My sister came home and flounced down in a chair at the kitchen table. She explained that her AP English class was in a poetry unit and had just finished viewing select highlights of Dead Poets Society, and that the combination of those two factors was extremely frustrating.

“[My teacher] acts as though poetry is the greatest expression of the human spirit—like if you don’t like poetry, you don’t have a soul. And I’m just not that into it.”

I could completely relate, because I too am an uncultured swine, who cannot relate to the deep emotions of the human spirit, because I do not “get” poetry.

Now, from a detached view, I can certainly appreciate the way that poetry speaks to both the writer and the reader, the time and effort put into it, and the artistry of well-done poetry. But I don’t personally have a taste for it. Reading a poem, especially to myself from a book or similar, doesn’t do anything for me. It doesn’t stir my soul, it doesn’t incite emotion, it doesn’t “speak” to me. I can occasionally appreciate a clever turn-of-phrase or tasty alliteration, but the things that make people really love poetry, it doesn’t do for me.

So the question is: am I dead inside?

Am I inhuman, a robot existing in an organic shell? If poetry doesn’t speak to my soul, do I even have one?

The conventional wisdom appears to answer yes, and that’s what my sister and I respond so negatively to. We know that a lot of people get a lot of value from reading and writing poetry, but we don’t, not really. The implication is that this makes us less human, which it’s hard not to be insulted by.

Speaking for myself here, there are a lot of other downsides to not grokking poetry. For one, I have a lot of friends who write poetry, which I hear is quite good. But though I read it, I feel like I can’t evaluate its quality, or even whether or not I liked it. This becomes a problem when I am forced to fumble around to find a good excuse for why I don’t know how much I like my friend’s work.

Secondly, poetry is one of the sublime tools of romance. After all, the poetry in Dead Poet’s Society was only secondarily used to inspire young men to greatness. Its primary use was in wooing young ladies. Poems have been long renowned for their ability to make women swoon, and it’s much harder to appear sensitive and loving when one can’t properly scribe a verse. Poetry-writing skills remain, like guitar-playing skills, one of those classic woman-wooing techniques that I will probably never learn. (Needless to say, their unholy alchemical combination, songwriting, will also remain out of my domain.)

Despite the above disadvantages to not understanding poetry, the biggest one is still the insinuation that because of my poetry-blindness, I am an uncultured idiot robot swine. This association makes me seethe inside, and sadly makes me disrespect poetry more than I would on my own terms. It’s a defensive posture: I feel attacked, and in my rush to defend who I am as a person, I reject the opportunity for growth.

Is it my loss? Perhaps. I don’t feel like poetry will ever really speak to me, and I don’t really think that a lack of insult would change that. But it might make it easier to properly appreciate those who do get a lot out of it, and that’s a good thing.

rdv is not, as far as he knows, a robot of any kind.

The conversation with my sister was a few weeks ago, so I had to paraphrase what she said.

My church is running an adult sunday school program called “Love and Respect” right now. It’s about the admonition to husbands to love their wives and to wives to respect their husbands. It’s a video series, similar to the “The Truth Project” series run for teens and young adults in the spring. In the promos, the couple in my church who are acting as the hosts and discussion leaders said something to the effect of, “And you young single people, you can learn a lot too,” and encouraged us to join in.

The other option was just a read-and-discuss of a NT letter (Corinthians maybe?), which is okay, though I’ve never been that good at the “read and what did you think” school of bible studies. “The Truth Project” was actually something I really enjoyed, in a twisted way. It was often just as frustrating as it was interesting, and while I tried to have good discussions in the sessions, I often found that I had better discussions talking with my family about it. (and as sister Caitlin would say, that’s because my family is awesome.) But overall it was interesting, and that is always a plus. And I’d always been interested in the gender-roles discussion at school. I didn’t always like it, and I didn’t often have much to contribute, but it was always interesting, except when people were getting hurt. So I decided to give it a try.

It’s not a bad series, overall—there’s a lot less stuff that makes me want to ask questions in post-video discussion time than the trthprjct—but I don’t think it’s really very helpful for someone in my position. It relies on a lot of “You know when your spouse…” examples, which I don’t even come close to having a frame of reference on, so they go over my head. I probably would have left after the second session, except that whenever they referenced respect, they never bothered to define it, and it always seemed like the definition of respect would come in a future session. (It hasn’t yet, though at least they’ve talked about it more.) Being in discussion is occasionally frustrating, as my lines of questioning eventually come down to, “Oh you’ll know, when you’re older.”

Last week it was the first real attempt to get into the meat of “respect.” It was good, but it reminded me of one of the things that really frustrates me about most gender discussions, especially in the church. The speaker was going over several different desires that a wife should appreciate in her husband, like his desire to work and achieve, etc. The final thing he covered in that day’s lecture was appreciating a man’s desire to lead and to make decisions. “Men want to lead and make decisions,” the speaker said.

Now, I am a man, or at least I’m male, and frankly, I’m just not that into the leading and making decisions. I’m not very good at it, and I haven’t been “beaten down by a female-centric culture” or anything like that…it’s just not my thing, and I am not really that fond of it. Now, I know that the speaker in this case didn’t intend to make broad, absolute statements (“all men are this, no exceptions”) but it’s hard not to hear that and think that if I’m not that into leading/making decisions, I’m less of a man. It’s a man-challenge that I’ve already lost.

It doesn’t help that in this discussion (I can’t recall whether it was through the speaker or through the open discussion) it is strongly implied that a man who is not that into leadership is that way because his wife doesn’t respect his desire to do so…that if she just respected him more, he’d step up to the challenge. So great—if I’m not that into the whole making decisions thing, then my wife’s going to blame herself for it? Woo.

