EPISODE 324: WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
I’m thinking a lot these days about gravity and parallel universes and timelines and social change, is a weird way to start a newsletter.
And yet here we are....
GRAVITY (IS WORKING AGAINST ME...)
There’s that insight from Einstein that what we call gravity is actually not an independent force of nature but a side effect of mass. Every little bit of everything has an effect on the space around it; the more little bits you have, the more the effect, such that the space around a planet or a star actually becomes warped. Earth is not revolving around the sun so much as it is rolling around it like a penny around a sink. Its own Mass-Space-Warp-Thingy™ is such that it doesn’t fall into the sink. But stay tuned.
The really crazy thing is that space and time are somehow together one seamless context in which everything exists, rather than two separate things. Which means that Mass doesn’t just warp space, it warps time. The bigger the Mass, the slower time passes for you relative to everyone else.
The extreme version of this: if you’re ever sucked into the event horizon of a black hole – actually, first of all, wow, cool, how did you manage that and is it windy where you are?
And second of all, in the millisecond it takes you to be crushed or stretched or thrown into some other universe or whatever, thousands of years will pass for the rest of us. Time passes that much slower for you.
(Which is crazy and also makes me want to try it if you have access to a black hole please DM me.)
PARALLEL UNIVERSES First of all and a propos of nothing can I just say I’m always happy to be able to talk about parallel universes? I’m not sure why, exactly. As I’ve mentioned here before, Goatee Spock is always the Wrong Spock.
I think I just like the idea that even in the realm of time and history, there’s always more out there than what we see. So much more, variations that are so ridiculously different they are completely unrecognizable, different universes where most of us probably don’t exist and we get our tea from the moon and dogs drive motorcycles.
But back to this: If we extend the science of our Gravity Space Time Warp Dance Off, I want to say that none of us are living at exactly the same rate.
I’m pretty sure every scientist in the universe right now is spontaneously shrieking at this idea, as any difference that might be caused by what, my weight? The mass of those around me? These are absolutely negligible amounts next to the mass of the planet. So shut up, professor, back to your books.
But what if what is true of the mass of objects is also true of the internal mass we carry?
For example: With any luck, girls growing up right now in the United States will not have to deal with much of the horrible workplace harassment stuff that we’ve been hearing about for the last six months. Those monsters are getting fired, that era is over.
I don’t want to be naive about that, there is some deep systemic stuff at work here and the likelihood of breaking it down is still very much in question. But at the very least it seems like in a lot of places awful men are not going to be able to get away with things they have been doing for decades and that girls today entering into that workplace in five, ten or more years have a good chance of having a better experience. We can only hope...
Their older counterparts will also experience that better world, hopefully. But they come to that moment with the mass of what they’ve already been through. A change in society does not erase what’s happened already. Which means how those women are able to experience these improvements – or, if you’ll let me push the science metaphor, how they will experience “the passage of time” -- will be different, too.
Kids can leap into that new world readily; it’s all new to them, and therefore it’s how it’s always been. Like the cell phone. Or wifi. Or Beyonce.
But the more you carry, the slower in some ways your experience changes.
In other words, that “new world” of safer workspaces, greater respect, equality or however we might want to imagine it will actually not be experienced the same by everyone who gets to be in it. Even as we all live together, we do so along parallel tracks.
TIMELINES The thing that got me thinking about all this was the new Netflix comedy special Nanette.
No no. Not that Nanette.
(#sorrynotsorry)
This one, the 2018 stand up comedy show from Tasmanian comic Hannah Gadsby.
Gadsby is a 40 year old lesbian comedienne, and her routine is all about what it’s like to be a 40 year old gay woman telling jokes about being a gay woman.
And one of the things that is just so clear from her routine is how different it is to be a 40 year old lesbian, raised in a state where homosexuality was a criminal act until the 1990s, than to be say, a twenty five year old lesbian. Homosexuality may be generally accepted in Australia now, with gay marriage legal as of about six months ago, but that doesn’t means all is now suddenly worked out for Gadsby or others like her. She’s stuck with the mass and warp, the internalized shame of her own life experience.
“Do you understand what self-deprecation means when it comes from somebody who already exists on the margins?” she asks about halfway through the special. “It’s not humility; it’s humiliation. I put myself down in order to speak, in order to seek permission to speak.”
Maybe this is an older person comment that I’m making here (and how dare you if you were thinking that yourself, 48 is not that old, I still have all my teeth, even if one of them is apparently dead). But it just strikes me the “everything is better now” take on society or moments of social change is actually the truth only for those who have never known anything else (the little monsters).
The rest of us may be able to see that future being lived out, and come to experience elements of it. But our individual histories mean we come to these moments of social change at different points in our own personal timelines.
