Ford's Theater gets to me in a surprising way, but then again, the entire weekend has been surprising.
It'll take me hours to work out exactly why it gets to me, but when I leave I'm feeling funny--just a little bit off--and I don't quite know why.
I'm wandering around the museum reading a story I already know and know well. It's the story of John Wilkes Booth's escape from D.C. after he shot President Lincoln. I'm familiar with the details, the places he stopped, his co-conspirators, how has plot changed after the Confederacy's surrender. What surprises me the most, what really worms its way under my skin, isn't Lincoln's assassination. It's not standing in the room where he passed, it's not even reading his second inaugural address later (my favorite piece of non-fiction word-smithing ever) at the Memorial.
Although, Jesus. That was incredible.
It isn't until I'm finished with Ford's Theater and the Lincoln Memorial and am sitting on the steps eating a PB&J that I realize what's upsetting me. It's Booth, unequivocally one of the greatest villains in American history that I feel sorry for. More than that, I feel like I understand Booth. At least, understand a little bit more about him than I expected.
Like I said, the entire weekend has been surprising.
***
A few years ago, on a road trip with a friend from graduate school, I started to tell stories about my childhood.
I was driving and couldn't see the reaction the woman next to me was having, but I probably could have guessed.
After about fifteen minutes, she reached across the car, put a hand on my arm and said "Kel, this is the most I've ever head you talk about yourself at one time and you're talking about feelings and what you think about things that aren't God and space and poetry. She paused and then continued. "I really want to affirm you in what you're doing right now. I think it's wonderful."
When she was finished, I cleared my throat and asked about her thesis. Things were quiet for the next fifty miles.
***
I spend too much time in my own head.
My graduate school friends would tease me about it. I could, apparently, intellectually eviscerate someone in class without much pause (a fact I attribute less to intelligence and more to writing in books and a good long-term memory) but the second someone said something that hurt or upset me on a personal level I'd get quiet and polite, leave the situation as soon as possible, and then resurface a few weeks later ready to talk.
I don't know how to fix this.
I don't know if it needs to be fixed.
I suspect it does.
My graduate school friends would tease me about it. I could, apparently, intellectually eviscerate someone in class without much pause (a fact I attribute less to intelligence and more to writing in books and a good long-term memory) but the second someone said something that hurt or upset me on a personal level I'd get quiet and polite, leave the situation as soon as possible, and then resurface a few weeks later ready to talk.
I don't know how to fix this.
I don't know if it needs to be fixed.
I suspect it does.
***
The first time my friend accuses me (accuses, really, Kelly?) me of "weirdly in touch with my emotions" I accuse him of being out of his head.
It strikes me as a stupid thing to say, especially as the conversation that we've just had is about how it takes me the aforementioned two weeks to consider how I feel about, well, whatever. Sure, I can articulate immediate reactions to things "Your argument is specious." "I love jazz!" "Citation needed." "Everyone's I.Q. just dropped ten points based on overhearing that comment." But anything deeper than intellectual disgust or anger or sheer mind-blowing joy takes me longer to sort out.
He takes a pull from his pint an insists. "Weirdly. In touch. With your emotions."
It's a recurring fight we'll have for years, the sort of threadbare, comfortable argument that you good-naturedly bicker about without really caring about citations or I.Q. points but just need something comfortable and familiar.
***
Anyway, I'm sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, looking over notes and journal entries from the past few days when I turn to something I scribbled sometime in the past twenty-four hours, but I can't particularly remember where.
The problem with creating your own narrative is that it doesn't require peer review.
It sounds like the sort of thing I'd flip on the bedside light to note to myself (sleepily convinced of my own brilliance) or would pause to in front of an exhibit to write. Either way, I don't remember when I put it down, but when I read it I feel like someone has yanked my head back.
If you know anything about the history of the Lincoln Assassination it's that John Wilkes Booth was completely, utterly convinced that people would applaud him for assassinating Lincoln. For God's sake, he saw himself as an American Brutus, going so far as to shout sic semper tyrannis after he shot Lincoln.
Although, taking a moment for brief historical commentary. The suspension of habeas corpus? Dick move, Lincoln.
Back on topic, John Wilkes Booth spent a lot of time in his own head. He constructed an entire narrative in which he was the hero, where the somewhat controversial head of a nation was not merely controversial but tyrannical.
This is what's sparking the strange feelings of . . . not empathy. Not understanding. Pity, probably (ask me again in a week) for Booth that I'm feeling.
The stories we tell--no, that's not quite right. The stories I tell about myself matter. The things I decide to air out, the places where I air them out, those are all reflections of how I view the world and my place in it. The fact that I can only say some things via text or when the lights are out, that it takes me weeks to be able to say how something impacted me matters. They're real life, edited and portrayed through the filter of a woman who struggles to spend time outside of her own head, who feels things (and feels them deeply) without being able to explain what she's feeling. And it's problematic, because there's no process for peer-review in these stories, the narrative that I construct is just that--the narrative I construct. The based upon a true story version of the world with which I interact every day.
While I'm certainly (I mean, I hope I'm not) engaging in narrative self-deception at the same scale as John Wilkes Booth, the possibility that I feel like I have even this much in common with him is deeply, profoundly disturbing.
At least, I think it is. Ask me in another two weeks and I'll be able to tell you for sure.
The problem with creating your own narrative is that it doesn't require peer review.
It sounds like the sort of thing I'd flip on the bedside light to note to myself (sleepily convinced of my own brilliance) or would pause to in front of an exhibit to write. Either way, I don't remember when I put it down, but when I read it I feel like someone has yanked my head back.
If you know anything about the history of the Lincoln Assassination it's that John Wilkes Booth was completely, utterly convinced that people would applaud him for assassinating Lincoln. For God's sake, he saw himself as an American Brutus, going so far as to shout sic semper tyrannis after he shot Lincoln.
Although, taking a moment for brief historical commentary. The suspension of habeas corpus? Dick move, Lincoln.
Back on topic, John Wilkes Booth spent a lot of time in his own head. He constructed an entire narrative in which he was the hero, where the somewhat controversial head of a nation was not merely controversial but tyrannical.
This is what's sparking the strange feelings of . . . not empathy. Not understanding. Pity, probably (ask me again in a week) for Booth that I'm feeling.
The stories we tell--no, that's not quite right. The stories I tell about myself matter. The things I decide to air out, the places where I air them out, those are all reflections of how I view the world and my place in it. The fact that I can only say some things via text or when the lights are out, that it takes me weeks to be able to say how something impacted me matters. They're real life, edited and portrayed through the filter of a woman who struggles to spend time outside of her own head, who feels things (and feels them deeply) without being able to explain what she's feeling. And it's problematic, because there's no process for peer-review in these stories, the narrative that I construct is just that--the narrative I construct. The based upon a true story version of the world with which I interact every day.
While I'm certainly (I mean, I hope I'm not) engaging in narrative self-deception at the same scale as John Wilkes Booth, the possibility that I feel like I have even this much in common with him is deeply, profoundly disturbing.
At least, I think it is. Ask me in another two weeks and I'll be able to tell you for sure.
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