#can you tell i love parentheticals. my beautiful wife parentheticals.

[fructidors]

HI so i'm thinking about burning a CD with live versions of mountain goats songs, however i am not well-versed in the world of the mountain goats so. what would you recommend? (the CD can be up to 80 minutes long :))

YEAHHHH so as you're probably aware the world of mountain goats live recordings is unimaginably expansive and i am by most standards an amateur at traversing it BUT i do have lots of advice :D

there really is no such thing as a bad mountain goats show. even the ones with awful crowds or where the band isn't doing so great are bound to have some very very bright spots. at the same time, the mountain goats have a 30+ year touring history, with lineups varying from john alone, to the full four-piece current permanent ensemble, to the five-piece current touring ensemble, to on one remarkable occasion john with a medieval a cappella quartet, to absolutely everywhere in between, so everyone is bound to have their own tastes.

as such, a really good way to find tmg shows is to just look through the mountain goats wiki! they have over 1500 shows listed, the general majority of which have archive.org recordings. they also have every live show any particular song was played at listed-- most of my favorite shows i've found through looking through all the various performances of my favorite songs. there are also a lot of great recs over on r/themountaingoats. but here are some of my personal favorites:

the bottom of the hill shows!! the bottom of the hill is a small venue in san francisco that the mountain goats have played at quite a few times over the years, and for some combination of reasons the shows there always turn out ridiculously special. any mountain goats fan will point a new tmg live listener to the bottom of the hill. the rather infamous recording of no children sung entirely by the crowd took place there in 2006. the recording of california song i sent you was from a show there in 2014-- which by the way contains the entirety of transmissions from horace (an early tape that was later released as part of the compilation ghana), which is why there might be a lot of songs you don't recognize, and also why they played so many fan favorites to close it out (as compensation)(denton AND you were cool. WHAT A NIGHT). everything from no children on in that recording is pure gold. the show there from the next night is roughly the same in content but the rendition of the best ever death metal band in denton they close with is one of my favorite live tracks of all time. and finally a show there from 2008 was videoed in full by paste magazine!! (here is the archive.org version for audio files) this is SUCH a good show oh my god. the two really standout numbers in my opinion are not actually by the mountain goats-- one is ace of base's defining europop number the sign, which has been. drastically reimagined by the mountain goats. the bottom of the hill performance is punctuated with stories about john's own personal history with the song (which, if that appeals, check out this version too), and is just generally iconic. and also intense. SPEAKING OF INTENSE the other is houseguest-- which is a song by franklin bruno (who john was/is in a band called the extra glens/glenns/lens with) that john has played live quite a bit. this particular performance is really just my favorite because you get to watch john stalk around and lean out over the crowd like a vulture or perhaps some kind of crow. for the audio alone honestly i would recommend the version from this 2008 show. (fun fact about me personally the first time my mom ever left baby me alone with my dad overnight was to go to this exact show!! i am still mad at her for not taking me)

the fall 2005 tour!! the really cool thing about this tour is that at the time, the mountain goats were still comprised of just john darnielle and peter hughes (bassist), so typically live shows were very stripped down and a far cry from the aforementioned five-person full band they tour as now. but on this tour, their opener, the prayers and tears of arthur digby sellers, joined them for a few songs each set, which meant they had much fuller band (DRUMS!! MORE GUITAR!!) while also still being very much sunset tree-era mountain goats and BOY is it special. highlights include: the version of tollund man from toronto which doesn't feature the larger band, but john does incorporate a mangled paraphrase of the final couplet of shakespeare's sonnet 73 (this thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong / to love that well which thou must leave ere long) into the song; the performance of palmcorder yajna from the same night where john replaces the "send somebody out for soda" line with "send somebody out for ATIVAN;" and of course, against pollution knitting factory halloween 2005 (audio). you probably noticed me posting the youtube video of this every day of october. it's my second favorite tmg live recording of all time (after bottom of the hill california song). john is in a priest costume which adds the most je ne sais quoi ever to the song (which is about going to church and shooting a guy. amongst other things). the video and audio are not clear at all but you must understand that is what makes this performance SO. it's SOOOO. in conclusion:

