Blog of Writer Lisa Houston - Lisa HoustonWriter

Thoughts on the Handmaid's Tale, Activism, Hope.

5/10/2017

One of the most powerful reading experiences I’ve ever had was reading Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale when I was in my early twenties.

Specifically, I almost gasped at the moment when the women are disenfranchised financially, overnight. (It reminds me of the East Germans, who put up the entire Berlin Wall overnight.) At that point in the book, cash money was a thing of the past. All the money was on something called a Compucount. One day, all the women’s accounts are deactivated.

The passage reads:

They’ve frozen them, she said. Mine too. The collective’s too. Any account with an F instead of an M. All they needed to do is push a few buttons. We’re cut off.

End of excerpt.

All the actions of our executive branch right now seem to me along this continuum. The firings, the arrests of journalists, the aggressive attempts to curtail women’s reproductive freedom.

Are we there yet? We’re there.

For me, I’m not drawn to watch the new filmed version of the Handmaid’s Tale, nor to reread the book. My first reading was so impactful, I don’t think it can be topped, and these days I feel like I’m reading the Handmaid’s Tale every time I pick up a newspaper. But maybe there are people waking up because of this TV version, or being inspired to read the book. One hopes.

The best way to stop a dog fight, is to prevent one from happening. Part of that is distribution of resources. If people weren’t facing financial and medical hardships of the most fundamental kind in this country, this person would never have been elected. So cultivating fairness, abundance, and care for all is the way to go, and of course, exercising our civil liberties vibrantly, while we still can.

I’m taking strength from stories of dissent from the past. Watching the PBS documentary Freedom Riders. We’ve been here before, and there are many templates of courage for us to draw from.

For most of us, me included, it’s hard enough to send love to the difficult situations in our own personal lives, much less tackle these huge things.

But I think it’s most important to keep the faith in the heart strong. Faith in yourself, and faith in humanity. I can’t say we’re better than this, because this is who we are, but in the most purely spiritual sense, I can say we’re for better than this. We’re made for better than this. Our purpose is love. That’s what I’m trying to remember, on all fronts.

Love you friends.

Remember Tchaikovsky: I stand with the LGBT community in Russia

5/4/2017

The treatment of homosexuals in Russia in the news these days is alarming, and deeply troubling. Despite the fact that I wrote this article a couple of years ago, I think the ideas herein are, sadly, quite timely.

Note: it was written at Christmastime.

Remember Tchaikovsky
Thoughts on the Nutcracker, the Olympics, and What It Means To Be Tolerant

“The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius."

Oscar Wilde (1864-1900)

As always at this time of year, audiences around the world are pouring into theatres to sit in awe of the magical dancing set to Tchaikovsky’s great score for the Nutcracker, which was given as a double bill with his opera Iolanta when it was premiered at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg on December 18, 1892. Also this season, members of the band Pussy Riot are being showily released from prison a few months early in an attempt by the Russian government to put on a more acceptably tolerant face for the eyes of the world, which are turning toward Russia in anticipation of next month’s Olympics. At such a time, it seems fitting that we should, as a world, remember what became of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, possibly the greatest Russian composer of all time and, we can now say without controversy, a homosexual.

The composer of such classics as Swan Lake and the piano concerto that, even if you don’t know classical music, you could probably easily sing along with, and numerous other great and powerful works. There is no composer who has placed himself more in the center of the affection of lovers of western music. He resides in the illustrious company with Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, forever on the orchestral top ten list, his swans dancing in our hearts.

As a fan and writer of murder mysteries, I’ve read about all sorts of horrible ways to kill a person. Even so, the death of Tchaikovsky stands in my mind as one of the most horrible ways to die imaginable. The facts were disputed, even at the time, but now it is confirmed by most scholars who are familiar with the details that his death was a suicide, either by poison or deliberate ingesting of unboiled water during a cholera epidemic. Worse than that, it was a suicide decided upon by a “court of honor.” His own brother, also gay, was at his side, and helped to promote the false story that he had died due to the cholera. In other words, Tchaikovsky, adhering to the judgment of others, killed himself to spare his country and society the shame of accepting his homosexuality, just nine days after the premier of his great symphony, the Pathétique.

It’s never exactly correct to point at another culture and say, “they shouldn’t do that.” However true or well intentioned the words may be, they are, at best, of limited usefulness. Not only because we’re speaking from outside of the situation, but because it’s what we do more than what we say that matters most. And looking at the attitude of the Russian government toward homosexuality, what is the right thing to do about the Winter Olympics?

