Month: January 2015

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Naked Bodies on Herself.com: Pornography or Powerful?

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So, is this pornography or a good idea? Herself.com, copyright dated 2015, claims to be dedicated to women, about women for women, according to their manifesto:

“Herself is a gesture to women for women by women; a chance to witness the female form in all its honesty without the burden of the male gaze, without the burden of appealing to anyone. These women are simply & courageously existing, immortalized within these photos. Within their words, their experiences and stories are offered on Herself in the hopes of encouraging solidarity – that maybe we as women will take comfort in the triumphs of others rather than revelling in each other’s defeats. Let us reclaim our bodies. Let us take them back from those who seek to profit from our insecurity.” -Caitlin Stasey

At first glance (lots of bodies to glance at, that being what hits the viewer first), the idea struck me as disingenuous, maybe a marketing ploy. After all, there are seven or so women featured naked with their stories interspersed between nude photos–on the Internet. The metaphor is supposed to be something like the naked truth, but how exactly are these women avoiding the male gaze and pornographic objectification on this public space?

However, after reading the interview questions that each woman responds to, I changed my mind a little, thought more about it. Women respond to many questions ranging on topics from first time sexual experiences, body image, marriage, monogamy, and polyamory, to name just a smattering of the content. The questions are rather blunt and aim for honesty. Few touched on the political such as those about reproductive rights and contraception. The rest are personal.

So what makes this anything more than a sociology graduate school project/case study? Well, the attempt to disseminate ordinary, non-Photoshopped, random, high quality, well-photographed bodies that are not merely categorized in the usual culturally accepted genres of naked or partially clad female bodies, i.e., models, actresses, erotica, pornography, or cadavers, is to challenge culturally acceptable notions of female nudity imposed on the public with other versions of the story of the naked female body. Potentially, it is a direct challenge to the media by ordinary women maintaining control of the deployed-into-society imagery that undergirds bias and affinity, dictates social norms and relegates some bodies to lesser or more valuable against usual criteria, i.e., commercial, aesthetic or familial.

If Herself.com’s game is to infuse media with naked bodies owned and thereby controlled by those throwing their bodies out to the public and not an advertising agency or other commercial enterprise, then I think it is a good idea. However, they will need a great many more bodies to display spanning all demographics: age, race, ethnicity, shape, identity. I will be curious to see where this site goes.

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“An Open Letter to My Ex-Husband’s New Girlfriend”

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A refreshingly mature, well-composed letter that reads like a how-to manual in its full cognizance of the nuanced trials that await complex family dynamics post-divorce with children, Tina Plantamura’s open letter to the newcomer to her expanding family (she is remarried) is sensible, sensitive and rational. One passage stands out as particularly the hallmark of all three aforementioned adjectives:

This might sound weird, but I’m so excited about you. My sons will see a side of their father that they don’t even know they missed. They’ll witness the kind of happiness that blooms from the excitement, joy and mystery that comes with a new relationship. They’ll see their father beaming with hope. They’ll hear him laugh (too much and too loud, as they’ve reported to us) and speak with a new charm in his voice. And because they love and admire him, all of these things will make them happier, too.

A healthier response about relationship healing and moving on I have never seen in over twenty years of divorces I’ve navigated; although, I did not often get to see the aftermath, the farther down the road recovery phase of my clients. Most divorces with new significant others, especially those who were part of the divorce causes–and there are always multiple causes–were complicated by yet another person’s agenda and sensibilities to consider. Generally, the path from conclusion to fresh start was far more difficult with outsiders to the divorcing family.

While Plantamura is optimistic about the relationship her sons will develop with the addressee of this letter and attempts to reassure her that the connection she and her ex (the new boyfriend) have is solely the children, both of those emotional and potentially volatile components of the newly emerging “family” are often insurmountably difficult to surrender.

