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The President Elect’s Ministry of Truth

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1984-2

I can understand the urge to boycott things as a form of resistance, but I forced myself to listen to and watch  — not my president’s—first press conference since the election because as exhausting as it is and as it will get, I need to get angry and stay angry. We all do. “Let fury have the hour, anger can be power/D’you know that you can use it?”

All that said, I’m not the first person to point out how Orwellian things have gotten in American politics, but having read 1984 with my students just about every year for the past 13 years, and having the ability to recite several parts of it by memory, I feel it’s my duty not to simply make the comparison, but also to point out that Orwell’s chief concern in writing 1984 was to warn readers about authoritarian rulers and the tactics they use to manipulate, confuse, trick, and control. As a disciple of Orwell’s, I realize, all this comes a bit late bit. I should have started writing this sooner, but as a disciple of Orwell’s I also know that one must continue to resist – to keep a record, to remember, to stay focused, vigilant.

1984

If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, IT NEVER                     HAPPENED—that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death?  (Orwell                        43-44)

‘I didn’t say shut down immigration.’ Donald Trump

http://thefederalist.com/2016/03/24/10-things-trump-said-but-says-he-didnt/

1984

The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith,               knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago.                   But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case                   must  soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed— if             all  records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who               controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present                   controls the past.’ (Orwell 44)

The day after the Brussels terrorist attack (3/22/16), Trump said in an interview with CBS “This Morning,” “I didn’t say shut it down. I said you have to be very careful. We have to be very, very strong and vigilant at the borders.”

On December 7, 2015, Trump issued a press release that begins, “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” He read and reaffirmed his statement at a rally that day.

http://thefederalist.com/2016/03/24/10-things-trump-said-but-says-he-didnt/

Video begins at attack of the press, dictatorial behaviors displayed by the pres elect in the recent past.

1984

Winston sank his arms to his sides and slowly refilled his lungs with air. His mind slid                     away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be                             conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold                           simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and             believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying                   claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian             of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into                     memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again:               and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate                       subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become                         unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word             ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink. (Orwell 44-45)

Jan. 28, 2016: Asking for Megyn Kelly’s removal from a debate

Trump’s war with Kelly led to him boycotting the Fox News/Google debate in Iowa. An hour before the other candidates took the stage, Trump insisted on CNN his absence was due to a mocking Fox News press release and he “never once asked that (Kelly) be removed.”

We found several instances of Trump and his campaign telling reporters and tweeting about skipping the debate because of Kelly. He went so far as to say Kelly “should not be allowed” to moderate, that she “should recuse herself,” and she “shouldn’t be in the debate.”

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/jul/06/17-things-donald-trump-said-and-then-denied-saying/

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My Very Own Midlife Mixtape

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Me & Ivy of Kamala and The Karnivores

My friend, Nancy Davis Kho, writer, blogger, and other mother extraordinaire invited me to be a guest on her blog Midlife Mixtape, and she’s giving away a free copy of my book The Spitboy Rule Tales of a Xicana in a Female Punk Band.

Nancy and I met when we both earned spots on the San Francisco Listen To Your Mother cast in 2013. I loved the name of her blog Midlife Mixtape the moment she told to me; little did I know that I’d be going into perimenopause within a year or so of meeting her. 

Now a proud perimenopunk, I’ve made a guest post on Midlife Mixtape, and I got to make my own mixtape — check it out here! The Spitboy Rule Mixtape  and enter the free drawing for my book!

Why The Hero Narrative is Hurting America

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My husband, Ines, is from Mexico. He views America and American culture from somewhat of an outsider perspective, and he often complains while watching the nightly news that in America, everyone’s a hero. I see his point that when everyone is called a hero that no one really is, but I used to scold him anyway for being so pessimistic, or not quite appreciating the goodness in people that these stories seek to display. However in the midst of another season of mass killings and the worn out hero narrative, Ines’ familiar complaint is starting to make a great deal more sense.