Disclaimer: I love the Winter Olympics. Love them! I always think that opera singers are much more like athletes than we are artists, or at least we’re half and half. We train to do this very specific, very difficult thing. Even if people train like we do, not everybody can do it. It’s exceptional. It’s also weird and wonderful bordering on miraculous that a human throat, any human throat, can train itself to sing Tosca, Pagliacci, Tannheuser. And it’s exceptional, weird, and wonderful bordering on miraculous what Olympic athletes do what they do, excelling within a very narrow range of expression. Ski jumping. Speed skating. Luge. I especially love the figure skating, which I find the most comparable to the demands of an operatic aria. About five minutes in length, with prescribed difficulties escalating to a make or break moment. The audience knows the repertoire well and roots for the skater, cringing when they miss, exploding in rapture when they succeed. Triple Axel equals High C. Ta da!

The U.S. Olympic committee has decided that their delegation will be led by Billy Jean King and other openly gay athletes, and the TV network will have former Olympic bronze medalist and openly gay figure skater Johnny Weir providing commentary for the U.S. network coverage. Both of these choices are examples of allowing positive actions to express a position, rather than choosing non-participation. Both choices could be viewed as living examples of a principle stated in Leonard Bernstein’s oft sited quotation: “This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”

Similar to the idea of answering violence with music is the more general principle of answering hatred with excellence, and no more poignant example of that principle can be found than the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, when African American Jesse Owens became the most decorated athlete of those games, showing the world the utter fallacy of Hitler’s espousal of Aryan supremacy. (FYI, for fans of this story, a biopic of Owens is in the works, written by the Oscar winning screenwriter of The King’s Speech, David Seidler.)

There is another example involving Hitler that demonstrates the triumph of achievement over dogma. It had to do with his favorite tenor, Max Lorenz. Lorenz, perhaps the greatest living Wagnerian tenor of the time, was gay but had married to conceal his homosexuality. His wife Lotte, was Jewish. Joseph Goebells, propaganda minister, ordered her and her mother arrested, and strangely enough, Hermann Georing interceded on their behalf. Georing, like Hitler, was a devoted lover of Wagner. These strange twists and turns aside, (you can’t make this stuff up) the most direct defiance of Hitler’s policies came from Winifred Wagner (wife of the composer’s son, Siegfried, and the head of the Bayreuth Festival from 1930 until the end of the War in 1945). Hitler did not want Lorenz to sing at Bayreuth because of his Jewish wife, and at that suggestion Winifred said she would accede to his request by simply closing the festival saying, famously, “Without Lorenz, Bayreuth doesn’t work.” It was an ideological battle Hitler lost. Not an everyday occurrence.

Taking this discussion to a deeper level, we can ask what this discrimination against homosexuals (or Jews for that matter) is emblematic of. Is it not a hatred of difference itself? Saying, “this is the way people are supposed to be. Not that way, this way!”
This is the time of year when we all hope to look at one another with softhearted eyes. So I think there is an opportunity in all this talk of discrimination and intolerance for us to turn and look at how we treat one another, and ourselves. Even if we are liberal minded and supposedly tolerant, don’t we often judge people as worse for their differences, which we perceive as weaknesses? And don’t we do this to ourselves most of all, loving the things about ourselves that offer us acclaim, status, pleasure, and running an internal dialogue about the other parts of ourselves that is, well, to put it mildly, less than kind?

So the act of decrying these forms of intolerance is fine, but if that becomes simply another way to judge, to say “You are wrong, I am right,” then it may come around to bite us on our own tail, feeding that attitude of judgment within ourselves which is not at all nurturing of our best intentions.

That is why I am happy about the choice for the U.S. to participate fully in the Olympics, not just because it means that there is some good TV in my future, but because it puts into action Bernstein’s sentiment. It is about what we are “for” not what we are against. Someone who is against discrimination towards homosexuals is for people being allowed to live their own lives, to be themselves without punishment or shame.

Another example, besides Tchaikovsky, of the impact of soviet attitudes to homosexuality on their artists is that of Sviatoslav Richter, (1915 to 1997) who was considered one of the great pianists of the 20th century. Russian born, he lived as a German expatriat and had female companions publicly, but he was gay. Perhaps not as dramatic a story as that of Tchaikovsky, but one of thousands of examples of lives turned inside out by unfair policies and attitudes toward gays, and yet the person leading that life accomplishing remarkable, admirable things.

The stories are endless. Only this week, Alan Turing, a mathematician and code breaker from the famous Bletchley Park in World War II was posthumously pardoned in the UK, where he was convicted and jailed over sixty years ago for “gross indecency.” Turing’s breaking of the so-called Enigma code is credited with shortening the war and saving thousands of lives. Turing was given a choice of two years in jail or chemical castration. He chose the jail time. Two years after serving his sentence, Turing committed suicide. (There is a very fine play about Turing, titled “Breaking the Code” which starred Derek Jacobi to great acclaim in London and Broadway. Jacobi is openly gay and has a civil marriage with his partner of 35 years.) One of the greatest playwright’s of all time could be also seen as a having been killed by Britain’s anti gay policies. Oscar Wilde, whom I quoted above, was imprisoned for homosexuality and emerged from prison a broken man. He died destitute in Paris.