Most mothers jealously guard their possessory interests in their children, emotional, behavioral, and instructional, interests that could easily be threatened by an outsider/insider mothering figure. For instance, being their father’s girlfriend, she inevitably will require, may even demand, a modicum of respect from her lover’s children. She may imagine a future with this family and want to establish and ensure her place as adult and potential permanent roommate. If she lives with him even part time, that demand may be even more insistent. And the longer the relationship persists, the likelier the intrusion on the mother’s coveted role as advisor, consoler, and role model. Disagreements are likely to surface.

Also, the connection two people have with respect to their children is unique, something the girlfriend will never have regarding those children who affect her life, individually and with her husband. Jealousy and friction are foreseeable no matter how warm the welcome and sincere the assurance and encouragement by an ex.

All in all, skepticism aside, I enjoyed the idyllic embrace of this letter and even if only a stated intention of good will and hope, it serves as inspiration for those willing to accept responsibility for raising healthy children as well as for their own happiness.

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Mistress Gone Ballistic

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I have written of the lure and power of confession before, the cost and benefit to confessor and hearer. Clearly some confess to atone, to bring on the flogging. That is what must be going on in this short advice column Q & A in elle.com, “Ask E. Jean: The Other Woman Etiquette.”

Surely there is a plea to be judged and condemned by the inquirer and E. Jean the advice columnist is only too happy to do so. Why else would a woman expose herself so when she could have easily kept it to herself or sought less public advice, like the therapist E. Jean suggests? I have to wonder at the authenticity of this piece. If not for self-flagellation, what motivates someone to seek an advice columnist, exposing herself publicly to disdain, being judged as someone so crazed or callous as to have committed the act for which she seeks atonement? Maybe it’s made up.

I am not judging (though it sure seems like it). Crimes of passion happen and are treated differently in the law from murder by reason of just that sort of mindlessness that negates intent to do harm, the lack of premeditative hurt and the acknowledgement that this state of mind is part of being human all too often. Some acts are far too provocative–say, catching your wife in bed with another–so that collateral damage is if not excusable then predictable at least.

But I always pause when I read about passion disasters, ponderous at those reported burns so deep that the blacked out mind ceases to direct the body’s actions any longer. Don’t get me wrong. I have suffered blind rage and mindless ecstasy. Perhaps I have been fortunate not to have utterly destroyed anyone or anything in my wake of near total obliteration, not that I know of anyhow.

Only near total obliteration. Somehow the little cricket conscience has chirped audibly enough for me to catch my breath, effect a re-set. The thought of destroying someone else in rage has no doubt occurred to me, but the gear shift from thought to action is sobering. Because sometimes it is just too late and too tragic to say I am sorry. That is what E. Jean and I believe about this mistress story. I have copied the entire short advice piece below.

Dear E. Jean: I have a question about the etiquette of being “the other woman.” The married man with whom I’d been having an affair told me I was “too needy” and that his “shoulders are not for [my] problems.” I was so angry that I texted his wife and ratted him out. I also called his sister and mother-in-law and told them I was pregnant with his child.

It was a lie. I was not pregnant. But I had reached the end of my rope when he ignored an important text I’d sent him. I was not only furious about being ignored, but I was hurt because he was emotionally unavailable to me. Now I feel terrible about what I’ve done. This is not the kind of person I am. How can I clear my conscience and move on from this? —Wronged Woman

Woman—Please: The man is a scoundrel. He was unfaithful to his wife. But you? What you did was so cruel, so half-witted, so dirty, so over the top, causing so much pain to so many people—and if any children suffer the slightest anguish because of your lie (if the man has kids and you cause a divorce)—I don’t want you to “clear your conscience.” Actually, I want you to go to a therapist.

WE RECOMMEND
Ask E. Jean: How Do I Make Peace With His Ex?
The shrink will help you understand that a married man is by definition “unavailable.” (I have the sickening feeling that you’re one of those sparkling Paula Broadwell–esque hotheads for whom “uproar’s your only music,” as Keats said. Hence, I’m not going to yammer all day about therapy. I just want you to give it a whirl and see if you can grok what’s going on and come to a deeper, truer understanding of your life.)

