“Why aren’t you paralyzed?” asked one of my classmates, agape, after seeing me poking around campus the week after my hospitalization.
I smiled at him. “The stroke didn’t hit the movement part of my brain,” I explained. “I can still walk just fine.”
He stared at me. “You know, you look great. You really don’t look or sound like you had a stroke,” he said. “I am so relieved.”
I laughed, and thanked him. Me too, I thought.

My stroke affected an esoteric dumpling of neurons on the left side of my brain called the “fusiform gyrus.” The name literally translates to “spindle-shaped ridge.” Rumored to be one of the most sophisticated areas of the brain, the fusiform gyrus has been implicated in a hodgepodge of visual processing functions, especially face recognition.

As a result, the most significant neurological consequence of my stroke has been this: when I look in the mirror, I don’t quite see my own face. Perhaps I should be more precise: I can still see my face, because the stroke spared my visual cortex. I can still identify the face as my face. And from one day to the next, I can tell that my face is the same one that I’ve seen before: hooded, down-turned brown eyes, plushy cheeks, small pink lips, and perfectly rounded nose (pierced, of course.)

But there’s something about my facial symmetry that’s perpetually off. The effect is most pronounced with my right eye, on the right side of the reflection. The eye looks receded, as though I am perpetually winking at myself. The eye is clearly visible to me, but it’s not so clearly an eye. If that sounds weird, it is. It’s weird, and it’s amusing, and it’s heartbreaking.

Sometimes, my reflection’s strangeness catches me off guard. This typically happens in the morning, when I take my first look in the mirror to assess the nuclear mushroom cloud of hair on my head and my desiccated, shrunken mouth. My right eye invariably seems mashed, as though someone accidentally smudged an oil painting. Sometimes it still takes me a moment to remember why.

I realize that this experience parallels that of many teenagers-turned-middle-agers who look in the mirror and don’t immediately recognize the wrinkly, grey-topped “old fogey” staring back at them. My situation is arguably better: everybody else can see my face well, even if I can’t.

If I choose to focus on my right eye directly, it comes into clear focus. Sometimes I do this, just to reassure myself that the eye is still there, exactly where it’s always been. But when I look at my face as a whole, my right eye becomes fuzzy, merging into the background, forever winking.
One morning, I hope, I’ll wink back.

By now I’m sure most of you are familiar with the saying “Strong is the new skinny.”  It shows up fairly regularly on fitspo images and in fitness circles as a way of promoting a new standard of female beauty, one that is focused on strength and physical power instead of weight loss and restriction.  The words are often accompanied by photos of women showing off glistening muscles while they pose with weights or perform feats of bodyweight strength.  If you have spent any time at all in the fit-o-sphere, you’ve seen what I’m talking about.

Now, I support the general idea behind the phrase.  I would prefer that women – and men, really – work to cultivate their bodies’ abilities rather than fight against them in an attempt to meet our culture’s incredibly fickle beauty standards.  But I also have some issues with the execution, which, as I and many other fitness writers have argued, merely exchanges one unattainable physical ideal for another one.  I mean, I might have a shot at attaining a visible six-pack, while nothing short of a life-threatening wasting disease will give me a thigh gap, but the effort required for me to get visible abs is so tremendous that I might as well not even consider it a possibility.  Plus, it elevates one body type (muscles) at the expense of another (skinny), which is not exactly my definition of body-positivity.

Another issue is that when I think of “strong,” I think of it as an adjective that describes a person’s abilities.  I consider myself strong because I can climb a pole or put my husband on my shoulders while we are in the water at the beach.  When I see my muscles, I don’t necessarily look at them and go “wow, I’m strong.”  Rather, I go, “wow, check out my muscles.”  “Strong” is a word that describes actions and state of being, not appearances. Yet fitspo rarely shows women in the act of doing things that require strength, and instead shows them posing and flexing. Posing a-straddle a loaded barbell while showing some impressive underboob might make for some good cheesecake photography, but it does nothing to convey that the woman doing the straddling is actually capable of lifting said loaded barbell. Often, the emphasis continues to be on what a body looks like over what the body can do.

But recently I’ve come to realize that there’s another problem here as well.  The expectation behind “strong is the new skinny” is that women who take it to heart will allow the pursuit of strength to supplant the pursuit of skinniness when it comes to their physical goals.  But what is actually happening for a lot of women is that they are not abandoning “skinny” in favor of “strong.”  Instead, strength has become yet another physical ideal to be piled on top of all of the other physical ideals they are already trying their damnedest to attain.

I had this realization while scanning one of the more popular healthy living blogs, in which the blogger wrote about squatting one-and-a-half times her bodyweight.  Her announcement was greeted with comments from young women who wanted to know how she could lift so heavy while still maintaining such thin legs.  It took everything I had to keep from head-desking myself into unconsciousness when I read that.  For the vast majority of us, this is not possible.  If we want to lift weights, we have to have muscle.  If we have muscle, our legs will be bigger.  Our thighs will be bigger.  They might actually touch.

Now, I am willing to grant that it is entirely possible for a person to be capable of doing things like a 1.5xBW squat while still having almost no visible muscle on their thighs, but I think it’s also important to note that the person who is capable of doing this is not the norm.  (And please know that I am not trying to turn this into a “ew skinny people are gross and weak” argument either.)

