{"id":21926,"date":"2015-07-30T13:09:57","date_gmt":"2015-07-30T13:09:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metonymypress.com\/?p=21926"},"modified":"2015-07-30T14:03:00","modified_gmt":"2015-07-30T14:03:00","slug":"when-god-was-a-girl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metonymypress.com\/fr\/when-god-was-a-girl\/","title":{"rendered":"When God Was a Girl"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"ruth<\/a>
Ruth West holds up an original papercut piece during a talk with Oliver Pickle in Montreal.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So we\u2019ve been calling She Is Sitting in the Night<\/em> a collaboration, but if it was that it was largely retroactive\u2014a conversation that started in part before I was born. Literally. Ruth West started working on Thea\u2019s Tarot when I was not yet a zygote, a fact that she is happy to emphasize with phrases like \u201cback when dirt was new,\u201d \u201cwhen god was a girl, and \u201cyou don\u2019t understand because you\u2019re not old enough.\u201d There is a fine line between respecting older generations and being offended by this kind of ageism. Meanwhile, we had printed the book before ever having talked to her, my conversations mediated until last month by email and Rima Athar, the person who bridged us by initiating the project.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For a conversation between a digital art professional and an introvert, email and Skype felt like appropriate communication methods. So the fact that we had invited Ruth to Montreal for a visit and to speak at an event last month was frightening to me. What were we going to talk about, I wondered? Would it be awkward? Even though we\u2019d been ostensibly collaborating for a while, would we like each other? Why were we doing everything backwards?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

While we had this basic connection\u2014along with appreciation for coffee at Social Club and small dogs (the latter was mediated by my partner and seemed the crux of what first made Ruth comfortable in conversation with us)\u2014we acknowledged that we came from different worlds in many ways. And that we each lived in a bubble of sorts. And we prodded at those bubbles, gently, Ruth expressing confusion at gender and sexual fluidity on the heels of what she had experienced as a binary scene, and me deeply wishing that MichFest would go away or open up to all women, except that it kept coming up in conversation.*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At the same time, Ruth herself hasn\u2019t attended the festival for years, and I can\u2019t deny its part in a longer history that, in one\u2019s rejection or appreciation of it, continues to inform choices queers make in our communities\u2014around inclusion and exclusion, gender expression and validation, direct action, caucuses, and mud wrestling, among other playful and painful actions. And this preferred disassociation is what makes many of us from my generation\u2014that is, vaguely youngish adults\u2014lose the generous and nourishing parts of lesbian feminist history, and how some of its participants continue to exist in the present (though the amount of queers who have died young in the past several decades is also notable, and informs our current work too).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In any case, we went for coffee, we talked, we drank, we ate breakfast, we read tarot, we took pictures. And the tensions were real, but I\u2019m not convinced they were worth total avoidance of each other. As it turns out, we like each other\u2019s work, which is significant and crucial in this particular relationship, and another reason to maintain this kind of conversation, even if it is after the fact, and brief, and mediated by electronics. We\u2019re hoping to set up a visit to her bubble this summer, too, and we\u2019d like to continue this conversation, now that it\u2019s started and as stilted as it sometimes may be, through sharing art, and prodding at each other about the things that feed us.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

__<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*In fact, it did close down this year. Metonymy Press opposes the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival’s exclusion policy categorically and stands in solidarity with trans women\u2019s struggles.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So we\u2019ve been calling She Is Sitting in the Night<\/em> a collaboration, but if it was that it was largely retroactive\u2014a conversation that started in part before I was born. Literally. Ruth West started working on Thea\u2019s Tarot when I was not yet a zygote, a fact that she is happy to emphasize with phrases like \u201cback when dirt was new,\u201d \u201cwhen god was a girl, and \u201cyou don\u2019t understand because you\u2019re not old enough.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21932,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books"],"yoast_head":"\nMetonymy Blog - When God Was a Girl<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Oliver reflects on the complicated nature of the intergenerational collaboration that made Metonymy's She Is Sitting in the Night possible.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/metonymypress.com\/fr\/when-god-was-a-girl\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"fr_CA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"When God Was a Girl - 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