{"id":4415,"date":"2010-04-13T20:50:57","date_gmt":"2010-04-14T01:50:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/?p=4415"},"modified":"2010-07-22T19:44:18","modified_gmt":"2010-07-23T00:44:18","slug":"im-sorry-you-dont-get-me-now-heres-a-picture-of-a-rabbit-with-pancakes-on-its-head","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/4415","title":{"rendered":"I’m Sorry You Don’t Get Me. Now Here’s A Picture Of A Rabbit With Pancakes On Its Head."},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m reading in The Advocate that another Jesus Music star has come out…Jennifer Knapp<\/a>…who was apparently a “…million-record-selling, multiple-Dove-award winning Christian singer-songwriter.” when she walked away from it all amid rumors that she is a lesbian. \u00a0 \u00a0 And as I read her story, I read this…<\/p>\n

Knapp no longer feels like being gay and being Christian are in opposition, even if others do. “I’m quite comfortable to live with parts of myself that don’t make sense to you,”<\/strong><\/em> she says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Emphasis mine. \u00a0 She had to basically leave music and her country for a period of time in order to find this comfort, and more to the point, in order to have it knowing that some of what he was comfortable with would not make sense to some people, sometimes. \u00a0 She had to get away from practically everyone and everything to, as the saying goes, to find herself. \u00a0 But if the individual person is their own unique song, that song is not so much a Thing<\/em> as a performance of many different instruments…some of which are older then the fish, let alone the mammals, let alone the primates, let alone we humans let alone you.<\/p>\n

We are amazing creations, each of us not only bearing our own history, but also the history of life on earth in our blood and bones, and sometimes in our deepest thoughts and feelings whether we’re aware of them or not. \u00a0 That we struggle sometimes to understand ourselves is probably the most understandable thing about is. \u00a0 One of the biggest ugliest crimes certain organized religions…and political movements…perpetrate is to set the parts of us that make us a whole human against themselves, so we end up tearing ourselves apart, after which they, the church or the party, offer to come inside and clean the mess up for us.<\/p>\n

How convenient. \u00a0 And how convenient that they have to keep on doing it, because left to ourselves we mess everything up again. \u00a0 If there is such a thing as Sin, capital ‘S’, in this life, then to teach a kid to fear themselves, to hate themselves, to regard themselves as innately untrustworthy, must be a big one.<\/p>\n

But it isn’t just organized religion and politics. \u00a0 It can start in childhood with the taunts about anything from being left-handed to having a strange accent or red hair or a favorite book or a particular skill at something. \u00a0 Anything about you can be a target for bullies, well meaning adults who just don’t get you, or uncomprehending friends who think this or that little thing about you is just…you know…Weird…<\/em><\/p>\n

So you grow up mistrusting a part or parts of yourself. \u00a0 You hide them from view lest you get taunted again and the hurt returns. \u00a0 It isn’t just sexual orientation. \u00a0 I was a little bookworm in school and for years I got taunted as That Kid Who Uses Big Words. \u00a0 I loved to draw and paint and for a brief period I remember turning Everything<\/em> I did in school into an art project, until the grief I caught for drawing on my test papers finally made me stop. \u00a0 One teacher wrote in my files (which I later saw) that Bruce “…takes excessive interest in personal art projects.”<\/em> Probably she was trying to warn the other teachers down the road that they were dealing with a little fay boy who needed some toughening. \u00a0 I was good at figuring things out, especially technical things, and I was always wanting to share what I’d discovered with others, discovering in the process that others didn’t necessarily get it or even care. \u00a0 \u00a0 I was the Weird<\/em> one.<\/p>\n

The blessing in disguise was I had a personality that would have suffocated had I tried to conform anyway and that kept me from trying too hard. \u00a0 But over the years I have hidden things about myself in order to make friends and that’s always self defeating in the end. \u00a0 \u00a0 To make friends who accept you as you are, you need to be…well…As you Are<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As Knapp sings on “Inside,” the track from Letting Go<\/em> that “I play when I get angry,” what Knapp fears the most is that “I know they’ll bury me \/ Before they hear the whole story.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A lot of us come out of adolescence with parts of ourselves deeply buried. \u00a0 You eventually start reclaiming your inner self, stop being ashamed or embarrassed of things you really never needed to be ashamed or embarrassed about in the first place. \u00a0 But that’s the easy part. \u00a0 The hard part is being comfortable with those parts of yourself not making sense to others.<\/em><\/p>\n

That’s what can take years. \u00a0 Decades even. \u00a0 Ask me how I know. \u00a0 I had an old and dear friend once lecture me when we were alone that being crazy is okay so long as I \u00a0 concealed it from the rest of the world. \u00a0 But I’m not crazy, I don’t think I even qualify as eccentric. \u00a0 Not by gay community standards at any rate. \u00a0 \u00a0 But crazy or not, I can’t be anything else but me. \u00a0 Well…I could pretend…but I won’t. \u00a0 Not anymore.<\/p>\n

