Monthly Archives: September 2010

Telling Them Anything You Want: Maurice Sendak

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I recently and randomly caught the HBO documentary: “Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak.” Sendak was my favorite author as a child. There’s a dreamlike and—at times—a nightmarish quality to his books, and it wasn’t until I saw the movie adaptation of “Where the Wild Things Are” that I truly understood the profoundness of his work.

Many children’s book authors succeed in channeling the wonder and imagination of childhood. Sendak does that and goes beyond, tapping into the childhood emotional experience—those dark moments of feeling lost and vulnerable. But the stories are surrounded by a sense of permission to have those feelings. The endings are not always happy in a traditional way, but the heroes stand strong amidst their hardships even if they cry during the journey.

The Sendak documentary does much to illuminate his sensibility. It came out last year before the Wild Things release and was filmed by directors Spike Jonze and Lance Bangs in 2003 when Sendak was 75. The documentary is a continuous conversation between Sendak and the directors at the author’s Connecticut home. Sendak has a caustic wit, tending to be self-deprecating in spite of his idol status.

What stood out was the permanence of his childhood imprints—the Lindbergh baby kidnapping and the accidental death of one of his playmates in Brooklyn. He admits to having morbid obsessions, an existential gloom, and you get the impression that he wishes he had a chance to live his childhood over again. And that his stories and illustrations are a method of re-experiencing, repairing what was lost to him.

My sixth grade teacher gave us the assignment to write a letter to our favorite author. I chose Sendak while over half the class chose Charles Schultz, even though the teacher warned us that Schultz never responds to fan mail. I remember my excitement when I got the response. It was just a postcard, hand-typed, thanking me for my letter and telling me about his three dogs all named after ancient Greek heroes. I remember Agamemnon and Io but I can’t recall the third. The postcard was tacked up on the bulletin board of my bedroom until I went away to college.

In the documentary, Sendak talks about how much he loves his dog (a new dog Herman). He also talks lovingly about his best friend Lynn and his longtime partner Eugene (who died in 2008). He seems a solitary figure, but this has become his family.

I think what resonated the most was Sendak’s emotional honesty. He has regrets, greedy ambitions, and he remains frightened by his gayness. That honesty is poured into his work. The documentary title “Tell Them Anything You Want” comes from his response to a question about children’s authors’ responsibility to their audience.   His longer answer is kids can handle tough subjects when they’re handled with honesty and kindness.

Why Are Gay Teens Killing Themselves?

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Over the past year, there have been a string of high profile teen suicides. Three were clustered in a Minnesota school district. The most recent suicide happened in rural Indiana. The common thread is that the victims were all being harassed because they were—or were perceived to be—gay.

Suicide is about isolation, loss of hope, feeling like the emotional pain is too much to bear. It will probably always be a reality, particularly for adolescents who feel the full force of their emotions, at times like a crushing weight. In the US, the number of teens who kill themselves each year has largely stayed the same over the past 30 years, and suicide is consistently the second or third leading cause of death among teenagers. A 1989 landmark federal study brought attention to the fact that gay teens are much more likely to commit suicide than their non-gay peers. Family rejection, ostracism at school, and loneliness can overwhelm and lead to desperate decisions.

When I was thirteen, I tied a belt around my neck and sat in my bedroom closet, contemplating. I hated my lumpy, pre-pubescent body. I was reminded about being overweight by friends and felt piercing embarrassment about having to change and shower in the locker room, back-to-school shopping for clothes that never fit and being mistaken for a girl by strangers due to my shapeless body. In a fuzzy sense, coming to terms with being gay figured in at that moment. I felt inadequate around other boys and thought I’d never fit in with my effeminate shyness and sensitivity.

Luckily, I was too afraid to try to hurt myself, and things got better as my height started catching up with my weight and I made a deal with myself to never, ever consider that I could possibly be gay.

That was 27 years ago, and I’ve since come out and worked as a social worker for LGBT youth for most of my adult career. But when I read about the recent gay teen suicides, I found myself wondering: Haven’t we made progress?

From a time when coming out in high school was near impossible, we now have gay student council presidents and homecoming kings and gay couples attending proms and Gay/Straight Alliances and high school theater productions of Rent and students organizing a National Day of Silence to protest homophobia and primetime TV shows featuring popular gay teens.

But we still have gay kids getting viciously harassed and killing themselves.

For sure, change has yet to come to many areas of the country. At the Minnesota school where three kids killed themselves, the district had a specific policy forbidding teachers from discussing gay issues even in the context of “tolerance” education or anti-bullying policies and despite student complaints of anti-gay harassment by students and even by some teachers. This is the attitude, the culture in many suburban and rural communities.

But studies show that as many as 60 percent of gay teenagers consider suicide, and they’re not all growing up in places where coming out remains strenuously taboo. Family support makes a big difference, and I think another factor is the complexity of adolescence, at times—and by its nature—resistant to outside meddling.

There’s a saying in developmental psychology. Adolescence is paradox. It’s a sky high feeling that anything is possible, and it’s the depths of futility. It’s demanding to be taken seriously as an individual but wanting more than anything to blend into the crowd. It’s protesting unequal treatment while perpetrating hateful, aggressive acts against those less powerful than you.

Gay teens find themselves in this mix, at turns encouraged and supported and at others despondent and ashamed. Their cues from the outside world are pitched at odd angles. ‘Be yourself’ is the message from the mainstream media, and ‘Don’t step too near’ is the refrain from the well-publicized political battles happening across the country. At best, public attitudes have moved from hostility to ambivalence. Polls now show just a slim majority of the general public believes gays and lesbians should be “accepted” in society.

