Video from Raqs Britannia?

Hello hello! So my last post was around my last exam, and here a month to the day I'm resurfacing to write again. And writing I am... I'm in the midst of writing an academic book catalogue, as well as doing a lot of dancing and eyeing up jobs in material culture and beyond. It's been a busy month, made busier by all the time that's been eaten up by partying and recovering from the night before. I've not been too bad, but I've finished my degree so this is pretty much to be expected.

However, I still feel I've been pretty productive. :) I'll post details soon...

In the meantime--has anyone seen/got footage of my performance at Raqs Britannia? I totally forgot to hand my camera off to a friend to film, and though I saw people filming I still haven't seen or heard anything. If you have video, I'd love to see it--please get in touch!

Hope all is well with you, and I'll whack together a more exciting news brief when I'm done researching books on 17th century philosophy.

I'm done! (I get so emotional...)

So Friday was the beginning of the beginning. And holy crap, did this weekend turn out to be an interesting dive in...

I had my last exam, and then sat outside in the glorious sunshine, having drinks with friends in front of SOAS and waiting to hear from Betty or Crissy when they landed. There was a painting project happening in front of the steps at school to benefit Iraqi refugee artists, which I added my mark to, and then I met up with my Americans at Soho. That's when the craziness began to amp up.

In their fabulous rented accomodation (a flat on Charing Cross Road near Leicester Square) things kicked off with vodka and Fanta and showgirls costumes. Then Betty, Crissy and I took off to Gordon's Wine Bar, walked along the river and then invaded some bar which we couldn't recall the next day. Early the next morning Marcio and Reed arrived, and about seven showers later we all went out to walk London, winding our way down through Trafalgar Square, to Westminster Abbey, past Parliament and then along the South Bank, where we found a gorgeous terrace with wine and food where we soaked up the sunshine. Then Marcio, Reed, Crissy and I went from Harrods through Hyde Park to meet up with James, and from there we started downing cider at our former local in Marylebone.

At one point, James and I went to get some dinner, and an hour later we returned to find Reed and Marcio outside, greeting us with a delirious "I'm drunk!" from Marcio. We went inside, and found that Graham, Darren and Crissy were similarly inebriated. We wandered back to the flat, regrouped, and then went out on the town in earnest. We started at Bar Soho, where Crissy and I managed to charm our way in without door charges for the posse. There we took over the bar with mad dancing, and then took off to Club 49 and stayed until close. This is the clean version of the story--the reality involved a lot more bumping, grinding, making out and drunken misbehavior.

Somehow we were alive the next morning. We reconstructed the night's events (largely at Crissy's expense) and then split into two teams--James, Nolan, Crissy and I to Camden (where I intended to buy new clothing, as I'd been partying and sleeping in the same gear for days), and Reed, Marcio and Betty headed to museums. Crissy and I had a chance to catch up a bit, I got some awesome Wellies for Sunrise next weekend, and on our way to other things I was photographed by people from a Japanese fashion magazine. I knew that if I wore that outfit long enough it would get someone's attention, if only by virtue of its singular scent....

I almost cried as James and I said goodbye to them. We had to head back to our own bed, I needed fresh clothes, and it seemed better to leave then rather than be in the way as everyone prepared to get ready for their flights the next day.

And now I'm in the beginning of the project of making the rest of my life. School work is done, I just have to wait for the results, and now it's on to the business of this summer: dancing, designing, job hunting, wedding planning... I keep feeling a mixture of sadness and excitement.

At the end of the weekend, I realized that the crew I hung out with this weekend was largely composed of the group that saw me off as I left California three years ago to do all this--and by some strange, beautiful loop in the universe they arrived precisely as I finished. Thanks to all of you for a really lovely weekend, and thanks for reminding me of home and the mobility of that concept. It was fantastic to get to know Reed, Nolan, Graham and Darren, and I hope it won't be too long before I get to catch up with everyone again.