The TV news media does have its favorite heroes: the teacher hero, the quick-thinking by-stander hero, the immigrant with an accent hero, the child hero, and even my personal favorite, the hero pet.

In this week’s shooting, the Lafayette, Louisiana, shooting, the heroes are teachers, two quick-thinking women are being hailed as heroes. One woman shielded her friend, took a bullet even, and the other had the presence of mind to find and sound the fire alarm. As a teacher myself, I love the hero teacher narrative, women who soothe or shield young children, jump into action, as if on instinct, women who use their bodies and their intellect to save others. There are male teacher heroes too, the men, some muscular, some not, who tackle the gunmen and hold on until authorities arrive.

The two teachers in Louisiana, Jena Meaux and Ali Martin were really brave and probably saved many lives, but we don’t know that for sure. And that’s the problem – probably dressed up in a touching narrative about heroism in the confusing, sad, and intensely emotional days following a mass shooting provides solace in the face of inexplicable and senseless death. Probably gives us something to feel good about, something to cling to, a story to tell when what we should be doing is asking the obvious questions. The first question is why? And then, what the fuck is wrong with this country? Why are there so many angry gun-toting white men? What would motivate this epidemic of random killing? And the police shootings, all the black Americans shot and killed in quickly escalated episodes, those detained, often dying in custody, the violence against women, human trafficking, and sexual abuse of children, often by acquaintances or even their own family.

I hate to say it, but in the midst of this violence, the sadness that is our country, heroes, while they may feel necessary to go on, to allow us to breath a sigh of relief while we sip our morning cup of coffee, they are beside the point. They detract from the problem; they keep us from asking the hard questions, from doing real work, insisting on gun control, insisting on increased funding for family support and education to end the cycle of violence and for mental health services, insisting on better police training, insisting on just and equitable housing and educational opportunities for all Americans, and some very real soul searching about our racism problem. So after every mass shooting, stop waiting for stories about the community coming together to help the families of the victims; stop waiting for slogans, and wrist bands, and stop waiting for heroes, the anticipated, comfort of the hero narrative, and the elusion that alone without your participation that the heroes make it all better – at least until the next shooter opens fire.

Piano, Privilege, and Being Put in My Place

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Piano

I’ve always admired those stories where some little kid walks up to a piano and starts playing a song by ear, or that one about the child who composed her first song at the age of five. No matter that it was probably a pretty shitty song, I’ve always admired those stories. While many will tell me that he got a late start, my son began playing the piano when he was only seven. He’s thirteen now, but it only occurred to me recently that these stories are about privilege. You don’t just walk up to a piano and start playing a song by ear or composing on the piano at the age of five unless you own one, unless you grew up listening to music, classical or jazz, and not watching reruns of Bonanza on a twelve inch black and white TV.

Once we realized that our son was serious about piano, wasn’t going to give it up after two weeks like he did tot-soccer, we got him one for free. It turns out that privileged folks in the Bay Area give them away to make space in their houses, and other privileged folks pay $200 to have them moved by a piano moving company. That’s right we paid $200 to move a free piano. Moving a piano seems an almost impossible task, but I learned that that all you need is a handmade, twelve by twelve inch wooden dolly with a piece of shag carpet nailed to the top. After rolling it out of the van, the movers put the piano on this wooden dolly, and wheeled it up to our house. The two men, neither of whom was particularly muscular, lifted the piano up the three steps to my house, managed it around the bend at the doorway, and up the last step. The large, dark wood, upright piano with its yellow keys like old chipped teeth fit in just right with our scuffed, deco style dining room table.

