With this ring...
Listen to "Married to God," performed at VAMP in San Diego
Hello, my friends (and my foes. I know you’re listening in!),
The piece I performed at VAMP San Diego in April is now on YouTube.
It’s not essential to watch the video, so may I recommend playing it like a podcast while you’re out walking or cooking or performing some underappreciated yet essential domestic grunt work? (I see you.)
I think often of the subjects of this piece: the nuns who taught me in high school. As Loudon Wainwright III sings tenderly in “Your Mother and I”
I hope when you grow up, one day you'll see
Your parents are people, that's all we can be
Parents are people: it’s a theme I will return to often in this newsletter, both as a daughter and as a mother. The nuns, also, were people, and as such the best of them embodied a central contradiction at the heart of their work as my teacher: they wanted what was best for me, even when they knew that might mean I would turn my back on the Church, as I eventually did.
Get the full story in the piece. Please comment on Substack if you watch/listen to it.
Maggie this was wonderful! (I listened to the YouTube video while cleaning up the kitchen 😄). I loved references to the passive aggressiveness, shade, and the institutional pixie cut. I went back and looked at that part of the video and saw VERY familiar hair styles. This brought back positive memories of high school. I was only taught by a handful of nuns, but I'm glad my experience was similar to yours. Except for the Sr. Elise part (getting a compliment from her is like "WHOA" to me) and she was right about you.