New video!

Here it is if you wanna peek:

www.youtube.com/watch

New Kids on the Block?

I've had some friends in the UK mention to me that Americans often strike them as living their lives as though they're starring in their own Hollywood blockbuster. I think this is a valid observation; however, while I've had my moments, I don't usually think of my own life trajectory in those terms. Sometimes, life just wraps itself around you in particularly fantastic ways that could only be fiction, and I seem to be finding myself in one of those periods.

Three years ago this July, I moved from San Francisco to London to go to the School of Oriental and African Studies and to be with James. Just getting here was an adventure in itself, preceded by some pretty absurd and hilariously unreal circumstances. Being here has led to more strange developments, a lot of ups as well as some notable downs, and now there's no denying I'm moving into a new phase in my life. This summer, I both graduate and get married. I start to really choose what I'm going to do for a living. And to top it all off, the New Kids on the Block are going on their reunion tour.

What?

Backing waaay up: When I was three, my first crush was Boy George, so sayeth my mother. This was apparently something of a shock to my Midwestern father. So I've liked British guys from early on, and perhaps this also indicated my long love of men in makeup. My next major crush was Michael J. Fox (I wrote him a love letter with a pineapple drawn on in crayon and tried to convince my dad to mail it to him) and then just a little while later, it was Jonathan Knight of the New Kids on the Block.

I was introduced to the New Kids on the Block when I was maybe 8 or 9 by my babysitter, Tiffani--spelled with an "i" and not a "y" lest she be confused with the singer. I think the New Kids crush thing lasted until I was about 12 or 13. Then they disbanded, I became an awkward teenager, and in no time at all I moved on to Gavin Rossdale and Kurt Cobain.

While I want to resist any urges to view my life in cinematic terms, there's a strange alignment of these threads of my life coming together right now. When I was 12, I wanted to go to university in England, which seemed magical and sophisticated; I practiced my own crazy choreographies at home to the Nutcracker Suite; I had a crush on Jonathan Knight. And now here I am, getting a degree in London, working as a dancer, and somehow the New Kids on the Block have mysteriously resurfaced as well.

That last bit is just so bizarrely coincidental it cracks me up. It's sort of like a message in a bottle that reminds me of my childhood in particular ways that really had slipped my mind.

Strangely, Gavin and I are also now connected via our dentist. It's a weird world sometimes.

Two Down, Three to Go...

So exams 1 & 2 both went... at least okay. I'm a bit uncertain about the second one, as I seem to have a lust for personal torment which drives me to answer the most complex questions available to me in situations under pressure. For exam 1, I actually got my course paper back just before, which was essentially award-winning--major confidence boost, and also useful to have in mind since the exact same topic came up again on the exam. So here's hoping it means that one's in the bag.

However, for the second one I did not get a chance to find out how my course paper flew, so I went into the exam and answered two very theoretically complex questions on similar matter. So that's a bit all or nothing, here's hoping my thoughts on transnationalism, citizenship and the crisis of the nation-state resonate with my professor.

On the other hand, if you want to talk about gender theory, ask away, because I am apparently, and much to my own surprise, some sort of genius in that area.

Now I have to consolidate my knowledge on civil society and social movements as well as issues of international development incorporating a gendered perspective. And I have both of those the same day. Then I run off to teach my class at Urdang... my apologies in advance for the Jello brain that's sure to hit me in the near future.

Next Friday is the biggest one credit-wise, but happily the one that comes the most easily--thankfully, my brain's tendencies to theorize seem to fall in line with what they want to hear in that class. Here's hoping that I can kick a bunch of ass on that and pull a good grade out of the hat.

