The Texture of Memory Is Corduroy

[Jackrabbit is nearing the home stretch on her field exam!  In the meantime, here's part two of that conversation regarding cognitive literary studies and The Laramie  Project.  If I have any brains left after the exam, I'll rejoin you shortly.]  

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So, in my last post I shared a personal anecdote that created a little doubt about Jed Schultz's version of events regarding his parents' ambivalence to his acting career in The Laramie Project.  He claims that his duet from Angels in America was the first time his parents hadn't come to support him, but my friend "Andie" can remember lots of times that they didn't come to events because of scheduling conflicts.  So, whom do I believe?  Now that we're almost ten years down the road...  I believe them both.  Perhaps I don't believe that they both represent objective reality.  But I do believe that both versions have story truth, and without any way to determine the objective facts, that's what I have to settle for.

Here's what I mean: I thoroughly believe that this moment was the first time Jed felt disappointment in his parents; it's also the first time he had to break away from their authority and suffer the consequences.  I believe that his dismay and disappointment is real.  And, as for "Andie?"  I believe that her memory accurately represents her childhood recollections of paling around at school and church together with Jed because both of them had extremely busy parents.  Now that the objective truth can't be discovered, I have to settle for story truth.   He remembers the disappointment.  She remembers the strength of their childhood relationship in the face of parents who couldn't always be there.

So, story truth isn't the same as objective truth, but it has value nonetheless.   It's not a distinction we're normally willing to make, but it's an important one for understanding how we should approach the truth of The Laramie Project.  If we treat this play as only forensic, verifiable fact, two things will happen.  One is that people will discover that a lot of it's not "true"  and want to reject what it has to tell us.  The other is that they won't understand the depth and complexity that this play has to offer.  We have to understand that the texture of memory is uneven and full of gaps, layers and crevices.  We have to feel the textures of memory more like it's corduroy than silk.

"Revenge and Forgiveness in Laramie, Wyoming": Stephen Wang writes on TLP

How on earth does one person forgive another? And, in the face of terrible violence against the self, how does the individual (and a the community) find healing?  These are questions that lie at the heart of The Laramie Project, and questions that, apparently, at least one of the writers struggled with as they crafted their play. 

 Stephen Wang served as a draumaturge and writer for The Laramie Project in its various forms, and he has done some sophisticated thinking at a critical distance from the play about the nature of forgiveness.  This article appeared, along with three commentaries and a reply, in the journal Psychoanalytic Dialogues.  Looking at both the psychoanalytic tradition, the theatrical tradition, and even religious groundings for forgiveness, Wangh gives his readers a fascinating look inside The Laramie Project at the company's understanding of forgiveness and how that, in turn, crafted the play they all created.   What I really like about Wangh's approach is that he's extremely open about how Kaufman and the other writers approached their documentary material, and he's willing to be honest about where the members of Tectonic might respectfully disagree.  Definitely pick up this issue of Psychoanalytic Dialogues if you're at all interested in the The Laramie Project, the writing process, or its social impact.  I will probably be coming back to these articles at a later date because I want to read Frommer and Sandage's critiques to see what other insight they might give us.

Some Thoughts on Myth

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The myth is, then, not necessarily false.  It might happen to be wholly true.  It may happen to be partly true.  If it has affected human conduct a long time, it is almost certain to contain much that is profoundly and importantly true.  What a myth never contains is the critical power to separate its truths from its errors.  For that power comes only by realizing that no human opinion, whatever its supposed origin, is too exalted for the test of evidence, that every opinion is only somebody's opinion.  And if you ask why the test of evidence is preferable to any other, there is no answer unless you are willing to use the test in order to test it.

--Walter Lippmann, in Public Opinion (123)

[W]hen we have a theory about who we are, and the data goes against that theory, we throw out the data rather than adjust the theory. We are hardwired as human beings not to contemplate our own complicity in things.

--Jeffrey Lockwood, in an interview with Tectonic Theater

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The beginning of The Laramie Project starts with some of the stories we tell each other about who we are and what it means to live there:

REBECCA HILLIKER:  There's so much space between people and towns here, so much time for reflection...  You have an opportunity to be happy in your life here.  I found that people here were nicer than in the Midwest, where I used to teach, because they were happy.  They were happy that the sun was shining.  And it shines a lot here... (7)

I know these stories so well because they're mine too-- conservation, self-reflection and space...    But then there's this odd moment in the middle of all this mythmaking when Seargeant Hing starts telling his story about Laramie:

SEARGEANT HING:  It's a good place to live.  Good people, lots of space.  Now when the incident happened with that boy, a lot of press people came up here.  And one time some of them followed me out to the crime scene.  And, uh, well, it was a beautiful day, absolutely gorgeous day, real clear and crisp and the sky was that blue, that, uh...  you know, you'll never be able to paint, it's just sky blue-- it's just gorgeous...  (8)

I know what he means about the sky.  That's why I used to love Maxfield Parrish's paintings when I was little-- because nobody else could quite get that barren, cobalt blue sky to turn out just right.  But this moment for me was utterly surreal when I first saw the play-- the way that Hing's narrative of that "good place to live" with its blue sky, so blue you don't understand unless you've seen it, just sort of blends in perfectly with the Shepard tragedy.  The one story has totally infiltrated the other.  I had a sense of horror the first time I heard these lines, a horror only slightly lessened by my satisfaction at hearing the reporters called "stupid"  just a moment later.  It felt like our story had been hijacked.  That's not who we are at all, I wanted to call out.  That's not the way the story goes. 

I've moved beyond that first reaction to a more ambivalent stance.  Hing couldn't tell his story about Matt Shepard without telling Tectonic who he was, so his myth of blue, blue skies and Shepard's murder site just run together. Anymore, that relationship goes both ways; you can't tell the story of Laramie anymore, it seems, without Matthew being a part of it:

JEDEDIAH SCHULTZ:  If you would have asked me before, I would have told you Laramie is a beautiful town, secluded enough that you can have your own identity... a town with a strong sense of community-- everyone knows everyone... Now, after Matthew, I would say that Laramie is a town defined by an accident, a crime.  We've become Waco, we've become Jasper...(9)

What I'm contemplating right now is this: how easy is it for your myths to change?   And when should they have to?