If you were hoping for heart-warming Christmas tales in this column, I apologize for disappointing you. I don’t mention all of these examples to be ghoulish, simply to put forth that as a world society, we already know this. History has shown time and time again, that this sort of oppression is terribly damaging, not only to the individuals involved, but to the fabric of society, to all of our senses of safety and acceptance.

The current degree of public attention to this issue internationally, the outrage over Pussy Riot’s incarcerations as just one example, is an indication that humanity is evolving to be less accepting of this sort of intolerance. The brave steps that people such as Pussy Riot, and others in Russia are taking now against intolerance, is not only a way of honoring gay people of today, but of honoring the memory of gay people from the past, people who struggled and suffered in ways that humanity cannot be proud of.

What we can be proud of is the degree of personal excellence achieved by figures such as Jesse Owens, or Sviatoslav Richter, people who triumphed by being simply, truly, beautifully themselves and did so under umbrellas of discrimination that cast wide shadows over their lives. When someone does that, exists as fully as they can in the ways that are particular to their specific, creative gifts, they confront their oppressors with the simplest of questions: Is it not enough to be ourselves? Is it not enough to be talented and strange and imperfect in exactly the way that we are? Isn’t it enough to be Oscar Wilde? To be Alan Turing?

Is it not enough to be Tchaikovsky?

L.H.

TV Today: "Colony" and the Healthcare Bill

3/23/2017

Sarah Wayne Callies in "Colony"

Does anybody watch the TV series "Colony"?

It's a sci-fi show set in futuristic L.A.. A family is living under military occupation of aliens, assisted by collaborating humans called RAPs. Basic necessities are hard to come by, and in the pilot episode, the main character is trying to buy insulin on the black market.

Here's one of the lines in that scene:

"Certain conditions have been deemed 'unworthy for treatment.' Diabetes is one of them. The RAPs are culling weakness from the herd."

I don't think it's a stretch to say that the GOP "healthcare" plan is attempting to do the same thing. And as much as people keep rebuffing the analogies to the rise of the Nazis in 1930s Germany, I think it's completely fair. This administration, which in reality is a bunch of criminals who have yet to be held accountable, is a cult of strength. We're all supposed to be skiing in Aspen and feasting at resort hotels and enjoying our wealth at the expense of the lesser beings.

I'm grateful to Chuck Schumer, and my senator Kamala Harris and others who are fighting the good fight.

#resist

p.s. good show. And the main family has a dog, which is always a plus:) Note, the line mentioned above is spoken by actress Deidrie Henry.

A Poem for Healthcare

3/12/2017

This Man Stands
By Lisa Houston

for the man in the photo

This man is a stranger to me,
Standing at the back of our town hall meeting.
The room is packed.
Is he tired?
Unwell?
But there he stands.

I don’t know what to do, so I take a picture of him.
There but for the grace, etc.

Weeks later, I struggle to contemplate the soul of a congressman in Utah who says that this man is spending all his money on a new iPhone.

By which he means, “He’s just whining.”

It feels like that’s all I hear these days, spewing forth in the bills introduced, the edicts that read like royal decrees from Mad King George. The words of an angry, illogical parent, possibly drunk, or otherwise impaired.

They’re yelling. “Suck it up, crybaby!”

If I had a better heart, I’d be crying for them, these politicians with lumps of coal where their hearts should be.

But I don’t cry for them.

Instead I look at this man and wonder, where’s his iPhone?

In the end, I decide that no human being would have the nerve to say such a thing to this man. Not to his face.

And that makes me think about insulation, about the cocoons of safety we’ve spun in our cyber systems, and whether, perhaps, they are making us less kind.

Face to face, I used to feel that I had a fundamentalist friend, or two. Opera singers are a diverse group. Thrown together by the freakish commonality of a blessing in the throat, we are Jews and Christians, black and white, short and tall. And everybody wants to eat after the show, whatever God you pray to.

But now, I don’t know.

I commune with one such friend from across the globe on the jetstream of our cyber society. She praises POTUS and FLOTUS for “bringing prayer back to the Whitehouse,” and I trip over her words as if a stone three meters wide has placed itself in the middle of my path.

I fall down, flummoxed. Injured.

“Prayer?!”

Is that what you call it?

Meanwhile, I wonder if she prays for this man. And what she would say to him, or the millions like him. What she would say to his face.