For most of us, this is just not possible.  It is not possible for us to train hard without eating a considerable amount of food to support our bodies.  (As a triathlete, swimmer and distance runner who lifts weights, I find I have to eat more than 2,500 calories a day just to keep my body from cannibalizing my muscles.)  It is not possible for us to build muscle without eating enough food because our bodies need something to build that muscle out of.  And it is not really possible for us to eat and train in such a way that we gain nothing but pure muscle.  There is a reason why bodybuilders cycle between phases when they build up muscle and ones where they lean out.

Yet there seems to be a whole cadre of women out there who refuse to accept this, despite the fact that it flies in the face of everything that is known about exercise science, nutrition, sports training and biology.  So many women believe even though it is flat-out illogical.  And then they immerse themselves in self-loathing when they cannot attain this ideal of being strong AND skinny at the same time, feeling as though the fault lies with them for not eating clean enough or training hard enough, instead of recognizing that the ideal itself is what’s wrong.

As much as I want to just blow this off as magical thinking, I also recognize that to a certain extent, this kind of reaction is actually perfectly logical.  I mean, maybe it’s not if you tend to be the kind of person who approaches things with an understanding of science, but we don’t really live in a society that values science that much (despite all the much-vaunted promotion of STEM careers we keep hearing about these days).  But if you take a step back and take a macro view of all of the messages being flung every which way at women and girls (and increasingly at men and boys) and you try to imagine what it would be like to actually believe all of that bullshit…well, let’s just say that it doesn’t seem quite as illogical as it once did.

After all, we live in a society that prizes female bodies that are small and compact while still having bigger breasts (but not too big, because that’s just obscene).  Women eat salads, not meat. They adhere to low-calorie diets so they can keep their “girlish” figures.  Diet pills, surgery, liposuction, powders you sprinkle on your food, books and segments on daytime television, superfoods, Skinnygirl margaritas and Skinny Bitch diet books…a billion-dollar industry aimed at Fighting Fat. We are taught to believe that the content of our dinner plates dictates the content of our character.  We learn that perfection is equated with self-denial and that appetites are sinful, that moral exemplars know how to exercise self-control and willpower, that only gluttons give into their desires for food, and that it is possible to determine if a person is a moral exemplar or a glutton just by looking at them.

And then you have all the lies put forth by so much of the mainstream fitness media.  The gurus that promote 800 calories a day for three weeks to “jump start” a diet for adult women.  The fitness magazines that lay out five-day-a-week weight training programs accompanied by diet plans that barely top 1600 calories most days.  (I still laugh maniacally when I think of one diet plan’s “cheat meal” – a slice of cheese pizza and a can of light beer.)  All of the photo spreads featuring figure models that conveniently leave out the fact that those women only look that way for two or three days at the very most.  (And you never hear about the models and figure competitors who wrecked their metabolisms by following high-exercise, low-calorie routines.)  Every single fucking magazine that promotes drinking lots of water, not as a way to keep yourself properly hydrated, but as a way of feeling full.  And of course, all of the fitspo that shows these new standards of female beauty with their flat stomachs and their ripped bodies with body fat percentages in the low teens.

I give up.

When you look at it like this, it’s really not surprising to see teenage girls and young women wringing their hands in anguish over the fact that they can’t figure out how to deadlift their bodyweight while still keeping their beloved thigh gap intact.  The cultural conversation around bodies and fitness and health is so bursting full of internal contradictions that the only way to survive intact is to fight back.  (And if you have an eating disorder, you really need to seek psychological help, NOT amateur counseling from bloggers who believe reading a few books on a subject is the same as being an expert.)  We have to approach so many of the fitness-related messages we receive with skepticism and critical thought, which I know is so unfair and so tiring, and it sucks that we even have to do it. I wish this wasn’t the case.

We don’t need a new “skinny.”  We don’t need a new beauty standard, nor do we need yet another physical ideal hanging over our every thought and move like a little black cloud of doom.  What we need to do is change the paradigm so that we value our bodies for all of the amazing things they let us do.  We need to expand our standards of beauty to recognize that beauty shows up in all kinds of bodies.  And we need to get over this idea that the most important purpose we serve on is to be beautiful for other people.  We have a right to have healthy bodies, to take up space, to have appetites, to cultivate our strengths in whatever form that may take.  Our time on this planet is precious and we will never, ever get it back, so let’s stop squandering it in pursuit of meaningless ideals we will most likely never attain anyway.  We deserve so much better than that.

Now. Exercise.

I know, it makes me feel a bit perturbed as well.

But I like exercise. I go through phases of doing it fairly regularly. I like an endorphin as much as the next man, and I enjoy the feeling of smugness that accompanies sweatily getting into a shower after a 30 minute run.

But for every 30 minute run, there is the Failed Exercise Attempt. You know what I’m talking about, dearest, static Listener. Those planned exercise sessions, that picture of your ideal body pinned to your wardrobe, the delicate fillet of lemon sole in your fridge, all geared towards transforming you into the Most Awesomely Stunning Example of Physical and Aesthetic Perfection in the World. All going up in smoke like a wet tea towel left on a burning hob.

I have identified four types of Failed Exercise Attempts throughout my extensive experience of the subject, and, for your ease of reference I shall detail them here.

The Unexpected Failure

You spend all day at work looking forward to a Really Good Session. You imagine your flushed cheeks, your sparkling eyes, your ripped abs, your toned thighs, your impossibly rounded buttocks. You bound home with the confident stride of a winner. You arrive home, you observe Rule No.1 of a successful exercise routine – DO NOT SIT DOWN EVEN FOR ONE MOMENT – you leap into your sports gear which you lovingly laid out on your bed this morning, you crank up some suitably noisy tunes on your iPod, you hop out into the cool evening light, you take those first sprightly steps in your new running shoes, the image of your disbelieving, beautiful face registering the roar of the crowd as you take Gold at the 100m final…

…and then the truth smacks you round the love handles like a horrible, slimy trout.