It’s so very different to witness the world changing from the event horizon of the black hole.
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No idea if that makes any sense. Just something on which my mind mouth has been brain chewing.
In the words of a creative legend...
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If you’ve seen Nanette and want to read more, there’s been some excellent stuff on it, including How Gadsby has Permanently Changed Comedy, How She Shines a Light on the Problem of Being a Minority Doing Comedy and How This Very Unassuming Funny Woman is in fact a Freaking Genius.
Also, you might check out this fun visual animated analysis of hour-long stand up, which I’m pretty sure I posted a while back. The premise of the piece is that a lot of stand up today is not just a bunch of different bits tacked together – Take my mother-in-law please; Hey can you believe this weather we’re having; Airplanes, amirite? -- but has an internal story structure within which the bits build on each other and then coalesce in the end in what was the bigger idea of the piece all along.
Bad, non-thematic version: “And that’s why I never take my mother-in-law on airplanes in hot weather.” Ba-dump-BUMP.
Slightly better: “That’s the thing about the universe, it’s filled with nightmares that in the end you realize you’d never want to live without.”
The Pudding people (my new horror movie at Nickelodeon, and/or the people who put together the piece) have this great insight: “For 50 minutes, Ali [the comedian they analyze] has built a universe, with each joke expanding the audience’s understanding of her world-view.” We learn, they say, Ali’s “map of life’s hidden order.”
I’d add, part of the magic is that you don’t even know it’s happening until you get to the end and it’s all tied together in some way.
And that is what Nanette has in spades.
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If you haven’t seen Nanette, I can’t recommend it strongly enough. It’s almost more a movie than it is a stand up routine. The journey she takes you on is really surprising.
Also, you’ll never think about cubism the same again....
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SNL’s Kenan Thompson got his first Emmy nod yesterday. He’s the longest-running cast member ever, pretty much the definition of the utility player. He can sing, he can dance, he can be at the center of a sketch or a bit player. And his humor is just plain infectious. He always seems like he's just having a good time.
Last year the Huffington Post did a great piece on him. It turns out it was six years before he really “broke out” with a sketch of his own, and he really struggled with that. But what he – and everyone else – learned is that he was really good at making everyone else look good. Really generous on stage, always knowing his lines and encouraging everyone backstage. And that’s what has made him into this incredible ensemble player.
From the article:
In January, Tina Fey, dressed as Princess Leia during a guest appearance, told host Felicity Jones, “If all else fails, you should know that back in Season 35, I put a fatal flaw in the system: If you take out Kenan Thompson, the studio will explode.”
Kenan's breakout sketch What Up With That? is mentioned in the piece. It’s got to be one of my favorite SNL sketches. In honor of Kenan and also Ant-Man and the Wasp, here’s the Paul Rudd What Up With That? (It also has media columnist Frank Rich and a man who I think might be Zach Galifianakis playing an enormous flute. It is insane.)
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Saw Ant Man and the Wasp. Lots of fun. Some cool little science-y kind of stuff in it – one of the villains’ powers is based on quantum theory that I just loved. And the movie is a lot about fathers and daughters, which was really great.
(Also Evangeline Lilly as Hope Pym: Yes. Wow. More. So good.)
There was one thing I really didn’t like about the film: the post-credit scenes. Marvel is really well known for them obviously, they’ve helped tie their whole universe together. But in this case I think they kind of ruined everything the film worked so hard to build.
Seriously, if you like the movie, I highly recommend leaving right away and then reading about the post-credit stuff later. I’m sure the clips will be up online in a few weeks, and trust me, you will enjoy them just as much, if not more, after you’ve had some time to just appreciate the film.)
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Some great stuff this week.
Famous Books where the Dog Dies, Rewritten By Dogs
Animals that Look Like They are About to Release a Chart Topping Single
How to Lose Weight in 4 Easy Steps
Along the lines of the struggle internalized prejudice, the funny-but-watch-out 17 Real-Life Would-You-Rathers I, A Woman, Have Had to Ask Myself (Note: Adult content).
And lastly, “Sweet Hope”, a gorgeous gorgeous piece of writing from LMU Magazine that I highly recommend any time you’re feeling down about the present.
I don't know how your week went. Maybe it was sunshine and a cold beer. Maybe it was a Quaker Oatmeal variety pack filled with nothing but Maple and Brown Sugar.
Either way, you made it. You are here. That is not nothing.
Whether you know it or not, your presence made a difference to someone else, too. A whole bunch of someone elses. You don't have to run a protest or man the barricades to make a difference. Think of Kenan Thompson. He just has fun, and everyone who watches feels happy.
Take deep breaths. Don't be afraid to hesitate. And stay in touch with what brings you joy.
Right there with you. Here we go.