This Is Beautiful: Fanny

I cannot believe I have never heard of the band Fanny before. Fanny is a rock band consisting entirely of women from the 70s. In fact, it is the first all girl rock band. And they are queer and women of color. It really does not get much better than that.

I found this band through the podcast "Lost Notes" from an episode they did on the band in their second season. It's an amazing episode, it goes through the history of the band and how they had fans like David Bowie and Paul McCartney. 

I've been listening to their music non-stop all week, I think they sound amazing. And the fact that the music is all written and performed by a bunch of badass women makes it even better. Their sound is not super unique, they sound a lot like any other 70s rock band, but I sure haven't heard that sound with a female vocalist before. 

Personally I've been in a bit of a rut recently, and getting out of my routine and listening to new music always helps me. So give them a listen if you need something new to knock you our of a rut.

“How to be an Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi

 Similar to how all white people are reading White Fragility, this book has also seen a resurgence due to the Black Lives Matter movement gaining traction. Having just finished, let me just say: this book is powerful. Kendi combines anecdotes from his life with principles about racism versus antiracist, and narrates the story of how he has grown as an antiracist while influencing our growth and introducing the reader to similar ideas. It is a really compelling way to lead us all to the same conclusion while also meeting the reader where they are at and not talking down to them.

I think the most powerful story in this book comes at the end, when Kendi discusses his family’s struggles with cancer. How his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, and his mother then had a similar diagnosis. How he went on to develop colon cancer and battled that while writing this book. This text is far from a cancer memoir, but his use of interweaving cancer as a physical disease with racism as a mental disease in America is incredibly powerful. What was particularly interesting to me is that earlier in the book he questions another academic using the metaphor of racism as a disease. And here he has changed his mind and now actively describes it as a cancer.

Activists tend to shy away from times when they might have been wrong or have had to change their minds about a topic. Not Kendi. He actively embraces his younger self who unknowingly harbored racist ideas. In showing how his thoughts have changed over time, it causes the reader to also look inward and examine their past or current racist thoughts. The reality is that we have all had them. We all live in a racist society and we have been marinating in these ideas for our entire lives. There is no need to try and hide it from ourselves, instead we should be more like Kendi and examine why we thought this and why it is incorrect. Only then can we work towards creating an anti-racist society.

This book has been a resounding success, and it is known as that for a reason. Kendi gently takes the reader’s hand and guides them through both his journey and their own to becoming an anti-racist. It makes this book ideal for individuals who want to get started examining the racism in their lives, as well as those who have been fighting it for years. We all fall somewhere within Kendi’s life and can learn from his story. Now more than ever it is important that we understand and make use of these learning opportunities and fight to make the world a more anti-racist place.

This Is Beautiful: The Strike

 Now that the strike is over I can write about it a little bit more. I was not super involved, mainly picked up picketing shifts when I could, but it was still a powerful movement to be involved in.

Seeing how the graduate students came together to support a common cause was really incredible. I do not usually feel that connected to the rest of the students since this school is so big, but this brought us together. It felt like we could all talk about and connect over this is nothing else. No matter what we studied, this was something we cared about.

I am pretty disappointed with how it ended, basically with the school threatening to dissolve the union and forcing us to accept their offer. Sure the offer is better than the first one they offered, but it is not great. It just feels like a disappointing ending to a movement that had to much potential.

Still, that does not negate everything that we did over the week of the strike. We made our voices heard and our position clear. We spread the word about our position to the community and were joined by so many people. And we showed that students at this university take care of each other and look after each other.

Unfortunately this is just the way change tends to happen. Excruciatingly slowly. And we don't have the time for that. But it is part of activism that we will have to accept for now.

Dancing at Home

 This is nothing new for me, but I decided to write about it.

So because of lockdown I have started having to take dance classes from my tiny kitchen. And it's really strange. I have yet to get over how strange it is. Something is just very out of place about dancing in the middle of my kitchen.

