins having nightmares. The first nightmare in the episode is best-they did a pretty good job showing the weird way dreams warp distances and add strange elements to ordinary situations, and how it can all seem normal in the course of the dream. They went overboard later, of course, with really random stuff like a Troi shaped cake and someone drinking from a straw sticking out of someone else’s head.
The M*A*S*H* dream episode is very well done, and it depicts a variety of different kinds of dreams.
(Also, so glad you’re reading the Ghost Keeper!)
Not Oklahoma!, that’s for sure. That dream sequence has haunted me for decades.
I always liked the X Files take on Scully’s dreams while she was in a coma.
oh yes, that was very good!
Best TV depiction of dreams? The conversation starts and ends with Gilligan’s Island, baby.