CONNECTION AND COMMUNITY

Why We Need Stories and Each Other

Hello from week 1,547,984 of physical distancing. Between the three of us we have watched over 192 episodes of tv (Friends, The OC, Dead to Me, Parks and Rec, Feel Good, Mrs. America, WWII in Color, all the shows), 81 movies (including all 8 Harry Potter movies, THE ENTIRE MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE, Jojo Rabbit x 2, and not counting the seven times one of us has watched Portrait of a Lady on Fire), read 24 books and a dozen New Yorkers, drunk at least a dozen 6-packs of Amstel Bier, cooked 54 new recipes and 12 loaves of sourdough, walked 280 miles with Frannie, fallen asleep to Alison Roman cooking videos, googled how to make jasmine oil, and started drinking straight out of the wine bottle. We are fully leaning into our quirks and our communities (to our friends and families - thank you for loving us). 

Whether it’s over Zoom calls, on the phone, over voice memos, poetry, novels, you name it - we are carving out time and space for stories and community. Which makes this issue’s interview with author, performer, and screenwriter Georgia Clark all the more timely. As Georgia puts it, she writes about “feisty, flawed, funny women.” And as host and creator of Generation Women, a cross-generational storytelling show (check out the next virtual show May 20th!) featuring a woman in her 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s+, Georgia thinks deeply about how storytelling shapes our lives, relationships, and society. 

We talked about shifting perspectives, the stripping away of unnecessary things, why society erases women as they get older, Mae Martin, and liberation through vulnerability (spoiler alert: it’s hard). 

*Lightly edited for length and clarity.

FIRST THING'S FIRST

My wife and I live in Williamsburg in Brooklyn so we are in it, we are in the eye of the epicenter, and we're doing okay. It’s been a real rollercoaster of emotion. I've felt every emotion every day for the past two months. But right now, we feel good. We've started having a bit more of a structured routine that focuses on health, mental health, physical health, which has been really good.

CREATING GENERATION WOMEN

The idea for the show came from my mom, Jayne. She was telling me about the experience of disappearing as an older woman and she was saying that the older she got, the more she felt she was being erased from society, by society. For example, walking down the street, people just looking right through her. Walking into the shop, people just not seeing her. And I've heard that experience from other older women as well. There’s the joke that there's no better time to become a shoplifter than in your 60s, because people literally don't look at you. And it really upset me and hit home because my mother is such a vital, interesting, warm person with so much to give.

I wanted to create a space where all the women weren't just welcomed, but where it was specifically for them. So that's where I got the idea for having the show format consist of a woman in her 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s to tell a story on a theme. So the room wouldn't be full of millennials. I'm a millennial, I love millennials, but I just thought it was a good idea. What I didn't realize was what a need it would be filling. And how much younger women want to hear from older women, in a really fundamental way. Not just because "oh it's interesting," but because they are the keepers of our future secrets, and the wisdom they have is so powerful and it's not coming from someone trying to sell you a self help book or get you to vote for them, there's no agenda. It's more "this is my experience, this is what life is like for me, and this is what life might be like for you," and that's invaluable. And older women want to be around younger women because they still have so much to give, they're a part of the conversation, they're active citizens, and it's been really eye opening and very fulfilling and soul-sustaining to create a community that is truly cross-generational, and it's bigger than just New York. We have shows in Sydney and Melbourne, and a show starting in Canada. And I hope we keep expanding because it's been such a wonderful journey to go on.

WE ARE STILL HUMAN BEINGS. WE STILL NEED TO TELL OUR STORIES.

I don't think anyone could go through this experience and not have it affect their work or their perspective on their work, even if the work itself hasn't changed. My thinking about what's important, what I really want to do, this moment feels like a real stripping away of unnecessary things. It’s impacted my thinking on storytelling and the show, Generation Women, as feeling like it's more important than ever, to connect, and to tell stories. Of course, nothing replaces the electric energy of being in a room full of live storytellers with the community right there, but we had our first virtual show a couple weeks ago and it was such a wonderful experience. Not only did we get to do our typical show, having a woman in her 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s tell a story on the same theme, but we were able to open up the show to a global community. We had people like my mom in Australia and my wife's family in New Mexico and friends up and down the coast watching, and our performers were able to have their community who were flung over the world tune in, which was really great. And the response was really wonderful. This moment of connection and community, and obviously in this age of social distancing when we are physically separated from our friends and families and communities, to be able to gather in some way, and people are doing it in all sorts of creative ways. To remind us we are still a community, we are still human beings, we still have the need to tell our stories, to be heard, to be understood, to be validated. All the things storytelling does for us.