You really cannot be arsed.

You try everything: you tell yourself you are fat and disgusting, you grab handfuls of your inner thighs, you search frantically through your Running playlist for a motivational tune, you make a promise to cut off your own hand if you don’t do a 30 minute run… But alas. It is all in vain. You just cannot be arsed.

You lope home, turning the serene evening air blue with your curses, you rip off your sportsgear, you kick your trainers at the wall, and you make six slices of toast and butter and spend the evening watching terrible, terrible television in a vile immovable torpor.

The Expected Failure

You just know it’s going to end badly. You’re almost playing a game with yourself; you’re saying ‘Oh right, going to exercise are we? Really? Huh. Yeah, good luck with that. We’ll just see what happens, shall we? You’re ridiculous.’

You go through the whole sorry rigmarole of putting on sportsgear, you find your running playlist, chuckling sadistically to yourself, you stomp outside, you take an almost ironic little jogging step…

…and the whole thing unravels with a tedious inevitability.

You spend three hours eating chocolate and ice cream in front of YouTube, but you tell yourself it’s okay because you expected to fail, so, in actual fact, you haven’t actually failed at anything because you succeeded in meeting your expectation to fail, and you open the second tub of ice cream to celebrate your astute self-awareness.

The Gallant Attempt

Most likely to occur in gyms, where the social pressure is most acute.

You start off okay. You get a bit sweaty on the bike. You go really fast on the crosstrainer for two minutes, which probably burned about 3,000,000 calories because you were going so fast. You plod for a bit on the treadmill. You look at the chest press, and note the intention to use it. You know you’re on a knife edge, you can feel eyes on you. Cruel eyes. Judging eyes.

You pull yourself together, you stride across the gym with a determination that even Rocky couldn’t  muster, you grab the weighty-arm-strengthener-handle-pully thing, you give it an almighty tug with the strength of an ox in his prime…

…and it hurts slightly, the gym is just so stuffy, your shoes are rubbing, you’re thinking about dinner, and life’s too short.

You scuttle into the changing rooms, splash some water over your face so at least it looks like you broke a sweat, and you drive home shaking your head and cursing the £100 a month you pay in order to humiliate yourself.

The Non-Attempt

You lie on your bedroom floor intending to do 100 sit ups.

You do two.

You get up and go to find food.

So, cherished, immobile Listener, there really is only one solution to these heinous daily failures:

Have a sandwich instead.

On March 2, 2012, forecasters anticipated tornadoes in our area. My son’s school let out early, and when the sirens started up we all huddled in the unfinished basement. The air outside our windows was deadly still, but the internet broadcast from our local television station told us that a large tornado was on the ground just a few miles away. We waited underground in folding chairs, my husband reading a book and my young son playing a video game. I kept my eyes on the screen as reports began to come in about damage in small communities populated by beloved church members and friends.

Henryville High School, destroyed by March 2, 2012 tornado

Then the image changed: a school collapsed, no knowledge of how many students might be trapped inside. My stomach lurched, and I thought I might vomit. I silently ticked off a list of all the young people I knew inside that school, their young lives and fears flashing before me. I grabbed the laptop and slammed it shut—presumably to protect my son from frightening news, but probably also because I could feel the panic overtaking me. Since the storm, I have relived that terrifying moment awake and in dreams. As soon as the sirens stopped, I began to call for news, and passed several anxious hours with families waiting to hear if all were safe and well. Miraculously, no lives were lost at Henryville school that day, although children and adults did die in their homes as a result of the storm.

Today in Moore, Oklahoma, the story has a more grim ending. I know how traumatic the tornado was here, but I can only imagine how that distress is multiplied tonight in Oklahoma. My heart breaks for parents who have lost children, children who have lost parents, and a community gripped by shock and grief.

The recovery ahead will be measured in months and years, not days and hours. I have spent the last fourteen months working nearly every day on recovery efforts here in my community, a disaster much smaller in scale than tonight’s news from Moore and the surrounding areas. I am currently the chair of March 2 Recovery, the long-term recovery organization working to rebuild homes, address unmet needs and tend to the spiritual and emotional needs of our community. I’m not an expert, but I have learned some things worth sharing.

Sign outside Henryville, IN. Photo by Kylene Lloyd, The Courier-Journal

All compassionate people want to respond, to help, to do something in response to tragedy. This impulse is good, because the people of Moore, Oklahoma will require outside aid, volunteers and resources to help them in their recovery. However, many well-meaning people and organizations give “help” that is far less than helpful, and may actually be harmful to the recovery process. I went looking tonight for a list of “do’s and don’t’s” for how to help after a disaster, but I didn’t find any lists that were more specific than “send cash, not stuff.” So I made my own.

As one who has worked closely with tornado recovery efforts in the last 14 months, I would like to offer these DO’s and DON’T’s, so that you can help in ways that are the most helpful, and avoid the ways that are not.

DO NOT

DO NOT send “stuff,” unless you specifically know it is wanted, needed and has a clear destination. The avalanche of used clothing, toiletries, canned goods, furniture and household supplies that pours in after a disaster can become a “secondary disaster” for a community, as organizations are forced to set aside the actual needs of survivors in order to attend to the mountains of stuff arriving at their doorstep. People who have lost their homes won’t need household goods and furniture for many months, and don’t have anywhere to cook your can of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle.