Honestly, it does feel like a fairly random process that's just taking me along for the ride. Sometime in June I find out how my investments and efforts paid off. If nothing else, I have the comments of my tutors on paper that make me feel that I've done something worthwhile no matter what; they've let me know that I should keep thinking about this stuff, keep writing, and that it's not just me alone feeling like the effort is fruitful. Here's hoping that same kind of blessing can carry through into other aspects of life... I get some mad ideas, and it's nice to feel like I can rely on my internal compass even when the real world leaves me feeling a little feeble as I try to explain what I'm up to.

A mental image of a cocooned caterpillar comes to mind, growing out of sight and waiting to burst forth in glory when the developing's all complete. I don't know if I'm contextualizing myself that way, or my dreams. Maybe there's not much difference.

Exams!

Just a quick note to explain why I've dropped off of the face of cyberspace: I'm teetering on the edge of five exams to finish a degree in International Development and Social Anthropology, which means I'm reading some heavy shit and trying to trick my brain out with some knowledge. I will resurface in earnest some time in June, methinks... I have a bunch of rad stuff going on over the summer, like dancing at Larmer Tree Fest with Sam Hasthorpe and Shisha Soundsystem, and I'll also be running classes and workshops all over the place. As soon as I get to have my brain to myself again, I will use my powers for good and get a lot of really cool stuff going.

Also, you may have heard me squealing about getting married this fall. Yep, that's happening, too. So there's a chance that I may disappear again toward the end of summer, when the wedding boat docks and it's all hands on deck.

For now, I'm going to carry on reading about gender theory and pertinent ethnographies... Here's hoping I can impress my professors before it's all said and done....

Countdown...

... Been up all night, having my last all-hours essay party, and it's all getting pretty weird! I'm moving pretty slowly through some very convoluted theoretical terrain, and my brain keeps dropping the ball. Like, when you're having a conversation with someone and you continually cannot remember what you just said? That's me right now, except I'm having an important conversation with my professors. Great!

Jelly Beans and Postmodernism

I'm one month away from the end of my degree. I'm sitting here, writing lengthy treatises on transnationalism and eating jelly beans. They're Jelly Belly beans that I had the luck to stumble across, and they're making me really happy. Unfortunately, there are only about five left, and I can't burden myself with the stress of rationing them on top of the stress of trying to make good on my investment in three years of university.

I'm at turns bored, fascinated, and thrilled to get a coconut jelly bean. It's amazing how life finds a way to be, simultaneously, extremely complicated and childishly simple.

The Birds, the Bees, and a Pregnant Man

So it's study time, and I must confess to going quite nocturnal. One of the last nights I was up in the wee hours reading and thinking, there was an earthquake. Tonight, a tiny news headline almost slipped unnoticed, but having clicked it open it is clear that an earthquake of the figurative sort is about to be unleashed.

Thomas Beatie is pregnant. Those of you that follow Oprah may have already heard this story and may have seen the interview with Thomans and his wife Nancy. The long story made short, Nancy had to have a hysterectomy because of endometriosis, so they opted to become pregnant via Thomas. Thomas has a uterus because he was born biologically female; however, he has leapt through the many long and arduous hoops one has to pass to reassign sex, so Thomas is not only self-identified as a man, but also legally a man.

Unlike many people that are sure to come across this story, I don't find this situation hard to understand. In fact, for so many reasons, this situation was inevitably going to happen--for those that are curious, look up transsexualism in Wikipedia and follow the links, and you will eventually find yourself reading about Lili Elbe, the first person widely known to have undergone gender reassignment surgery (in 1930). In fact, Lili died from complications subsequent to an attempt to transplant a uterus so she could become a mother.

It's hard for many people to take this as an intuitive natural fact, but the world is not neatly gendered into male and female. Even those who identify as heterosexual and female or male, and were born checking off all the boxes in terms of expected physiology for that identity, experience crises of femininity or masculinity. Anthropology and gender studies have tons of jargon to help us talk about the processes that make recognizable women and men, like heteronormativity. This is the edge of the rabbit hole, and if you peek in you can see a whole world of difference that gets narrowed down, sorted out, valorized or pathologized against a rather odd and restricted view that we can understand all of this through the lens of a binary--male and female.