Some days, I have to tie my wrists down to stop from typing a direct public message to this “friend” with a picture of this man and the Hashtag, “What would Jesus do?”

Because what would he?

And now I’ve put this woman in quotation marks, this “friend,” for the word has lost all meaning. She’s fallen into the abyss of someone I reject. Someone I don’t wish harm, but refuse to include in my company. Now I want her away from me. More than arm’s length.

In today’s language, I “mute” her.

But some don’t have that privilege. To push away those who would encroach upon them. I can’t imagine that this man wants to be here, standing in the thick air, listening to hours of political chatter. But here he stands, among us. And I have a flash of insight that this is the only way out. We must be there, physically, to protest, speak, listen care. We must show up. In person.

Meanwhile, I navigate my internal highways, trying to find ways of pushing this friend’s posts out of my “feed” without pushing the person out of my heart.

A faint echo returns from a decades-long journey into the void.

It's a memory of some silly family moment on the stairs, when we hugged, all five of us, and Dad said, “All for one and one for all!”

And with that I’m reminded: We’re in this together. No one is safe unless everyone is.

And through all of that, this man stands.

And I take a picture of him.

With my iPhone.

Thoughts and Photos for Mom: Happy Women's Day!

3/8/2017

Mom and Me on her 80th Birthday in 2014

Today I’m looking forward to the Women’s Day celebrations, and I’m also honoring my mother.
            Last week I attended an event to celebrate Mom. The California Women Lawyers association was giving her an award. Named for trailblazer Rose Bird, who was not only the first female justice on the California Supreme Court, but the first female Chief Justice on the California Supreme Court. But beyond that, Bird was a woman of exceptional courage and principle. She opposed the death penalty, and overturned 56 death penalty sentences before she was voted out of office after a highly publicized campaign against her. And in a case we might be hearing more about as states continue their efforts to curtail the right to abortion, she ruled that poor women should be provided with free abortions.
            Mom was thrilled to be receiving an award named for this woman.
            It was a nice event, with a buffet dinner and a medium-sized room packed with about a hundred lawyers and Judges. My niece, who will be 14 in a month, was all dressed up and wanted to circulate in the crowd by herself. I loved watching this, and can’t help but think it had something to do with the fact that it was a very pro-female room.
            Mom’s acceptance speech included profound thanks to her clerk and bailiff, and the social workers she deals with daily, but also a rousing cry of outrage at the decimation of the judicial system, the budget cuts that make it more difficult to dispense justice, and the new administration’s cutting of the a legal services corporation for the poor. And as she spoke, I watched the faces of the women lawyers, many of them about my age, mid-life and working hard to do their thing. And I saw how much Mom meant to them. How they had watched her for years, and been influenced by a woman doing her job with grace and authority.
            Mom’s been a trailblazer in her own way, working hard to support drug recovery as an option to prison, and for the past ten years helping to establish a mental health court so that people receive treatment instead of jail. And I could tell it was meaningful to these women, what Mom had done.
            Mom didn’t have examples like that. Mom went to Harvard Law School in the 50’s, applying to the Law School because her first choice, the Harvard Business School didn’t accept women. (But it does now! Here's a picture of my cousin Kathleen, Mom’s niece, graduating from Harvard Business School in 2014.)

There were nine women in Mom's class at Harvard Law in the fall of 1956, one of whom was Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And when the dean welcomed them, he told these women: “You know, you’re taking up a space that should be filled by a man.”

Even having heard the story all these years, I still find it hard to imagine such a thing.

So here she is now in 2017, 82 years old, happily married to Dad for 58 years, three grown children, four grandchildren, still serving on the Alameda County Superior Court, working with young public defenders, prosecutors, and social workers, trying to be fair and just and reasonable and kind to the people who come before her, both the “clients” as they call them, and the attorneys. California’s newest Senator, Kamala Harris, (who’s rockin’ the resistance in the Senate by the way,) Kamala served as a District Attorney in Alameda County for eight years, and argued in front of Mom, as did so many women who’ve gone on to do great things. And I think it’s been good for the men, too, to see a woman Judge who’s fair, diligent, and capable. And Mom’s all of those things.

So Happy Woman’s Day. I’ll probably go down to a midday rally later, to enjoy the activism that is inspiring our nation right now. But the real celebration is going on in my heart, as I give thanks for the greatest blessing a woman can have, an inspiring mother.

Thanks Mom.

P.S. Mom's grandmother was born in Lithuania in the 1880's. Her family left there the year she was born, fleeing the persecution of Jews that was so rampant in Eastern Europe at the time. I had the chance to go to Lithuania to sing a few years ago, and one of my concerts took place at a Jewish museum. This is a photo of me taken next to a painting there. Is this woman one of my lost grandmothers?