We are still a community,
we are still human beings,
we still have the need to tell our stories,
to be heard, to be understood,
to be validated

GEORGIA CLARK

PLEASE DON'T BE AFRAID OF OLDER PEOPLE.

We all have a lot of fear about aging and dying. In some ways that’s so natural. But the way it manifests is a real agist culture. So many people are literally afraid to talk to or engage with older people because somehow it feels like you're getting one step closer to your own mortality. Which is really ridiculous when you think about it because all young women will become older women or young men will become older men or however you identify, we are all going to age - that is one thing that connects us as people. And there's something really, not brave, but sensible, about engaging with older people and not contributing to a culture that will one day erase you if this continues.

NEWS FLASH: OLDER WOMEN STILL HAVE SEXUALITY

I probably was guilty myself of having certain conceptions about personality traits of older women. And the reality is if you just think of a collection of your friends now, whether you're in your 20s, 30s, 40s, you have some friends who are outrageous, some who are quiet, all those sorts of things - those sort of personality traits don't really change. That means we have some women who are more outspoken, outrageous, funny, some who are more introspective and quiet. And I always love hearing stories about love, sex, and desire - it's one of my favorite buckets we get. I always encourage our older performers to write on love, sex, and desire because those feelings don't change either. Older women still have a sexuality, again, that's something we don't like to think about, because we're so focused on youth. Women's sexuality and desire starts to get erased really from your 40s onwards because there's such a conflation of sexual availability and sexuality. As soon as you're maybe married, or in a long term relationship, we're less interested in your sexuality for some reason, rather than identifying it as a part of human nature and something that we can talk about and laugh about and think about well into our 70s and 80s.

WHY AM I THE WAY I AM? AND OTHER UNCOMFORTABLE QUESTIONS

I've just started a new project. I just handed in a novel right when the pandemic started, which is a modern romantic comedy called It Had To Be You. I was going to write another romantic comedy, a queer romantic comedy, and really as a result of the shutdown and having this time to really start to think: What's important? What do I want to say? What am I afraid to write about? What have I been putting off writing about? And what came up for me, inspired by a few other things I was thinking about, conversations I was having, and that I was watching, was a desire to tell a story that was way more autobiographical than I'd been writing before.

The story I'm looking to write now is something that will be based very closely on my own life and telling a story of the things that have defined my story, probably through the lens of my relationship - painting more of a devastatingly brutal psychological self portrait. It's funny, it will still be entertaining, and probably loosely fit into the form of a romantic comedy, but will be way more exposing of myself, and really looking a lot deeper into what makes me tick and the ways in which I'm broken. I've never thought about doing this book before, but it really requires you take real stock of yourself and your past, your past relationships, your family life, and draw the conclusions of “Why am I the way I am? Why do I have the kind of psychological tics that I have? And how could I change them?” It's pretty confronting. But I also think that the best fiction comes from reality, and I think I've been afraid to expose myself in that way. When I mentioned online that I was thinking of writing this, everyone was like "Oh my gosh it's going to be so fabulous, so witty and so fun!" Well, it will be, but I don't think you guys realize I’ve wept because I'm not famous enough, it's pretty embarrassing really. And I think also terrifyingly relatable. So that's what I'm working on right now.

ON MAE MARTIN'S FEEL GOOD AND NEW TYPES OF QUEER STORIES

I saw the show, watched it twice, I’m completely obsessed with her, and what I realized from watching that show - it wasn't that “oh I wish I'd written that show,” I mean of course I do wish I'd written that show, but it was more like "Oh I want to do that - what's my version of that?” It was really inspiring, I was reading some interviews she's done about it, and how liberating it was to talk about your vulnerability. I'd heard all of that before, it wasn't as if it was new information, but hearing it in this time, it really hit home for me. And it also made me think, that story [Feel Good] takes place over a three month period, but I've been in a relationship with a woman who I’ve been married to for seven years, and I also realize we don't have so many of those stories. We have a lot of coming out stories. I want to see more stories of women who are in long term relationships with other women who are still kind of young women, and not the ‘we were hiding from our parents’ stories. No, we are married, everyone knows, it's no secret. And I want to explore that world. I think Mae Martin's story is truly groundbreaking and she's just an enormous talent. So grateful for her.

