Algo de música
I like the way Monteverdi’s music moves between chant, polyphony, and dance. Voice and lyrics are foregrounded, but suffused with lilting and jumping. Now I am playing the instrumental introduction to Chiome d’oro [Chiome d’oro, bel tesoro, tu mi leghi in mille modi…], whose lyrics I will reproduce, illustrated with Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, one day.
De como los músicos claman a Dios
Monteverdi appears to have been quite unhappy in his job as violin player to the Dukes of Mantua. He complained to his employers about being overworked, underappreciated, poorly assisted, and underpaid. His Vespro della Beata Vergine was composed as the writing sample to accompany his application for a job he did not get, as a musician at the Vatican. He got depressed and tried to resign his Mantua post. The resignation was refused, but then he was fired. Finally, he was offered a position as music director for San Marco, in Venice, where he accomplished many things.
Del mal
The Unapologetic Mexican has posted a thoughtful piece on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Tae Kwon Do. As the assiduous reader may have seen, I am undertaking some investigations of my own in related areas. For my own purposes, I would like to underline two points from the Unapologetic Mexican’s piece: that the voice of self-doubt, even as it sits on your shoulder, is not you, and that if you wish to reach higher levels of yourself, you must step out onto the mat.
I am interested in these points because I had the exact opposite drilled into me toward the end of the last century via psychotherapy and Al-Anon: accept the voice of self-doubt as your true self, learn humility, and do not be so arrogant as to believe you can step out onto the mat. I was younger than I am now, but not so terribly young when I learned these things, and I am rather amazed that I managed to assimilate them. I would have expected that a doctrine so absurd, would not stick. And yet it did.
I have a fairly good idea of why it did, and how. But I am interested in articulating the principles more clearly, so that as they flash up on my cue cards, I can cast them out. From what I am able to divine at this point, these principles are compatible with the rise of Fascism, and they are weapons in the repression of women.
1. Renounce: yourself, your interests, your best interests, and especially your agency. It is the pursuit of these things which has caused any problems you may have.
2. Renounce: the intellectual function. Analytical and critical capabilities are destructive. Delenda sunt. If you can think, you cannot feel, and only feeling is valid.
3. Renounce: positive feelings. These are the result of denial. You need to feel pain.
4. Accept: the results of these renunciations. You have now seen the true size of life: small.
5. Embrace: negative feelings. Feel pain and hold onto it. Realize that these are your true feelings. Accept them as the expression of your true self.
I had several amusing dialogues with the whiteman in charge of inculcating these principles. –You want me to do what? –Yes. –But that is silly. –You are resisting change. –I am resisting foolishness. In the end, my logic lost out to his relentless illogic.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
i have realized that we learn absolutely anything presented to us, if our mind is open to it. it can be scary when looking back…but also, extremely empowering in the here and now.
Yes. The line from my famous ;-), unpublished novel MADRID on this is, “Y se puede decir cualquier cosa sobre cualquier cosa, y el mundo es un tejido de sueños.”
Actually, I should resurrect that novel: it was designed to have twelve chapters, but I only had enough material for half, so it either needs a redesign or an expansion in scope. It is entertaining, very intertextual as they say, and fun at one level just because of what it quotes. The characters are working these very straight jobs during the day, for an international development bank engaged in integrating Spain into the EU, but at night they fan out into Bohemian Madrid and interact with two rival gangs, from Segovia (representing Castile-Leon and repression) and Seville (representing Andalusia and the so-called Other).
It’s in Spanish. My theory was that I could make Alfaguara publish it under my true, ultra-Anglo name, and bill it as a transculturated text.
We are raised to get along, to fit in. Anything that doesn’t fit in is dismissed as neurotic behavior and is marginalized. We are also taught to be neat, both physically and mentally as we deodorize both our bodies and our minds.
I have always believed that fastidiousness is the midwife of oppression.
nice blog today – nice
take a look at thi chi – i think you will find some of the same ‘behaviors’ in it
as far as my own thoughts – feelings
i listen to that circle of light in my gut to decide my own fate in this world…as i have found no place else really ‘knows’ better than my gut
Hmmm, don’t have time to comment at length on this, but thanks for the link to Unapologetic Mexican, and I want to think more about why my experience with Al-Anon was so different from yours.