For your own honor, you must now write three letters. The man’s wife, his mother-in-law, and his sister should each receive one—handwritten in ink, on serious cream-colored stationery. Apologize for your heinous lies, take full blame for the affair, and say you led him into it. Yes, we know he’s a bastard. Yes, we know you’re not the Dalai Lama. But make this your one great, selfless act. Your remorse and honesty will restore your dignity, help three people deal with a catastrophe, and show what “kind of person” you are, really.

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Big Week in Mistress News

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Sunday is pandering to the public’s need to know day, apparently, because I am about to update readers on the latest in mistress news. But seriously, there is more motivation to critique the reporting of these events than to merely report these “compelling” mistress happenings.

First up is this eye-catching headliner from gawker.com: “60 Minutes’ Steve Kroft Guzzled Champagne from Mistress’ Ass: Report”. Here the big news is a celebrity newscaster had a three year affair with a Manhattan lawyer for which he was sorry and is quoted as apologizing to his wife with whom he has a kid. Of course, that in itself is not big news. No, to make this story newsworthy, piquing the public’s prurient interests, the gawker publication had to include copies of the illicit couple’s sexting, brought to everyone courtesy of the infamous National Enquirer. Thus the titled headline grabber.

Note that had the cited behaviors or sexting occurred between Kroft and his wife, even the National Enquirer would not have escaped criticism–or worse–as most readers would have been offended with such an outlandish invasion of privacy. But when it comes to affairs and celebrities, all bets are off. I got the distinct impression that the story was way too common place as a mere celebrity with a mistress report, so the piece had to be beefed up with something juicy. Thus the sexts.

In other less than stellar news reporting, the late Sammy Davis Jr.’s avowed ex-mistress became the latest in a long line of accusers, 24 or more, to step up in remembrance of being raped by Bill Cosby in USAToday’s report of a couple of weeks ago.

She describes the surprise attack, which occurred in the early 70s when she went to Cosby’s hotel room with barbecued ribs in hand, as one that left her stunned, particularly since she knew Cosby as a friend to Davis. Her stated reasons for not reporting the attack earlier were the prevailing attitudes about rape 45 years ago, her confusion about a friend rather than stranger in a dark alley rape and the awakening of her long ago repressed memory by the recent revelations of Cosby’s other alleged attacks.

It seems the writers did not pursue the going-to-Cosby’s-hotel-room-alone- bearing-ribs line of questioning. How many will read this article and think she is suspect merely by virtue of her being a professed ex-mistress? I would be surprised if there were no more than a handful.

Cosby himself has been the subject of many articles in the past year, all of them increasingly cognizant of his fall from a pretty high pedestal. Six months ago, the indulgences apparently went to him, the celebrity of notable clean, comic wholesome fun with family values. For example, uk’s dailymail ran an article about him in August of 2014, headlined with Bill Cosby’s dumped mistress and her mom having dinner with him. That is apparently the lead-in lure, but the story is a rather warm-ish more than critical story about Bill Cosby, ending with his heh, heh, heh parting remark on the Jimmy Fallon show that he got “some” from his wife on his 77th birthday and alluding to the trials and tribulations of an aging sexual guy with husbandly duties.

However, prior to that, the article matter of factly outlines the sexual abuse accusations, the long term affair and breakup with the subject mistress, as well as the lawsuit by a former lover claiming she raised his love child, the latter having gone to jail for extortion after she threatened Cosby with going to the tabloids. The most interesting part of the article is this excerpt from Cosby’s wife explaining how they were weathering the storm, discussing a time when the Cosbys had focused on ‘selfish needs’:

‘We were both young. We had to go through a lot. It’s difficult to learn to live with somebody, to be unselfish and to be responsible for your behavior – and even to think how you hurt others if you do certain things.’
‘You go through a transition, if you are committed to each other. You cleanse yourself of all of that baggage, and you look at each other and determine whether the relationship is worth salvaging, whether you really love each other and want to be together.’
‘Then you realize, ‘Wait a minute. I might have been doing this because I just didn’t want to think about how this would affect the other person or to allow myself to love someone with emotional intimacy’.’