Ballet started as the dance of the gods originally. It is very formal, every part of your body must be controlled and mastered in order to create a specific shape. It's an art form passed down over years of teaching and performance. 

And now I'm doing it in the middle of my dirty, cluttered kitchen. It wasn't so bad over the summer when I wasn't part of a formal class so I could wear shorts and a tank top. Now I'm dancing in full ballet regalia (think tights, leotard, and hair in a bun) in my dirty, cluttered kitchen. Great.

This pandemic has forced us in a lot of ways to do activities in different locations. Usually in our own homes. We have to take these fancy techniques and bring them into the mundane. It creates a certain cognitive dissonance. Now our houses aren't just where we live and come back to at night, it's a dance studio, workout room, office, and bedroom. 

I should really clean my kitchen.

Campus Strike

 Look, this week has been rough, I'm just going to take off a week from writing here. The graduate students, residential life, some faculty, and numerous others have been striking all week at my university to protest the reopening plan as well as many other things. It's just been exhausting since I've been doing my best to support the strike and I don't really have the energy right now. 

Support people working to improve conditions. Striking and making your voice heard is beautiful. That's all I got right now.

This Is Beautiful: Community

 This week was the first meeting for a couple of orgs that I'm in, and even though they were virtual, it was really nice to see people again. I think I forgot how much energy I tend to pick up from other people around me, and how invigorating that can be. It's got me all pumped up for the start of the semester! I'm starting to feel excited about coming up with events to host and things to do. We might be stuck being virtual, but there's still friends to make and things to do. It'll be okay. :) 

“Utopia Avenue” by David Mitchell

I do not care about the rest of 2020, we got a new book from David Mitchell this year and that makes up for it to me. Mitchell is one of my favorite authors, and reading his works were formative for me in college. And this book does not disappoint.

I cannot help but feel as though this book was written specifically for me. Utopia Avenue chronicles the experiences of four musicians in England in the 60s as they come together to form a band and make music together. There is Elf, already an established folk singer in her own right; Jasper, a guitar wizard if a bit eccentric; Griff, a jazz drummer; and Dean, a bassist who recently got evicted from his apartment and has nothing else going for him. It is a recipe for success!

Knowing Mitchell, the narration is not as straightforward as it seems. Each chapter features a different member of the band’s voice, but observant readers will notice that it follows the tracks of the band’s albums. Each song has a specific songwriter, who narrates the chapter in the story of the band pertaining to that song. It’s a really neat structure that compliments the story of the band without getting toooooo out there and weird.

What I continue to appreciate more and more about Mitchell’s writings are how he will bring back characters that he loved to write about and expand his universe. Fans of Michell’s work will recognize a number of them (Jasper de Zoet is probably the most obvious one) including the beloved Marinus as well as one of my favorite characters from Cloud Atlas. And even if readers are unfamiliar with his works, that does not detract from the book at all. Everything necessary is explained in the plot, and in fact even builds off of previous books they appeared in.

I do not want to spoil one of the best additions to the book, but I absolutely loved the development of Elf and her sexuality. Mildly alluded to early on in the book, it becomes official when she begins to date Luisa, a reporter who might be familiar to some. I was nervous about this direction, seeing as how men writing queer female relationships has not always been respectful. But Mitchell treats the subject with grace and respect. There’s a segment on labels that so nicely captures how it feels to have your identity turned upside down by how you feel about someone. I was pleasantly surprised for sure, and I definitely wish that more male writers took a leaf out of his book.

Utopia Avenue is one of the best books that I have read in a while. It does not shy away from discussing esoteric subjects like how music can make you feel while also chronicling the mundane interactions between friends. Plenty of people claim the music of the 60s as an inspiration, but few are able to portray it in a fresh light like Mitchell can.

This Is Beautiful: Soup

 It's one of those weeks. I just feel like a great thing about virtual classes is that I can stay home and eat whatever I want without worrying about transporting the food around. So it's been a lot of soup for me. Comfort food time. I don't even care that it's so hot out or anything, this stuff is good and I'm eating it, back off.