Hey JoannaO–you should check out what my current Al-Anon group–the most intellectual, the most advanced, and the least religious in town, is up to now: admitting that they have poor judgment, and renouncing the use of their judgment. “I do not know what is good for me, only God knows, and I must wait for Him to reveal my purpose, in His time.” It is almost word for word what these Quiverfull families say to women about submitting to and accepting patriarchy.
I shocked the hell out of them by telling them I was an atheist, except for the spirits, who are part of nature and so don’t count as ‘higher powers’, and that I was not going to get a higher power, and that I had good judgment and had never regretted anything I had done using my own judgment. They said: if you don’t believe in God, why don’t you have a criminal record? On whose authority do you NOT go out and commit crimes? On my own authority, said I. They were amazed.
Gah.
1. Yes. Of course, with some effort I can translate their sentence into terms which are in fact useful to me: “I will guard against the projections and assumptions of others, and follow my own judgment.” When these people, who are very much oriented towards authorities and do not imagine a non-authoritarian world, say “I” or “me”, they mean an oppressive, internalized discourse. When they say “God,” they mean their rational and feeling selves. If I substitute these terms, I can understand what they are talking about and why it makes sense.
2. I have many thoughts on the whole ‘discourse’ of AA/Al-Anon, which I find very useful in some ways, and very problematic in others. I have other thoughts which aren’t about AA/Al-Anon tout court but about the overuse of / overreliance on their model, and the function of the 12 Steps as an Althusserian ISA. AA/Al-Anon say they are not part of any cause, but I say they do have an ideology in the Althusserian sense, and they have also been hijacked into serving some external agendas, although they do not realize this.
3. There’s an old article in SIGNS by Janice Haaken which has a pretty interesting take on how/why the movement is, loosely speaking, ‘ambiguously non-hegemonic’. I’m interested in this piece because rather than simply say that Al-Anon is anti-therapeutic, or that it’s cultish, as some clinical literature does, it looks at both the progressive and the regressive strands.
4. On my current group, remember I’m in the land of fundamentalist Christians and conservative Catholics. This is key. 12 step programs may be nondenominational, but they are still staunchly monotheistic, and everything hinges on the idea of submission to authority. On my 1991-1994 group, remember this was in the same cultural context, and it was in conjunction with a so-called therapist who, as it turned out, was steeped in poorly conceived 12-steppy self-help books, and who solitudinem faciebat pacem apellabat (made deserts and called them peace, as Tacitus said of the Roman conquest of Britain). My ‘reeducation’ would not have happened as it did if I had just gone to Al-Anon. It was the entire context in which I did it, including the confused and confusing shrink, which made the regressive aspects of the 12 steps virtually impossible to resist.
5. Speaking of him – dat head shrinker – his objection to my objection to taking seriously what was basically a women’s fashion magazine view of life was that I was an “intellectual snob.” This is NAME CALLING and it was not the first, but the first crystal clear sign of abuse in that relationship … I would not have allowed a friend or a random person on the street to call me that, but I did not realize the same rules could apply to a therapist. I didn’t figure that out until much later, when I went to a battered women’s shelter to see whether I was experiencing abuse from this therapist, and they said yes.
6. While I’m taking notes – there is also the simpler question of whether Al-Anon fits me. A lot of what they want me to learn, I know and agree with. A lot of what I need to learn, their model only speaks to partially or obliquely. The 12 step model puts drugs and addiction at the center of things. It insists on the ‘disease’ interpretation of alcoholism, which does not convince me. Now, if there were a similar group which focused squarely on dealing with invasive people and emotional abuse, as opposed to addicts, I would have a lot less trouble fitting myself in.
7. The proselytizing that goes on in AA/Al-Anon–we have found God, and we are sorry for you that you have not yet, but we will support you in your lost sheepdom and look forward to such a time as you may join the fold–is destructive for me to try to take seriously. Sometimes I think it would be easier if they’d just come out and say they’re a conservative Christian program and they are approaching things from that point of view.
