Foolishness
So it’s April Fool’s Day, and I was a little wary of posting anything today, lest I not be (*cough*) taken seriously...
But as it happens, today I’m having flashbacks to a lay sermon I wrote and delivered several years ago, when April 1st fell on a Sunday and our church celebrated Loof Lirpa (spell it backwards and you’ll get it). And it seems to be begging for some further exploration.
I admit, I enjoy the odd service-frameworks that our fun-loving Worship & Music Committeefolk sometimes come up with. (My favorite will always be the Oct. 31st Rocky Horror extravaganza... I figure any church service in which I get to perform “Sweet Transvestite” from the pulpit is automatically a winner!) But at the same time, it’s also important to me that they have a deeper meaning, that they make people both think and feel. And often I will aim to push uncomfortable buttons. (My Rocky Horror sermon was about owning your own dark side - not merely distinguishing darkness from actual evil, but actually owning and acknowledging both as part of our human reality, like it or not.)
And so for Loof Lirpa, I turned to sociologist Victor Turner and his classic conception of the so-called “monstrous sacra”- sacred objects, images, or ritual settings/actions which intentionally cross established boundaries and turn the normal world upside-down. After all, the traditions of April Fool’s Day (and much of what constitutes our crazy human sense of humor during the rest of the year, too) is all about putting people into situations that break boundaries in unexpected ways.
Turner introduces the concept of the “monstrous sacra” in terms of sacred images: say, a god-image that is part-human, part-animal, or a goddess-image that is more exaggeratedly pregnant than any real woman could possibly survive. Explaining how frequently such images are found at the secret heart of coming-of-age rituals, he points out that there are also “monstrous” combinations inherent in the very conditions of these rituals: for instance, boys being required to wear women’s clothing during a certain stage of the rite, to eat foods that are normally proscribed or perform actions that are normally considered taboo.
Turner’s argument (and I think I’m representing him fairly here, though admittedly in a sort of simplified “quick’n’dirty” sense) was that in order to re-organize a personality within a given social context - say, to turn a boy into a man, or a woman into a wife - you must first disorganize it. The weird, contradictory, boundary-breaking images and conventions of these ritual passages are part of a necessary “shaking-up” that serves, in part, to uproot one’s old established conceptions of self and other, of both the world and one’s own place in it.
My suggestion, in this Loof Lirpa sermon, was that when we experience such a disorganization in our everyday lives, we might want to consider seeing it as a sort of unofficial rite of passage... a suggestion, so to speak, from the Universe or from our own subconscious selves that some reorganization might be ready to happen. When nothing in your life seems to fit anymore, when you feel turned upside-down and inside-out... when you encounter some sort of deep paradox, some “monstrous” combination of facts and feelings, of inner and outer worlds... maybe that’s actually not the time to strive desperately for the restoration of normalcy. Rather, it might be time to pay close attention to where those apparently contradictory images and experiences are trying to bring you.
I occasionally think about Turner, these days, when I look in the mirror. My gradually-changing appearance is certainly “monstrous” in much the way Turner used the term, in that it combines elements of apparent opposites that cross, or at least confuse, normal boundaries.
For example... I watch, with great fascination and pleasure, the slow filling-in of my currently-sparse pattern of facial hair - while simultaneously noting that the rounded contours of my face still read very much as feminine. (And will continue to do so for some time yet; testosterone will eventually “fix” that to some extent, but it’ll take a while.)
My body has always read somewhat ambiguously - enough so to lead one trans-knowledgeable person to suggest that I might someday want to be tested to see if I’m technically intersex at the chromosomal level. For instance, most female-bodied persons of my weight have breasts in proportion to their size; mine (thank all the gods that may or may not be) are insignificant enough to more or less pass as “moobs,” once concealed with a T-shirt-under-button-shirt combination.
That’s a help. Other physical aspects, some of which are unchangeable, will be a hindrance. For instance, women tend to have wider, “child-bearing” hips; while testosterone will assist in camouflaging that difference with fat redistribution in the waist and torso, chances are there will always be something a little “off” about my body in that area... something that, if looked at closely, doesn’t look quite right.
In other words - and I realize that saying this may push some uncomfortable buttons, both for Transgender folk and for Cisgender folk - in a way, trans bodies are always “monstrous”... always mixing elements that cross gender lines against old, well-established cultural taboos.
Some transfolk accept this with equanimity. For others it’s a painful reminder, a lingering wrongness that stands forever between one’s inner and outer realities. And for some cisgender (aka "normal") folk, it's a argument that gender-transitioning is somehow wrong, a twisted or perverse thing to do.
I prefer to see it, in the Turnerian sense, as a gift that can serve to initiate a deep mystery. An always-reminder that I have the capability to inhabit and explore a liminal space, a between-gender space, that doesn’t fit the cultural norm - a space in which this mixedness, this “wrongness,” can become a tool for deconstruction and re-creation.