(do christians have high holidays. i'm so jewish i'm sorry)

the webster hall 2009 show!! this show's from the life of the world to come tour which is why there are so many songs named after bible verses (unsure how familiar you are with the life of the world to come but i feel like it has some you vibes). they were touring with violinist owen pallet at the time which means we get going to bristol & hebrews 11:14 with string accompaniment!!!! this show literally never fails but the absolute highlights for me are deuteronomy 2:10 (although deuteronomy 2:10 is one of my favorite songs in the entire mountain goats canon so it's rare to come across a version i dislike), enoch 18:14 (which is actually an unreleased outtake from lotwtc-- the version you see online the most is from the lotwtc film but this one is full-band and prefaced by a long john story about video games)(if the latter appeals, i'd check out thank you mario), quito (which is probably best appreciated as part of the larger we shall all be healed album but the full-band version here SHINES), and of course full band going to georgia!!! i understand solo going to georgia purists so so well and there really is nothing like shouting the words back to just john and his guitar but there is SOMETHING in full band going to georgia that i suspect is rather close to real actual apotheosis. if the former appeals more though i am emotionally attached to the version from last august because i was there (one of only 7 times he's played it since 2012!) and it was the best day of my life but objectively this 2007 version is probably better.

also!! i've done something very similar with a tape! it's probably the most care i've ever put into a tracklist and remains one of my favorite tapes i've ever made-- finding tracks for it is how i found most of what i just recommended :) here's the setlist:

ignore the blank spot i tried to put in abandoned flesh from the aforementioned august show i went to but it turned out really bad for some reason so i wanted to put in shower from the show two days before john got married but then i forgot. anyways YEAH THAT'S ABOUT IT! lmk if you want more specific reqs or about any mountain goats thoughts ever anytime :DDD

#can you tell i love parentheticals. my beautiful wife parentheticals. #also i loveeee the mountain goats. if perchance you couldn't tell #thank you for the ask this was so much fun to put together <33

[forgottenyear]

identities’ genders and gender identities

[tw: sexuality, rape (neither are necessarily described explicitly)]

I write mostly about the extant identity fragment and the boy identity from the set of identities that integrated to form me. I do not have a lot to work with to write about the ‘minor’ identities. The remaining ‘major’ identity is the girl.

I have blinks of memories from the girl identity, but not much more. The system was trying to move to her city to be around her friends (met online, at 1200 baud, if the reader is not already aware that I am a dinosaur). I try not to project imagined attributes onto her.

My mother (my name is not Norman, if you are beginning to worry)(I haven’t actually seen the movie, so I may be mis-referencing here)(but you get the idea, I hope)(“string staccato stab, string staccato stab, string staccato stab” loses far too much in the translation to text, so I should probably have abandoned this gag with the last parenthetic)(Anyway: My mother-) as much as stated her belief that girls are good and boys are bad. The girl identity was everything that was good, protected from the world, unsurprisingly since the boy was ‘everything that was bad,’ abused by the world.

Given that the rape was perpetrated by her ‘friends’ at a party in her city, the girl identity may have given her trust too freely. She may, alternatively, have been so desperate to make a go of it in her new city that she ignored the warning signs.

It is also possible that she never matured at pace with the body. She did not have a chance to prove herself one way or the other, but her plans appear naïve or more wishful than realistic.

I feel like the boy identity distrusted her ‘friends,’ but I may be projecting this into the thin memories of that time. The boy identity had misgivings around the new city, but I am only sure about the misgivings around the financial reality.

I have mostly impressions and feelings from her memories. I am wording this poorly though, because I have not found the words to describe how the identity fragment communicates. I think her communication was not entirely verbal. Which leads to the question of how she could communicate with the outside world, a question for which I have no adequate answers. [Rereading for editing, I now think maybe it is only our internal communication that is non-verbal. Although no one has reported communicating with the identity fragment when it fronts during an emergency, I cannot speculate about the girl identity.]

