Loud-mouthed liberal feminist. Anarchist knitter. Tequila-drinking artsy-smartsy fat chick. Bluesy folk-rock singer-songwriter. Rebel with too many causes. Quirky eclectic pagan poet. Paradoxical intuitive smartass. Sarcastic brainiac insomniac. You know, for starters.

4.14.2009

My head hurts, on a couple levels.

So, I'm working a migraine for the past, hmm, 30 hours or so. I stayed home today, and have managed to stave off the crashing boredom of unending extreme pain that gets worse when I, say, read or watch TV or look at the internet....by working in the occasional brief round of reading (I've got the new Dresden Files to finish!) or watching DVDs (hello, Firefly, my old friend) or looking at the internet (hiya).

What can I say? I am sometimes stupid, and what's a little more pain as compared to the unbearable monotony of laying in bed with a pillow over my eyes, with only the rare dip into blissful sleep to break it up??

Meh. Anyway. During one of these breaks, I flipped on the news, where I saw a clip from the show Britain's Got Talent or whatever it's called, with the shocking revelation that a non-thin, non-sexpot-dressing, non-pop-star-looking-or-sounding person can sing the shit out of a song. And that Simon Cowell, and well, pretty much everyone else in a fucking reality TV show audience is a judgmental doucheface who associates talent with being hot. Well, lemme look around at the world of "famous" people in the past twenty years, and see if I can figure out where people might've made that fucking connection, hmmmm??

Yeah, anybody who's out there in the actual world, not the "real" world as conveyed by "reality" TV, anybody who's working in community theater or a local music scene or going to art shows or any creative endeavor that's not broadcast via mass media....is probably not surprised that a "normal" looking person is incredibly talented. Raise your hands, friends, if you can name five or ten really amazing artists or musicians or writers or actors or dancers who aren't going to show up on the cover of a fashion mag anytime soon. Fucking NO DUH.

Despite the pop culture phenomenon of pretty people getting record deals and better exposure and audience support and yada yada yada (which isn't to say that there aren't "pretty" people who make it by the sweat of their brow and not some "free" ride), talent obnoxiously insists on attaching itself to people from ALL walks of life, with all ranges of physical and mental and emotional states of being.

This reminds me of that old trope connecting madness to genius. Yeah, you know what, there are plenty of people walking the line of mental stability who also happen to make amazing art of some kind....and just as many totally stable artists cranking out interesting works. Just like anything else, there are so many independent factors that go into making each of us who we are, and into the opportunities we are offered and pursue, that to make any kind of gross generalization about any "type" of person is pretty much asking the universe to prove you wrong.

The news played this story with the angle, "Don't judge a book by its cover." Again I say, fucking no duh. How about we stretch our lobes a bit further, though, people? How about we stop telling our collectives selves the story that only pretty people are good? How about we stop deluding ourselves that the only people who can rip our hearts out when they sing songs or play roles or paint pictures or dance around....look or speak or act a certain way?

How about, instead of being shocked that someone so unexpected could be so brilliant, we consider the possibility that everyone we meet just might be brilliant somehow, if we only stopped telling them they weren't, and maybe gave them a spotlight and a microphone?

I'm going back to my dark room and the pillow over my eyes. Maybe when I get up again the world will be a less shitty place?

1 comment:

andria said...

1. Just found your blog. Hi.
2. I highly enjoy your use of the f bomb throughout.
3. I am totally insulted by peoples' response to this woman - that she's somehow talented IN SPITE of the hideousness of her physical being. (This is why I hate people.)