Since I grew up in a small town on welfare in a house that looked more like a shack, with its tin roof and make-shift rooms, I never thought I’d own, or even live in house with a dining room and hard wood floors, a house with space for a piano, and I never imagined I’d own a piano, not even a hand-me-down, though I loved the idea of having a child who played one. Growing up Chicana in a hick town, piano seemed unattainable. They cost a lot of money and you couldn’t learn to play piano at school like you could the clarinet or trumpet. I played the flute; borrowed one from the school until my mom could afford to rent-to-own. When I got my flute, I decorated the case with unicorn stickers and carried it to school everyday by the slender leather handle, feeling fancy, and glad that I hadn’t decided to play trombone.

As an adult, I’ve had many wild piano playing fantasies, me playing the theme to Bizet’s “Carmen” in a red dress. I even tried learning to play alongside my son, but I don’t remember wanting to learn when I was young. I know now it’s because Piano was not an option. I suppose that my appreciation for piano, reading, and writing, the finer things in life, can be attributed to my sister’s dad, David. David was one of those crazy geniuses, a man who literally suffered from schizophrenia, a man who played every piano he saw. He wrote poetry too. For some reason, my mom’s friend James Garcia had a piano in his doublewide trailer. Before all the adults drank too much beer and smoked too much pot; before someone got mad and yelled at someone else, David would play the piano, a different song each time. I’d sit on the couch nearby and watch in awe as his fingers glided over the keys to a song he had locked somewhere in his memory. Watching him play, I came to understand that David had grown up differently than we had, a psychologist for a father, new clothes, his own room, and lessons, but he never talked about any of that because none of it made him happy.

And now, in spite of my background, I’m the privileged one. My son has his own room, a drawer full of skinny jeans, guitars, an amp, a piano, and lessons. It’s a strange thing to admit, a bit disorienting after internalizing shame about being Mexican and collecting Welfare, after sharing a room with my brother, and having only one pair of warm tights in winter, but I’d be a fool not to admit it and a fraud. Still, I weird out sometimes, thinking about how different my son’s childhood is from mine, from his father’s dirt floors in Mexico, how we can afford instruments, private lessons, and jazz concerts, the means to support his dream. And because suffering is cool, and having privilege is not, I feel bad sometimes, decadent, for being proud of my son who plays jazz piano instead of punk rock like I did, for owning a home in the Bay Area, and being married, for having all kinds of stability that I never knew growing up. Then sometimes because I’m Mexican, people say things like, “good for you,” when they learn about my success, like I’m a child, and that’s weird too.

The Riot Grrrl Controversy

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“SPITBOY are the best girl band around. They piss all over every Riot Girl band I can think of. They’ve got more power in their dirty little fingernails than Courtney Love, Kathleen Hanna and Kat Bjelland put together… Tonight, these four women, sweaty and angry, but also (between songs) witty and endearing–have stolen my heart… Spitboy are uniquely inspiring, not only for their awesome bile, but also for their straightforwardness. They hate sexism, not men. They know exactly what they’re talking about and how to articulate their righteous aggression.”

—From Melody Maker April 10, 1993

   London, England

   “Live!” review by Lucy Sweet                           

We weren’t trying to piss on riot grrrl bands. But we did understand that the comparison, or being labeled a riot girl band, wasn’t going away and neither was what had now become rivalry between female punk bands who ultimately had the same mission: to speak out against sexism. It would have been easier to say we were a riot girrl band, but we had formed Spitboy in the Bay Area during the early days of their movement. And we stood for just about everything they did, only we didn’t want to be called girls.

It happened in Washington DC, an already strange city, which added to the days angst.  After getting lost on one way streets and roundabouts, we found our way to the venue we were scheduled to play that day, a sort of loft space storefront on a swanky tree lined street with Victorian architecture, a strange place to play after playing church basements and Elks Lodges in the mid-west.

I followed Adrienne out of the van, staying at the heels of her clunky boots, as I often did during times like these.  Adrienne was outgoing and became even more so when in doubt; whereas, I tended toward standoffishness. We weren’t playing with any riot girl bands that day, but members of Bikini Kill and the guys from Nation of Ulysses who they were all hanging around with were there for the show. Punk bands from the bay area, where every other band wanted to play, or played as often as they could, were a draw, and women came out when Spitboy played. Bikini Kill and their friends had come out to see us play, to see what we were all about.