She claims, I think, that Cosby’s ‘dalliances’ are the result of avoidance behavior, fear of emotional intimacy with a spouse or denial behaviors. Camille Cosby, a PhD in education, appears to be a very smart woman, and she is standing by her man. After all, what does she gain in vilifying him? She is not running for public office and is probably financially secure. Apparently she knew he was a philanderer, perhaps just not the extent of his behavior. And of course he is innocent until proven guilty though it is tough to overlook so many accusations. Defending her husband of 40 something years, a private and personal duty, surely trumps her civil duty to the female victims. Or does it?

Finally, there is the latest and greatest on an old mistress scandal, this one the most logically troublesome. Former CIA director and General, David Petraeus, is accused of having leaked classified information to his then mistress and biographer, Paula Broadwell, which could lead to felony charges.

The businessinsider article acknowledges that Petraeus’ affair was not so much the big deal (imagine that: a politician with a mistress) as the potential threat of blackmail or leaks, such as those he is accused of having made, that skewered his personal life publicly–clearly an exclusion from the wink wink exemption of the age old good ol’ boys’ mistressing practices.

So four different journals, from gossip to news, cover four different mistress stories from four different subjects: an unknown, two television celebrities and a high-ranking government official. Each is accorded the credibility afforded by society’s attitudes. The unknown mistress gets a salutary news spot in a daily gossip riding on a bashed celebrity’s coattails. The two celebrities get the usual free pass of a double sided nod playing up the public’s interests in illicit affairs of stars with intent to tarnish–or further tarnish–their reputations even while exploiting those celebrity reputations for the hook. That’s because journalists know the public both adores and excoriates celebrities, most likely due to the fame-lust that elicits both adoration and envy of those who have acquired it.

Fame is a shield, almost magical; it makes people turn away in disinterest or in wary suspicion of accusers assumed to be extorting from a monied star. Bill Cosby may still be riding that magic carpet ride: old stories, why didn’t they come forward sooner, paid off, wanting more money or attention, etc. Of course, the jury is not only not still out, it may never assemble. The play in the public sphere for sympathy and the power of fame and money may be the only “justice” on display here. And where there is power, fame, and money, there will be mistresses, adored and abhorred.

But the real power is in the consumers. The public are mostly predictable, sometimes quirky judges. They are a mix of salacious salivators, moralistic finger waggers and jealous girlfriends hooked on fantasy and soaps stories. And when they turn, as quickly as a rising star, public figure, or complete unknown can float the wave of notoriety or popularity, is as deep as they can drown and disappear. Power to the people.

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“Women Hold the Key to Marital Bliss”

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Photo: Andrea Obzerova/Shutterstock

Well of course they do. Generally speaking, parents foster emotional intelligence in little girls, at least in Western cultures, so women are better at identifying and naming specific items of redress in an emotional domain such as marriage, love relationships. They can speak the language of emotional discourse and are less likely to lose their balance when the dizzying frays of discord strain individual temperament, patience and understanding.

Though the study is not new, from September 2014, the findings not startling, it was curious that the Journal of Marriage and Family just recently studied and concluded the above-titled findings. But I like an article such as this one that appears in NY Magazine because it details the source of the study and the methodology, thus lending credibility to the information and affording the reader an opportunity to assess the value of the conclusions. Sociologists at play. The writers are also respectful and cognizant of the dangers of stereotypical gendered assumptions–like the ones I made above.

It’s a short read. The authors conclude that women are better at talking about their feelings, which may be the reason for their holding the happy marriage card, but I can think of other reasons historical, biological, cultural and sociological.

What’s your take?