I know that the fiancée (an external person who never occupied this body – a phrase I never expected I may need to write) was, to retrospective appearance, almost predatory toward the girl identity. The fiancée assembled the girl identity’s wardrobe and makeup set. She would help the girl dress and then would have what appears, retrospectively again, to be angry sex with her. The memories do not feel like what I see in them, so it is uncomfortable to write about them. (The fiancée went on to encourage a friend to sleep with the boy/girl/system so she would have justification to leave for a new boyfriend. The friend in this case was caring and refused to take part in the plan, but the fiancée had already acted on her plans before learning this.)

I need to back off from this now, but the fiancée introduced the girl to her new ‘friends’ in the other city.

*

I need a break.

*

*

No. The fiancée only indirectly introduced the girl identity. It was not more nefarious than that. I do not want to run away with projecting suspicions onto the past.

*

The fiancée was no more aware of DID than the identities were. How a plurality of identities being unaware of DID is supposed to make sense is beyond me. It is one more nagging question – fodder for denial. In the memories, it is just ‘normal.’

But my memories of the girl identity seem to outnumber my memories from her.

She had two boyfriend’s.

The first ‘boyfriend’ was the one that the fiancée tried to talk into seducing the girl. This boyfriend was, as he declared at the time, a crossdresser. They kissed but stopped short of intimacy. He told the girl much later about the fiancée’s request of him. He was such a beautiful person. It is painful to think that if the fiancée had not attempted a plot, she may have got what she wanted anyway. Then the girl and her boyfriend may have begun a relationship that would have saved the girl from going to that party in her city (the boyfriend lived in yet another city). He was so beautiful and caring that it hurts to think of the loss.

The relationship with the second boyfriend (did you already guess, still another city?) was early in the forgotten years and after the fiancée had broken off the engagement. They met in his city only once. They started to get intimate, but this came to an awkward end because this (male) body is allergic to – the official term is ‘seminal fluid hypersensitivity’ (it is rare in men, to be effectively allergic to themselves, but what else is new with this body?). It leaves this body with painful burns that last for hours. It can be dangerous if it causes swelling around the airway, which was very nearly the way it was discovered. Fortunately, it does not cause anaphylaxis in this body. It does tend to ruin the mood for good, however. That relationship ended abruptly.

Seminal fluid hypersensitivity also added a level of brutality to the rape that the rapists could not have foreseen. Not that they may have cared. (It was a food allergy that more slowly resulted in similar burns, that brought the flashbacks  that preceded or precipitated the end of the full amnesia.)

*

There are the forgotten years. The hospitalizations. The apparent misdiagnosis of the now-deprecated “gender identity confusion.”

And then there is me.

I still feel awkward to think this way, but I am the integrated identity of the boy, the girl, the child, et al. Al, but for the identity fragment. I developed in a state of amnesia, but this paragraph is better covered in earlier posts.

I present as male. According to the S.A.G.E. (gender) test, for what that is worth, I have androgynous brain processes and I socialize as female. I do not feel especially one way or the other on the matter. I present as male because it is the easiest, not because it is necessarily more fitting or comfortable for me. I have said before that I would be most comfortable to have no gender or sexuality. I am no more attached to these things than I am to my name. [I forgot that I cut the paragraph where I wrote about my dis-attachment to my name. It was overly tangential.]

I consider myself pansexual and panromantic. But I do not necessarily keep up with the terminology. I carry trauma over male presences in sexual situations, so these identifications are mostly moot.

My current partner, my wife, declares herself to be straight. She demonstrates (and denies) an attraction to strong lesbian women. She is what she declares herself to be, and I will not dismiss what she says. I will only point out that she was first attracted to me when I was still more feminine than I am now (not that I am especially masculine today).

I love my wife. She is so beautiful and she grows more beautiful every year. She appears to have similar issues with memory to mine. It is not so much of an issue for her that my identity is a little fluid. We have our challenges and conflicts and whatnot, but we have been together for nearly all of my identity. We could have been made for each other. Whatever may have been, I am glad to be here with her now.

*

I find it exhausting to socialize with men. It requires so much fakery. I can do it and appear comfortable doing so, but I have to be guarded against appearing too feminine. I have to be similarly guarded with women, but they are less likely to notice when I slip. They are also less likely to jump to the conclusion that I am being less masculine because I want to get into their pants, the conclusion men often jump to. Telling guys that they are definitely not my type does little to improve the situation.