Adrienne marched up to the door of the venue looking for the guy who had set up the show to find out where we should load in. I figured I could get past the intimidating moments of meeting new people, new scenesters, faster if I hung with Adrienne while she went around, smiling wide, her straight-toothed smile, her blue eyes sparkling, introducing herself to people, laughing easily, shaking people’s hands, and hugging those who wanted a hug. I stopped at shaking hands. I didn’t want people I didn’t know hugging me or touching me, men in particular, no matter how much they liked Spitboy, and not when I was already feeling tense about being on riot grrrl territory.

Like riot grrrl, hugs had become a sore subject too. Earlier in the tour, on our way out of some city, this guy, a friend of our tour contact had offered to give us all hugs. Apparently, I was the only one in the band who found this creepy.

“Everyone tells me that I give the best hugs. Do you want a hug?” the young man said, holding his arms out, waiting for one of us to step in. He was a pale-faced, chubby dude, not fat, just a little husky, the kind of punk guy who was probably vegetarian who rarely ate vegetables and who subsisted on mainly cheese and bread and beer or soda.

“Sure, I’ll have a hug.” Adrienne smiled wide and stepped forward.

I took a step back and looked toward our dented blue van.

“You do give the best hugs.’ Adrienne turned to Karin who was standing at her side. “Karin, you have to get one of his hugs.”

Karin stepped forward and let this guy hug her, hugging him back.

I could see the guy’s face as he hugged Karin, his head over her shoulder, his eyes scrunching with the squeeze of his arms, his goofy smile.

“Okay, I’ll have one too,” Paula said.

 I stepped to the side to avoid his line of vision once he opened his eyes.

“Thank you,” Paula said, once he released her. She smiled a real smile, her freckles dancing about.

I looked down at the ground, to where the asphalt met the dirt on the side of the road. I could feel all eyes on me.

“Do you want a hug too?” Huggy Bear Boy smiled and stepped in my direction.

“No, I don’t,” I said before he got too close. “Thank you,” I added.

Huggy Bear Boy stopped his forward lumber, and there was an awkward silence as he lowered his arms, like two long animal balloons out of air.

In the van, I felt like I had to explain myself, as if our ‘body is mine’ motto didn’t extend to fans.

“But he was nice,” Adrienne said.

Karin and Paula were in the front seat waving at Huggy Bear Boy and his friend as we drove away. I waved and forced a smile because I didn’t want to look like a total asshole.

“That was probably the most action that guy’s gotten in days, maybe ever,” I said once we had driven a block or so.

“Todd,” Karin said, shocked but she laughed anyway because she knew it was probably true.

Even though I didn’t want to be hugged by fans, unless I felt some kind of real connection, like after a conversation, I was oddly confident in other ways, and I didn’t usually get nervous before playing live, but I was nervous the night we played in front of members of Bikini Kill and Nation of Ulysses. In short, I was intimidated. Then a tall guy came up to me before we took to the stage ( which wasn’t a stage at all, just a piece of the floor in the back of the venue, opposite the glare from the front windows) to ask if we required the men in the crowd to stand in the back of the room, like they were told to do during a Bikini Kill set. I couldn’t believe my ears, but I now had someplace to direct my angst.

At my drumset, sitting on the stool, I pulled my backup vocal mic up to my mouth, “Before we play, we’d just like to say that we don’t expect men to stand in the back of the room. We’re not a riot girl band.”

All the air sucked right out of the room as soon as I said it. Mouths dropped open and silent. It was as if someone turned off the sound.