It’s the wrong time to get complacent. I don’t think that we can expect political change or even school policy change to completely eliminate gay teen suicide, but it can make a difference. As disturbing as these stories are, it counts as progress that they have claimed attention and not been buried by the squeamishness of the past.

A Poem for Wednesday

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I’ve been watching more US Open Tennis than writing lately.  My picks to win:  Caroline Wozniacki and Roger Federer.

But tossing around some thoughts while waiting for a connecting train this morning, I came up with this poem.

Eat, Pray, Love for the Small-town Boy

 

He wanted to see the world,

Places photographed in travel magazines,

Small town America was porridge,

The Far East curry and chili peppers,

He wanted to stand on Grecian mountains,

And dive from Mexican cliffs,

To feel his heartbeat thudding in his chest.

 

He wanted to see the world,

Nine dollars an hour and Walmart jeans,

If you squint real hard at night,

And smoke enough marijuana,

Main Street sparkles like an Italian piazza,

And dreams of breaking free,

Are always just a day away.

 

He wanted to see the world,

No one could tell him he didn’t have the right,

Truck stop trade, broken windshields, bloody noses,

If Julia Roberts could do it,

So could he,

One day he’d take that bus to the airport,

And disappear.

Songs, Poetry and Images Inspired by Atlantis

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Suffice it to say, my fantasy series-in-progress travels well-trod literary territory. My interest in Atlantis came late in life—just five years ago—and prior to my research, my only frame of reference was Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and the ubiquitous nautical namesakes–Atlantis car washes, Atlantis diners. There’s even a gay cruise line called Atlantis.

My hope is to bring a fresh perspective to the legend while remaining faithful to classic mythology. My favorite texts on the subject are Lewis Spence’s History of Atlantis, Edith Hamilton’s Mythology and Frank Joseph’s The Atlantis Encyclopedia. The latter is literally an A to Z reference book and a fascinating read.

Here’s some poetry, lyrics and imagery I found to keep me inspired.

Atlantis

Being set on the idea

Of getting to Atlantis,

You have discovered of course

Only the Ship of Fools is

Making the voyage this year,

As gales of abnormal force

Are predicted, and that you

Must therefore be ready to

Behave absurdly enough

To pass for one of The Boys,

At least appearing to love

Hard liquor, horseplay and noise.

 

Should storms, as may well happen,

Drive you to anchor a week

In some old harbour-city

Of Ionia, then speak

With her witty sholars, men

Who have proved there cannot be

Such a place as Atlantis:

Learn their logic, but notice

How its subtlety betrays

Their enormous simple grief;

Thus they shall teach you the ways

To doubt that you may believe.

 

If, later, you run aground

Among the headlands of Thrace,

Where with torches all night long

A naked barbaric race

Leaps frenziedly to the sound

Of conch and dissonant gong:

On that stony savage shore

Strip off your clothes and dance, for

Unless you are capable

Of forgetting completely

About Atlantis, you will

Never finish your journey.

 

Again, should you come to gay

Carthage or Corinth, take part

In their endless gaiety;

And if in some bar a tart,

As she strokes your hair, should say

“This is Atlantis, dearie,”

Listen with attentiveness

To her life-story: unless

You become acquainted now

With each refuge that tries to

Counterfeit Atlantis, how

Will you recognise the true?

 

Assuming you beach at last

Near Atlantis, and begin

That terrible trek inland

Through squalid woods and frozen

Thundras where all are soon lost;

If, forsaken then, you stand,

Dismissal everywhere,

Stone and now, silence and air,

O remember the great dead

And honour the fate you are,

Travelling and tormented,

Dialectic and bizarre.

 

Stagger onward rejoicing;

And even then if, perhaps

Having actually got

To the last col, you collapse

With all Atlantis shining

Below you yet you cannot

Descend, you should still be proud

Even to have been allowed

Just to peep at Atlantis

In a poetic vision:

Give thanks and lie down in peace,

Having seen your salvation.

 

All the little household gods

Have started crying, but say

Good-bye now, and put to sea.

Farewell, my dear, farewell: may

Hermes, master of the roads,

And the four dwarf Kabiri,

Protect and serve you always;

And may the Ancient of Days

Provide for all you must do

His invisible guidance,

Lifting up, dear, upon you

The light of His countenance.

WH Auden

Moon Turn the Tides Gently Away

So down and down and down and down

and down and down we go.

Hurry my darling we mustn’t be late

for the show.

Neptune champion games to an aqua

world is so very dear.

“Right this way,” smiles a mermaid,

I can hear Atlantis full of cheer.

 

I can hear Atlantis full of cheer…

I can hear Atlantis full of cheer…

Jimi Hendrix

Atlantis – A Lost Sonnet

How on earth did it happen, I used to wonder

that a whole city—arches, pillars, colonnades,

not to mention vehicles and animals—had all

one fine day gone under?

 

I mean, I said to myself, the world was small then.

Surely a great city must have been missed?

I miss our old city—

 

white pepper, white pudding, you and I meeting

under fanlights and low skies to go home in it. Maybe

what really happened is

this: the old fable-makers searched hard for a word

to convey that what is gone is gone forever and

never found it. And so, in the best traditions of

where we come from, they gave their sorrow a name

and drowned it.

Eavan Boland