I find it appalling to think there might be such a thing as a GLBT identity so distinct and so self-sufficient that it might give birth all by itself--an immaculate conception, if you will--to anything resembling reasonable wisdom. The beginning of a rant? It sounds like it, doesn't it? My defense is to say the convoluted drivel that follows is only about me. Nothing I write is a prescription for others. I claim no high moral ground. That said ...
At first sight, I did not warm to today's topic. GLBT smacks of being a category, or an amalgam of categories. Categories and I don't get along. We never have. Even though I've been known to hide in some.
I started this morning with my favorite fallback trick: the dictionary, to lay down some consensual understanding of the two key terms--wisdom and identity. These from the American Heritage Third Edition:
Wisdom 1. Understanding what is true, right, or lasting. 2. Common sense; good judgment. 3. The sum of scholarly learning through the ages.
Identity 1. The set of characteristics by which a thing is recognized or known. 2. The set of behavioral or personal traits by which an individual is recognized as a member of a group.
I next shrunk these down and personalized them:
Wisdom: the sum of my personal learning during all the years of my life, and . . .
Identity: how I'm recognized or known.
From the start I saw a trap in today's topic: the wisdom of GLBT identity. Walk blindly and we may fall into believing there's some all-consuming identity, GLBT, out of which a unique, remarkably dedicated wisdom springs.
I dispute this, that GLBT is an all-consuming identity--although I have friends who brood endlessly about being G, or L, or B, or T. Instead I see each of us as a tightly bundled collection of lesser identities, GLBT being one of those lesser identities, and the collection or bundle being our aggregate, or overarching identity.
I dispute as well that wisdom--at least any wisdom worth its salt--can ever be the product of a lesser identity only. To qualify as real wisdom it must be the product of many if not all lesser identities, a compliment to our overarching identity, an inexplicable brilliance greater than the sum of its parts.
Does this sound like a lot of academic b.s.? It does to me, too. However, casting good judgment aside, I pontificate on ...
For a person to live as though he or she were in possession of one narrow all-consuming identity out of which all necessary wisdom might arise is to live as a human monoculture. It's to live a life of some simplicity, yes, but also to invite dangerous vulnerabilities and the risk of reaching the end only to wonder what has been missed.
It's worth reiterating before I continue, I claim no moral ground, neither high nor worldly-wise. As I make these pronouncements, I remain fully aware I'm as much of a plodder as the next guy. But, you see, for me ...
I can't parse my identity. My identity is a sentence whose predicates, subjects, clauses--dependent and subordinate--must all be on hand if I've a chance of making any sense--to myself or to anyone else. Am I a G? Yes. But I'm more than just a G. I'm a whole alphabet. G is just one of my lesser identities, one that now and then insists on elbowing its way to the front, but just as often is content to take a seat in the back row.
Remember the piece of the poem by Patrick Kavangh I included in last week's story about burying a bull? the poem that says "To go on the grand tour/A man must be free of self-necessity"? To live in a singular identity is to perpetuate a self-necessity.
This notion was dump-trucked on me 15 years ago when I realized I had a drinking problem. I should say I have near absolute respect for AA, although in trying to achieve a lasting sobriety I tried many programs. Undoubtedly, though, I relied most heavily on AA. One bit of AA dogma that troubled me from the get-go was once-an-alcoholic-always-an-alcoholic. This had the stench of an all-consuming identity. I rejected this, but to be seen as a good 12-stepper I kept it to myself. I stopped drinking in 1999 not because I finally acquiesced to some dogmatic, everlasting identity--that of alcoholic--but because I just did. For me, as Nick Carraway says at the end of Gatsby, the party was simply over.
Caveat: AA with all of its dogmas and insistences has worked for countless people, and I vigorously applaud that. Again, in what I'm saying this afternoon, I'm only talking about me. And yet ...
For me, had I gone the distance and assumed an all-consuming identity as alcoholic-for-life I would have had to one day rid myself of it, of this self-necessity, in order to go on my grand tour. Now, did I gain wisdom in my AA experience? Absolutely. But that wisdom was long ago poured into the pot, stirred around until today it cannot be spooned out and dumped into a saucer as the specific wisdom born of my time in AA. It's now part of my overarching identity.
The danger of clinging to tightly to a single identity--of fostering a self-necessity--was shown to me only last year. I spent most of my adult life as an actor, allowing that one role to become (sneakily) an almost all-consuming identity. A year and a half ago when I retired from the Shakespeare Festival and in effect partially retired from acting--and began to look for a new ways to discharge creative energy--I was surprised to find the transition excruciatingly painful. I hadn't realized how tightly I'd embraced my actor identity. Seeing myself as an actor had become a self-necessity. And in retiring I was hoping to set out again on yet another grand tour. I pretty quickly realized I had to rid myself of this all-consuming actor identity, this singular, limiting, debilitating self-necessity.
To my strange, twisted way of thinking, to be free of any singular identity is not to become nothing, but to open oneself up to the possibility of becoming everything. It is, as the poet said in speaking of living a life without straitjacketing identities, to live life as an epic poem.
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And so, in closing, I'm not able to speak honestly about any chunk of my conglomerate wisdom that's the result of the G of GLBT. There is some, undoubtedly, but it has long since been mixed in, blended, homogenized--more importantly, harmonized with the whole of my patchwork wisdom.
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A footnote? I'd set out today to be brief, and I think I've succeeded. I looked back over my previous stories, and discovered that I've been averaging 1,600 words. Last Monday's filibuster about burying a bull topped out at 2,191 words. Today's story is a mere 1,100 words--which for me is a piece of haiku.
© 3 December 2012
Colin Dale couldn't be happier to be involved again at the Center. Nearly three decades ago, Colin was both a volunteer and board member with the old Gay and Lesbian Community Center. Then and since he has been an actor and director in Colorado regional theatre. Old enough to report his many stage roles as "countless," Colin lists among his favorite Sir Bonington in The Doctor's Dilemma at Germinal Stage, George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Colonel Kincaid in The Oldest Living Graduate, both at RiverTree Theatre, Ralph Nickleby in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby with Compass Theatre, and most recently, Grandfather in Ragtime at the Arvada Center. For the past 17 years, Colin worked as an actor and administrator with Boulder's Colorado Shakespeare Festival. Largely retired from acting, Colin has shifted his creative energies to writing--plays, travel, and memoir.
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