Writing Project Runway

Last night I was sad to see Mondo not win Project Runway. Earlier in the season I had actually liked some of Gretchen's designs and I always pull for folks from Portland, OR, but Mondo one me over with his personal quirkiness, his feelings of insecurity and, well, his designs. (Besides Gretchen, as she was portrayed, seemed so pretentious.)

As I was watching the season finale and not working on one of my various writing projects, I couldn't help but think about the similarities between the writing process and Project Runway. The different challenges parallel the different types of writing projects we do: We have the "team challenge," which involves working with collaborators and all that entails; the "making a couture gown out of garbage challenge," which might parallel revising a chapter from the dissertation into an article; we have the "design a cocktail dress for a regular gal" challenge, which might be like writing a piece for a popular audience or an audience outside of your field; there is always "design a garment for a celebrity," which reminds me of writing a piece for that eminent scholar or journal . . . even when the project might be a bit out of your league at the moment. Rarely, do the contestants get to design something completely on their own terms. The closest they probably come is at the end, when they design their own line . . . but even then there are expectations set by others. Likewise, those of us at the beginning of our careers often have projects that respond to the needs and conform to the rules of others. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, of course. At least for me, it's how it has been.

Watching the show, I also thought about how the contestants evolve and grow over the show. It takes them time to get used to working under pressure and in their new surroundings--"the workroom." Similarly, I guess I should have anticipated that moving from grad school into a full time job might also take some adjustment, but I'm not sure if really could have anticipated how much time it has taken to start getting used to "the challenges." In other words, some of my early writing pieces or projects have been hits and some have probably been misses, although I can definitely see my work evolve. Also, I can also tell that I'm starting to develop a style. Not only do my writing projects revolve around similar themes and questions (kind of like designing for a particular "type" of client), but I'm getting a sense of my voice . . . the colors and patterns that I'm most comfortable working with. In fact, putting together my tenure file last fall helped me see some of this progress and development--a good thing to see within the midst of the tenure process. (Thankfully, it was a successful process.)

Returning to Gretchen's win and Mondo's "not-win" (I can't call it a loss), I was struck by the fact that even though Mondo didn't come out on top the judges were still confident about him being a successful designer. The same with Andy and even Michael C. Wow. What a novel concept, winning isn't everything. Hopefully, I can translate that into my writing/ academic life!

Lessons from the Midpoint

So, I'm just over half way through the sabbatical. Here are some of the things I've learned so far about sabbatical, my work and Satan.

1. Change can be difficult. Even if the change is positive in nature, like having time to work and reflect, adjusting to different work patterns, different work expectations, different surroundings, etc. can be unsettling. When things change, I need to allow myself some time to adjust or even some time to flail about resisting the change before I can move forward.

2. Personally, I am happiest with my work if I have more than one project going at a time. If I get frustrated with one project or am simply tired with reading one set of materials, it's nice to be able to change pace without having to stop work all together. That's where Satan comes in: Picking up a project on Satan (an annotated online bibliography) this month has allowed me to have something to focus upon besides Revelation's bridal imagery. Thank God, or Satan, or whoever (esp. the person who recommended me to the OUP editor) . . . because I needed a diversion.

3. Sometimes we just need to give ourselves a break, literally and figuratively. Literally, sometimes we just need a little time to relax and to let work sit for awhile. If we focus on anything too long, we have a distorted perspective on it. I had a colleague a number of years ago who used to take a mental health day once a semester. She could tell when she was pushing herself too hard and so, before she started biting heads off students and pushing colleagues out of windows, she took a day off of work just to catch up on stuff she needed to do and to relax. She was really one of the most well adjusted people I've met. Figuratively, we need to quit being so hard on ourselves. OK, I need to quit being so hard on myself. I need to give myself a break from the constant criticism and unattainable expectations. I'm not perfect and I never will be and it's not really fair that I demand that of myself at work, at home, with my friends, with my family, etc. No one else is perfect, even if they may have perfected the art of performing perfection.

4. I have some good ideas and I know some things about the Book of Revelation.

5. Writing can be hard work. Of course I knew this before sabbatical, but I'm being reminded again. I told a friend yesterday that writing, at times, is like pulling bags of wet laundry out of my brain. It takes effort and some persistence.