Protecting the Rights of the "Foreign Born"

3/2/2017

Today I'm thinking about how hatred seems to be spreading as bigotry and oppression somehow are more "in" with the actions of this administration. Specifically, I'm concerned that those of us who are dedicated to resisting the administration are also vulnerable to this atmosphere of hate. I wrote of this earlier in the post "Becoming the Thing You Fear" but today I mean it in a slightly different way. I have noticed online that people are critiquing one another on the tone of their resistance. One friend was given a hard time about her posts being too angry, while others are criticized, sometimes subtly, for not being angry enough.
Well-meaning in both instances, I'm sure, but troubling, for this is truly how hatred spreads. When we hate the hatred, we're practicing hatred, and as a classical musician I know that what we practice, we get good at. This is why historically in-fighting is common in resistance movements, though I think this time around people are very aware that a new, more peaceful, more loving kind of resistance is called for. But it's very hard not to be angry, and being angry, it's always a challenge not to spill over to hate. It is a slippery slope and I'm standing atop it like the rest of you, trying not to roll down the hill.
Poking around for quotations about hatred, I came across this one from President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
"We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization."
Any hatred, he said, not "their" hatred.
It was fascinating to discover that this quotation came from Roosevelt's address of greeting to the American Committee for Protection of Foreign-born in January of 1940. This was a time when almost a hundred "Anti-alien" bills were before congress.

  Writer Ernest Hemingway supported the work of this committee trying to protect immigrants, then more commonly called "aliens."
     Hemingway wrote to the magazine "The Nation" urging people to resist the movement against aliens.
He wrote:
  "You must be aware that the existence of the war in Europe has intensified the efforts of demagogic Alien-baiters who seek to destroy our rights as Americans behind the subterfuge of attacking the so-called Alien."
   Sadly, Roosevelt went on to sign Proclamation number 2537 on January 14th, 1942, which required people from enemy countries, (Germany, Italy, and Japan), to register with the Department of Justice. It was under this order that the internment order for Japanese Americans began.
   Having read a fair bit about the Roosevelts, and watched the excellent documentary by Ken Burns, I am guessing this is one of the times when Roosevelt bowed to political pressures rather than that he truly believed in this kind of discrimination. I need to research that more to know for sure. But even if that's the case, that in a way is more chilling, showing how even a decent man can do something indecent if the momentum of hatred is strong enough.
Well, I'm loving you, my friends and readers, today. Even those who think I'm not angry enough, and those who think I'm too angry! Like musicians, let's see if we can't get into a groove here, and find the sweet spot of political action fueled by love.
Here's a link to Roosevelt's greeting in its entirety. Roosevelt's Speech.
Note, as a resource for this post, I referred to Peter Rose's book, "The Dispossessed: An Anatomy of Exile."

L.H.

I Hate Different People, plus some movie picks

2/28/2017

I hate different people, and you probably do too.

I was at a seminar recently where a dissenting opinion from a student was very poorly handled by the instructor. When I tried to define what the teacher had done to let things go so awry, I couldn’t really put my finger on it. It wasn’t that she had totally shut the person down, but she just didn’t make any space for the person’s experience, which was quite singular within the group. Because of the teacher’s narrow reaction, the group didn’t really know what to make of the situation, and seemed to take on a negative attitude towards the person after that. And that’s when it hit me. All this talk lately about whether or not we actually have to tolerate opinions that are offensive to us misses the point entirely. We don’t have to tolerate them. We actually have to make more room for them. It’s like someone unexpected showing up to dinner. You’re all already seated at the table. What do you do? You scoot over, you squeeze in, you make room.

And the same thing applies to people. We need to figure out how to make more room for those we don’t understand or agree with. Stop, I’m not saying it isn’t horrific and upsetting to realize, for example, that there are lots of people who hate you because of your religion, or skin color, or sexual or gender identity. And I’m not saying by making room that you endorse, feel happy about, or encourage someone to have these feelings. But denial doesn’t help. People are overwhelmed right now and part of that is from not knowing where the heck to file all of these hate-filled opinions and more importantly, the people who hold them. There is a confrontation taking place across the divide. It takes time, energy, and even creativity to handle new kinds of people, thoughts, situations. And people are worried they will fail, or that when it’s all over, they will have less.
Speaking personally, I was in the middle of a rather lovely, creative life, with most of my time devoted to writing, singing, and caring for dogs. Where’s the space in that life for this very painful truth that bigotry –in all its ugly forms – is alive and well in a large part of the population. Where does that fit in my life? And besides, didn’t we grow past this? Haven’t we evolved to understand that we are all equal?

Yes and no.