But they deny that even as they embody it. To notice this is not to understand the program correctly. That way, they get to hold all the cards. Interesting comments can be made at the margins, which is why I still go. But elephant I see in the middle of the room is this authoritarian-lite religious ideology, which makes a certain set of assumptions and demands that these be introjected. Accepting these uncritically was where I made my original error, one I am not willing to repeat now.
–Z
Also:
1. One of my big beefs about the expansion of the 12 steps to cover every aspect of life is that “powerlessness” now justifies passive aggression and apathy, and being successful is now called being “controlling.”
1.1. Example from today: I share a secretary with the chair of another department. Nobody consulted me about his hire, but he was assigned to me. There are many problems with this sharing arrangement, the greatest being that my department chair and secretary did not believe they had any power to say anything, nor did they feel I had the right or power to speak directly to this department chair about how the sharing arrangement would work.
1.2. Finally today I exploded and darkened the door of this department chair, demanding satisfaction. She was totally cool about it, said fine let’s work this out, and was not even angry that I was angry.
1.3. My chair and his secretary think I have too much power, because I am efficient and experienced. Having power is bad in 12 step ideology. I should disempower myself to become spiritually better. If I wanted to turn 12 stepping terminology back on them, I would say they have too little faith in anyone’s but their own ability to just talk to people and get things done, too much fear [another key word] that things can’t get done, and too much investment in the chaotic status quo. Al-Anon would recommend that I continue to accept this status quo and “pray about it.” But I am a heretic, and I find it works better to just do something. (Yes, I know Al-Anon does officially talk about changing what one can, but what I hear there as often as not, is not about changing what one can [except about oneself], it’s about finding excuses for burying one’s head in the sand and accepting the intolerable.)
1.4. The conclusion I draw: there’s too much vagueness in the AA/Al-Anon vocabulary, and it is too easily exploitable to bad ends.
2. I am in complete rebellion against being told I have too much power and control. I don’t call them power and control, I call them competence and integrity. For example, people vote with me not because I coerce them to, but because they follow my reasoning.
3. The best advice I’ve heard about how to deal with being in those groups is, “don’t listen to the words, just listen to the music.”
3.1. This works, but I find it difficult at times, precisely because so many in those groups ARE so fixated on the words. I find myself thinking, if we’re going to do theology and mysticism, why don’t we go for the real thing? Evagrius. Aquinas. The Baghavad Gita. I mean, there is a lot of really good, well thought out religious writing out there, and a lot of good, serious clinical psychology. One could actually go for it, instead of mucking around in concepts derived from commercialized self help. (This, of course, would mean making an independent decision, exerting power/control, and not being accepting or faithful enough. And those are all symptoms of the “illness” Al-Anon wants to control.)
3.2. I realize I sound a little tachante, but I have been putting up with 12 stepping for quite a few years, and I think I have been TOO patient and kind to it. The 12 step thing as a “spritual program for life” just makes me feel corraled. Considering what they have to say is one thing. Trying to fit myself into their paradigm drains my energy, and all the reasoning that is necessary to do so, is very convoluted and illogical. Engaging that, addles my brain, and disables me from accomplishing useful and pleasant things. On the other hand, when I just say the hell with it, I will not doubt when the Al-Anons go on at me about how one gets nothing out of it unless one joins full tilt, I am suddenly energized, relaxed, happy, and life goes much better.
4. HOWEVER, when one IS actually dealing with an addict, going to a meeting where other people are dealing with the same problem and understand what it is, really is helpful. This is a very strong point in Al-Anon’s favor. And, as I say, if there were a self-help group for verbal and emotional abuse survivors, I’d go. I think too much of what goes on in Al-Anon IS verbal and emotional abuse. That is the essential problem I have with it. I also find that it encourages self-blame. And all the talk of ‘acceptance’, as it has been applied to me, was advice to stay in bad situations and deaden my consciousness.
5. Word association game: what does the word “Al-Anon” suggest to you? My answers: submission, resignation, limitation, renunciation, head-bowing, breast-beating, self-flagellation, shame, guilt, hopelessness, exacerbation and prolongation of suffering, remaining subordinate, becoming more perfectly subordinate. Renouncing the self and becoming a thing.
