Three stories on being human

watch, read, listen

Sometimes I come across stories that move me more than usual. For 2023’s midway point, here are a film, book, and podcast episode that I engaged with this year and why I couldn’t stop thinking about them after.

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Read:
Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative (2022)

I rarely feel the need to own physical copies of books, but after reading Body Work by Melissa Febos, highlighting every other passage of the library loan on my Kindle, and crying with it in my lap, I felt like I could benefit from having a copy to turn to at any time. As a diarist, memoir reader, and personal essay writer (but only in secret), this book was deeply moving and inspiring. It made me want to confront my own ghosts using words on a page. At its simplest, it’s an ode to writing.

As I drove down the night highway, my heart surged and surged. I was, of course, on the brink of writing something that scared me.

The collection of four personal essays discusses the power of writing about one’s personal life, struggles, and trauma. The first essay gives the reader permission to “navel-gaze.” The second explains the necessity of healing from patriarchal expectations before writing well about sex. The third contemplates the messy ethics of writing about other people. The last, possibly my favorite, maps out the way writing can go hand in hand with trauma recovery. It takes a spiritual approach and likens writing about trauma to a way of bearing witness to your own experiences and showering yourself in divine love.

What I’m saying is: don’t avoid yourself. The story that comes calling might be your own and it might not go away if you don’t open the door. I don’t believe in writer’s block. I only believe in fear. And you can be afraid and still write something. No one has to read it, though when you’re done, you might want them to.

Watch:
Joyland (2022)

I cry at least a little at nearly every movie, but I’ve never cried this hard at one. During the final scene of Joyland, I was sobbing in the theater to the point where I had to calm myself down to avoid disturbing people around me. I was stunned; words escaped me. This was a Friday night. Three days later, I went to watch it again, which is not something I do often.

Biba is a dancer. She is ambitious, talented, and has developed a cold facade as a result of navigating life in Lahore as a trans woman. Haider, the lead character, is allured by her. He is quiet, nervous, and weathered by the patriarchal expectations on him at home. Mumtaz, Haider’s wife, is the breadwinner. She loves her job and her sister-in-law, and is happy to have no children.

I went into Joyland only thinking that it was a movie set in Pakistan about a man who falls in love with a trans woman. The actual story was much, much more than I expected. It’s a beautifully shot portrait of several characters who are fighting with external expectations and experiencing layers and layers of shame, pain, desire, and yearning.

Do you really think doing what you want will result in your funeral?

Listen:
"Flight 571: Survival in the Andes”

This is a 2022 episode of You’re Wrong About, a deep-diving podcast that clears up common misconceptions in contemporary history. It’s one of the most amazing stories I’ve ever listened to. [Links: Youtube, Spotify]

Drawing heavily from survivor memoirs, regular host Sarah Marshall and guest host Blair Braverman recount the harrowing tale of the Uruguayan rugby team that crashed in the snowy peaks of the Andes in October 1972. Out of the 40 people on the airplane, 29 initially survived, with various gruesome injuries. After more than two months in the unforgiving icy landscape took additional lives, 16 survivors, with a severe sense of community and incredible will to survive, were finally able to contact civilization and be rescued.

Listening to this beautiful, terrifying account of survival made me realize the sheer animal instinct that humans have to keep living. It also made me incredibly grateful for my life. The hosts touched on themes of humanity, dignity, and what “survival” means in everyday life.

Marshall: In day to day life, in civilization, you’re supposed to not feel like the bottom could drop out at any time, even though it could.

Braverman: It’s almost like we don’t want to acknowledge that, and that’s why we assign … the word [‘survival stories’] to situations like this one, as a way of denying how close we all are to [death] at any given time.”

Notable for many who learn about this story, the survivors wouldn’t have made it out alive without cannibalism. The podcast takes a non-sensationalist approach to this reality. For example, it brings up the deeply religious discussions that the survivors, all Catholic, engaged in when mutually agreeing that if they died, the others should eat their bodies to live.

While hardly the only or even main point of the story, it leads many people to consider, if I were in stuck in the wilderness like that, would I eat people? I found myself unable to answer the question, and after listening to this episode, it felt a little ignorant to even entertain. I’ve never been in a situation that would even raise the question, so I could not imagine the answer. I found myself thinking: I don’t know if I’d want to do it, but I hope that my body would will me to do it. To summon that deep a desire to live feels like a miracle in itself.

As two of the plane crash survivors embarked on what would become the 10 day expedition that finally led to their and the group’s rescue, they looked over the mountains:

Nando: Can you imagine how beautiful this would be if we were not dead men?

Canessa: You and I are friends, Nando. We’ve been through so much. Now let’s go die together.