Tag: julia sweeney

My Brain Has Bad Wiring

I often find myself watching my brain at work, puzzling over its various quirks. Note that I say *it*. Julia Sweeney mentioned something of the kind in Letting Go Of God, that we seem perversely incapable of viewing these innerworkings as being ourselves. My brain is a little machine, it isn't me. Except that it is. And I am afraid that I am not possessed of a sleek and efficient device like my MacBook laptop. No, my brain unfortunately more closely resembles a particularly badly-designed Rube Goldberg contraption, clicking away with little marbles and dominoes flying every which way. Kinda interesting if you are into the whole steampunk world, but not terribly useful if you are trying to take an exam on Etruscan politics or recall all the Roman emperors in order.

One of the things that most amuses me is my word recall. I have a pretty extensive vocabulary due to the many, many books I have read over the years. But it's not very accessible, as each word requires a tiny brain hamster to crawl through a maze, down a zigzag ramp, ride an elevator up, and then swing through the air to the correct elevated platform and ring the red bell. The yellow bell means the hamster gets flattened by a large Monty Python foot, and - alas - my brain hamsters are not too bright and I have lost many of them to the foot, resulting in me standing slack-jawed in the middle of a conversation and completely at a loss for words.
City of Lost Children
SteamPunk Brains...


But, thankfully (I guess), I can usually manage to retrieve a word from this process. Most often not the right word, but a word nonetheless. And it's generally a word that is pretty close to almost being what I wanted, so if I send the hamster back a few times more I can sometimes find the RIGHT ONE. I wrote down some examples from today.

Searching...
1) dog-tagged. NO
2) dog-earred. NO
3) ear-marked. YES!
Searching...
1) black list. NO
2) white wash. NO
3) blackmailed. YES!


As I'm sure you can see, this means that most conversations with me can be quite entertaining as I dance around (sometimes quite literally) trying to find the right word. And then a hamster dies and it all comes to a painful, stuttering halt.

This is why I prefer to use email. And why I never answer my phone (sorry, Mom and Dad!).
Posted 2008.01.23 20:22 | Last modified 2011.03.02 13:43 | 2 Comments

Julia Sweeney’s "Letting Go Of God"

I had the great pleasure of seeing Julia Sweeney's One-Woman show tonight, "Letting Go Of God". I saw parts of it last year at the Paramount and instantly loved it. The extended version was amazing. I think the shorter version was a concentration of the funny bits, and the longer version had a lot more socks to the gut. When I was abandoning the Mormon faith, I belonged to a group called "Recovery from Mormonism." It was a sort of an online therapy group. They collected stories former members told of their experiences (often AWFUL experiences) in leaving the Mormon church. I always wanted to post my story there, but I never felt like I had a "finished" version. And by the time it was finished, I couldn't remember anymore how it felt like when I was actually there.

Julia Sweeney has no such problem. She elegantly carries the audience through her entire journey, in the moment, with no hints of what is to come. It was funny and satirical, of course, but it was also devastating and embarrassing and filled with all the grief of lost fairy tales. I can't say that I've read as much on the many, many topics that led her to atheism, but her conclusions resonated very strongly with me. Especially the conversation she has with her mother, where she says she is more at peace now than she was before. And that it really sucks to re-evaluate one's own impending demise, especially given the better understanding of one's own significance (or lack thereof) in the universe at large (cv. Douglas Adams and fairy cake).

As soon as the movie is released, I will be buying it for myself and all my friends. But in the meantime, you can enjoy this amusing clip of Julia Sweeney's encounter with the Mormon Missionaries.
Posted 2007.10.20 22:31 | Last modified 2011.03.02 13:41 | Leave a reply

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