On History
Oct. 25th, 2024 10:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeWhen I made my plural histories, I said, “thank fuck that’s over, never doing THAT again!” It was a lot of work, and a lot more agonizing about what I didn’t know, what I should and shouldn’t include, what “plural” even meant. I was thrilled when it was done. Wash my hands of the business!
But then I got a printer. And then I tried a tiny print run of those essays in zine format, and people started buying them at cons. And I went, “I know so much more about demoniacs and possession now... I have Coons and Greaves and their godforsaken bibliography and Silverwolf and Ida Craddock and what if I made a real book about this?”
Clearly I have learned nothing.
But... it is important to me. I owe Redwoods a drink, it seems, since I’m pretty sure it was them who asked me to make the cussed things in the first place.
When I read Ida Craddock’s journal entries of her spirit husband, “my daily Borderland companion... quite near and dear to me,” (Schmidt, 249) even though she worried it was “a delusion, a lie” “only hallucinative” (267) it spoke to me, even though she was a 1904 freethinker spiritualist and I a 2023 mental patient. (As did learning that the only reason her papers survived is because after her inheritor sank on the Titanic, a douchebag psychoanalyst snatched up her diaries so he could write his sexual fanfic about her “delusional intimacy” (248).)
When I learned about Alma Z., open about her three selves who loved and were loved by each other and their friends and family in 1893, it spoke to me. Reading about their conscientious switching to allow Alma to enjoy a favorite symphony felt so true, so real to my own experience, over a century later. How many times have we done such things ourself?
When I learned how Haiti was formed in a slave rebellion, slaves rising up and calling on the Petwo lwa to bring freedom through being mounted by powers greater than their enslavers, it spoke to me, even though I was never a slave, never a Haitian, never possessed. But the opening oneself up to beings bigger, brighter, bolder than one’s oppressors... that I knew.
When I read about the creators of Silverwolf, living openly multi in Ireland in the 80s, making freakin’ computer games and spanky lesbian separatist books&zines and running a kinky boarding school LARP for adult schoolgirls and just GETTING AWAY WITH IT, I am in awe and delight, even though I’m pretty sure they were a cult. Nevertheless, I can only aspire to that level of shameless self-ownership!
And these are stories I want people to know, lessons I feel are worth learning. There’s always this presumption that people like us have no history. We were invented by tumblr, or Sybil, or Eve, or doctors, or mass hysteria. We never created ourselves, have no past worth knowing or learning from (be they triumphs OR mistakes). We are always flashes in the pan, fads that we’ll all be embarrassed about in a few years, extremely rare. We are presumed to always be alone and sad, never in community, never accepted.
But that’s not true. It’s never been true. A Haitian revolutionary may seem to have nothing in common with an Irish kinky schoolmarm or my disabled cartoonist ass, but we nonetheless can learn from all of them... and should, if we want to grow into better and more. Even though I know that my ignorance will always hinder me, that for every story I write a hundred more I never knew, I want to try, if only to give other people a platform to build better on.
...This means I will probably have to read that sneering Memory Wars era book dismissing us all as iatrogenic demoniacs, but such is life.
But then I got a printer. And then I tried a tiny print run of those essays in zine format, and people started buying them at cons. And I went, “I know so much more about demoniacs and possession now... I have Coons and Greaves and their godforsaken bibliography and Silverwolf and Ida Craddock and what if I made a real book about this?”
Clearly I have learned nothing.
But... it is important to me. I owe Redwoods a drink, it seems, since I’m pretty sure it was them who asked me to make the cussed things in the first place.
When I read Ida Craddock’s journal entries of her spirit husband, “my daily Borderland companion... quite near and dear to me,” (Schmidt, 249) even though she worried it was “a delusion, a lie” “only hallucinative” (267) it spoke to me, even though she was a 1904 freethinker spiritualist and I a 2023 mental patient. (As did learning that the only reason her papers survived is because after her inheritor sank on the Titanic, a douchebag psychoanalyst snatched up her diaries so he could write his sexual fanfic about her “delusional intimacy” (248).)
When I learned about Alma Z., open about her three selves who loved and were loved by each other and their friends and family in 1893, it spoke to me. Reading about their conscientious switching to allow Alma to enjoy a favorite symphony felt so true, so real to my own experience, over a century later. How many times have we done such things ourself?
When I learned how Haiti was formed in a slave rebellion, slaves rising up and calling on the Petwo lwa to bring freedom through being mounted by powers greater than their enslavers, it spoke to me, even though I was never a slave, never a Haitian, never possessed. But the opening oneself up to beings bigger, brighter, bolder than one’s oppressors... that I knew.
When I read about the creators of Silverwolf, living openly multi in Ireland in the 80s, making freakin’ computer games and spanky lesbian separatist books&zines and running a kinky boarding school LARP for adult schoolgirls and just GETTING AWAY WITH IT, I am in awe and delight, even though I’m pretty sure they were a cult. Nevertheless, I can only aspire to that level of shameless self-ownership!
And these are stories I want people to know, lessons I feel are worth learning. There’s always this presumption that people like us have no history. We were invented by tumblr, or Sybil, or Eve, or doctors, or mass hysteria. We never created ourselves, have no past worth knowing or learning from (be they triumphs OR mistakes). We are always flashes in the pan, fads that we’ll all be embarrassed about in a few years, extremely rare. We are presumed to always be alone and sad, never in community, never accepted.
But that’s not true. It’s never been true. A Haitian revolutionary may seem to have nothing in common with an Irish kinky schoolmarm or my disabled cartoonist ass, but we nonetheless can learn from all of them... and should, if we want to grow into better and more. Even though I know that my ignorance will always hinder me, that for every story I write a hundred more I never knew, I want to try, if only to give other people a platform to build better on.
...This means I will probably have to read that sneering Memory Wars era book dismissing us all as iatrogenic demoniacs, but such is life.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-26 03:49 am (UTC)mood
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Date: 2024-10-27 12:10 am (UTC)We appreciate all the work you've done. Your resources helped us years ago when we were first accepting ourselves, and they still help us to this day!
-B
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Date: 2024-10-27 04:48 pm (UTC)Hey, we're glad! There were so few people making resources back in the day, and now more and more people are making such great stuff!
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Date: 2024-11-07 06:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-07 06:40 am (UTC)-B
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Date: 2024-10-27 09:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-10-27 04:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-10-27 04:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-10-27 09:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-10-27 10:28 pm (UTC)We can give you access to the post I made screaming about it last year, if you want.
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Date: 2024-10-28 08:05 pm (UTC)And yes to getting access.
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Date: 2024-10-28 08:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-07 06:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-07 04:23 pm (UTC)