One female friend was delighted when I slipped and she thought I was her new gay best friend. She was trying to hook me up with her other gay best friend (apparently she had a collection) before she moved away. (I wonder if he was as bewildered as I was.)

Sexuality is a headache I could do without. I mostly just want friends. I do not want the acrobatics of entanglement and/or disentanglement. I just want meaningful conversations that never lead to bed, or that never end because someone is afraid that it may lead to bed.

Of course I am sexual. But I would give it up in an instant, if it would take that barrier to meaningful friendships away with it.

*

I can find vestiges of the girl identity within me today. Some are complications, but only because of the world.

#dissociative identity disorder #dissociative amnesia #DID

[sheseestheatre]

some notes on hilton als, the glass menagerie and the not-so-fragile classics

Ugh. Hilton Als. Did you see his review of The Glass Menagerie? Double ugh. Look, he was already on my shitlist for two reasons:

First up: I sometimes doubt whether he even...likes theatre at all? In more than one review, he has taken a show (usually a musical) to task merely for adhering to genre conventions. I loved Hamilton (have I mentioned that I saw it at the Public?? Because I totally saw it at the Public * hairflip *), but I do think Als’ Hamilton review has some good stuff to say about the show’s relationship to “traditional” masculinity within the queer tradition of the musical. HOWEVER: 

“But once Hamilton works his way into Washington’s inner circle, becomes the Treasury Secretary, and meets his future wife, the rich and socially prominent Eliza Schuyler (played by the genteel and thus dull Phillipa Soo), the show’s radicalism is slowly drained, and the resulting corpse is a conventional musical love story. “ 

Two things to unpack here. First, I think it’s unreasonably bitchy and even cruel to trash an entire performance in a parenthetical. If Soo’s performance was such a substantial obstacle, then you owe it to your readers and to the show to engage with it in a substantial way. Second: I know that “conventional” is a common critical pejorative, but like...musicals are a genre, and genres have conventions. Get over it. When this is a major sticking point in your review, it sounds to me like you’re saying, “It’s not like other musicals! It’s a Cool Musical! Well, until the part when it started acting like other musicals, and then it sucked because musicals suck.” There’s also a nice little dash of implied misogyny here - the show is fun when it’s just ~teh boyz~, but once the ladies get some air time, it’s snooze city. Which leads me to…

Second major beef: This review. Oh LORD LORD LORD, this review. And yes, this review is that review - the jaw-dropping take on Leigh Silverman’s New Group revival of Sweet Charity whose blithe sexism inspired a furious point-by-point takedown from the women of the Interval and a letter-writing campaign to the New Yorker. Most of what I have to say (and then some) is covered in the Interval piece, but I will say that I practically fell off my chair at least six times while reading it and immediately sent livid caps-lock messages to three of my girlfriends the second I finished it. For most of my childhood, both of my parents worked for weekly newsmagazines, and I have enough of an understanding of the editorial process to be I am truly shocked that this piece made it to publication without major adjustments. Especially at the GODDAMN NEW YORKER - which, famously, sends fact-checkers to the movies to fact-check their fucking movie reviews. Come on, people. Do better. 

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that while I do think Hilton Als is a smart, interesting person capable of wonderful writing - not to mention a much-needed voice of color in a still-very-white critical landscape - his theatre writing does not always land him my good graces. All of that said, let’s turn to his recent review of Sam Gold’s Glass Menagerie revival on Broadway. Behold his opening salvo: 

“The despair and disgust I felt after seeing the director Sam Gold’s rendition of Tennessee Williams’s 1944 play, “The Glass Menagerie” (at the Belasco), was so debilitating that I couldn’t tell if my confused, hurt fury was caused by the pretentious and callous staging I had just witnessed or if my anger was a result of feeling robbed of the beauty of Williams’s script.”

Wow, Hilton! Tell us how you really feel! (Just kidding. My mom always says that to me after I’ve expressed a particularly forceful opinion, and I always fucking fall for it!!! Don’t mess with people when they’re in high dudgeon, guys, it’s really rude.)