6. I'm who I need to be right now. The things I'm experiencing today, whether I'm struggling with feelings of inadequacy or happy about a line or two that I've written, are part of my lesson for the moment. Yes, I know that sounds like something out of a Hazelden self-help book, but . . . oh well. "It is what it is," as the chef-testants on Top Chef often say.

herod's theater box

This summer I had the opportunity to visit a number of sites related to Herodian Dynasty in Israel. One of the interesting things about Herod the Great (37 BCE-4 BCE) is his relationship to the major players involved in the emergence of the Roman Empire. Initially allied with Mark Antony, after Octavian's victory, Herod courted his favor. He met Octavian at Rhodes where he turned his loyalty to Mark Antony into a positive factor, proclaiming that his loyalty would now be directed toward Octavian. After Octavian's acceptance of his loyalty, Herod built Ceasarea Maritima in the then-named Augustus' honor.

Ceasarea wasn't the only Herodian building project reflecting Roman influence. Although Herod's building at Herodium, a hill South of Jerusalem, began prior to Herod's connections to Augustus, archeologist Ehud Netzer suggests that the building project may have been part of Herod's attempt at demonstrating his sophistication to Roman elites. The site at Herodium included a luxury palace, gardens, a large bath complex and a theater. Recently, Netzer and his team, who had been searching for Herod's tomb, discovered a private theater box at the top of theater. This box has recently been featured in the National Geographic. As the images in the article reveal, the box was sumptuously painted, including faux windows and scenes of the Nile, which were especially popular among Romans. When the group I traveled with this summer met with Netzer, he showed us the box, which Zealots later turned into a kitchen, explaining that he believed Herod had this painted especially to impress his Roman guests. These paintings, in fact, are some of the few Roman paintings in Judea with human and animal figures. Other Herodian decorative arts, such as the mosaics at Masada, refrain from depicting such figures. This is something scholars have attributed to Herod's compliance with the Jewish prohibitions against images. This box potentially challenges some of the the assumptions scholars have held about Herod and his relation to Jewish tradition.

Kiki, Herb and Grilled Cheezus

In the past few weeks, with the allegations being made against Bishop Eddie Long and the spate of gay teen suicides, the attention of many Americans has been drawn to questions of homosexuality and religion, specifically Christianity. While productions schedules suggest that the Fox network’s show Glee could not have planned the recent “Grilled Cheesus” episode as a response to these issues, the episode does reflect the current climate. In this episode, the Glee club is interested in celebrating their faiths. Kurt, a young gay man, expresses a sentiment shared by many LGBTQ individuals: “"Sorry, but if I wanted to sing about Jesus, I'd go to church. And the reason I don't go to church is because most churches don't think very much of gay people. Or women. Or science." After making his views clear, Kurt’s father suffers a serious heart attack. While his friends turn to faith for comfort and want him to do the same, Kurt is resolute in his stance. At one point, Kurt’s friend Mercedes pleads with him to believe in something. Kurt’s sadness and pain is visible in his every move, yet the expressions of the divine offered to Kurt by his friends is simply not sufficient to meet his pain. Finally, in tears by his father’s bedside, Kurt proclaims his belief in their relationship, their family. His comatose father lightly grabs Kurt’s hand, as the rest of the cast sings Joan Osborne’s “What if God Were One of Us.” The message being that the queer divine, that queer religiosity, is found in relationship.

The conclusion to Kurt’s spiritual struggle is one that many LGBTQ individuals reach: The divine is not for us; our church is in the community we create with one another. While this is a perfectly legitimate position, for some LGBTQ individuals within the Christian tradition there is a desire for a queer Christology that plumbs the depths of our experiences and even pain. In a less well known, yet critically acclaimed, drag act, Kiki and Herb’s “Year of Magical Drinking Tour” (recorded at the Knitting Factory in 2007), we are presented a theological reflection that pushes us to think about the figure of Christ in relation to queer experience.

Kiki, the drag persona created by artist and actor Justin Bond, and Herb, played by pianist Kenny Mellman, have been performing together since the late 1980’s/ early 1990’s. Kiki is the weathered and often drunk lounge singer, while Herb is her long-suffering, gay accompanist. As Kiki explains in this performance, she is the “hag” to Herb’s “fag.” Biblical or religious references comprise a recurring theme in their shows: Their off Broadway Christmas show, which won an Obie award in 2001, was entitled “Jesus Wept.” Their more recent comeback tour was called “The Second Coming” and in “Kiki and Herb Would Die For You” Kiki describes Jesus as the ultimate showbiz martyr. While the duo has toured internationally and received critical attention, their work is certainly not as mainstream Glee.