6. What I’ve just listed is, I know, the opposite of what Al-Anon says it wants. And believe me, I do understand what the progam is supposed to be. I just think that a lot of what goes on there is powerful as a mind fuck, but very weak and thin as a ‘spiritual’ program or guide. Not that it doesn’t offer some useful insights and skills, you understand. But the dogmatic and formulaic nature of the thing, and its religious/Christian base, are really problematic.
7. To continue the harangue (and oh, I feel so very much better when I eject Al-Anon instead of try to compromise with it, and in real life, talk to it but not submit at all to joining it): in a Brazilian household I lived in, there was a little maid. One day she arrived with one of her eyes missing, because her father had beaten her up. Practical me was grabbing for the aspirin, the tea, and the doctor’s phone number. The lady of the house did not oppose this, but before doing anything else, said to the little maid, Josefa. I want to be sure you understand, IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT THAT THIS HAS HAPPENED. It was brilliant: she was quite right, this was the FIRST FIRST aid the little maid needed.
7.1. Now, Al-Anon’s principles cover that: you did not cause [alcoholism, abuse, etc.], you cannot control it, and you cannot cure it. However, at least half of the people I know in Al-Anon, faced with a situation like that of the little maid, would say to her: so what was your part in your beating? Take responsibility! Admit your imperfections, accept the loss of your eye, and humbly ask God to remove your character defects! I would like to know who the fuck these people think they are to be so mean, and so self-righteous at the same time. This is why I do not think Al-Anon is necessarily a safe place.
7.2. Once again (and I am starting to get repetitive, so I will soon be quiet), not everyone there is like this, and this is not how the ‘program’ appears to be intended, or how it has to be understood. And I still go sometimes, and get something out of it. But that is because I navigate it very, very carefully.
7.3. To me, it does matter that in these meetings people come together to repeat that they are ill, that their illness is permanent, that they have character defects, that they are humbly asking God to remove these. They pledge to give their will and life over to God. It is terribly fundamentalist and self-deprecating, and very uncomfortably similar to the sin-confession-penitence cycle of Christianity. Mea culpa! Mea culpa! Mea maxima culpa!
7.4. These old-fashioned Christians really do believe that “sin” is sitting on their shoulder ready to engulf them, and that the devil must be battled at all times. I think Al-Anon is easier to take if you are actually in a situation that feels like that, or if your Lebenswelt is actually structured like that. I’m lightyears away from this. The “sins” which sit on my shoulder are misplaced guilt and unreasonable self-doubt. So, going and admitting guilt, and promising to doubt myself even more, as these Al-Anon people do, is contra-indicated for me, I would say.
7.5. Finally, it seems that to be comfortable with Al-Anon, you have to want a personal God who watches over your every move, has the answers although He keeps you guessing, can be known to fix your printer when you pray over it, and so on. It’s fine by me if it works for them, but my own reaction to that whole conception of religion is … ewww … if I want to do magic, I’ll call on a spirit, and if I want to think of something all-powerful, I do not want it to be an anthropomorphic Daddy. And I think ‘God’ is a metaphor, anyway.
This is my oil change analogy on the ridiculous, manipulative, pernicious, evil, and destructive convolutions of Al-Anon. “You know nothing and are always wrong. Your perceptions are off. Therefore, if you think it is time to change the oil in your car, hold off. This is CONTROLLING, and control is bad. TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF by meditating. You cannot control what your engine does, but you can control how you react to it.”
“Pray for guidance. God will provide spiritual oil for your car. If you have engine trouble, be patient with yourself. Do not criticize yourself for not having changed the oil. Pray.” What I most dislike about Al-Anon is the way it wants you not to be an adult, not to take care of your own life, not to trust yourself that you know what to do, like put oil in your car.
I am sorry but this is RETARDED. It is especially retarded coming from people who can barely contain their agitation, and appear not to have spent a calm moment in their lives. And they want other people to give their lives over to “God,” to Al-Anon especially, and to whatever standard authorities to whom they can cleave. Independent thought, except insofar as it may be used to figure out a fit between oneself and the 12-step paradigm, THEY ARE AGAINST.