The notion of equality can be constraining if it results in assumptions of sameness. People have different needs, and if we go about resenting people for having different needs, we’ve failed fundamentally at empathy. We’ve expected the world to be an exact mirror, and to sound as an echo chamber only for our own or similar voices.

And that’s not what we want. Because the only thing truer than the fact that we hate different people, is that we love them. We thirst for them. We delight in them. We need them. We celebrate them. We even deify them. So maybe the hating is some intermediary step, something we do as we adjust to the reality of them, and maybe once we know them, we will love them.

But why is the fear and hatred there in the first place? Because people are afraid of other people. We are evolved to be suspicious, wary, careful. It’s said we have five questions we immediately want to answer when we meet someone. These are not cocktail party questions: What do you do? Are you a fan of watercolors? These are our lizard brain questions, the things our limbic system needs to know to decide fight or flight. Here are the questions:
Can I eat them?
Are they going to eat me?
Can I mate with them?
Are they going to mate with me?
And lastly, have I seen them before? And that’s where all the “different” radar gets involved. We run through our database to remember if it’s friend or foe so we can kill it, run away from it, or maybe relax and have sex with it. But if we haven’t seen it before, if it registers as different to us, then we don’t know yet if we’re safe in its presence. So in a modern, “civilized” world, where does this concern go? How is it channeled? Into the mind. Into finding reasons to dislike people, to separate us from them. To render them “different.”

The limbic system also has a lot to do with emotions and emotional bonding and empathy. So what do you suppose happens if you first bond emotionally with people who say they hate Jews? Or don’t like black people? I’m talking about your parents. Your best friend. Your big brother. Or maybe you had a terrible home life and then, in your twenties, you met a great bunch of guys who made you feel welcome. And those guys hate black people. Or you’re black yourself, but had a chaotic homelife, and then found a sense of order and purpose in the Republican party? Either way, even in an atmosphere of prejudice, part of you is learning what love is, what connection feels like. The dopamine in your brain is doing its job as a neurotransmitter as you laugh, are fed by, and hugged by these people. Your empathy is developed for these people, not for those other “different” people.

Is hate taught? Most definitely! But just as the abusive marriage includes strong emotional and sexual bonds that make it difficult for an abused person to leave, bonds of love and connection are formed simultaneously, and it’s not easy to cut these bonds once their developed. Some of the most racist groups are made up of outcasts and abused people who have never found a feeling of love and safety until they joined those groups. I’m not saying it is love. But to some, it’s the closest they’ve ever come, and it feels like love.

The fact that these things are learned should give us great hope. What is learned can be unlearned! Still, there’s no easy fix here, and I’m certainly not going to go out and find the nearest Nazi and give them a hug. But I think there’s something in the idea that we need to make more space, not less, and I always think its best to start the process of change or growth internally. Secure your own oxygen mask before you help others kind of thing. So maybe the first thing we need to remember is that we are very strange ourselves, and isn’t that wonderful! If nothing else, for those of us who are feeling attacked and afraid in the face of this bigotry, it may be comforting to reassure ourselves that we are lovable, in all our weirdness.

So here is a list of five movies I like a lot, each of which, in its own way helped me enjoy and understand someone who is different. Three of them are available free on Netflix streaming. Maybe this list won’t appeal to you. At the risk of repeating myself, we are different.

Movie Picks:

The Imitation Game (2014) Compelling story of famous British code breaker. A scientific mind struggling heroically to serve his country in wartime, while that same country criminalizes his sexuality. (Free on Netflix streaming.)

Hello Dolly (1969) Directed by my hero Gene Kelly. A treasure. And Dolly Levi is the original fun crazy lady. (Free on Netflix streaming.)

Frances Ha (2012) This indie film about an unusual young dancer in New York City straddles comedy and drama in a way that is odd itself, and if you struggled to find your place in your 20s, you might love this one. I did. (Free on Netflix streaming.)

Cold Comfort Farm (1995) Early film of Kate Beckinsale. A delight. Funny and touching. Weird wins the day with this bucketful of characters at a rural farm in Sussex.

My Left Foot (1989) Well-deserved classic status. Astounding performance by Daniel Day Lewis. The hardships of boy with cerebral palsy in a poor family in Dublin in the 30s. Based on a true story, an inspiring life, an inspiring film.