DO NOT drive to the impacted area to help unless you are trained and credentialed by a recognized organization. Not only is the tornado debris field dangerous, the crowds of onlookers and unskilled volunteers get in the way of trained relief workers trying to do their work.

DO NOT say dumb things like “I know what you are going through,” because you don’t. Only if you’ve lost a child or lived through a disaster do you have some first-hand knowledge about what someone is feeling. Even then, be cautious. Not everyone will feel the same way you do. It’s doubly presumptuous to say you know what people are feeling if you’ve never even been in a similar situation.

DO NOT offer help in order to lessen your feelings of helplessness or make yourself feel better. Put aside your own needs and desires, and act only in the best interests of others. Don’t do what makes you feel better—do what best helps survivors.

DO NOT forget about this disaster as soon as another tragedy takes the headlines. Recovery will take a long time. Stick with it. The most helpful people are those who come long after the TV cameras are gone.

DO NOT try to theologize disaster away, or say that God did or didn’t do something. God didn’t need more angels, or have any kind of master plan that involved dead children. God didn’t save the children at one school only to harm the children at another one. That’s not how God works. Let God be God, and don’t assign your own motives to the Creator of heaven and earth.

DO

DO: Donate money. But not just today. While organizations like Red Cross and Salvation Army do amazing work feeding and sheltering people in the immediate aftermath, they do not rebuild homes or communities. Local leaders and faith-based organizations pick up the work of long-term recovery, and they will need major dollars for construction, case management, survivor support and more. Sure, send $10 via text message today, but wait to mail a check for $100 or $1,000, and send it to groups involved in long-term recovery efforts. Be careful to give to reputable, established organizations only. No matter what your faith or cause, there’s a group for you.

DO: Volunteer. But not today, or even in the next month or two. Thousands of people pour in to help in the first few weeks, but the work of rebuilding will last for a year or two. Volunteers, especially those with construction skills, will be needed far more urgently 9-24 months from now to help people get home again.

DO: Listen to anyone who needs to tell their story, no matter how many times they need to tell it. Survivors, first responders, clergy and helpers of all types will relive this experience over and over again. It helps to tell and retell it to patient, non-judgmental listeners. Make room for whatever people are feeling—sadness, anger (at appropriate or inappropriate people or institutions), grief, fear, anxiety, even laughter.

An example of messages of encouragement: 1,000 paper cranes that travel to places healing from violence, currently at the Old South Church in Boston, the site of the marathon bombings. Click picture for full story.

DO: Remind others that God is present even in the midst of destruction. Speak of God’s love that overcomes all barriers, even death. Give people room to have their own relationships with God, even if they’re having a big family fight with God right now.

DO: Send messages of love and concern. Whether it’s e-mail, texts, Facebook posts, tweets, letters, cards, notes, banners or children’s drawings, your words can be a source of great encouragement. Send them to local churches through your denomination. Mail them to the fire station or hospital or police station to encourage the helpers who are working 24-7 to aid their community. Share messages with people in the affected area who share your profession, whether it be insurance agents, funeral directors, electricians, servers or retail workers. Indicate that you do not expect a response, but merely send your love and prayers. It will be appreciated.

DO: Pray. It seems like such a small thing, but it matters. We could feel the prayers from around the world bearing us up and giving us strength.

There you have it. That’s what I’ve learned in the last year about life after a disaster—how your help can be most helpful. I’m sure I’ve left things out, and will count on you to add them in the comments section.

This is my small way of helping, through communication about what’s actually helpful. My heartfelt prayers are with the people of Oklahoma, now and in the long months to come.

The curtains go up. On the Origin of Species, published on 24 November 1859 by Charles Darwin is considered (correctly I would argue) to be the foundation of evolutionary biology. Its original full title was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life which was later changed around 1872 to the shorter, The Origin of Species. It was perhaps felt that “the preservation of favoured races” sounded dubiously racist when in fact this wasn’t what the title was referring to at all. Of course the last thing anybody would do is falsely co-opt evolutionary theory to promote their own despicable and prejudice agenda. Right?

Darwin’s book introduced the scientific theory of natural selection. I am aware of the excellent work of Alfred Russell Wallace and you should definitely watch Bill Bailey’s brilliant TV series on the topic. However I’ve probably got enough work on my hands tenuously claiming that one set of original prose about natural selection should be a musical, without throwing Wallace into the mix. Notable in that it was not written specifically for a scientifically literate audience, The Origin of Species methodically and eloquently sets out the evidence and arguments for  the theory that the diversity of life on Earth arose by common descent through a branching pattern of evolution.  All any book by Dan Brown can say is that it’s thoroughly absorbent. It is not too much of a leap to say that modern evolutionary theory is the unifying concept of the life science and that little in biology makes sense without it. It’s a good theory.

Is the theory of evolution so good however that it can’t be improved by singing? Musical theatre as an art form combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance to communicate a story and its emotional content. It’s a bit popular. 12.27 million tickets were purchased for Broadway musical shows in 2007-2008. In 2007 total ticket revenues in Central London in the major commercial and grant-aided theatres were £469.7 million. Musicals are not just popular in theatre. Les Misérables, as a film aided by the singing of Anne Hathaway and Hugh Jackman while Russell Crowe was also there won 3 Oscars and earned £8.1 million in its opening weekend in the UK.