Yes, I am still expelling the weird ideas I learned from this well meaning but ultimately destructive ISA, Al-Anon. I repeat that Al-Anon is excellent for figuring out if you are dealing with an alcoholic type situation. Feeling weird, feeling as though something untoward is going on, not knowing: and then going to a group where everyone has that feeling, can give a great AHA feeling, now I know. They’re also very good about realizing these situations may not be able to be resolved all at once. In these ways they are encouraging, and useful, so I do not complain about that.
But this thing about giving up control of your life – especially as a way to “take care of yourself” is simply WEIRD, and it is NOT UNIVERSALLY APPLICABLE! Yet they assume that everyone is inappropriately controlling, which I hate, it is a projection and it is invasive and it is mean. And it is, precisely, INAPPROPRIATELY CONTROLLING!
—————————————————————–
That was my rant, which I keep saying because one really important form of oppression is to tell people that normal professional behavior, or normal adult behavior (which involves taking care of one’s own life) is “controlling.” That is SO DESTRUCTIVE. This is one of the ways in which Al-Anon, which loves to tell people, essentially, that they should put up with crap, twist in the wind, and pray to God, is complicit in the oppression of women and so on. I do believe this is article material right here. Al-Anon as Althusserian ISA and it disempowers women in the name of empowering them. Or maybe, it empowers powerless women a little tiny bit. But if you are already independent and empowered, it does its best to take that away. This is my experience.
But I think I have figured out something about some of these 12-steppers: maybe they ARE in fact like the alcoholics they are dealing with, just as they say, and “sicker than the alcoholic.” The part I object to is their effort to say that everyone else is JUST LIKE THEM, and if they don’t think so, it is because of DENIAL. Now, that is controlling and God-like, and they are telling others that going about life in a normal manner is controlling and God-like! Hah! Ridiculous! And watching some of these women berate themselves in meetings, hearing them call that strength, is to me a really saddening experience.
—————————————————————–
And this right here is post material (posts being about knowledge just coming over the horizon, which is my favorite kind). I am venting about the Al-Anon model because it was used in the really destructive psychic restructuring I underwent in the 1990s. My note is how much work it took to do that: LORD! Although I also think I created a separate department of myself to undergo that, really, so that I could keep the real one, the one who is happy and writes, safe. This blog, as we know, is intended to let that person out of hiding. I will not make that person go through crap, or call her modest, self-contained bearing ‘arrogant’, or her tranquillity ‘denial’, or do any of the things the evil denizens of 12 stepping nazguls tried on me.
Hmmm…trying to fit the Al-Anon model and follow its rules gave me a lot of really bad habits. But I am slowly getting at what it is that ticks me off: they want you to give up your totally appropriate, personal power. And they think that having your life in order is being “controlling.” It is odd, because they also say their lives have become unmanageable and they are trying to get some managing BACK. But if your life isn’t chaotic and unmanageable, you are being CONTROLLING. They know best and they are right and you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Anyway: what I did, since they assumed everyone was controlling and in denial, was become much more meek and mild and accepting of poor behavior, which I then tried to shrug off, saying “all I can control is my reaction.” That is just oppressive. And it is not applicable. SO: what specifically am I so angry about, what is the idea I am trying to shake off? That leading an adult life is somehow wrong, pathological. It is not true: health means being a grownup, being competent, being original, being an individual.
P.S. – And I will stop ranting and raving about this some day, believe it or not – the thing is, when I started listening to these Al-Anon and Al-Anon derived people, I was already not trying to control the uncontrollable. But they wanted me to give up SOME kind of control. So I had nothing to give up except control over my own soul (or whatever you call it). This is what I have finally understood, and it shocks me.
Anyway: what I learned were UNREASONABLE SELF-DOUBT and UNREASONABLE RELINQUISHING OF ADULTHOOD. This, I really think, was because the paradigm just didn’t apply. And I feel guilty saying it didn’t: who am I to say so? But I have as much right to say so as anyone. So now I am unlearning this unreasonable self-doubt, and that unreasonable relinquishing of adulthood. But I have to say it daily: it is all right to use your own judgment, and it is all right to be grown up.