This particular show opens with Kiki dressed in a black cocktail dress covered with red-glitter explosions and a large black bow in her teased blonde hair. Kenny wears a lamé tuxedo jacket. Both of their faces are lined with “wrinkles,” obviously drawn with stage makeup. Kiki, drink in hand, explains that the “Year of Magical Drinking” celebrates their Tony nomination and the death of Jerry Fallwell. The costumes, the dramatic atmosphere, the biting humor are pure camp.

In all of their performances, Kiki offers extended monologues, seemingly alcohol infused prattle, which spin a fantastic narrative about their fictional lives. In this particular show, she explains her and Herb’s connection to Jesus. Present in the stable at Christ’s birth and a little hungry, since they were poor little Jewish urchins, they drink milk from a cow that has eaten Jesus’ afterbirth. The milk grants the duo eternal life and they grow up alongside of Jesus. Continuing the story as she drinks her cocktail, Kiki offers that both she and Herb have a “hot nut” for younger men and, consequently, have known Jesus in the “biblical sense.” In fact, Kiki had quite an affair with Jesus, who she describes as a tender lover. She then tells of Jesus’ true character, as the “first hippie,” who drove people like Fallwell out of the Temple. People today have gotten the story turned around, Kiki intones: If Jesus was still in the grave, than he’d be rolling over in it. Jesus was just coming into his sexuality when he died and had he lived he would have likely gone in “Herb’s direction.” The singer wistfully proclaims that Jesus “was bisexual, spiritual and beautiful . . . and they killed him.” It’s a cautionary tale not to “challenge the man.” She then describes how both she and Mary Magdalene plead, upon seeing Jesus on the cross, “Bring him down!” Kiki ends this monologue by explaining that she is looking forward to Christ’s supposed return and she dedicates a song, a poignant rendition of Emmylou Harris’ “From Boulder to Birmingham,” to the only man she ever loved--Jesus Christ.

One of the most striking aspects of this show is the way Kiki, or Justin Bond, appropriates the tradition of a lounge act monologue in order to collapse time, subvert the conventions of history and construct a queer history. This a-historicity, an ability to exist in the present, past, and future, is characteristic of camp: A camp queen can live in the 30’s and 40’s as the incomparable Marlene Dietrich, while drag king Murray Hill stylistically inhabits the late 60’s, early 70’s. By retelling their history into the history of Jesus’ life, Kiki and Herb point to the fact that all history, including Gospel accounts of Jesus, is story, is constructed. In some way, Kiki is a modern day Albert Schweitzer as her story reveals how interpreters weave their historical and cultural perspectives into the life of Jesus. She reminds us that even things such as Jesus’ gender and sexual identity are constructed in the stories of his life as they are told and re-told. Furthermore, Bond collapses history, taking Kiki and Herb back and time, in order to weave Jesus into queer history or the shared cultural memory of the queer community. This is arguably one of the functions of camp for queer communities, whose histories have been erased and assaulted by heteronormative constructions of history.

In her re-telling of Jesus’ life, Kiki offers a portrait of Jesus quite unlike the seemingly straight Jesus depicted in so many popular contexts (e.g. the Jesus played by Jack Black in “Prop 8: The Musical). In terms of sexuality, Jesus’ identity is fluid, having had affairs with Mary Magdalene, according to Kiki, Kiki herself, Herb, and moving in the direction of being gay. Likewise, Jesus embraces a queer gender identity, embodying characteristics typically associated with the feminine, such as tenderness, beauty, spirituality. Kiki even feminizies Jesus through her re-reading of biblical events, describing the wonderful pedicures that Jesus gave at the Last Supper. While spiked with humor, Kiki offers her audience a thoroughly queer and emphatically incarnational theology. As Marcella Althaus-Reid argued in a 2007 article, Queer Theology assumes, “God dwells in flesh and when this happens all our myopic earth-bound ideas are subject to change, the dynamic life force which is the divine erupts in diversity and the energy of it will not be inhibited by laws and statues.” (“Thinking Theology and Queer Theory.” Feminist Theology 15.3 (2007): 302-214). In this incarnational vein, Bond interprets Jesus’ death as a point of connection with those in the queer and LGBT communities who have challenged the dominant culture’s construction of gender and sexuality. It is a powerful move when you consider the violence, emotional, social, and physically, experienced by so many.