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Ghost Marriages

Ghost marriages? Though ghost marriages are historically reported, and thus are real, the metaphoric possibilities of the concept are far more interesting.

Ghost marriages were an ancient Chinese practice to ward off loneliness in the afterlife. The “arranged” betrothal of an unmarried deceased family member occurred when a corpse match was found to bury beside the unmarried one, usually by a relation, resulting in the intended eternal union. Though contemporary China has discarded the practice and grave robbing is outlawed, there still exists practitioners in rural areas. In fact, just last October, the BBC reported a grave-robbing incident by eligible corpse seekers, which led to arrests.

The idea of a ghost marriage is quite frankly creepy to me, but that is most probably due to my cultural predispositions. As the short TED talk featured below describes, marriage is an historical institution that is shaped by the ever-changing values and practices of a given culture throughout time. It is a flexible arrangement that conforms to the people who practice it.

But a ghost marriage is precisely what some people have, whether intended or not. Let me belabor the obvious with an example of the married couple, one of whom works endless days and nights and misses out on the benefits of marriage and family. A husband who works at an all-consuming job appears vacantly in the family functions of necessity, sometimes at dinner or breakfast before scurrying off to work. His mind is never really there, just his body. He is a symbolic figure as husband and father. Though he goes through the motions of patting his children on the head before leaping off to his car or makes love to his wife to keep up some semblance of duty, his presence is somewhere buried in what others need of him: his job.

Or perhaps his mistress’ siren call is the life-suck that keeps him a specter in his marriage. When he is home, he thinks of her and wants to be with her; she provides him with what he doesn’t get at home. He thinks of her when he does his husbandly duty to keep that circle sewn up, maybe even making it possible to complete the task of making love to his wife. He is a ghost husband.

But the ghost husband or wife may also be either or both in a marriage that has run its course, where both long to be somewhere else but remain in the marriage for the sake of the kids or for fear of financial insecurity or the unknown. The comfort of the well-worn patterns walked in the carpeted floor of the family home of thirty odd years is all that is left when desire and disdain have deadened walking bodies, zombies, that refuse to be buried. The glazed over lifeless eyes that gaze out the kitchen window onto manicured green flawless lawns of suburban safety reveal the truth.

A marriage is only as strong as its weakest member.

Marriage clearly is a highly improbable proposition. How can two people pledge themselves forever after in a lifetime of change? The inhabitants of this thing, marriage, are both the components and the encasement of that which has an independent existence itself. Marriage is both the sum of its parts and the excess, an entity in itself, an idea, a pledge, and a monument to societally structured love and order. It persists.

Like the jailhouse that stands separate from the inmates will continue to stand though the inmates perish, languish or thrive within, so too marriage survives beyond its inhabitants. The bride and groom pledge as much to the symbol and practice of marriage from wedding rituals to marriage licenses and filing joint tax returns, as they promise themselves one to the other.

Marriage tests the mettle of its subscribing members. Survivors of imprisonment and marriage–no I am not equating the two–make their world from within not without. Strong marriage mates can stretch, withstand and grow from pain, isolation and degradation yet do not stagnate in the long safe sailing days of predictability, comfort and security. Marriage is both stasis and evolution, the anchor and the ship.

Just as our bodies are garments we wear to weather the surrounding climate, so too the marriage protects us from outside forces that threaten us: disease, rejection, insecurity, heartbreak and restlessness. We trade possibility and excitement, stimulants from the outside, for the quietude and stability from within the shelter of marriage. Some of us need the staid grounding that strengthens us to journey far.

Some find themselves, what they’re made of, only in adversity. While marriage is the impetus for that discovery for some, ultimately, each of us finds within ourselves the necessary tools to make our own happiness wherever we are and with whom we are by self love; selfless compassion and forgiveness; fullness of time; persistence, presence and acceptance; growth in experience; open-mindedness and the ability to laugh at ourselves.