REJECTING 'COMPARE & DESPAIR'

It’s made me think about it in a more practical sense, and to be less afraid of it. I wouldn't say I am looking forward to getting older. I think everyone, especially creatives, because I think the nature of being a creative is the goal posts moving and you're never going to be where you want to be, that's sort of how the double edge sword of ambition keeps you going, but it also doesn't really let you enjoy the spoils of your hard work. Being in a multigenerational community relaxes that a bit more - that feeling - because you get a bit more of a sense of the cycle of life, and understand more that we're all going to get older, we're all going to go through these things, I may as well just try and enjoy my life how it is right now, today, this moment, talking with you, rather than be disappointed about the past, desperate to get into a future, but also deeply afraid of getting older. You know what I mean? We can work ourselves into a real frenzy about that. Also it's a very relaxing environment to be in, a cross-generational environment. When you're surrounded by your peers, people who are in your exact age group, there's a lot of ‘compare and despair’ that goes on. You're like "Oh my god they're my age and they own their own house, or they have a business or their kids are already 10 and I haven't even had kids yet." But when you're in a group where you're with women in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s - that all melts away a little bit and you just focus more on - “What are your ideas? What do you like? Let's have a laugh together, or just, tell me about your life.” You can't really compare and despair with a group of women who are seven decades strong.

I'm thinking a lot about ambition, that's something I'm really thinking a lot about right now, and the way in which it can really prevent you from pleasure and from joy.

WHAT SHE'S HOPEFUL FOR RIGHT NOW ...

I mean, I'm hopeful this will all be over. That I can see my friends again. But I'm more grateful than hopeful. I'm really grateful for my health, my family's health, for my ability to continue to do work that I think serves people. It’s a really hard time to be hopeful because of the current administration. I live a life of enormous privilege. So many people are in such horrendous circumstances right now. And it's hard to know what to do. Of course I donate money and do what I can, I stay home, but the pandemic has exposed the already glaring division between the rich and the poor in America, which is just so much more pronounced than in my home country of Australia and so many other countries. And I've always been aware of it, especially in New York where you are all living together in one petri dish, which is one of the things that makes New York exciting when it's working, but when it doesn't, it's really sad and hard.

I'm definitely hopeful for new generations of queer people, for sure. When I was in high school, for me, homosexuality just wasn't invented - I didn't really know about it. And no one was out at my high school, no one. I went to a country high school in New South Wales in Australia. I had a great high school experience, I had a lot of fun, I had really good friends. But I also wasn't clued in to sexuality, and I don't know what that experience was like for kids who knew for sure they were gay. Now, I think it's a different world. It sounds like I'm so old, looking back, but I’m really not. They're only a couple decades below me, and like, “Oh wow, the experience, the language, the possibilities.” The fact that 25% of kids in their 20s identify as queer? I don't even know if queer is the word they use anymore. It's so liberating, and that's really exciting, and I'm really excited for them and the influence they're going to have on pushing the conversation forward, or just letting the conversation go. Maybe we don't even have to think about it so much. I'm married to a woman, but neither of us really define ourselves as lesbians, but it would feel weird to say bi. I generally just say queer, but no one's even asking me so I don't have to worry about it. But it is strange to still be thinking about labels and things like that. All I'm really interested in is people's stories. Just tell me your story. How do you think of yourself? What is life like for you? Those are the things that I think make good stories at our shows, stories that expose vulnerability, expose a personal truth, that have some sort of hope; that's all people want to hear. They want to hear stories that are truthful to the storyteller and that maybe have a little bit of hope in them. That's a great story, always.

WHAT ARE YOU READING, OR WATCHING, OR NEITHER RIGHT NOW? I KNOW EVERYONE IS HAVING VERY DIFFERENT EXPERIENCES WITH CONTENT AT THE MOMENT

Feel Good 
Obviously Feel Good, which is a show that everyone should be watching and talking about.
Little Fires Everywhere 
It’s so wonderful, so rich, so powerful, such a layered story that really builds on itself and is excellent. 

I also love queer rom-com, queer YA stuff. 
Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
Carry On by Rainbow Rowell - An absolute delight, you can really get your fix for hot queer guy content.  
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
All Adults Here by Emma Straub
Emma owns Books Are Magic which is my favorite bookstore in Cobble Hill. She writes really smart, accessible fiction. 

Interested in learning more
about Georgia Clark?

Generation Women  
Next virtual show is on May 20th @7pm ET

Funny over Fifty

Learn more about Georgia Clark and
her work at georgiaclark.com