I have never really been a woman in the “normal” sense - and perhaps I will never be a man in the completely “normal” sense, either. But what I am is needful and valuable, a prompt to the growth and maturation of our culture from a childhood dominated by stark, black-and-white differences into an adult world of more subtle shades and unexpected combinations. If I so choose, I can see the “wrongness” of my body as a signpost, guide to a secret path woven through the dark forest. And if I learn to own and embrace the liminal spaces where that secret dwells, I may find myself a shaman of sorts, able to help others navigate those strange in-between places when life and growth demand it of them.
Before I get too mystical on you (not that I'd mind, but you might!), let’s hark back to the concrete world for a brief history lesson. As a musician and a trumpet player, let me offer you a parable from music history about the value of “wrongness”.
In the long history of brass instruments, there were many, many years, before the invention of either rotary or piston valves, in which it was all but impossible to play a “normal” melody on the trumpet, which was essentially limited to just those few widely-spaced notes which could be played by changing air pressure and the tension of the lips (think of modern-day bugle calls). The only way to manage anything remotely resembling a complete musical scale was to use a specialized instrument known as a clarino trumpet, with an enormously long tube coiled like that of a modern French horn; the great length of piping made it possible for the virtuoso player (a specialist) to get more notes, closer together, at the most extreme high range of the instrument. But there were still gaps in the scale, and some of the notes were “wrong” - hopelessly out of tune.
However, trumpet music of that time period routinely seemed to use notes that didn’t exist on the trumpet, and musicologists wondered why. Eventually it was discovered that those “wrong” notes, the out-of-tune ones, were in fact the key to completing the scale! Because they were about halfway between the “right” notes, a skilled player could actually “bend” the pitch far enough in either direction (modern brassplayers call this “lipping the note” up or down) so that the wrong note yielded TWO “right” notes - one higher and one lower. These “bent” (or shall we perhaps say “monstrous”?) notes weren’t exactly normal; they had a different sound and projection level, and if you tried to hold them too long, the difference would be obvious... but their presence completed the scale and made the trumpet able to play such amazing, complex music as, say, the third movement of the second Brandenburg Concerto.
It is perhaps also worth pointing out, in this context, that although the English word “monstrous” may seem to connote something twisted or evil, the original etymology of the word had nothing to do with wrongness. It comes from the Latin verb “monstrare” which merely means to show or to point out - the same Latin root as our English word “demonstrate.” In this context we might well translate “monstrous” simply as “worth looking at”!
Those in-between notes on the trumpet were certainly worth looking at. And my in-between experience of gender, both in my physical body and in my interactions with the culture of my birth, may be similarly valuable.
And if not... well, it’s still pretty damn fun to finally be able to say to the world: Really? You thought I was a girl??? Seriously? Well, guess what? April Fool!!! :p
But as it happens, today I’m having flashbacks to a lay sermon I wrote and delivered several years ago, when April 1st fell on a Sunday and our church celebrated Loof Lirpa (spell it backwards and you’ll get it). And it seems to be begging for some further exploration.
I admit, I enjoy the odd service-frameworks that our fun-loving Worship & Music Committeefolk sometimes come up with. (My favorite will always be the Oct. 31st Rocky Horror extravaganza... I figure any church service in which I get to perform “Sweet Transvestite” from the pulpit is automatically a winner!) But at the same time, it’s also important to me that they have a deeper meaning, that they make people both think and feel. And often I will aim to push uncomfortable buttons. (My Rocky Horror sermon was about owning your own dark side - not merely distinguishing darkness from actual evil, but actually owning and acknowledging both as part of our human reality, like it or not.)
And so for Loof Lirpa, I turned to sociologist Victor Turner and his classic conception of the so-called “monstrous sacra”- sacred objects, images, or ritual settings/actions which intentionally cross established boundaries and turn the normal world upside-down. After all, the traditions of April Fool’s Day (and much of what constitutes our crazy human sense of humor during the rest of the year, too) is all about putting people into situations that break boundaries in unexpected ways.
Turner introduces the concept of the “monstrous sacra” in terms of sacred images: say, a god-image that is part-human, part-animal, or a goddess-image that is more exaggeratedly pregnant than any real woman could possibly survive. Explaining how frequently such images are found at the secret heart of coming-of-age rituals, he points out that there are also “monstrous” combinations inherent in the very conditions of these rituals: for instance, boys being required to wear women’s clothing during a certain stage of the rite, to eat foods that are normally proscribed or perform actions that are normally considered taboo.
Turner’s argument (and I think I’m representing him fairly here, though admittedly in a sort of simplified “quick’n’dirty” sense) was that in order to re-organize a personality within a given social context - say, to turn a boy into a man, or a woman into a wife - you must first disorganize it. The weird, contradictory, boundary-breaking images and conventions of these ritual passages are part of a necessary “shaking-up” that serves, in part, to uproot one’s old established conceptions of self and other, of both the world and one’s own place in it.
My suggestion, in this Loof Lirpa sermon, was that when we experience such a disorganization in our everyday lives, we might want to consider seeing it as a sort of unofficial rite of passage... a suggestion, so to speak, from the Universe or from our own subconscious selves that some reorganization might be ready to happen. When nothing in your life seems to fit anymore, when you feel turned upside-down and inside-out... when you encounter some sort of deep paradox, some “monstrous” combination of facts and feelings, of inner and outer worlds... maybe that’s actually not the time to strive desperately for the restoration of normalcy. Rather, it might be time to pay close attention to where those apparently contradictory images and experiences are trying to bring you.
