Measuring in love

Even when--especially when--it feels like hate is winning

When I woke up this morning, I saw a text from Z: “Was there a showing of RENT you told me about a bit ago.” I took Z to see RENT for his 12th birthday. I had not seen it and while I knew some of the music, I wasn’t that familiar with the show. A few scenes in, I was a little concerned he might be bored. The woes of struggling artists in New York City and their anarchist professor friend seemed awfully distant from the worries of a sixth grader who had just changed schools. But it quickly became clear that he was completely enthralled. He proclaimed it his favorite musical on our way home. And in the intervening years, during which he has seen dozens of Broadway musicals, nothing has been able to match the gritty rock opera that brings to life the challenges of artists struggling to make a living in NYC during the height of the HIV epidemic. RENT, with its focus on a group of racially and gender diverse young activists, remains Z’s favorite musical. We have seen four different productions together—including a youth theater production that I so wish Z would have auditioned for. When Z was in his theater days, I had hoped he might one day play Mark, the struggling filmmaker and narrator of the show. Were he a high school or college student in the mid to late 90s, perhaps he would have been a RENThead—waiting in line for $20 rush tickets and seeing the show many more than four times.

We haven’t seen a production of RENT for two years. In fact, since college tuition has taken up our Broadway budget, we haven’t seen many professional theater productions. So, since I knew there was no way Z was up yet, I got my coffee and spent way too much time trying to find a production of RENT anywhere within a reasonable distance. No luck. Given the time of year, most places are putting on Christmas themed shows—The Nutcracker, A Charlie Brown Christmas, The Grinch, and that awful Cirque Dreams Holidaze (don’t go. It’s awful and has zero relationship with the amazing Cirque du Soleil). I called Z and shared that the only non Christmas show I knew of was Cats. He was a solid no on seeing that. (I am still perplexed why so many people dislike Cats. The music is great. So what if the actors are dressed as cats?)

Thursday night, it rained and was still raining when we woke up Friday. The cold November rain was a relief, as we hadn’t had any significant precipitation since August. We had a reprieve from the rain in the afternoon, and I escaped to the woods mid afternoon. The air, the ground, the smells and sounds of the woods were all different with an inch of rain and more to come. The gray, somber sky; the brisk, almost-biting wind; and the heaviness of the air, pregnant with moisture, made it feel much colder than the measured temperature. It was a day made for a warm cup of peppermint tea, a cozy mystery, a soft fleece blanket, and nothing to do. But I was outside, walking carefully through the slick wet leaves. The distinct smell after a rain fall is so captivating, a group of Austrian scientists came up with a name for the scent. Petrichor describes the musty combination of plant oils released when the rain hits decaying leaves and bacterias emitted by damp soil. It is particularly strong when these oils have been accumulating for longer periods without rain. And it had been nearly three months since we had much more than a brief shower.

The vernal pond at the entrance to the woods had been dry since mid September. When I headed into the woods, I was delighted to see that water had returned. Although it was not much more than a large puddle, at least enough rain had fallen to give the suggestion of the pond that was usually there. I felt a sense of returning as I felt the weight of the air, the moisture on my face, the petrichor filling my nostrils, the soft slickness of the leaves. The last time the woods had held moisture like this, the leaves were all over head, brilliant in their verdant canopy. The pine needles were not softly carpeting the paths, but forming soft green bundles on the spiraling whirls of branches. The moisture in the hot summer air felt heavy and thick, unlike the cold briskness of November rain.

How quickly we had all adapted to the dryness, the reliability of being able to get outside without a protective layer or umbrella. To walk through the woods without worry of mud or slipping. No need to dry off the dog when we came in from a walk or wipe mud from his paws. And yet, once the much-needed rain came, we knew exactly what to do, how to step more gingerly to avoid slipping on the wet leaves, to pull the hood overhead and keep the rain off our heads. Last spring, when water seemed to fall from the sky with regularity, the sound of rain in the morning was not so welcome. I forced myself outside even on those cold rainy spring days, but with reluctance and often irritation. The cold wet often interfered with my ability to gain the calm and balance that generally comes from my walks.