I expressed some of this consternation in the car afterward, and my mother posited that we can grow into those desires when we come to assume them. Which definitely happens…but what if it doesn’t? Does that mean that something’s wrong with me then? And then there’s the matter of timing: does the leadership/decision-thing have to kick in before I take on that role (say, in a marriage) or do I go forward with it, trusting that it’ll kick in when it has to? Then if it still doesn’t kick in, what then?

I think some of you are at this point saying that one has to make the choice to desire leadership/making decisions…but what’s the point of expending all of that effort to try and desire something that you don’t like that much in the first place? Wouldn’t it be a more effective use of energy to play to your strengths?

I just feel like it’s hard to mesh the large, generally true statements in gender discussions with the individual differences that we all have. Some authors make it harder than others (would it really hurt, John Eldridge, to put some qualifying words in Wild at Heart? maybe a “most men” or something other than “men are this way?”), but it’s something that is really hard to avoid, even if one tries to.

It often comes back to “Oh, you just don’t know, because you’re young.” Because my issues with these concepts aren’t uncommon with my age group, and they’re much less common with the older folks. So maybe I will figure it out when I’m older.

But what if I dont?

rdv

Back before this summer, I remember my cosmopolitan, Las Vegas-dwelling cousin telling me about a group of her friends who gathered to watch Mad Men, a highly lauded AMC drama about an advertising agency in the 60’s. She said that she thought I would like it.

Not having cable, however, it took me awhile to get around to watching it. At the beginning of this summer, I checked the first season out from the library. I was finally able to check out the second season a couple of weeks ago, and, due to library fees, It was my media focus for the two weeks I had it. After watching the two seasons, I can say this: my cousin was right. I really enjoy Mad Men.

The show has a lot going for it. The setting is novel, and gives the show’s excellent production staff a chance to shine. It’s said that there are those who watch just to see the glamorous clothes, and it’s hard to blame them. My work sponsored a Mad Men themed giving campaign kickoff, and the main event was a costume contest. It’s one of those indelible elements of the show. The setting also provides for a huge number of cheap dramatic ironies, mostly about the vices of the day. The series starts with an episode pitching Lucky Strike as an enjoyable and even good cigarette, despite what these doctors (most of whom themselves smoke) are just starting to say. There’s drinking in the office (amusing!), pregnant women drinking and smoking, which brings on a kind of gleeful terror, an “ohmigosh-did-she-just-do-that,” and lots of “You say that now, but we know what happens next.” On a personal note, I find the operation of an ad agency more fascinating than most jobs, so the setting works for me in that way too.

In addition, other production elements are top-notch as well. It’s lusciously shot in a very cinematic style, and the sound design, set design—etc are all very well done.

The above items are among the show’s strengths, but they’re not what makes me really dig it. It’s more of…a feeling.

When one is a kid, the adult world has a mystique about it. You observe most things about the adult world without a full grasp of what they mean. The subtle social cues, body language, protocol, sexual tension—what are these things? What do they mean? When you’re a kid, you’re no stranger to the feeling that something is going on, but you don’t have a clue what it is.

For me, Mad Men brings back that feeling. Mad Men makes me feel like a kid again, not fully able to interpret its world. Some of this is due to its 60s setting—the social rules of that day are quite different from modern-day standards, and I really don’t feel like I have a strong grasp on those yet, being a new adult. Much of this feeling can be attributed to the complex scripting, which reveals the themes for the show, its characters, and each episode throughout their length. There are scenes which I know in my gut must relate to a broader theme, but externally do not. (An example of this from second season is Betty Draper’s horse-riding hobby) I often don’t understand the full theme of an episode until I read a commentary (Alan Sepinwall’s Coverage is especially great) but then the nice thing is that I don’t feel cheated, like the writers were pulling pretentiousness out of their butts. In hindsight it makes sense—it’s just that I’m not enough in the adult world to see it.

I don’t know why it’s appealing to watch a show that makes me realize I haven’t figured this adult world out, but it is. I know no other show that makes me feel quite that way.

rdv

(I should note that it’s especially frustrating now to finish the second season just as the third season ends. Now I’m going to have to wait until next summer to watch third season on DVD!)

My MP3 player has gone missing and I am disappointed.

Here’s what I don’t know: where it is.

Here’s what I do know: I had it…recently. I think it went missing the weekend before thanksgiving, as I remember wishing I had it at Acappella practice…but not having it (at least, I think I remember wishing I had it then). I’m trying to think of when I had it and when I didn’t, but I can’t fully picture it.

I think part of the problem is that the times when I would whip it out were the more mundane moments in life. Walking the dog? Listen to the MP3s. Hanging out with people? Don’t.

So trying to pick a specific mundane moment from a week back is challenging. I can say “oh, i did this on saturday, this on sunday” and the like, but I can’t picture if I had my mp3 player in my pocket at those times. Or I can vaguely remember feeling like I was going to smush it when I was laying on my belly, and so I might have taken it out for then…but I can’t remember if I actually did that or where I put it if that was the case.

Ugh, it’s utterly frustrating. I still haven’t scoured my house (I definitely feel like it’s somewhere in my house), but I’m not confident it’ll turn up even then.

It reminds me of other things I had that got lost. I took my box with my ps2 (a once-fantastic purchase) and things in it. I haven’t played that in so long, partly because of time, but mostly because sometime around lending it to my mom’s friend’s son for his grad party (guitar hero) the actual ps2 controller went missing. So now I can ONLY play guitar hero on it, and that’s disappointing. I suppose it’s about time to pony up for a new controller…but it’s frustrating that that one went missing.

And there are so many other things. But such is life and we move on. That is all.

rdv