I occasionally think about Turner, these days, when I look in the mirror. My gradually-changing appearance is certainly “monstrous” in much the way Turner used the term, in that it combines elements of apparent opposites that cross, or at least confuse, normal boundaries.
For example... I watch, with great fascination and pleasure, the slow filling-in of my currently-sparse pattern of facial hair - while simultaneously noting that the rounded contours of my face still read very much as feminine. (And will continue to do so for some time yet; testosterone will eventually “fix” that to some extent, but it’ll take a while.)
My body has always read somewhat ambiguously - enough so to lead one trans-knowledgeable person to suggest that I might someday want to be tested to see if I’m technically intersex at the chromosomal level. For instance, most female-bodied persons of my weight have breasts in proportion to their size; mine (thank all the gods that may or may not be) are insignificant enough to more or less pass as “moobs,” once concealed with a T-shirt-under-button-shirt combination.
That’s a help. Other physical aspects, some of which are unchangeable, will be a hindrance. For instance, women tend to have wider, “child-bearing” hips; while testosterone will assist in camouflaging that difference with fat redistribution in the waist and torso, chances are there will always be something a little “off” about my body in that area... something that, if looked at closely, doesn’t look quite right.
In other words - and I realize that saying this may push some uncomfortable buttons, both for Transgender folk and for Cisgender folk - in a way, trans bodies are always “monstrous”... always mixing elements that cross gender lines against old, well-established cultural taboos.
Some transfolk accept this with equanimity. For others it’s a painful reminder, a lingering wrongness that stands forever between one’s inner and outer realities. And for some cisgender (aka "normal") folk, it's a argument that gender-transitioning is somehow wrong, a twisted or perverse thing to do.
I prefer to see it, in the Turnerian sense, as a gift that can serve to initiate a deep mystery. An always-reminder that I have the capability to inhabit and explore a liminal space, a between-gender space, that doesn’t fit the cultural norm - a space in which this mixedness, this “wrongness,” can become a tool for deconstruction and re-creation.
I have never really been a woman in the “normal” sense - and perhaps I will never be a man in the completely “normal” sense, either. But what I am is needful and valuable, a prompt to the growth and maturation of our culture from a childhood dominated by stark, black-and-white differences into an adult world of more subtle shades and unexpected combinations. If I so choose, I can see the “wrongness” of my body as a signpost, guide to a secret path woven through the dark forest. And if I learn to own and embrace the liminal spaces where that secret dwells, I may find myself a shaman of sorts, able to help others navigate those strange in-between places when life and growth demand it of them.
Before I get too mystical on you (not that I'd mind, but you might!), let’s hark back to the concrete world for a brief history lesson. As a musician and a trumpet player, let me offer you a parable from music history about the value of “wrongness”.
In the long history of brass instruments, there were many, many years, before the invention of either rotary or piston valves, in which it was all but impossible to play a “normal” melody on the trumpet, which was essentially limited to just those few widely-spaced notes which could be played by changing air pressure and the tension of the lips (think of modern-day bugle calls). The only way to manage anything remotely resembling a complete musical scale was to use a specialized instrument known as a clarino trumpet, with an enormously long tube coiled like that of a modern French horn; the great length of piping made it possible for the virtuoso player (a specialist) to get more notes, closer together, at the most extreme high range of the instrument. But there were still gaps in the scale, and some of the notes were “wrong” - hopelessly out of tune.
However, trumpet music of that time period routinely seemed to use notes that didn’t exist on the trumpet, and musicologists wondered why. Eventually it was discovered that those “wrong” notes, the out-of-tune ones, were in fact the key to completing the scale! Because they were about halfway between the “right” notes, a skilled player could actually “bend” the pitch far enough in either direction (modern brassplayers call this “lipping the note” up or down) so that the wrong note yielded TWO “right” notes - one higher and one lower. These “bent” (or shall we perhaps say “monstrous”?) notes weren’t exactly normal; they had a different sound and projection level, and if you tried to hold them too long, the difference would be obvious... but their presence completed the scale and made the trumpet able to play such amazing, complex music as, say, the third movement of the second Brandenburg Concerto.
It is perhaps also worth pointing out, in this context, that although the English word “monstrous” may seem to connote something twisted or evil, the original etymology of the word had nothing to do with wrongness. It comes from the Latin verb “monstrare” which merely means to show or to point out - the same Latin root as our English word “demonstrate.” In this context we might well translate “monstrous” simply as “worth looking at”!
Those in-between notes on the trumpet were certainly worth looking at. And my in-between experience of gender, both in my physical body and in my interactions with the culture of my birth, may be similarly valuable.
And if not... well, it’s still pretty damn fun to finally be able to say to the world: Really? You thought I was a girl??? Seriously? Well, guess what? April Fool!!! :p
Comments
Post a Comment