Love, Lisa
The Oddball

My Oscar Wish

2/27/2017

I watch the parade and manage easily not to be offended by the glamour. The silks and satins and architectural skirts with gratuitous beading, laborious and intricate beyond any readable effect. The hair piled high and then frozen down. The borrowed jewels. Maria Callas used to be loaned jewels for parties, and a man from Harry Winston had to follow her around to guard them. I wonder, as I watch the thousand dollar shoes padding around the red carpet, what thug-like ear-pieced gem protectors are lurking in the background. One airbrushed starlet is showing off her pendulous diamond earrings to the woman with the microphone. “They’re different she says,” and shimmies her head slightly in a way the queen might do to infer that no, she will not have tea at the present time. And I see that yes, the earrings are different. One is a gaudy, overstated slightly oval shape, and the other is a gaudy, overstated heart-like shape.
     It does bother me some, I’ll admit, that many of the women cannot move their mouths properly. I think of all my years of diction classes, and struggling to enunciate in various languages. My “Red Leather, Yellow Leather”, my “Round and around the rugged rock, the ragged rascal ran”. And I can’t fathom how sad it must make these women feel that they can no longer fully express themselves as actors because their faces are full of poison. I once saw a mother-daughter scene played by two actresses who had had so much work done that it became a totally abstract exercise. It was like a play you might’ve seen in the east village in the 80’s, where the text was passionate, furious, disturbing, but the faces remained calm, impassive, detached. “You hurt me!” the middle aged woman shouted, with no sign of pain. “Well you hurt me!” her mother replied, the resonance in both voices halted by an unnatural immobility just under their nostrils. Wait, I thought, who is hurting? Where has all the grief gone? Watching this and the cavalcade of beauties on Oscar night, my upper lip begins to buzz, as it sometimes does when I’ve eaten something I’m allergic to. And I do a few lip trills and raspberries, just to give thanks that I still can.
        Year after year, I’ve watched this ceremony and I’ve put up with it all. I’ve waded through the wealth and glamour, endured the high percentage of narcissistic grandiosity, overlooked the gaffs and drunkenness and the always insufficient presence of minorities, and many years, the deplorable lack of any depth of content whatsoever. Mostly I do this because I’m a performer, and by some ridiculously attenuated stretch, these are my people. If you consider that singing Carmen in Modesto, or teaching karaoke singers, or being utterly unemployed, to be in some way the same profession as, say, George Clooney. But it is. Players upon a stage, and so forth. And there’s always one moment of the Oscars, or Tonys, or whatever, that grabs me. A person who rises completely above the noise to celebrate with humility and grace a rather miraculous event. The component parts of such a moment is a devotion to and reverence for the life of an artist. I love those moments. It’s like watching a gratitude bomb go off. It’s organic, and joyous, and meaningful, and it puts some kind of deposit in my bank as a performer, so the next day I can go back to my rural semi-professional gig, or my karaoke singer, or my wrestling match with too much nothing, while feeling a bit more connected to life on earth. To the struggle and the triumph of breathing life as a creative person.
  And now comes the part where I say that this year, that didn’t happen. It didn’t do it for me. Am I a killjoy? Am I dead inside? Do I not know how to have fun anymore? Maybe. And what was I hoping for anyway?
Selflessness.
  There’s a saying people have about dealing with dysfunctional relationships: Don’t go to the hardware store for milk. Meaning, if someone is unable to give you love, or understanding, or kindness, you don’t go to that person for love, or understanding, or kindness. So, Lisa, maybe don’t go to the narcissistic, self-absorbed entertainment industry for selflessness. Fair enough. Also in fairness, there were moments. A Mexican American saying he wanted no walls between us. A filmmaker reaching out to those being oppressed that he “had their backs.” And the moment of the night for me, which belonged to a man who wasn’t there. An Iranian filmmaker who, in solidarity with the millions of people of the seven nations targeted by a ban on travel to the U.S., had stayed home. As a woman read his acceptance speech in his absence, this was the act of true courage I was hoping for. But it was also the missed moment. It happened early in the ceremony, and while it received enthusiastic applause, it should have gotten more. It should have gotten a standing ovation that went on and on and on and on, to show the world we give a shit. That we know this is wrong. That it’s worth getting up our bejeweled asses for. Later, the audience stood up to show this solidarity when explicitly asked to do so, but they shouldn’t have needed this permission. It was their job to stand at that earlier moment, and to stand long and loud. Because this man sacrificed to make this point. Imagine being nominated for an academy award. To have your life’s work acknowledged and celebrated, and then you don’t go to the ceremony. You stay away. Not for yourself, because you’re Woody Allen and you don’t like that sort of thing, but for the nameless, voiceless others, who are being discriminated against unfairly. That’s what protest is. It is objection by proxy. You protest not for yourself, but those who cannot protest for themselves.
  And that’s what I think the vast majority of those at last night’s ceremony didn’t do, and what collectively, as a body of humanity, they failed utterly to do. I can imagine all the conversations, the careful planning and strategizing about what to say, what not to say, how much to say, whose job is it to say something? Will we playing into “their” hands if we get angry. Every time somebody got up and plodded on as per usual, I could see these contingent contemplations tugging at the hems of their gowns and tuxedo pants. It made me sad for them, and sad for us as a nation, and sad mostly for those who did not find a reflection of themselves as they watched, for that is the essence of a performer, to give voice to the human experience. Were they scared of the angry tweets to come? That’s the predictable effect of a bully. Or did they want to have a night off from the horror show of the past month?
      What it comes down to for me is a reading of the moment. What kind of moment are we in right now? And who do we look to get us out of it?
When the ceremony ended, I felt a bit ashamed of myself. Not because I read this as a dire moment in human history, which I do. I see this as a time of accelerated evil that is not only normalizing bigotry, it is elevating it to a kind of prestigious courage. It’s a time for action, and courage, and sacrifice, and I’m not ashamed to say so. But I was ashamed because I’d been hoping for more from this event. I had. And when it was done, it was almost to the point where I slapped myself on the forehead like, what was I thinking? Clue-phone ringing: Celebrity culture is part of what got us into this mess!
   As an artist, a creative person, I and others will persevere. That’s what artists do. But the artists, or performers, or the rich and famous on the walk of fame, won’t be the ones to get us out of this pickle. This movement, if there is a movement against this tide of hate, will be a people’s movement, not a star-studded affair. It is like what Buddhist monk and peace activist Thích Nhát Hạnh means when he says that the next savior will not be an individual, but a community.
For some reason my conclusion to all these thoughts is coming to me in a southern accent, which is something I welcome at times like these. It’s the accent of my maternal grandmother, born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. The warmth of the tone sooths me, and the melodious lilt of the voice is slightly entertaining in a way that makes me smile. I can hear her now. She’s looking around, seeing things as they truly are, and she’s saying, “Well, I guess we’ll have to clean up this mess our own selves.”
Cinderella’s gone home. The ball is over.
OK everybody, let’s go get a broom.