Just because something is popular though doesn’t make it good, he typed realising he’d already used his Dan Brown reference. Popular UK sitcom My Family anyone? Things could always do with a bit of added science and I would definitely watch a musical about evolution. Additionally there is some evidence that music can aid with learning as well as being useful in studying the brain’s natural plasticity. The Origin of Species: The Musical then seems like an ideal form of science entertainment. Primarily though I just thought it would be a fun idea to think and write about. So without much further ado, introducing The Origin of Species: The Musical!

Introduction

The introduction mainly establishes Darwin’s credentials as a naturalist.

Song: Naturalist In The UK

I am a scientist
I am a naturalist
I know what moths I want and
I know how to get them
I wanna catch butterfly.

Chapter 1

Primarily deals with animal husbandry, plant breeding and selective breeding.  Darwin describes the astonishing diversity of pigeon breeds given that that they all descend from a single species of rock pigeon.

Song: Crazy Little Things Called Doves

These things, called doves, explained, no religion,
These things called doves , descend, from a rock pigeon,
Selective breeding!
To get these little things called doves.

Chapter 2 and 3

Darwin argues the arbitrary distinction between species and varieties with species merely being distinctive and well-established varieties. He then explores how varieties become separate species and introduces the concept of natural selection.

Song: Taxonomy And Variety

Taxonomy and Variety, work together, to help describe species
Side by side for example, defining different types of trees.

Chapter 4

Darwin further describes natural selection through the relationships of all living beings and the physical conditions of their environment.  He also proposes sexual selection to explain sexually dimorphic features such as lion manes, peacock tails and some bird song.

Song: Girls Just Want To Have Good Genes

I’m at home, make myself look fine
Mother nature says when you gonna pick a genetic line?
Oh mother dear I’ll pick the best suited ones
And girls they want to have good genes
And men just want to have good genes.

Chapter 5

Here Darwin discusses the effects of use, disuse and inheritance.

Song: Lamarck The Disproved Theory Sings

With untested thought proclaim:
Use it or lose it is the game.
Lamarck the disproved theory sings
This kind of inheritance isn’t a thing.

 Chapter 6

Darwin discusses the existence of intermediate forms and then whether natural selection could produce complex specialised structures. (It can.)

Song: Stuck In The Middle With Gills

Water to the left of me, land to the right
Here I am, stuck in the middle with gills.

Chapter 7

This chapter covers the evolution of instincts using experimental evidence from ants and honey bees.

Song: Ain’t No Hexagons

Ain’t no hexagons with bees gone
Ain’t no swarm with bees away
Ain’t no hexagons with bees gone
They don’t make that honeycomb
Anytime bees go away.

Chapter 8

In this chapter Darwin addresses the idea that species have special characteristics which prevent hybrids from being fertile and preserve separate species.

Song: Bonnie Facts Of Stock Breeding

Oh you’ll take the hybrid and I’ll take the within-species breed
And I’ll preserve the genome before you.

Chapter 9 and 10

Here we get a bit of rock and look at how the geological record appears to show forms of life suddenly arising, without the multiple transitional fossils expected from gradual changes. Darwin then easily explains this by exploring the science and relative rarity of fossilisation.

Song: You Are Not A Stone

But you are not a stone
You just decayed to goo
Conditions didn’t apply
For you to mineralise
So you are not a stone.

Chapter 11 and 12

The biogeographical evidence is explored and Darwin notes the importance of barriers to migration in the formation of species.

Song: Island In The Sea

Island in the sea
That is where we are
Something between
Half our species gone
Go on breed with me
We’ll start to adapt
And given some mutations, ah-ha
We’ll begin our speciation, ah-ha.

Chapter 13

Darwin observes that classification depends on grouping based on degrees of similarity.

Song: I Believe I Can Classify

I believe I can classify
Pick matching wings and classify
Using nature’s morphology,
To recognise homology.

Conclusion

At last we have the big finale where Darwin reviews the previous chapter and expresses his hope that evolutionary theory might produce revolutionary changes in many fields of natural history. It did.

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

Now to get some musical skill, incorporate the differences between different editions of the book and write this!

So, one day, I got a call for an audition at a Big New York Theater (BNYT).  The character description read:

30s-50s. (actually ageless) The tribal chief of the NaKong of the lost city of Pahatlabong – a very war-like people. Proud of his culture. Very smart and very observant. Truly a fish out of water . . .  he speaks only a few words of English, but picks up on many English customs during the course of the play. MUST BE A GREAT PHYSICAL COMEDIAN.

Okay, great.  A tribal chief.

An indigenous person.

A native.  I could look ‘native’.

Asian, sort of.

“NaKong “ and “Pahatlabong” sound vaguely Pacific. 

Pacific Islander?  I’m Filipino.  Check.

This is great.  There are only a handful of actors I know that could go out for this.  For once, I’m happy I don’t look Chinese.  Very few of my East Asian actor friends could look like they were a native from a Pacific island.  This is a GREAT opportunity for me.  The pool just got smaller.

I check out the sides.  The sides are all in a made up Polynesian sounding language:

I speak Tagalog, so this is definitely something I can do and sound ‘authentic’, even with a fictional language.  I can make all this made up language sound REAL.

I read the play, and the character first appears wearing blue paint and tattoos and feathers.  And knickers.

STOP.  Wait a minute.

Am I going to be okay with doing this role?  We’ve struggled so hard to get away from these stereotypes: the tribal chief?  The non-English speaking savage?  Talking in some whackadoo made-up language?  Are the white people having a laugh at our expense, AGAIN?

