alexandraerin | Entries tagged with not actually very brief

Among the other panels I've attended one was about disability and was geared towards what it means to be an artist or creative person with a disability. I may do a larger write-up of this after the con (or I may hit the ground running with a bunch of other things), but it was useful for me to hear a bunch of the things I need to internalize stated again from another source, and also in terms of learning a few new tools/tricks.

One of the recurring threads in the panel was how if you try to push on and ignore what your body is telling you, the results aren't as good and you're likely to pay for it with some kind of crash later, which definitely speaks to my experience. No matter what I do to manage or work around my disability, it's still present, and I can't match my "peak performance" all the time no matter what I do.

One of the panelists, Laurel Amberdine, said something that really resonated with me, talking about grappling with the idea that "If I could just do everything right, I could be awesome all the time." I'm sure some people reading this will want to respond with "but you are awesome all the time!" or "but you could be awesome all the time!", and while that's appreciated, it's not really relevant. There is a specific awesome that I am never going to be except intermittently, and this is an awesome where my body feels good and rested and full of energy and my brain is sharp and crackling and free of fog. When that happens it's like there's a direct pipeline from my creativity to the screen and I just have to aim myself at the computer and I can watch things take shape. When things aren't like that, it might be that I can still create but at a slower pace and with much more effort, or I might still have the same creative impulses and ideas but absolutely no possibility of getting them out at the moment.

It can be frustrating for me when things aren't lining up because I know what it feels like when they are, and sometimes they fall into place for months at a time but sometimes--particularly when I let myself feel frustrated and don't take care of myself--I can go months without ever hitting that zone. A lot of the time I'm somewhere in between the extremes, which means that the peak is within sight and seemingly within reach... but if I try to reach it when I'm not really there, I end up tumbling further down.

And that's one of the things I know and that I've started to internalize but that really needs to become part of my basic understanding of myself and how the world works for me. I am happier and more productive (and healthier, which is no small thing) over the long term when I use what I have at the moment, every moment, rather than trying to make myself into some sort of creative dynamo every moment. The dynamic moments will come when they come, as long as I let them come.

Lena Horne passed away yesterday. My first exposure to her was the first place I encountered most people of immense talent: Muppet Show reruns.

This is going to be a brief post, because I don't feel adequate to the task of eulogizing a woman with such a long and varied career. There's a decent obituary on Yahoo! News, but the impetus behind this post is in the comments (which I really should know better than to read).

One commenter thanks her thusly: "Yes, RIP to a woman who did her thing for African Americans." Now, the headline on the piece is "Barrier-breaking jazz star Lena Horne dies at 92." The article touches briefly on some of the (racial) barriers she broke down. Her kipedia article has a more detailed but still very brief primer on her civil rights work, but the article the comment was left on did address these things at a glance.

But some of the responses to this comment (I'm paraphrasing because I don't have the spoons to wade back in and read them) ran along the lines of how very dare you claim Lena Horne she belonged to everybody she worked to destroy racial barriers why are you emphasizing differences, etc., etc., etc.

This is what we mean when we say we live in a "post-racial society": stop complaining. We got rid of slavery and replaced it with civil rights laws and therefore there's nothing left to be said, right? Why do people have to go and bring race into things? It's the people who bring race up that are racists!

Even the argument that "racism is over" falls flat as a reason to tell people to pipe down about the fact that Lena Horne's career didn't consist entirely of having people giving her talent the reception it deserved, unless someone wants to argue that racism was over during the entire period her long career spanned. Even though racism is alive and well and woven very deeply in the fabric of American life, there are people of color who are alive today... people who are being born just today... who are the beneficiaries of the progress she made in her lifetime.

If one of the folks she was fighting for feels like giving her thanks, or expressing pride in what she did... how is it appropriate to tell them to pipe down? Yes, contemporary white audiences enjoyed Ms. Horne's music, too... if they hadn't, she wouldn't have had nearly as much leverage to effect change. Does that give white America some claim over her? Because we deigned to allow a talented superstar to entertain us?

Lena Horne's career was filled with people who wouldn't let her forget her racial background and people who wanted everybody else to forget it. Trying to be all "colorblind" about her now is just plain dishonest.

Seeing a little running commentary by

yuki_onna on fan fiction and authors' reactions to it made me feel like it was time to reiterate my own stance: I don't have a problem with people writing and sharing fan fiction based on my creations, but I'm not interested in reading it.