Being the hot headed one, I had nominated myself to say something first about what we realized had become an elephant in the room, but I had chosen my words poorly, spoke too soon, shat where I ate. But there it was out in the open, we were a female punk band in 1992, but we were not a riot grrl band. And it was probably best for the rest of the band that I had been the one to say it, the one who would became the most hated Spitwoman of just about every riot girl thereafter because I was the scrappy one, the only one who didn’t grow up middle-class, the non-white one; I had thicker skin.  But they backed me up; Spitboy was great this way. We did sometimes discuss possible approaches and reactions to familiar crowd responses, but we never shut anyone in the band down who felt passionate about about a something, and when one of us spoke first on a topic, there was always room for another of us to chime in and add her two cents. In this case, Adrienne stepped into recover some sense of decorum.

“Please don’t block a woman’s view; don’t stand in front of someone who is shorter than you are. Just use common sense.”

I appreciated Adrienne’s attempt to soften the blow of my comment, but my hands and knees, which started to shake the second the words, “We’re not a riot girl band,” came out of my mouth and I saw the stunned looks on people’ faces, wouldn’t stop. We knew that this one comment, saying this one thing that we had discussed with one another privately, in public, would forever alter our relationship with one of the most influential women’s movements in the punk rock scene nationwide. Still we had discussed it, and we, Spitboy (even before boys in the DC crowd came up to us and thanked us after the show) had made the deliberate decision not take a separatist stance. It was true, we hated sexism; we didn’t hate men, and neither did Bikini Kill, really.  Though if we could go back and do it over again we would have gone about it, I would have gone about it a bit differently, but not much, not much differently.

Listen To Your Mother, Damnit!

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Listen To Your Mother 2013 — San Francisco Cast
Photo by Kari Paulsey

“I don’t think you’re going to get picked,” my eleven-year old said. I was about to audition for a seat on the cast of the national Listen To Your Mother event. I almost scolded him for being rude, but I realized from his tone that he was trying to help me not get my hopes up too high, trying not to get his hopes up too high. After all, the piece that I submitted was about him.  I measured my response carefully, not something I always do, admittedly, but I was well rested after good night’s sleep in preparation for my audition. “Well, I did get this far, and you know I’m a good writer and reader – so watch me get it.” I thought about giving him the when-you-know-how-to-write-well-you-can-get-things-that-you-want-that-you-might-not-be-able-to-get-otherwise speech, but I figured I should wait until I actually got it.

And I did want it, wanted it so bad that I wrote a piece specially tailored for the event, something funny, something touching, a little bit Louie CK, a little bit Erma Bombeck, with a dash of Patti Smith. And I didn’t just write one draft, I wrote six. The first three changed a lot; in the last three I honed the language, keeping in mind it was to be read aloud and that it couldn’t exceed five minutes. In addition to the six drafts, I had three readers, people I trusted to be honest. This process turned my cruddy first draft into a tightly crafted, well-written narrative containing conflict, rising action, a climax, and falling action. It was funny, self-deprecating, sassy, and sweet. Still I had to wait over a week to find out if I had earned a seat on the cast out of fifty-four people who auditioned.

My son waited until after we got in the car to ask how it went. He was in the back seat, Ines, mi marido, was driving, and I was in the passenger seat

“So, how do you think you did?” my son asked.

“I think I did pretty good.” I turned in my seat so I could see him.

“How do you know?” he asked

“We’ll, the producers, Kirsten and Kari said I did a good job.”

“They probably said that to everyone.”

“You’re right,” I looked back over the seat again to make eye contact with him.

“But Kari, the one who didn’t read any of the pieces before hand,” I paused for effect.

“Yeah?”

“At the end of my piece, she cried.”

“She cried?”

“Yeah, she cried.”

I turned forward in my seat and smiled, figuring that in just a matter of days I’d get to give the when-you-know-how-to-write-well-you-can-get-things-that-you-want-that-you-might-not-be-able-to-get-otherwise speech, and I couldn’t wait.

Buy tickets for the 2013 Listen To Your Mother event while they last!

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/347292