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Take her

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Credit: s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com

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One day I stepped into myself and found love.
I knew it was there all along because I could feel it, give it.
But it was all for others.
And I also found greed and jealousy and hate, disrespect.
And I found those hideously powerful.
They belonged to me.
I felt them too.
But mostly I felt disillusionment and loss.
I felt myself missing.
I feel it.
There is no poetry in reality.

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What is Love Anyway?

I love you whether or not you love me
I love you even if you think that I don’t
Sometimes I find you doubt my love for you, but I don’t mind
Why should I mind, why should I mind

What is Love anyway, does anybody love anybody anyway
What is Love anyway, does anybody love anybody anyway

Can anybody love anyone so much that they will never fear
Never worry never be sad
The answer is they cannot love this much nobody can
This is why I don’t mind you doubting

And maybe love is letting people be just what they want to be
The door always must be left unlocked
To love when circumstance may lead someone away from you
And not to spend the time just doubting

Howard Jones

I woke up with this song in my head. Since it’s an old song, I could only remember the two line, one line repeated actually, refrain, until I looked up the lyrics.

As luck would have it, however, I came across a BuzzFeed article that fed into the ear worm eating at my brain…”What is looooooooove, anyway?” According to Chloe Angyal in “The Paradoxical Rise of the Viral Marriage Proposal,” despite the present decline in marches to the altar, those who do seek marriage want it to be known–everywhere–because true love is exceptional, something that should be spread like a virus. Okay, that’s my cynically bent twist on Angyal’s showcase, which is the growing phenomenon of viral internet marriage proposals and weddings as love on public display, a paradox, she muses, that marks “contemporary romance culture.”

Aside from some fun viewing of the Danish proposal gone wrong, gone viral, and a choreographed wedding walk down the aisle (and all over the church), her premise is that romantic comedies have framed our vision and appropriate measure of the ultimate public love expression–marriage. Thus, the advent of the viral video proposal and wedding madness.

If romantic comedies tell us that the truest and most special love is performed in grand, public ways, then the advent of social media has increased the pressure on all of us to stage those performances in our own lives. Now we can all prove that our love is special and true by putting on our own romantic comedy happy ending — and now more people than ever before will be able to watch it.

Her more intriguing claims are not teased out enough, however, leaving the reader hanging, though with some good food for thought.

And, of course, for people whose love is still threatening to the status quo, treated as second-class or hidden away and kept secret, there’s enormous political and personal power in the kind of visibility that a spectacular public display provides.

Really? How does public display garner respect and not increased public aversion or even hate in minds predisposed to the threat of all that is other than themselves, their values, their world view?

After observing that the public marriage proposal smells like a trap–the woman is compelled to say yes or stab her beloved with public humiliation in addition to plain old rejection–Angyal concludes:

But marriage is evolving in a way that is historically normal, even if it feels unprecedented at our close range. This is just one of several paradoxes at the heart of how we perform and consume love today: As marriage becomes less popular, the performance of it becomes more insistent. Another paradox: Despite the intimate nature of romantic love, straight, cis couples seem more intent than ever on displaying it in public.

Not sure what she means by marriage’s evolution as “historically normal” especially since she implies by this penultimate parting thought that marriage is performing its “swan song.” Seems more like the devolution of marriage.

Love is exceptional, or at least we think “our love” is exceptional, are her final words. Perhaps that is the reason for the decline of marriage, which, historically has been all about public display. Before meticulous institutionalized record keeping, the best way to keep track of who was having kids with whom and where was by the public marriage ceremony, aside from the symbolic nature of an open declaration of love as testimony to its truth, to its manifest being. But the belief that couplehood love is unique or special is a sure set up for the big let down when it turns out to be the ordinary kind of love that morphs into fermented love over time or rubs out completely in daily friction.

