Category: TMBG

We can’t be silenced ‘cuz THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS and what are we gonna do unless they are?

Dead

My mother died 11 months ago today. My father died 11 years ago. Lately, the reality that one day I will die haunts me in the still of the night. Part of the fear is Calvinist fear, that I will stay dead for eternity never reunited with other saved souls. Underlying that fear is a more terrible feeling than fear, what Camus called “estrangement” but in less high-faluten terms: it is simply the terrible feeling of being very lonely.

In reflecting on her life, in these months after her death, I have probably given the most thought to how she raised me. She raised me as a single Mom under tremendous duress. And she raised me with a goal of becoming self-reliant. She made many sacrifices, raising me to become emotionally independent, is the sacrifice that made her the most sad. I know because she said so. Until recently, the scope and scale of the feeling and the impact that it had on her was lost on me.

Lyrics:

I will never say the word “procrastinate” again
I’ll never see myself in the mirror with my eyes closed.

…

Did a large procession wave their torches as my head fell in the basket,
And was everybody dancing on my casket?
Now it seems that I’m dead and I haven’t done anything that I want,
Or I’m still alive and there’s nothing I want to do.

Did “the gay thing” sort of make the divorce easier?

One of the big developments of the 20th century in family law was the no fault divorce. It represents a major shift in the thinking of the courts about the promise of marriage. That shift is this: if one person wants a divorce, then the courts will grant a divorce without any need for a further reason.

This can be counter-intuitive because the popular notion about divorce is that someone is to blame. Normally the adulterer. What about a gay adulterer? Is it an easier betrayal to realize that the reason your wife was unfaithful is that she didn’t like your gender? I don’t know. Nobody can know because intensity of feeling is subjective. Anyhow, neither TGT nor the adulterty factored into the legal proceedings because it was a no-fault divorce done under the collaborative divorce rules. Our divorce happened mostly through preparing for a series of conference-table discussions. Although I was heartbroken and angry, none of this was reflected in the proceeding, the papers, or the outcome. Basically my feelings were my problem, not the courts. If you just said to yourself “as it should be” then you’ve been swept away in the contemporary jurisprudence on family law. Your corresponding self from 30, 50, and 100 years ago might not have agreed. Your corresponding self might have said something about getting justice against the party who broke the sacred marriage vows. And if you said something more like the 2nd thing, then it shows that the sweep of history is incremental.

Anyhow, this isn’t about legal theory. This is about whether TGT somehow made my divorce easier. Was it a comfort to know that there wasn’t some scuzzy guy she liked better? I don’t know. Is some scuzzy gal that she met on the internet really an improvement? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I was shocked and heartbroken. I was never surprised.

I will say this, however. When my ex-wife moved out, she was rejecting everything about the perfect life that she had built for herself with the adoring, faithful, white-collar husband; the shiny new house in the suburb; and the two cherubic kids. Her reasons on the last are unclear and a bit inconsistent, like the woman herself. But the fact is, I am glad to have custody of my kids, I am a loving and devoted father, she remains involved in the kids lives, and we have transitioned from spouses to amicable co-partents at arms length in a manner which has been a whole lot better than my own parents or many other divorced parents that I knew.

There are various groups set up for straight spouses, the most prominent being the Straight Spouse Network and there is even a celebrity pop-psychologist champion with three names (Amity Pierce Buxton) and a rival (has a new book out, but can’t remember the name). And I joined them for a while but quickly lost interest. The reason why is because these groups all deal with the strangeness of discovering that your ex is gay. At some level, its because the most straight ex-spouses think that its strange it be gay. Its an uncommon reason to get divorced, statisically speaking. But it’s not a strange reason. Take TGT out of the equation and my divorce is simply a case of a wife waking up one day to realize that she’d made a terrible mistake in her life about what she thought she wanted once the things she thought she wanted started to happen. So first she got passive aggressive about undoing her own project, then she just bolted. That’s a familiar enough story.

The (so far) good outcome is a little more strange. In part I attribute this to doing a collaborative divorce. In part, I attribute this to being a liberal and therefore morally superior to you conservative haters (suck it! … this is a joke, why don’t you relax?). But in part, I think its about TGT. She wanted a different life. Were she not gay, I’d wonder “why cant we both change together?” and I’d also be critical of her desires. And, in fact, outside of TGT, she’s made other life choices since living on her own, that I am critical of. I’ve noticed though, that because she’s not my spouse and its not my problem, these choices piss me off a whole lot less.

ok, now some relevant tmbg lyrics:

URNX
URNX, NI, IMNX
ICTV
ICTV
ICTV, NICU
ICU, ICU, NUROK

Skipping church to get my kids early on Father’s day

I had a conversation with a friend last night, while I was waiting to sing at the Karaoke place. My friend was telling me about how he had started a non-denominational evangelical Christian youth group whose ministry featured a major component based on heavy metal music, because he felt moved by the spirit after he had performed Christian Heavy Metal with face-melting awesomeness in a music festival. I was proud of him, and said as much. Well, not in words, but this isn’t exactly the point of this blog entry.

God is still there, even when you don’t got to church. This is my point.

God is in your conversations at the karaoke place. God is within your most banal interactions, and can surprise you with joy.

My atheist friends (which would be most of my friends) are offended/freaked out by this idea. And I think some of my Christian friends aren’t always comfortable with the idea that God exists even when they are not in church or prayin’.

Here are a set of limericks that I learned as an undergraduate, to help understand the metaphysical and epistemological significance of an ever-present God, who sustains us even when we have to miss church. It also summarizes the philosophy of George Berkeley (pronounced Bark-a-lay):

A skeptical sophomore wrote God:
“I find it exceedingly odd
that there yonder tree
dost not ceaseth be
When no one’s about in the quad.”

“Dear Sir: Your bewilderment’s odd;
For I am about in the quad.
And thusly, yon tree
shall continue to be;
observed by… Yours faithfully, God.”

I had something else to say to my friend, but the KJ called me to sing. So, I got up and sang “The Rainbow Connection”. When the intro started, I gave him a shout-out, saying that this song was dedicated to him. When I finished my song, I realized it was after midnight and that it was now Father’s Day. I decided to pay my tab, and go home.

Today, a bunch of my Facebook friends are posting about their fathers here and passed. I don’t really need to try very hard to imagine what my Dad would say about my whole situation, were he still alive. I am fairly sure that I have access those thoughts, and I am certain that I do access those feelings.

That’s maybe the more interesting epistemological trick. My parents are gone, I know that. This knowledge lacks understanding. Metaphysically, I don’t know where they went to. I seem to think that they are gone but somehow still with me; and not in the sense “that God dwells in all of us.” I feel it as a corporeal reality. I am made up of their DNA. The repeated aphorisms of their nurturing years trained and shaped the chemistry and physiology of my brain. Echos of their utterances run through my thoughts and the language that I use; especially as I nurture my kids.

Neither is the relationship purely static. There is a lasting dynamism that survives in the relationship. As I move through the ages my life, and my experiences come into phase with their corresponding ages and experiences, I feel the strength of their vicarious impulses within me. Mother and Father duel within my psyche, urging me both to correct their mistakes, while also urging me to repeat their same choices. I wonder if my kids will have the same paradoxical feelings? That’s rhetorical. I know they will.

Ok. here are some TMBG lyrics:

You’ll always miss my big old body
In its prime and never shoddy,
While bloodhounds wait down in the lobby you’ll eulogize my big old body

You’ll miss me with effigies
Lighting up your house like Xmas trees
As tears roll down below your knees
You’ll miss me with effigies