Friday, July 8 and Saturday, July 9 – “Feelings Are Facts” by Yvonne Rainer and “Being Watched” by Carrie Lambert-Beatty
I’m combining these two days because, in my mind, the books sort of melted together. On Friday, I trekked down to Wicker Park. I spent the morning at Filter Cafe (a pretty large, cozy cafe with many outlets and work spaces), and the afternoon at Caffe Streets (much smaller and sleeker; had an awesome atmosphere but some weird music choices). I read at home Saturday morning before taking a dance class and then finishing up my reading on the Lakefill.
The biggest moment in these books for me was when Rainer recounted her suicide attempt in “Feelings are Facts.” She very factually explains what she did and why she did it, and the reactions of the people close to her. Reading about it affected me very viscerally, and it also took Rainer from this Higher Being who was a Creative Genius to a really brilliant human, but a human nonetheless. Her struggles with depression, arguably, shaped a lot of what she did with dance, and that’s not something we can discount in pursuit of a pretty narrative. I have the utmost respect for Rainer for being willing to write so candidly about her experiences.
“Being Watched” was less about Rainer’s life and more about her work; Lambert-Beatty spends a lot of time detailing dances and describing the artistic atmosphere of the world in which Rainer was creating. Since Rainer doesn’t elaborate much on this in her memoir, it was a useful supplement.
The two major components in “Being Watched” that stood out to me were the consideration of temporality, and the effect of war on Rainer’s work. Rainer starts her memoir by discussing 9/11, but doesn’t detail too much about how Vietnam and other goings-on in the world affected her work. “Being Watched” fills in this hole nicely. It’s important to remember that the work we create cannot be separated from the world in which we’re living, even if it doesn’t directly correspond to the work itself. We are shaped by our atmosphere and experiences. Nothing exists in a vacuum.