I’m exceptionally fond of a definition of love I found on today’s Brainpickings.org offering by Tom Stoppard in his play The Real Thing:

It’s to do with knowing and being known. I remember how it stopped seeming odd that in biblical Greek, knowing was used for making love. Whosit knew so-and-so. Carnal knowledge. It’s what lovers trust each other with. Knowledge of each other, not of the flesh but through the flesh, knowledge of self, the real him, the real her, in extremis, the mask slipped from the face. Every other version of oneself is on offer to the public. We share our vivacity, grief, sulks, anger, joy… we hand it out to anybody who happens to be standing around, to friends and family with a momentary sense of indecency perhaps, to strangers without hesitation. Our lovers share us with the passing trade. But in pairs we insist that we give ourselves to each other. What selves? What’s left? What else is there that hasn’t been dealt out like a deck of cards? Carnal knowledge. Personal, final, uncompromised. Knowing, being known. I revere that. Having that is being rich, you can be generous about what’s shared — she walks, she talks, she laughs, she lends a sympathetic ear, she kicks off her shoes and dances on the tables, she’s everybody’s and it don’t mean a thing, let them eat cake; knowledge is something else, the undealt card, and while it’s held it makes you free-and-easy and nice to know, and when it’s gone everything is pain. Every single thing. Every object that meets the eye, a pencil, a tangerine, a travel poster. As if the physical world has been wired up to pass a current back to the part of your brain where imagination glows like a filament in a lobe no bigger than a torch bulb. Pain.

Love is knowledge. I like that in so many ways, its broad application to the unlimited: to people, learning, everything, really, and even to the unknowable. The bible’s love as patient and kind resonates rightly with me too. And I don’t know why it does exactly except for my experience as one individual has proved it so–for me. What IS love anyway?

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Music is a Demonic Mistress in Whiplash

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Credit: paleothea.com

My grandfather died when I was ten. I don’t remember much of him other than what others have spoken of him, that he was a piano tuner and a musician that taught and cajoled all of his 7 sons (not his one daughter) to play an instrument, two of whom were later professionals. I was told he was a gentle and kind man, soft spoken in juxtaposition to his louder more vociferous “witchy” wife, as characterized by an oft chastised daughter in law, my mother. The one lasting memory I have of him, Julius, Isidore prior to immigrating from Russia as his wife’s brother, is a cello lesson he gave me one summer afternoon of a rare visit to our Long Island home.

Though he and my grandmother lived merely a half hour’s distance away, we traveled to their Farmingdale home most visits. My father was the last of the seven boys, so his parents were older grandparents vis a vis my family and thus we traveled to them. On this one visit to our home, my grandfather, as ever interested in family musical progress (all four siblings and I played an instrument), decided to see for himself and sat me down for a listen. I remember his stern, disapproving look as I muddled my way through a piece I was learning for the school orchestra, probably some Muller-Rush simple exercise piece disguised as a song. Those were the days of music lessons and orchestras in elementary school, when instruments were offered in third grade at which time I was appointed the cello due to my long fingers despite my request to play violin. I had only been playing for a couple of years then and had not started the private lessons that I would have the following year, despite my family’s limited budget.

He was aggressive. He shook his head in decided disapproval, got up from his seat and pushed my fingers all about the neck of the cello, pressing down on the forefinger up high and stretching the ring finger down low and absolutely smashing my pinky. Then he jerked my bow arm from the elbow up to place it properly from his perspective, which strained my neck and torqued my hand whose fingers were being smashed into the neck of the now source of torture, formerly my cello, as used by this draconian musician. He instructed me in something barely conceivable as English worsened by his frustration, “Do dees, now dees, like dees!” He muttered in Russian probably.

Since I was ten and was not well versed in Russian, Hebrew, Latvian, Polish, German or other languages my grandparents spoke, hell I was barely fluent in English at 10, I had always felt distant from my grandparents who were adoring enough, calling me pet names like Pamaluchkala and ochichonya (dark eyes), and teasing me with the yiddish equivalent of ugly girl and then smiling and calling me the opposite. They made me nervous, however. I didn’t understand them. That cello lesson did not help matters. I was nervous about playing in front of anyone let alone an exacting musician who spoke little English. If I had any talent or education in the instrument, none of it was going to show under those conditions.