What I find really interesting about Thomas's situation is that he has a very stable male gender identity, and yet certain ideas upon which masculinity is often predicated are absent for him and a number of other things are present. I could write a number of essays with the thoughts I'm having now, but one thing that keeps coming back is an interesting idea to do with touch and the difference between masculine and feminine understandings of the world.

This idea is borrowed from an idea in one of Iris Marion Young's essays. In it, she talks about the huge changes pregnancy brought upon her mental understanding of how she physically fit into the world. Men may experience many types of sudden physical change, but few will make them aware of the blurred lines of individuality, of a rapidly changing shape that within a few months displaces them from their entire wardrobes and puts a big belly on a previously slim body. They don't find themselves legally entangled in the question of how their treatment of their own bodies may be construed as a crime directly against a small human inside of them. Consequently, the argument goes, men can more easily view the world as having subjects and objects, observers and observed. Women, on the other hand, know much more intimately about interactions that touch, where subject and subject effect each other and impact upon each other's development.

I find Thomas's stable male gender identity very reassuring, because he has found a core of masculinity that encompasses so many things that masculinity is typically seen as opposing. There's so much more that I could talk about here, but it's very late and I need to get some shuteye before I become totally incoherent...

But the last thing to mention is the birds. Many birds that find their mates by song are finding it hard to communicate over the din of city noise. This is causing some to diminish, others to be louder, and yet another group to sing at night, when it's quieter. The outcome of this, it has been suggested, may be the development of distinctly different urban and rural varieties of the same birds, since they will become more and more different as their mating rituals diverge into different schedules. In my neighborhood, the birds sing at night. They aren't confused, or wrong, they're just finding a new way to live and procreate in a world of endless change. Somehow, I find this slightly inverted take on the birds an amusing co-parable with the extraordinary pregnancy I've just been learning about.

The Footnote and General Geekery...

So I am about to engulf myself in a storm of writing that will mark the last blast of academic assignments for my foreseeable future. I'm all about writing (even when I am annoyed about having to do it to deadline) and so I happily geek out on the quirks of language and authorship.

This morning, as I was eating breakfast, there was a program on Radio 4 about the footnote: its history, use, effect on author's voice, value to investigation, and interesting examples of all of the above. The program was tongue-in-cheek, and they had a really nice variety of views and tidbits to offer. While it may seem a bit random to do a radio program on this, it's actually not the first inspection of the footnote I've come across lately--in the course of writing an academic book catalogue, I recently discovered "The Footnote: A Curious History," which embarks on a mission quite similar to this morning's program.

So while I was listening to this, I realized that when I write, I never use footnotes. I was pondering why on Earth this would be, since as a reader I really enjoy them, and as those of you that have gabbed with me may notice, my thoughts are quite prone to taking diverging tangents simultaneously even when talking. Frequently, there are just too many bits of information, and trying to squash them all into a linear progression with a neat beginning, middle and end is really hard, and even superficial--so the footnote is a really excellent way to bring back the option of further exploration.

The Radio 4 program then exposed the reason for my lack of training in the use of footnotes: in the name of standardizing academic annotation, the MLA standard officially declared the footnote dead a few years ago. The MLA standard says that if it's important, it should appear in the main body of the text, and if it isn't, leave it out--roughly. This was how I was taught to write, at least from high school on, and so footnotes were never part of academic writing for me and were in fact actively discouraged.

If you think that this is a rather ridiculous thing to devote a blog to, read Terry Pratchett's "Discworld" series and imagine the violence that would have been done to his humor without all of those tangential thoughts. I'm just realizing, having been spurred to think about it by this morning's breakfast education, how much of my own writing has been reduced as I slowly and painstakingly combed through my own over-long essays, trying to make vast topics simple and neat straight lines when they really shouldn't or couldn't be and chucking out valuable ideas and research along the way.