Wait, I said to myself, read the play at least.  If it’s funny, and with a twist, maybe it’s worth it.  Maybe it’s even genius.

The play turns out to be very, VERY funny, and is actually lampooning the European explorers who find these ancient tribal people and claim to have discovered them.  The play even centers around the woman who brings this tribal chief to England, only to have a hard time joining the club because, well, she’s a woman.

Hey, look what I found!

The play specifically exposes white European male exclusivity and here, the white European males are all made to look absolutely ridiculous!  Fantastic!

I tell myself, yes, I can do this role.  It’s spinning the tribal stereotype on its head.  It IS genius.

The Audition

FIRST.  My audition is with the casting director and her assistant.  The casting director laughs; throughout the ENTIRE thing.  Everything that came out of my mouth was GOLD.  Wow, that may be the best audition I’ve ever had.  I’ve NEVER had anyone respond that positively in the room.  EVER.  I get called back.

SECOND.  In the callback, another casting person is there, which makes three,  along with the playwright and director.  I knock it out of the park.  The room is bigger and the laughs are louder.  I am SO getting this.  If the writer and director love me, it’s a done deal.  I get called back again.

THIRD.  In the second callback, a producer of the BNYT is there, along with everyone else from the second callback.  The laughter isn’t as robust, and the producer has a permanent sneer, but the casting director nods her head with a big smile throughout the entire thing.  She’s rooting for me.  The rest of the room seems tempered by the presence of the producer, but they laugh anyway.  This is in the bag, I thought.

I didn’t get the part.

The Bomb

So, I’m crushed.  I want to know who got it.  In my mind, I go through the people I know who might’ve gotten it;  I wonder if I was too confident in that final callback;  I wonder if I should’ve played nicer with the producer; I wonder if it’s because I don’t have any major theater credits in New York, that I was passed over for someone with Broadway credits.

Then, one day, I see my agent.  On the way out, I tell him how devastated I was about that audition for that BNYT a few weeks back.  He said they decided to go with someone more ‘physical’ and then he dropped the bomb:

“They cast a white guy.”

BOOM.

Huh?!

WHAT?!

But he’s “The tribal chief of the NaKong of the lost city of Pahatlabong – a very war-like people . . . . he speaks only a few words of English.”

I go online and see the cast.

My jaw, my heart, my soul drops to the floor.

How could they cast a white guy?

They couldn’t find anyone a shade darker than this?

This was their idea of a tribal chief of a very war-like people.

I know who this is.  I’m sure he had a fantastic audition, because the guy is VERY talented and very funny.  He also has Broadway creds and a ton of other credits that I probably could never accumulate in 20 years.

But he’s WHITE.

The Questions

Obviously, I had some questions:

1)      Was there really an injustice done here?  Is anyone even going to notice that the tribal chief is white?  And if they notice, will they care?  Will it matter?

2)      And if there WAS an injustice done, is it even worth mentioning?  On the scale of injustices, if the sectarian massacres on the beach towns of Syria, involving the killing of women and children and babies and unborn fetuses are a TEN, if a thousand Bangladeshi garment workers dying so my t-shirt could cost $10 instead of $15 is a TEN, then surely this casting choice injustice (if it is one), is down somewhere around ONE.  Maybe even a .5.

3)      Are people even going to CARE what the race is of the actor playing the part of the tribal chief?  It’s a comedy!  White comedians play colored folks all the time on Saturday Night Live.  No one’s holding up banners at 30 Rock.  Doesn’t comedy get a pass?  It’s a farce, it’s comedy, lighten up!  It’s not a history lesson, it’s not even a real Pacific Island, it’s about a fictional people!  It’s about laughs, have a good time!

4)      Since this is the FIRST statement in this BNYT’s mission:

“INNOVATE. Our mission is to produce a season of innovative work with a series of productions as broad and diverse as New York itself”

. . . wouldn’t this have been a good opportunity to fulfill that mission statement, by casting a character of color with, you know, an actor of color?  In the name of diversity and New York City?

5)      Wasn’t the character supposed to be a NATIVE that comes out in tattoos and feathers and blue paint?  I guess Braveheart wore blue paint . . .

Wasn’t he in Apocalypto?

But still.  He was from Scotland.  Blue paint or not, he was supposed to be white.

6)      Speaking of movies, would this casting choice be made in a movie?  If this play were a movie, would Jim Carrey be the native?  Will Ferrell?  Zack Galifinakis?  Surely they are some of the funniest physical comedians around.  And white guys playing native always gets a laugh.  And surely a financial venture as costly as a movie, easily 20 times more expensive than an off-Broadway play, would cast the BEST comedian; the funniest, hottest, best known comedian they could find, because it would be the best way to guarantee a hit, so they could recoup their gargantuan investment.  Hollywood would cast a white guy if this play was a movie, right?

7)      Speaking of color, would this BNYT cast a white guy if this role was a fictional AFRICAN tribal chief?  If he was the chief of the zebra-herding Mbutu clan of the Zamazinga savannah, would they cast a white actor?  Or, because of the vast melanin gulf that exists between black and white, would the BNYT have to cast a black actor in that instance?  Is the difference between white and Asian LESS than the difference between white and black?  Is the difference so small it doesn’t exist AT ALL? 

In mathematical terms, is the following statement true:

If W – A = 0, then W – A < W – B.

8)      How will the play poke fun at the white European male explorers when the tribal chief in front of them is . . . a white European male?   What about satirizing the 19^th century European explorer/colonizer, and the racist attitudes that he embodied?  Shouldn’t the actor playing the tribal chief be anything BUT white?   