Toward the end of the show, Kiki becomes drunk and angry. No holds are barred as she explains how she was unable to protect Herb from being raped when they were both institutionalized in the ‘50s. In response, she launches into a medley of “Heroin” by Lou Reed, comparing the rush of the drug to being like Jesus’ son, “Wild Side” also by Lou Reed, highlighting the drag aspect of the song, and Radiohead’s “Creep.” Kiki screams, “But I'm a creep/ I'm a weirdo/ What the hell am I doing here?/ I don't belong here.” This medley ends and Kiki and Herb break into a frenzied rendition of “Jesus Loves Me” combined with “O Happy Day,” replete with evangelistic recitations of John 3:16 and Psalm 23. Finally, Kiki ends with the song, “Cunts Are Still Running the World” by Jarvis Cocker which offers a biting critique of social hierarchy. Interpreting this pastiche of religious allusions, queer images and raw emotion in light of Kiki’s earlier discussion of Jesus’ crucifixion, I am reminded of Mark’s depiction of Jesus on the cross. Could this be Kiki’s re-enactment of Jesus’ cry, “My God, My God why have you forsaken me?” Has she become the crucified Messiah who cannot save his close companions from the violence and social upheaval that he knows is to come, just as Kiki could not protect her beloved Herb? Is she giving voice to the sense of forsakenness felt by queers, gays, lesbians and trans-people, who have been rejected by their families, communities, governments and religions? As in the Markan narrative, it is in the midst of this forsakenness that Jesus’ identity is made known. In spite of the pain, or perhaps on account of the pain, Kiki asserts Jesus’ identity and love and proclaims the protection of the Good Shepherd: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of death, I shall fear no evil, for thou art with me; thy rod and staff, they comfort me.” Even though the privileged and well-positioned, and we would add straight, people control the world, Kiki is comforted by a queer/ embodied Jesus . . . a Good Shepherd who has a “rod.”

Kiki’s Jesus, I would argue, is a Jesus of queer experience. It is a version of Jesus who shares the pain of Kurt as he sits by his father’s bedside, unable to take comfort in the churches that exclude him. It is also the Jesus who experiences the pain of bullying and violence and the despair of suicide. Behold, the Queer Jesus.

I presented a version of this paper at the 2009 meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature.

space: a place to store my thoughts

The network of connections between space, thought and persuasion/ rhetoric is something that I find fascinating. Ancient rhetoricians recommended the use of spatial imagery as a tool for remembering the parts of a speech. Just as you move through a house, so to you move through the parts of your speech. Memory was understood in spatial terms.

Similarly, in a 1994 article Bettina Bergmann suggests that actual spaces could serve as a sort of mnemonic device. In "The Roman House as Memory Theater" (The Art Bulletin 76), she argues that the wall paintings in the House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii, which included depictions of classical marriages, were arranged to evoke particular ideas, connections and analogies in the minds of the viewer. In other words, the images and the space, which constrains to an extent how the images are viewed, activate certain ways of thinking and imagining. Fascinating. (Unfortunately, I don't recall Bergmann talking about the "Cave Canem" mosaic also found in the house.)

So, where am I going with this? (Pun intended.) I'm not completely sure, but I think that this type of understanding of space might be pertinent to thinking about Revelation, a narrative that relies upon a very structured notion of the universe: Below earth, earth, mid-heaven, heavenly throne room. Interesting things happen in relation to these spaces. For instance, the new Jerusalem seems trapped in a perpetual descent from heaven into mid-heaven toward earth. Also, the text pinpoints certain important places (e.g. Mount Zion) and shows interest in measuring space (chapter 11) and discussing the arrangement/ structure of certain spaces (e.g. throne room and the new Jerusalem). I wonder, how does this relate to space as a mnemonic and how does this relate to the way spaces were constructed/ manipulated in the ancient world.

Although Revelation was written in Asia Minor and not Israel, I can't help thinking about how Herod manipulated the natural landscape to create Herodian. The hill is artificially enhanced and into it is built a palace, including gardens. There probably would have been a structure visible at the top (I have double-check my autographed copy of Ehud Netzer's book on Herodian!) and there were structures at the base and on the sides that would have been visible from a distance. Also, I''m thinking of the connection between "recreated" spaces in villas and the like. For instance the Serapeum and Canopus at Hadrian's Villa, which seemingly evoke Alexandria.

At this point, I just using the blog as a virtual storage space . . . a place to hold my thoughts and questions about space and Revelation. Here's hoping that I can complete the growing list of current projects in order to get to this one sometime in the next ten years!