Becalmed

Two things happened at pretty much the exact same moment at the end of February. The first is that I finished the fourth draft (for now) of Safecrackers, a spec script I’d been beavering away on for (what felt like) far too long. This was a deadline I set for myself! Feb. 28! And in spite of literal weeks of it looking like I definitely wasn’t going to get there, I actually got there!

And at the literal exact same moment, I got taken off my largest (paid) project. No warning, just poof. All of a sudden, it was March, and I had nothing, and I mean nothing, to do.

Parts of this standstill, I’m sure, were useful. I’ve been doing Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, and sure, let’s call it synchronicity. At a moment when I’ve been trying to be more attentive to structures and habits that I unconsciously put in my own creative way, I suddenly had nothing else to do but stare right at them, with all the other noise turned way down, the distractions minimal. There were a handful of good times when I was hustling my way around somewhere, on my way to something or from something in a hurry of my own invention — and I was able to really observe that sensation, given that it arose independently of actually having anything important to do or anywhere time-critical to be. I slowed my stride. I followed my whims. All of this was probably nice.

The rest of it sucked. I did my morning pages and kept up with this newsletter, but I’m still in the “noodling” phase of my next big writing project, and that’s a process that takes its own time. I wasn’t able to take advantage of this sudden emptiness except as an opportunity to watch TV and size up some home reno projects I can’t pay for. Which, I’m sure, Julia Cameron is out there somewhere saying good, gooooooood, that’s the point, but it was and is fucking unsettling to sit around purposelessly for a big lurch of time, when you don’t even know if/when that lurch is gonna end.

And the work is the work, blah blah blah, but nobody wants the fucking work either, and that’s disheartening. I send of my subs and apply for my grants and set up my calls and do all the things I can do, and the answers come back no, no, no. Which is a lot to carry on its own terms, but amidst this torpor, when I have little else to do but that, it’s downright reality-bending.

It’s hard not to get to the “what the fuck am I doing” point, in all this. There’s no one better at catastrophizing an existential crisis than a queer out-of-work writer who’s not writing, living in a period of systemic and moral collapse that will be remembered for generations, should such generations survive the boiling planet we have foisted upon them, in our bottomless laziness and greed.

(See? Catastrophizing.)

I’ll soldier on, because I always do. But I feel more beaten down than I usually do, and more than I generally like. And the ways of the world right now aren’t doing much besides feeding my own feelings of worthlessness or, at best, my sense of being a sort of person who is profoundly unwanted around here.

Speaking of which…

All The Evil

I’m not a transgender person but I’m also not an idiot^*, so last week was a heartbreaking reminder that pretty much the entire Harry Potter project over at HBO, for as long as it occupies public attention, is going to be an experience of pain, loss, and helplessness.

^* By this I mean a few things, let’s list them:

1/ I’m a genderfluid person, so my not being transgender doesn’t make me feel particularly outside the target scope for J.K. Rowling’s attacks on human rights. I’m, like, right next door. I’m not safe.

2/ BUT ALSO, that doesn’t and shouldn’t matter. I — and you — should not need to be a member of a persecuted minority, or adjacent to one, to be horrified by what Rowling is doing and saying, and what her Harry Potter money is explicitly being used for, and how many people across all walks of life are either a) just totally fine with it or b) aren’t thinking about it at all.

3/ BUT ALSO ALSO, if you are actually so fucking venal that you can only imagine this conflict in terms that directly impact you, consider the fact that Rowling has already widened her scope from attacking transgender people to attacking cisgender women she doesn’t feel strongly enough reflect her definition of what a “woman” is. If you’re too fucking stupid to understand what THAT leads to, well, there’s literally no helping you. Walk off a pier.

For people like me, all of this is going to be painful, repeatedly so, because around every corner is going to be another person who blithely walked over the line and doesn’t give a fuck — who either thinks me and mine are a community worth targeting, or at best a community not worth protecting. I was out doing my thing on Saturday when I found out a writer and podcaster I quite like, Andy Greenwald — a guy who, ethically and critically and creatively, seemed (at a distance) up till now largely aligned with me, as regards pretty much everything that’s happening in Hollywood, in the States, and in life — has been working on the Harry Potter show this whole time. A guy who thinks ICE is terrible and The Lowdown rules, also saw an open attack on transgender people and said “that, that I will help fund.”

I don’t bring Greenwald up specifically for any other reason than to illustrate the thing where these gutless fuckers will just reveal themselves, over and over again, a jack-in-the-box that keeps opening with a new gargoyle face springing out. Faces like Nick Frost’s, or John Lithgow’s, or whoever the fuck knows who’s next, grinning and leering at us with the same smug cruelty that adorns every single photo of Rowling herself. Those of us on the humane side of this thing, we’re all just going to have to sit on our hands and wonder over and over again what happened, what went wrong with these people, people we thought we liked, people we thought we understood, until we start auto-gaslighting our own position due to the sheer quotidian ubiquity of the other side.

It’s enough to make me feel utterly insane, and it’s going to happen for years and years. I’m going to lose friends, I’m certainly going to lose jobs, and there’s no reward at the end of it other than being fully in possession of information that the whole world received six years ago, when the crazy TERF came out of her closet and manufactured hatred at scale, a right which only her whiteness, her wealth, and her bullshit fantasy franchise had bought her.

Be gentle with the queer folks in your life, around all this shit. Don’t treat it casually.

I’ll leave you with a bleat, which is blunt and maybe not a fair joke to make, but I was angry:

New by me

I had a look at Criterion’s new release of Lynne Littman’s 1983 apocalyptic heartbreaker, Testament. Anyone want to feel really, really bad? What, you don’t already? Fuck you. (Screen Anarchy)

Not by me

• If you want to feel good, on the other hand, consider the Greenland shark. “Its parents would have been old enough to have lived alongside Dante; its great-great-grandparents alongside Julius Caesar. For thousands of years Greenland sharks have swum in silence, as above them the world has burned, rebuilt, burned again.” I don’t know, maybe it’s a me thing. But slipping out of our solipsistic relationship to time, however briefly, calms me right down. (London Review of Books)
• Or, return to a beloved time gone by! One of my very favourite comics of all time, a relic of the glorious ’00s, returned last fall and I didn’t even notice. Well, I’ve noticed now! And I am having a delectable time catching up on Powers 25. (Dark Horse)
• Notes Towards a Woke 2. I love a well-earned sequel. (Aftermath)