9)      Did ANYONE at the BNYT even say “Hey, wait a minute guys, I just realized something:  the tribe is not in Europe.  So, the tribal chief is probably, you know, dark.  Or dark-er.  We cast a guy who is probably Irish by descent.  Is that . . . weird?”

10)  And if someone DID say that, what was the following conversation like?

11)  Isn’t the play also about a woman who isn’t allowed in the club because she’s a woman?  Surely a writer who is fully conscious of the ideas of exclusivity (and has written a brilliant play about it) and how the old notions of inequality are downright silly, surely SHE would object to having the savage played by a white man.  Right?

12)   But isn’t this the magic of theater?  That anyone can play ANYTHING?  Anna Deavere-Smith played all sorts of races in her one-person shows.

She’s so good.

So does a whole bunch of other super talented actors in their own one-person vehicles.  What does it matter that this role is played by a white actor, as long as the story is told and the audience is entertained?

13)  Should I really be complaining about the lack of parts for Asian actors?  Didn’t the Signature just do a season of David Henry Hwang plays?  Hasn’t Here Lies Love, a musical set in the Philippines with Filipino characters, just been extended at the Public?  Wasn’t Chinglish on Broadway last year?  Why gripe about this ONE part at this one BNYT?

14)  Are they doing something so witty and so 21st century post-racial that I can’t even grasp it:  casting a white person to play a noble savage in a play about how racist white people are (or were) to show how crazy it is when white people are/were racist?

15)  Was I just simply not good enough?  Was no other colored actor good enough?  Although I looked the part, the actor they cast was just SO much better, just way funnier, that the BNYT decided “Hey, he may be white, which is the completely wrong skin color for this role, but he was just SO damn funny!  Plus, look at his resume.  No, don’t look at his headshot, look at his resume.”  Was the actor they cast just THAT good?

16)   Am I just being too sensitive again?  Am I just being the bitter actor who didn’t get the part?

These are not rhetorical questions.  If you have some answers, please respond.

The Dream 

Before I found out who was cast, before I realized I hadn’t gotten the part, I had a nightmare.

I dreamt I was in some town hall type meeting.  Representatives from the BNYT were there, along with the artistic directors of every major ‘ethnic’ and off-Broadway theater in New York, as well as actors, other theater folk and activist types.

I dreamt that the BNYT had cast a white actor in the role I auditioned for.

I dreamt that the BNYT people said that while I was good, they went with someone that had a bigger name, and that it was simply a business decision.

I dreamt that I thanked the BNYT for allowing this conversation to take place.  (I was extremely polite in my dream.)  I said I completely understood their decision, and of course it was their right to do what was best for their business, which their theater is, after all.  A BNYT is not in the business of giving jobs to actors of color, they are in the business of theater, of entertainment.  I get that, I said.

Then, I dreamt that I began telling the crowd what the role was:  how the character first appeared, how he would be dressed, what he would say and how he would say it.

I dreamt that I heard the crowd gasping in disbelief.  I dreamt I heard murmuring turn into yelling, and shouts.  I dreamt the crowd turned into an angry riotous mob, and their cursing and screaming turned towards the representatives of the BNYT, demanding answers.

I dreamt the BNYT people attempted to defend their actions, stammering out half-sentences at the increasingly furious body of angry colored people.  I dreamt they were yelling over the din, desperately trying explain their choice again, and I dreamt I said to these BNYT reps:

“No.  You’ve had your chance to talk.  It’s MY turn now.”

What do you know?  Dreams do come true after all.

The Asian Actor Exits.

I didn’t think about this meaning stuff when I was eight years old in the summertime, riding a bus back from downtown at my grandma’s side.  She always bought me at least two books when we would go to the bookstore downtown – one for the bus, one for the evening, and then we would go to the library to check out more books the next day.  I would hear her brag to friends on the phone that I’d finished one of the paperbacks before the bus reached home. I would feel proud.

I devoured books as a kid, and I write this so you know that I am biased.  I am a reader, and I’ve been a reader ever since I was a kid.  I got more Personal Pan Pizzas than any other kid in school when we did the Book It program.  My best friend and I created a “library” that lined the shelves in her bedroom, inventing policies for the other kids in the neighborhood to borrow our paperbacks.  Books got me through long car rides, angsty middle-school friendships, Friday nights when I wasn’t invited to high school parties, and an extended illness that had me out of school for months.  When I was faced with reading that didn’t thrill me – Shakespeare in high school, Plato in college, engineering manuals at my summer job – the habit of reading sustained me and carried my focus through the boring stuff.  To this day, I feel less than whole when I’m not in the midst of a book or three.

Of course, there are more media options now.  Sometimes I’m listening to a novel while I’m running trails in the woods.  Sometimes I’ll highlight sections of nonfiction with a finger-tap to the iPad screen.  But what counts is the story.  Books allow me to live in the midst of more than one story – which somehow makes my own personal story just a little more inhabitable.

And so, I flinch whenever I hear of a library closing.  These days, my flinches are practically nervous tics.  In public education, budget axings pit libraries, arts programs, and nurses in competition for the distinction of first cut, with fatalities of the remaining programs soon after. In private schools, where budget woes are less pressing (at least for the moment), books are pushed aside to make way for what is deemed as innovation.  In cities, libraries seems to exist just one headline away from closure, cutbacks, reduced hours, staff reductions – despite being the one thing that 91% of Americans can agree holds value in their communities.

