forthcoming in the near-distant future: ON BEING HALF-IMAGINARY
this is not terrifically typical of me but i wanted to announce & start discussing something i've been sitting on for some time. some of you may be aware that in summer 2021 i wrote a long hybrid essay/autotheory/antimemoir/prose something, called on being half-imaginary. some of you may have even seen earlier drafts of it. well, it's been picked up by an indie press out of ireland. it's coming out in 2024. i want to talk about it for a number of reasons. one, i've sent it to two blurbers so it's open on my desktop as we speak. two, it's probably of interest to at least two people here because of one of its "theses"--laid right out on p. 21:
My personal identity formation, including gender identity and sense of myself as a poet, can be traced in large part to Doctor Who.
it has taken me a long time to "come out" as a lifelong DW fan, especially since "fan" doesn't cover the importance of the show to my life. that's part of why i want to talk about it, because the split between public faces of poetry & poetics communities, & fandom communities, seems to hinge on excluding each other. like, i know there's a growing "speculative poetry" movement, which i love, but it still seems like even those conversations don't get at the thing i find appallingly absent from all poetics conversation (& even fandoms): love. why can't we talk about genuine, deep love without cynicism, mockery or protective self-cancellation? i mean, i know i make a discipline out of doing that very thing, but my question stands--culturally, why is it so hard, so subversive, to talk about the emotional, self-affirming or self-creating core of what we do & love & make? why are there so few spaces that can hold that engagement? i hope to create those spaces wherever i am, so that's another reason i bring this book & its centerings here.
it's also on my mind because at the end of the month i am going to my first DW convention. (i'll turn 52 a week after). there are many reasons why i was unable to do so until now, & many reasons why i am going, finally, this year. i need to bring my love to one particular mentor. i need to have a vacation, the first one in my life that was truly for my own pleasure. i need to be in relation with others who value these stories & the people making them alive. & i need to represent my other communities.
on twitter i joked recently that i'm the kind of guy who wears an indie press t-shirt to a Doctor Who con. well, that's exactly what i plan to do. i want to blur the lines between these worlds that are artificially kept distant--at least on the face of things!--& make it easier to claim both as home. because they are. for me, they've largely been my only homes, my true homes.
Jay--I have a few quick responses:
ReplyDelete1. You know that I (we, honestly, but I won't presume to speak for Phil) LOVE Tom Baker's Who & the whole Who shitty/wonderful BBC studio effect (the choices are always caves/tunnels or an alien landscape that seems to be some BBC parking lot backing out into a forest preserve) . . . I love the costumes, the sounds, the feeling of playing pretend at another world . . .
2. A long, long time ago--I can remember I had these green pants that I loved--Phil and I went to Facets (<3) to see this movie (2009, apparently): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Came_from_Kuchar . . . and it's a nice, friendly film, but something in my emotional facing of it caused to me feel such deep kinship, and I felt that somehow how I wanted to be a poet the way these Kuchar brothers are movie-makers/artists/teachers. I often suffer/benefit from wanting to BE an artist/a character in the way that I make them an overlay on me, not casually but not seriously . . . I don't know . . . I tried to write about this in part of INTERROPORN/WOMONSTER . . . and sometimes I feel a kind of artificiality about my affections and self-costumes and sometimes I love it so much.
3. I liked this book a lot, for thinking about FANFIC and its many faces: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/oct/05/who-is-mary-sue-by-sophie-collins-review-correcting-sexist-narratives
all of these are exciting responses--i know about your & phil's affinities for the fourth doctor, & i had you in mind when i mentioned "at least two of you" would likely relate. :) i think i need to check out that film. i need to reread INTERROPORN/WOMONSTER anyway, but definitely because of what you talk about above, because i remember recognizing that part of it as doing something similar. i was thinking of sending you the book too, with the possibility of blurbing, though not a pressure to do so...i know you've got a lot on every plate you keep spinning in the air. but it's also got an extensive analysis of my own self-costuming esp. from my teen years that the book mostly concerns.
ReplyDeleteas far as my own incarnational affinities, i usually say...i love them all, but "my doctor" is sylvester mc coy. i also resonate with 3 & 5 because they were the ones on PBS when i first started watching. (the book gets into this). if you want, i'll send it your way.
Do send it my way, yes!
ReplyDeletesending it to you is on my "re-entry" list for this week as i return to earth post-con...but i may need a nudge
Deleteyr too cool for me Jay-- I briefly watched Who during Russell T. Davies days but nothing older than 9th Doctor. 🥺
ReplyDeleteALSO CONGRATS ON THE NEW PROJECT!!!!!
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