He spends the rest of the review bemoaning Sam Gold’s “desire to leave his mark on the play” (side note: please don’t psychologize directors!! Especially if you’re going to be really fucking ungenerous and condescending about it!!! It’s lazy lazy lazy criticism that wouldn’t pass muster in a freshman writing seminar!), comparing the stark production design to the descriptions in Williams’ famously rich stage directions, and complaining about the casting of a wheelchair-bound actress with muscular dystrophy as Laura (who is usually played as having a slight limp). There’s also some rhapsodizing about the genius of Tennessee Williams as well as a brief detour to pillory Ivo van Hove, on whom he blames the current vogue for directorly European minimalism (Gold first directed this production for van Hove’s Toneelgroep Amsterdam).

Okay. This review is almost 1500 words long. But Als’ complaint boils down to one question: “Why couldn’t you just do it exactly the way it is on the page?”

Here’s what this review reminds me of. Once, in college, I was in the dressing room getting ready for a performance of Coriolanus. We were swapping stories of our favorite productions, and I chimed in with a description of William Electric Black’s The Hamlet Project, which I saw at LaMaMa when I was in about fifth grade. (Yeah, I don’t know. My parents kinda knew the author? And they thought my then 7-year-old sister and I would enjoy it? Who knows, maybe they’re cooler than I give them credit for.) It was a hip-hop/pop/rock Hamlet, and y’all, it blew my prepubescent MIND. Gertrude wore a leather bustier and the best glittery fuschia lip gloss I have e’er seen, Ophelia had a group of backup singers called the Opheliettes, and I think there were puppets. It was VERY DOPE, is what I’m saying. And I’m like 19 and putting on my blush or whatever and jibber-jabbering about how this show opened my eyes and changed my life and the summer after I saw it I started going to Shakespeare camp, and this other girl in the cast who’s like, passing by on her way to pee, goes, “Ugh! No textual evidence!”

1) Rude. Rude!!! 2) Is that...seriously the only framework that you have to evaluate a piece of theatre? You will reject something out of hand because it’s not 100% Faithful To The Text? Ugh. I have encountered this attitude pretty frequently among Shakespeare People, to be honest: the idea that the best thing any production can be is a faithful rendering of exactly what’s on the page, because Shakespeare was a greater genius than any of us will ever be and we must approach him with proper reverence. (Frankly, this attitude is why I don’t spend much time hanging around Shakespeare People anymore.)

A lack of reverence for the text seems to be what Hilton dislikes about Gold’s production of Menagerie. And - as is common in this kind of critique - he seems to think that Gold has done some kind of violence to the play. He has “robbed” the audience of the text and its beauty. The most pedestrian rendering of this critical posture is “If it ain’t broke, why fix it?”; the necessary corollary is that doing anything to an unbroken text will break it.

Here’s my point: great plays are not fragile. A few backup dancers will not permanently disfigure Hamlet; a bare stage and a wheelchair will not smash The Glass Menagerie to pieces. These plays get performed all the fucking time. There will be another Menagerie on Broadway within five years! There will be another Hamlet...like, tomorrow! One aggressive reimagining - even a shitty one - is not going to do lasting damage; no one is going to get on the subway after seeing Gold’s Menagerie and think, “Huh! You know, I always thought that was a good play but I guess it’s garbage! Wow, so glad that got cleared up for me.” A truly great play can invite, support, and even flourish under a wide variety of interpretations, and that openness - in my opinion - is, in fact, a sign of its greatness, not of weakness.

This is not about my thoughts on the actual production. (Stay tuned for those, or don’t if you’re tired of my yapping or need to shave your legs or whatever. I don’t know. Live your life!) This is about my dismay at seeing such pedantic narrow-mindedness in the pages (webpages, but still) of a publication I admire deeply. This is maybe the only time I will ever say this, but Als would do well to look to Jesse Green on this one: this is not THE Glass Menagerie, it’s A Glass Menagerie. As with any number of great plays, there have been many and there will be more. Take the production on its own terms and stop pouting about how it’s not exactly like all the many, many others.

#hilton als #glass menagerie #sam gold #theatre #the new yorker #rantz