Weather and seasons used to feel more predictable, more reliably the same. The variation from one year to the next seemed less dramatic. We used to be able to ski Thanksgiving weekend. Not only the expert skiers who will ski anything just to get out on the trails, but me—who is rather particular about the reliability and consistency of the conditions. Winter was cold. Snow fell. Winter lasted long—well into March and sometimes half of April—and spring was notoriously short. But that also meant that summers were not too too hot—no more than a few days pushing past 90 degrees. While a warm spell could happen, apple picking usually took place in the loveliest weather of the year—crisp and cool, the temperature reliably upper 50s to mid 60s. But more and more, it is warmer and we have extremes. Weeks above 90 degrees. Months without rain. Weeks with too much rain.

I find the seasonal cycles not only a preferable environment in which to live, but a reliable metaphor for life. Coldness and short periods of light eventually give way to the return of light and warmth and the miraculous rebirth of blossom and bloom. Heat can swelter and slow everything down for awhile, but eventually, it burns off and the coolness of evening feels even more delightful. It all has a predictable and comforting rhythm.

Just as our planet is heating up and the reliable cadence of our seasons is being disrupted, so too is our way of life. And I wonder, as so many of us are wondering, how can we see each other in such profoundly different ways? How can our vision of what is needed to keep each other safe and healthy and thriving be so dramatically different? I think about my own relationships that have weathered conflict and hurt. And those that have not. Adrienne Rich, a poet and essayist, wrote of the critical role of truthfulness in both politics and relationships:

Truthfulness, honor, is not something which springs ablaze of itself; it has to be created between people.

This is true in political situations. The quality and depth of the politics evolving from a group depends in large part on their understanding of honor.

Much of what is narrowly termed “politics” seems to rest on a longing for certainty even at the cost of honesty, for an analysis which, once given, need not be re-examined. …Truthfulness anywhere means a heightened complexity. But it is a movement into evolution. Women are only beginning to uncover our own truths; many of us would be grateful for some rest in that struggle, would be glad just to lie down with the sherds we have painfully unearthed, and be satisfied with those. Often I feel this like an exhaustion in my own body.

The politics worth having, the relationships worth having, demand that we delve deeper.

The possibilities that exist between two people, or among a group of people, are a kind of alchemy.

They are the most interesting thing in life. The liar is someone who keeps losing sight of these possibilities.

When relationships are determined by manipulation, by the need for control, they may possess a dreary, bickering kind of drama, but they cease to be interesting. They are repetitious; the shock of human possibilities has ceased to reverberate through them.

From “Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying,” first read at the Hartwick Women Writers’ Workshop in June of 1975 and eventually reprinted in On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966–1978

How do we return to a place in which we have an agreed upon sense of what is honorable? Have we ever actually achieved that? Most governments, most organizations of any kind—religious or secular—are founded on an agreement of what is honorable for the most privileged and powerful. Modern civilization has yet to create a governmental structure that has truly embraced all of its people though many have tried to achieve that at least in thought, if not practice.

When I consider the relationships in my own life that have failed, it is, fundamentally, because of this failure to hold the same respect for truthfulness, for allowing room for both people’s complex understanding of the world. I see my own failures, and I wonder, how can a nation that has moved so far apart in its understanding of honor, of truthfulness, of understanding the complexity of what it means to be a human in this time, possibly come back together?

I will be honest. This has had me in a place of alternating anguish and indignation over the past few days. This is not some intellectual exercise that we are talking about. While pundits and journalists engage in endless analysis of what happened and why, the incoming administration is naming people to the most powerful positions in government based not on skill or experience, but assumed loyalty. The playbook for this administration, 900+ pages in length, seeks to roll back the rights of women, people of color, undocumented immigrants, LGBTQ folks, and the least-resourced among us. I cannot wrap my mind around how this is truthfulness, this is honor for some people in this country. Some people that I know. My previous resolution to stay focused on what is in front of me—my family, friends, and community—failed many times this weekend. And I was full of intense emotions.