I am interested in seeing fan art, of course, and I even created a community where you can share it:

the_art_of_mu. While this is an "official" place for it, you are by no means restricted to only putting it there. Put it up on your DeviantArt account. Share it on your own Livejournal. Add it to your personal online portfolio. Whatever. I just ask that if you're proud enough of your artwork to want people to see it, please submit it to the art community so that I cna see it, and if I find it awesome, point people to it.

I can't draw. At all. I can barely picture things in my head. Someone says "picture a rocking horse", and I get the words "a rocking horse" in my head. So it's really neat to see how people envision my character. The icon on this post is from a piece of fan art.

My stance about fan fic at the beginning was "please don't", because unlike most professional authors, my work used the same medium and channels of distribution and promotion as fan fiction. Until I established a name and a presence for myself, it seemed entirely possible that a fan version could occlude the official continuity, or engender conclusion about who MU "really" belonged to. It's hard enough to convince some people that things created on the internet are Real Things in the same way that things printed out on paper are. That's no longer a concern, though, and hasn't been for a while.

(Some people might suggest that I missed an opportunity by telling people who wanted to write fan fic to please not... it's also entirely possible that if I'd said "Sure, feel free!" that I'd have caught a number of new readers from fan fic communities. It's possible, and I thought about it. I decided that the risk outweighed the reward.)

Pop quiz:

Q.: What's the difference between someone you see using a device to assist their mobility or an accommodation for people with disabilities who doesn't obviously need it and one who obviously doesn't need it?

A.: Nothing that you can tell by looking.

Therefore, if you find yourself saying something along the lines of "It makes me mad when I see someone using a wheelchair/motorized cart/priority bus seat when they obviously don't need it." or "Motorized carts are fine for people who need them, but most of the people I see using them are just lazy", you might want to stop talking as the sounds that are coming out of your mouth are clearly gibberish and you're in danger of embarrassing yourself.

For extra credit:

Q.: Under what circumstances is it appropriate to mock/snark/judge/stare at/comment on/interrogate somebody using such an accommodation or assistive device?

A.: Never.

Not even if you've seen the same person walk, stand unaided for a long period of time, or dance a merry jig... the world doesn't divide neatly into perfectly able-bodied people and people who need devices to aid their mobility all the time. You don't know what it cost that person to dance a jig or why it was worth it to them to do so. You don't know what trade-offs they're making every time they decide to do something you do for granted or accept what assistance is available.

If you judge someone for using a scooter or cane after you saw them go ballroom dancing, what is the lesson that you (as one small part of a larger society that is also sending this message) are sending people? That some people have fun and other people have wheelchairs, but nobody gets to have both?

Not even if the person is fat, to a degree that you--with your in-depth medical training and ability to take in a person's medical history with a glance--have determined is unhealthy, their fault, and easily fixed by anyone with willpower. Seriously. You don't know why your fellow shoppers might be using a motorized cart. You don't know why their bodies are shaped like they are. The only thing those two things are guaranteed to have in common is that neither one is any of your business*.

Not even if you're doing it in private, at home, with only one other person who knows that you don't have any prejudice against those with disabilities and wouldn't be mocking/judging without good reason. First, even if you're alone you're not doing this in isolation. You're participating in (and reinforcing and spreading) a larger meme, one that has actual consequences for real people. Second, your judgment does not magically become more insightful, necessary, or appropriate just because you waited to get home to express it. Third, if you couldn't conceal your scorn any longer than it took you to get to an audience you know will be sympathetic and appreciative of it, what makes you think you were concealing it that well in the first place?

The fat person on the scooter at Wal-Mart, the person without any crutches or cane who plops down in the priority seat, the person who explains how their chronic pain, depression, or anxiety disorder impacts their life one day while talking about how much fun they had doing A Thing That People Do the next day... these are all pretty much considered to be "socially acceptable targets". Snarking them isn't being edgy, it's buying into a mindset that is relentlessly mainstream and conformist. Someone calling you on snarking them isn't calling "The PC Police" on you or oppressing you... if marginalized people did have a police force and the power to oppress, they wouldn't be marginalized.

*I say "guaranteed" because someone might point out that the two things could be related; i.e., the same medical condition that limits mobility might be directly or indirectly contributing to the individual's weight. But you know what? It's still nobody else's businesses, and a person doesn't need that kind of "excuse" to be fat and have a disability at the same time.