Recalling that experience still elicits a frown to my face, sadly the only recollection of my grandfather, who was a receding character compared to the imposing figure that was my grandmother in stature and voice. That memory still conflicts with the one or two video preservations of some 35 mm film of him, my grandmother and extended family at their house. He always looked gentle, smiling, and composed. Was it the music that brought out the demon in him, the child abuser that plowed over the slightest sensibilities of a child not taking into account the damage he may have done to that child’s love for and thereby development in the instrument?

That question of the madness in the musician besieged me, awakening my grandfather memory and provoked a long look at my musical endeavors, after seeing the movie Whiplash recently. The movie in pinpoint precision well casted acting and unlikely thriller momentum (my glutes hurt afterward) presents the outermost limits of the innermost determinants of personal achievement through mastery of a musical instrument, here the drums: monomaniacal focus of the musician, the demented exactitude and sadism of the teacher torturously beating greatness out of his students, and the Odyssean journey of the student musician into Hades to learn the truth: Am I capable of greatness?

The movie was truly well done, especially the nuanced acting of Miles Teller, the aspiring Buddy Rich, and J.K. Simmons, the complex, somewhat deranged professor. So much of the movie occurred in their faces, that subtle twitch, stare or glint. As is often the case after seeing a movie of such caliber that it lingers in my mental limbs the next day, I wanted to read more about the movie, reviews and such.

Serendipitously, I came across this quote by renowned American conductor Leonard Slatkin on my morning travels through the net: “Ultimately, music is a possessive mistress.” I read this and immediately thought about the scene (SPOILER ALERT!) in which Teller brilliantly and brutally spells out to his girlfriend in a great detailed cause and effect chain of prognostications why he cannot maintain a relationship, which, without spoiling too much, amounts to the essence of Slatkin’s quote. There just isn’t much time for other passions when one consumes so absolutely, burns so powerfully inside that all thought and action is that passion or tied to it in some way. All else is peripheral. One eats to keep the engine able to execute for the sake of the art.

Whether my grandfather broke my art or I just wasn’t good or passionate enough, I gave up playing the cello seriously by my junior year in high school, the year I delved deeper into the world eschewed by obsessively driven musicians, artists, actors, and anyone with the monomania to pursue greatness: a social life. Now I pick up the cello or the guitar, which I later tinkered with, when the mood strikes me. I like it that way. The small suffering of frustration and yearning for skillful music making, that lifelong itch, falls far short, even in amassed decades, of the inconceivable agony in attaining greatness: the innumerable hours, indomitable doubt and suffocating insecurity for a payoff that may turn out to be no more than a less than stellar roster of achievements.

Sounds a lot like the trials and tribulations of the writer, who must likewise be owned by a “possessive mistress” if she wants to be the next something to read on a list somewhere. Or be content to dabble to her heart’s compromised content. The only writing whisperers of the J.K. Simmons kind that writers withstand are their own tormenting demons. They have to find their own motivation for distinction in a sado-masochism of their own making.

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Sour Grapes Much?

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Well, so why do women cheat so easily? For all these 25 reasons and more. And sometimes, they don’t need a reason at all.

Just ask me, my not-so-steady girlfriend confessed to cheating on me a week ago. She looked into my eyes with her big, beautiful eyes and told me she was sorry and she regretted it. And her reason, well, she doesn’t know why. All she knows is that she’s sorry because she slept with another guy when she’s in love with me.

Seriously, kinda makes me wonder if women need a reason at all!

Really, what more can you say about this other than there must have been a specific number of reasons the writer of Twenty-five Truthful Reasons Why Women Cheat So Easily on LovePanky.com was told to reach–25, in fact–since much of it is repetition of the same never-ever-heard-this-before-from-a-man rant–women are ungrateful, crazy bitches? Equal time venting and keeping it real and publish-worthy, I guess.

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