21 May Punker, Table Of One

Gentle Reader(s), up until this point in the game InkyInkInc.com has been exclusively a one-man show. It’s been both challenging and fulfilling to keep the ideas and the playlists flowing for the past year and a half, but I am more than thrilled to present to you InkyInkInc’s first guest blogger—my friend and fellow Matador DJ (No Pants), Lily Jones.

 
PUNKER, TABLE OF ONE: One Girl’s Ramblings on an Evening of Dichotomies

 

​Before last Thursday, my knowledge of Pussy Riot was limited. Neon dresses, balaclavas, and prison came to mind. Limited may be an overstatement. However, when I heard that Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (Nadya) and Maria Alyokhina (Masha) were going to be in my little niche in the desert, and a friend of mine wanted to fund my ticket to see them speak, I got educated. What struck me more than anything was their adoption of true intersectional feminism. Instead of confining their activism to Russian women or just women in general, they wanted to and were continuing to, fight for everyone.

 

​These are the women who visited New York in December during the onslaught of police brutality towards the black population and responded with their first music video in English. “I Can’t Breathe” is a song that acts in memoriam of Eric Garner. Nadya and Masha wrote a song about the dual nature of the phrase “I Can’t Breathe” as both the literal statement and the metaphorical ideal of living within this climate of police brutality. The chorus repeats “It’s getting dark in New York City/I need to catch my breath” and concludes with Richard Hell repeating Garner’s plea to be left alone and allowed to breathe. Where others would see wage, color, and nationality gaps, Masha and Nadya see commonality. When these women say that you can be Pussy Riot, they are also extending a fist towards your oppressor. Through their influence in multiple spheres, including their NGO Zona Prava, their news service MediaZona, and their work to free imprisoned activists these women will fight with those who are greatly marginalized with a camaraderie that states your success is our victory as well.

 

​It’s so encouraging and fucking flattening to think these women are my age. Self pity aside, I was extremely excited to learn more about these pussy positive hooligans. Being a V.I.P. at the event also had its perks. I was escorted to a selection of seats in the third and fourth rows at SFUAD’s Greer Garson Theatre and allowed to attend a fundraiser dinner that would follow the talk Pussy Riot was giving. I should have been more apprehensive about a dinner that cost upwards of $300 to attend ($600 for a seat at Nadya and Masha’s dinner table) and had an excess of bougie fish on the menu, but what can I say—I genuinely thought that those who invested such a sum of money and time would be interested in the topics at hand.

 

​The first kick in the cunt came from the man who sat next to me at the talk. As he took his seat he turned to the folks sitting behind him and said “I just got the ticket. The woman told me if I had a vagina, it would be cheaper.” Ah, the middle-aged white man who feels the need to point out that if his gender was swapped he’d have a better go of it. What a laugh riot. As if the going is ever easy with a vagina in tow. I bet this guy took personal offense back in the early ’90s when Riot Grrrl shows encouraged women to the front of the stage and gave the ladies cheaper tickets than the guys in order to let the girls know they wanted them in attendance. After a couple moments of pointed scribbling in my notebook, I moved on. This dickhead wasn’t going to sully my pussy riot!

 

​The talk was a state of flux. It was actually the kind of talk that I really enjoy. Neither Masha nor Nadya had airs to put on nor reasons to be impressive. After the amount they have accomplished and time in prison they served, I think they’re over the bullshit that comes with keeping up with appearances. Most of the talk was filled with them whispering to each other in Russian, futzing ineffectively with their microphones, and engaging in general horseplay with each other. At one point Nadya explained their demeanor as “our reaction to intellectual conversation.” Their interpreter, Pyotr Verzilov (who happens to be Nadya’s husband) constantly asks them to be serious. However, as Nadya says, they simply aren’t serious and thus will not act as if they are.

 

​In between laughing at presumably hilarious inside jokes, Nadya and Masha laughed some more. It was invigorating to hear Masha describe an instance of “the poetry of relationships” while in prison. Letters that she had been writing were collected by three COs and burned in an iron bucket to show her that her ideas would not infest anyone else, especially not those on the other side of the prison’s walls. In response, Masha laughed. She laughed at the beauty of the burning paper and the ridiculous sight of these women standing around her burning words. Masha refused to let this experience, prison and/or this censorship diffuse her. Masha and Nadya laughed about the men in Sochi who told them to put raw chickens in their vaginas. Nadya spoke of how funny it was to learn that men within the Kremlin were orchestrating another group of men with raw chickens. Their indifference towards being angry about these things was also a wonder. It’s as if when their anger doesn’t fuel a new music video or activist action they’re uninterested in wasting time getting bent out of shape about it. Prison? Chuckle. Raw Chickens? Snort. It echoes Nadya’s thoughts on being a celebrity: “It doesn’t matter how they call you.” It must not matter when they have been able to do and withstand so much starting from such a grassroots base.