When I was 12 years old, I had already been taught that anything straying from cisgender, heterosexual expression was wrong. And not just wrong, but to be shunned—an evil that could lead to eternal damnation. Gender roles were strictly defined and I was taught explicitly what was feminine and what was masculine and the grave dangers of crossing those lines. I also lived in a tight community—a place where everyone knew each other, where meals were organized and delivered to new moms, families who had lost someone, when they were other hardships in the home. People looked out for each other.—within the norms and rules of the community.

When my son was 12, I took him to see a show that depicted gender fluidity, the harsh realities of living with HIV, poverty, class struggle, the power of activism and art, and the enduring strength of community. He saw a different kind of honor, a different type of truthfulness. The values that he had been raised with were much more open, much more accepting than the ones I had known as a child.

In one generation, the definition of honor and truthfulness has changed within my family. Not one member of my family would struggle with the themes presented in RENT. Not one of them would argue that the definition of truthfulness and honor we operated under in the late 80s is accurate. While we might fall on a continuum, the range is fairly narrow and far more complex and nuanced than the absolutes that guided our lives in the late 80s and early 90s.

And that is where I find the hope. That is how I can move out of the anguish, the indignation. I believe we have arrived at this moment because of fear. And fear is something we all have. Fear is something we also have all overcome. I was taught to be afraid of same-sex attraction. Of gender fluidity. What changed that for me?

Knowledge.

Awareness.

Friendship.

Music by the Indigo Girls. Ani DiFranco. Melissa Etheridge.

Learning about Matthew Shepherd, who was only a few years younger than me.

Reading Judith Butler in college and learning that gender was in fact, performative.

Seeing Peggy Shaw perform.

Reading Alice Walker. bell hooks. Toni Morrison. Zora Neale Hurston. Maxine Hong Kingston. Sandra Cisneros. Among so many others.

Watching the Color of Fear and then going back home and holding a family movie night and requiring my entire family to watch and then discuss the documentary with me.

Going to college and being introduced to worlds I had never known existed.

And having so many wonderful friends in my life who embraced who they were and who they loved. I hope you know who you are. I am profoundly grateful for your friendship, your presence in my life.

(Please note: This is a necessarily abbreviated list of all the things that helped me to redefine what truthfulness and honor were. I am inevitably leaving important things out. But this is a sketch, meant to communicate how powerful art, education, literature, and most importantly, relationships are in helping us broaden our values.)

Change happens. And as my dear friend said to me today, “We can’t let every step backward—which is coming—break us or wear us down. We focus on what we can do and we don’t get overwhelmed because we have each other.”

We have each other.

So when we find ourselves, our friends, our community asking as the Life Support Group in RENT did:

Will I lose my dignity?
Will someone care?
Will I wake tomorrow
From this nightmare?

Will I lose my dignity?
Will someone care?
Will I wake tomorrow
From this nightmare?

~Jonathan Larson

We are compelled to answer as definitively as we possibly can:

NO.

We are here, around, behind, and with you affirming your dignity and caring for and about you. We are here to provide a place that allows you to wake in love, not a nightmare of hate.

And we will continue to fight for one perfect world.

One ripple at a time.

And if anyone in the Boston area hears of a local production of RENT, let me know.

Let me know if you want to join me and Z in attending.

Let’s keep measuring life in love.

How do you measure a year in the life?

How about love?

It's time now to sing out
Though the story never ends
Let's celebrate
Remember a year in the life of friends

Remember the love
Remember the love, remember the love
Measure in love

~Jonathan Larson

All photos were taken by the exceptional Dana Giuliana, unless otherwise noted.

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