I’m quite comfortable to live with parts of myself that don’t make sense to you.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

My sexual orientation, my geeky techno babble, my ability to just disappear into my head for hours at a time, my odd fascination with seemingly random objects in the world around me. \u00a0 All that Weird Stuff inside of me, is also part of \u00a0 all this…<\/p>\n

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Maybe this image says something to you. \u00a0 It did to me when I was standing in front of it with my camera. \u00a0 Now you have it too.<\/p>\n

And…this…<\/p>\n

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I do this. \u00a0 And also…this…<\/p>\n

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“…takes excessive interest in personal art projects.”<\/em> Whatever. \u00a0 She may just as well have written that I take excessive interest in electronics, in books, in the other boys.<\/p>\n

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It’s a struggle familiar to most gay people, even those who haven’t had to make room for sex and God, often uncomfortable bedfellows. Choosing to come out can still mean choosing away from family and friends who just can’t accept us as well as making institutions like marriage and parenthood exponentially more difficult to access. For Knapp, the process of bringing faith and sexuality into a coherent self required her to step away from her life and career in the U.S. The music that had spoken through her voice and hands became completely alienating. “I would think, I don’t even have a right to sing a song I wrote, because I am a hypocrite,<\/em>” she says. Knapp spent her first three years as “a PlayStation guru,” and, when she tired of that, spent four years working at everything but music. She didn’t even pick up a guitar until her last year in Sydney. “I was building something new, starting something fresh,” she says. “I had to go someplace that would completely redefine my perspective of who I was in the universe.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Coming out is, I have come to realize in my middle ages, not only an issue for gay people. \u00a0 A good slice of the human race have issues with being told they’re weird for various reasons. \u00a0 We’re encouraged to bury those parts of ourselves so that our neighbors in this life don’t have to deal with things that don’t make sense to them. \u00a0 And yet, all that weirdness inside of us is sometimes considered useful. \u00a0 Beautiful even…<\/p>\n

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Later that night Knapp plays a set to a full house at Manhattan’s City Winery.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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I read this on Andrew Sullivan’s site just as I was composing this blog post last night. \u00a0 And serendipity it was…<\/p>\n

Jonah Lehrer passes along<\/a> some research:<\/p>\n

Eric Barker<\/a> recently referred me to this interesting study<\/a>, which looked at how elementary school teachers perceived creativity in their students. While the teachers said they wanted creative kids in their classroom, they actually didn’t. In fact, when they were asked to rate their students on a variety of personality measures – the list included everything from “individualistic” to “risk-seeking” to “accepting of authority” – the traits mostly closely aligned with creative thinking were also closely associated with their “least favorite” students. As the researchers note, “Judgments for the favorite student were negatively correlated with creativity; judgments for the least favorite student were positively correlated with creativity.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This shouldn’t be too surprising: Would you really want a little Picasso in your class? How about a baby Gertrude Stein? Or a teenage Eminem?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Perfect! \u00a0 \u00a0 The little dears wouldn’t draw inside the lines and that makes teacher frown. \u00a0 But sometimes we make people smile too…<\/p>\n

She follows old friend Derek Webb, a straight and happily married Christian artist, who plays “What Matters More,” a track off his recent album that is explicitly critical of antigay Christians. Knapp is less blunt, playing a mix of her Christian favorites and new songs that hew to themes of love and loss. She does include “Inside,” the song that broadcasts the fears and frustrations that lick around the edges of what is otherwise an exciting and joyful return to what Knapp does best. But as she closes the set, graciously telling the applauding crowd that the night’s schedule doesn’t allow an encore, it’s clear that no matter what happens next, Jennifer Knapp will be playing music<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You have to let people be weirded out. \u00a0 You have to let them put you into whatever little box they have handy, that lets them quickly dismiss you, categorize you, calculate, number, index and catalog \u00a0 you. \u00a0 \u00a0 Some people just have to have their boxes. \u00a0 Just so long as you don’t put yourself into one. \u00a0 All those things that make you different from the others. \u00a0 It doesn’t matter they don’t understand. \u00a0 Just so long as you do. \u00a0 \u00a0 Or even if you don’t, that you’re comfortable with it. \u00a0 Better you don’t make sense to people sometimes, then you don’t make sense to yourself. \u00a0 Creativity and oddness just go hand in hand and you don’t want to wake up one day and realize you’ve buried everything inside of you that could have been grown wings and soared, that could have been beautiful, and now you can’t find it anymore.<\/p>\n

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I’m reading in The Advocate that another Jesus Music star has come out…Jennifer Knapp…who was apparently a “…million-record-selling, multiple-Dove-award winning Christian singer-songwriter.” when she walked away from it all amid rumors that she is a lesbian. \u00a0 \u00a0 And as I read her story, I read this… Knapp no longer feels like being gay and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[103,12],"class_list":["post-4415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-the-human-heart","tag-the-struggle-for-our-lives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}