L.H.

This Land IS Your Land! (photo slideshow)

2/23/2017

I took these photos at the San Francisco Airport protest on January 29, 2017. Like protests at airports across the country, this one was peaceful, and spontaneous. A heartfelt response from thousands of people who were offended and distressed at the new president’s ban on travelers for seven mostly Muslim nations.

This slide show seemed like a good way to honor Woodie Guthrie, who on this day, February 23rd, in 1940, wrote the lyrics to his wonderful song, “This Land Is Your Land.”

And it is.

A Rose By Any Other President...

2/22/2017

I understand people who want to say that you-know-who is not their president. And I wish I could join them and say #notmypresident. But as upset as I am, I want to maintain my faith in the Constitution. I need to maintain my faith in the Constitution, and that means, like it or not, he is, quite tragically, my president.

But I don’t want to say his name. I’m not being political. I just don’t want to. It grosses me out. Maybe I should say his name. After all, I always loved that Harry Potter was brave enough to say, “Voldemort,” right out loud, while others called him "He Who Must Not Be Named." Maybe I’m not brave like Harry. But in this case, what I really think is that the atmosphere is already so full of this guy’s name, and has been for more than a year if you include all that disproportional free press during the campaign, which btw! helped him win the election!
Deep breath. Blood pressure check. Wish well to all beings.
But really, I don’t want to add my voice to what has already become an omnipresent cloud that every day looks more and more like “The Airborne Toxic Event” in the novel White Noise by Dom Delillo.

So what’s the solution? One of my favorite authors on Twitter has settled on not capitalizing the first letter, which gives you tRump, pronounced, “Tee-Rump”. I think that works. But even that is too close to his name for me, and the more destruction he wreaks, the more I am resolved that I’m going to continue not to use his name. There’s always POTUS, the acronym is President of the United States, but that's too dignified to suit, don’t you think? And for me, POTUS will always be Martin Sheen in The West Wing, which is good viewing right now by the way, if you want to disappear into a more caring alternative governmental reality.

So for those of you who are with me on this, who are maybe not meaning it politically, but are just, frankly, too grossed out to say the actual name, or for those who do mean it politically as a statement of withholding your personal investiture of power, whatever your reasons, here are some Alt Titles for the current you-know-what.

Here’s my list:

Flaming Ball of Hate

Personification of Greed

Embodiment of Short-sighted Self-Interest

Mr. Heartless

Poor Huddled Masses Basher

Mars, the Wannabe God of Warmongering

Destructor in Chief

Dissembler in Chief

Liar in Chief

National Park Stranger

Sexual Assault Promoter, with a minor in Bigotry

The Bankruptcy King

“Ick” Factor Champion

Captain Unthinkable

Marvel of Devolution

And finally,

Fear-based Protozoa

That’s it for now, though I’m afraid there will be more.

Keep the faith people.

p.s. I don’t think any of this is funny, but that doesn’t mean that sometimes, you don’t just have to laugh anyway. :)