 

​After questions were asked of the ladies and time was called, the audience filed out and I eavesdropped on anyone in proximity. “It was interesting, I guess…” was the first gem. The woman who said this had a pained expression enveloping her features as if stating the above was an admission that caused her physical pain. (Fun fact: This woman was one of the seat holders at Masha and Nadya’s table. Way to spend 600 big ones on something you kinda, sorta, didn’t think totally sucked.) The second tidbit I gathered was from a man walking in front of me who said to his friend “I’m surprised these girls are able to talk about it.” Girls? Those were women you just saw on stage, bud. Maybe girls would have a harder time discussing their past circumstances, but those two women, who lived through these experiences, are surely able to discuss them, seeing as they are intelligent enough to string together words and such. The most disconcerting remark I heard was also the truest. A woman leaving the theatre stated, “It’s a fucking woman-driven thing and fucking white men ask questions.” She was right. During the Q&A portion of the night, the overwhelming majority of people called upon and given a mic were male. Why the hell was this? Were the women in charge of the event (both SITE Santa Fe heads and the dean of SFUAD, etc.) worried that if women talked too much the men in the audience would cry pussy envy? And yet the reactions I was having to the people around me were nothing in comparison to what was coming.
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​The dinner, although delicious, did not compliment the talk half as much as the wine did my mood. Yes, going into this I knew that the dinner was a fundraiser (for what, I am still unsure) and the attendees would most likely be Fanta Se types, meaning money, free time, and a whole wine cellar of pretension. I thought it would be awkward, but interesting. Rubbing elbows with the wealthy and well connected is not a favored pastime of mine, but I tend to believe my humor and vast knowledge of a variety of topics would be my crutch if simply listening to those around me was not an option. Oh, hubris thy name is Lily! I was an unknown at this event and thus had to provide proof of the V.I.P. status of my ticket, which seemed standard. When I was confirmed as a rightful ticket holder I was given a blank place card and shown to an empty seat. Later, when I made a joke to another attendee about the place card as my lack of benchmark as an actual V.I.P., she tried to confirm that I did know that I had to pay to be here, as if I had literally waltzed in and set up camp where I felt like it. I had to reassure her that I had in fact paid, just as she had. To be privy to such delightful small talk is always such a joy.

 

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At this point I gave up on being polite and started being myself. Call it my way of embracing the spirit of Pussy Riot—I stopped caring what these people thought of me. Unlike Nadya and Masha, I tend to lean towards reading the room rather than laughing at it. I tried to engage in conversations with the surrounding table members and ended up dismantling their theories and criticizing their standpoints. My favorite moment being when I claimed the reason why the women next to me felt suicidal after reading bell hooks was because of her privilege. In my defense, I think I am very funny, but once your (or your family’s) net worth jumps into a certain bracket, I guess I cease to be as amusing. I am being very hard on this group at the dinner, I know that, but wouldn’t you expect a higher level of communication and open-mindedness at a function supposedly celebrating two women at the forefront of a feminist art collective called Pussy Riot? Shouldn’t we expect more than money from people who claim to love the arts? These women are rolling on the floor laughing, making videos, and challenging every Putin that comes their way while “fans” of their work eat a fancy dinner and feel proud of themselves for being in attendance. Why did Masha and Nadya stop laughing the moment the dinner started? I think Masha and Nadya know that these dinners are not the time to be laughing. Sitting in a $600 seat may make the audience feel entitled to know why Masha and Nadya are laughing. That kind of money gets agitated by bad table manners. Maybe I rebelled because I saw that Masha and Nadya couldn’t. Perhaps I felt that the punk end of their collective needed to be present at this dinner and in this inception, punk meant getting to the grit of the conversation. With every dick joke and witty shut-down I was expelling the notion that this dinner existed outside of the world of the real. Or maybe I just feel uncomfortable around people that lick at a tit that they don’t understand.

 

​There was a moment that night that I will treasure. I shared a bench with Masha as we both smoked cigarettes in silence. I had things I wanted to ask her and thank her for, but instead of being another person at the dinner she should put on the face for, we sat inhaling and exhaling mere inches away from each other. I think she was as glad as I was to have a quiet moment outside of the rush of a dinner of overexcited blowhards.