After school last Wednesday, I was loading kilns and trying not to get drawn into a conversation with a few students who were working at a studio table.  They were discussing the impending elimination of their school’s library, and its transformation into something that purports to be more innovation-themed and technology-driven.  Words like “cool” and “awesome” flew across the table with glaze and splatters of wax.  As I sanded shelves, I quietly meditated on how they seemed to know more than I did about plans just recently made public.  Their conversation had the air of community buzz.

On my next trip past the table, I couldn’t help myself – I had to ask a question.  “Don’t you guys have any reservations at all about clearing out the books?”

After the is-she-really-going-there pause, one bright, accomplished junior replied, “Seriously, Ms. P?  No reservations whatsoever.  The only thing I use those books for…” He paused.  “I’m not on the record, right?”  He knows I blog, and has been quoted before.  I smiled.  “I like to stuff a book in another kid’s backpack so that the alarm goes off.”

The others laughed and agreed.  I leaned my forehead against a wall.

“Wait.  But you guys read, right?  I mean… you read more than SparkNotes?”

Laughter again.  “There’s not much time to read more than I have to for school,” one student remarked.  Another noted, “And sometimes I like reading that stuff!  I mean, The Great Gatsby was one of my favorites.”

I quizzed them for a few minutes, then, on what else they read.  Turns out that we have some recent fiction favorites in common – The Hunger Games, Divergent, Game of Thrones and others were on our shared lists.  These were books they had purchased and I had borrowed.  They talked about the plusses to reading on devices (lighted screens, you don’t have to fold pages, something I didn’t quite understand about what a pain it is to angle your pages while you’re reading in bed) – and about what they still like about reading physical books (less distraction, the sound of pages, the accomplishment of reaching the end).  I didn’t say much – happy to let the conversation flow as long as it was flowing away from library alarm pranks.

But then, back to impending changes to the space-formerly-known-as-a-library.  “It’s going to be awesome, Ms. P.  Like… outlets hanging from the ceilings, and iPad carts, and a 3D printer.”  I nodded, thoughtfully.  “We won’t miss the books.”

In a book I’ve never read – The Leopard, by the Italian writer Giuseppe di Lampedusa – a prince proclaims, “Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga com’è bisogna che tutto cambi” – “For things to remain the same, everything must change.”  Technology has changed education drastically in the decade since I started teaching, and I have rolled along with most of it – adapting, progressing, even leading the charge at times.  I’ve bought in.  I’m drafting this in Google Docs, and a trusted friend might add notes and comments to the same screen as I’m typing.  But lately, I’ve been hitting some psychological walls with the rapid pace of this change – and my latest wall is made of books.

My students might not see value in checking books out of a library to read.  But they also don’t see much value in practicing with two pounds of clay before they try ten.  Or in trying to read Shakespeare before SparkNotes resolves their confusion.  Or in speed limits.  They are teenagers; they are hard-wired to be cursory and impulsive.  Having Google in their pockets seems to sometimes reinforce such an approach.

I’ve always seen part of my job as an arts teacher to remind them to slow down, to consider consequences, story, and implications.  In a studio, we consider all of that meaning stuff – sometimes before we create, often as we are creating, and always after.  Replace “create” with “read,” and books lead us to the same considerations.  If my students don’t see value in their studio work, my passion and advocacy for my subject matter doesn’t change – but it’s a surefire sign that I need to re-evaluate my approach to teaching it.  And if students don’t see value in a library or books, I don’t see this an indicator that the books should be boxed and set aside to make room for more technology – but rather a warning sign that students are not pulling depth or substance from reading.

Last time I checked, such depth and substance trumped the pocket browser.

Maybe the library of the future looks less like stacks and more like Seth Godin’s version.  I’m with my students – it does sound “awesome.”  But in order “to do co-working and coordinate and invent projects worth working on together,” I hold that you have to have some deep content knowledge from which to work.  Ever work with a co-worker whose knowledge was shallow and cursory?  Ever coordinate and invent alongside someone who relies on Google for every answer?  I have.  It’s annoying, and any work that might happen feels equally shallow and cursory.  I gravitate towards a different sort of collaborator – a more substantial and passionate one.

Depth doesn’t come from earning Godin’s “data shark” badge.  Substance starts in curiosity, roots in understanding, takes form in exploration, and demonstrates itself in product and articulation.  At least three-quarters of those steps are supported by the habit of reading – or at least by an inclusive approach that supports deep reading alongside the technologies of the moment.

There’s another issue at play here, and it has something to do with class.  Public school systems and cities are closing libraries because they can’t afford them.  Some of the reasons why libraries remain so  necessary to communities are related to things that are hard to talk about when they aren’t in your front yard – homelessness, poverty, economic inequality, fair access to resources in the midst of a lousy economy.  When you’re homeless, or barely making rent, the extra fifty bucks a month for internet access – or to pick up copies of books your kids would enjoy reading – may be impossible.  According to Molly Raphael, past president of the ALA, “Public libraries are also serving as a lifeline for people trying to adapt to challenging economic circumstances, providing technology training and online resources for employment, access to government resources, continuing education, retooling for new careers and starting a small business.”  If elite schools dismiss books, how do they ensure that their students – future citizens and community leaders – don’t dismiss the value libraries hold in more economically diverse communities?

But I told you – I’m biased, and in more ways than one.  My grandma taught me to love books.  Books taught me to seek meaning. The problem is that I’m struggling both with losing the books – and with the bigger meaning behind the gesture.