For the Last Few Years of Shows Before She Died

The utter f*cking privilege of having her time

I have been rambling this week about the ways we can actually know a person…

And doing so in a way that makes me feel super exposed and unky and like a terrible writer?

Who we are “in person” is a completely different craft than any plaster cast of persona non-gotta.

I would assume there are many writers who write too much, or Woolfians who dredge too much, or sick people who sick too much (even if the people who really know those people know that the in-person person is normally the opposite): who are too much to read and digest all the time.

It’s just too much.

I Glide my best friend on my commute each week, and our conversations have always been about who we are as people, not how we advocate in one microcosmo of it all. And, at least to me, it’s always shown very candidly who sees a person as the person they’ve always been, and who does that thing people do in movies where they make the Deaf character’s identity only have to do with deafness?

I call this “the hearing lens” amongst my students but it’s also the same as a “male gaze” or a failed Bechdel or… accidental ableism?

Do I occasionally wish my longtime love would listen to my request to read my daily blurb here, whilst zoom scrolling kittens and soccer plays? Yes. And I don’t know why except that… well, maybe writers really ARE two people? (And dancers, and athletes, and musicians, and anyone who expresses a side of themself without filter in one very cornered way)

And as genuinely vulnerable as it is to admit because it shows all the gross, needy softunderbellysides of a person when every one knows that Cool Girls™️ don’t actually acknowledge that they’re needy and lonely too, BUT - deep breath-

I have watched for a decade as a close network of dance friends or varying famfriend members far and wide leave comments, like I do to them, when they share something online.

We all miss things, for sure. We have lives and only see what the Wizard lets us see sometimes, but… most of us probably participate in the “girl, you’re a queen” silent agreement that we uphold with those we know or are related to too.

I love when I catch a post from someone I love, or admire, or once knew- in the raging rapids that is social media … and I get to just be encouraging in some small innocuous way.

It seems silly and it IS silly… but name one person with whom seeing someone you want to feel connected with drops a postcard in your metaphoric mailbox and you don’t feel special.

Down deep… we ALL want to give postcards to one another.

The problem here is as follows:

This IS my personal and only space for sharing this way… but because it’s a hemroghing diary, it likely doesn’t always feel or seem like a scrapbook to those who write “so cute!” on every post of every friend or cousin or dance colleague we caught that week, like I do. (For most of us on this uncontrollable digiplace, it’s pure crapshoot on what and when we see shares, but no less truthful when we cheer someone on).

It’s hard to write “so cute!” on someone’s post about profound pain or a new surgery.

It’s hard to write “keep going” when someone has been writing the same sh*t for all these years… and you’re kind of like, “okay but does she have to keep going already? This is tiresome”. (I get that)

I know that so many friends out there too… but your postage is coming from so very far away.

And that makes it more meaningful in a way (don’t worry. This is going in a direction that will celebrate you who’s reading this by the end, I promise!). But we all want those closest to us in terms of shared history to think we did an okay job at “work”.

But, the “give and take” of writing these letters in “home room” to each other here, is one that isn’t about having those closest to us [in terms of shared history] say “emoji thumbs up” at our contributions to the world in some way …

It’s something much more cheesy and simple and affirming and cliche than maybe most of us want to say or write down:

Friendship.

Maybe we all just want nothing more than to make friends.

PS. If you feel like any of these words are familiar, sometimes I will post a preview of something on my Instagram… but I always try to save the full length piece to be archived safely here!

I think about Gemma a lot lately and how little she shared about her experience (online) when she was sick.

She shared through texts with the close knit few she loved and trusted.

She documented her experiences deeply in snapshots and digiscraps and sent them playfully to us- “Prednisone face today!” - the glam and the grit; An actual Kahlo.

She didn’t look favorably on fairweather friends or those who eventually grew impatient with the ongoing undoing of an all-weather patient… And, she wasn’t wrong.

She knew what mattered to her, and she kept her complex, decisive, profoundly creative heart close to the vest.

But, then again: she shared of herself so profoundly through the arts and by supporting the dancers that once dug callouses into the same emotional dirt, showing up to see the latest story no matter the odds and connected with us by letting us perform for her when she couldn’t perform with us.

She lets us dance silly little shows with silly little stories that paled in comparison to the life of a young woman grappling with possibly losing her own … and she gave us her time. The one currency she truly did not have enough of.

And she danced with us, truly - empathetic kinesiology- having memorized the storylines and the nuance and the subtext and things that almost no one else cared about to the level she did…

And she witnessed it all with a generosity and openness as if her skin was transparent.

The utter f*cking privilege of having the time and imagination of Gemma in our line of sight, for the last few years of shows before she died = is a gift none of us may ever experience in that way again.

Ever.

Name a time you’ll dance with more meaning… With an impact that she took with her soul to the very last M83 note she listened to… The imagination deliverance she chose, again and again, to reposition from pain.

Isn’t that WHY we do this?

Most of us don’t really know each other in this life.

We know stories and versions of things that we never even sat with another person to exchange for ourselves. I’m so grateful for the couple humans who communicate, forgive, heal; Who helped uphold the gems that can come from the grit, not just the glam. Who don’t savor fiction to the point of losing truths.

I think about Gemma a lot and her choice to not share the things online that would maybe make others see her as something different than the “you’re so cute!” exchanges most of us leave on another ‘wall’; Grafitti that means so much more to those that feel left out.

Those words we give to another often ironically often mean THE MOST coming from those we know the most in real life… but that’s why I can’t believe I met a dance hero of mine (wearing this dress!)- which I’ll share tomorrow- and had a moment of honor getting to be… Gem.

Kineshetic empathy.

But I also think about how much Gemma encouraged me to keep sharing.

That’s hard to admit because it feels self serving but… she really did.

She would read things and send me texts about the ways she’d relate, and it made this sloppy scrapbook feel like something worth it:

Passing around a “yearbook” here…

Because most of us care more about reading what others have to write, than we do our own.

PART TWO.

More tomorrow. Almost done, almost there!

I still am persevering and choosing this nonsensical freelance life because the only way to change our own little tiny pocket of our own little tiny world is to do and make things for the right reasons.

So thank you for being here