Born on Battleground
Dear Hugo,
We have returned from our Grand Tour of North Carolina. Between Topsail, Raleigh, Greensboro, and Charlotte (plus the Asheville wedding in May) I've covered most of the state. You would have stayed with Cousin Nora the rest of the summer if I'd let you. Maybe we'll go back for Labor Day -- I didn't get to visit all my Greensboro research sites, and we left the sleeping bag there.
I do have many research-objects to study and an interview to transcribe. Still trying to figure out exactly where Mom's family lived before they moved to the current place in Pleasant Garden in the 60s. She doesn't remember -- she was only five when they moved, and says the adults only ever called it "the old place." I asked Uncle Mike where this old place was exactly and he deadpanned, "Oh, over there." But I did get a little more information. I know it was a 17-acre farm off of Old Battleground Road and that it's now a subdivision. I think it's this neighborhood called Cotswold Terrace, which means they were really right there next to the battleground, possibly even during the Battle of Guilford Courthouse itself in 1781.
In the meantime, a few things I've been reading: Britney's statement, which is maybe one of the best pieces of personal writing I've read. I don't think it's being addressed that way, as a speech or an essay, but she says in the beginning she wrote it all down. And it's clearly not off the cuff; it's a structured narrative and a structured argument, but still so much in her own voice, with her little jokes here and there ("I don’t even drink alcohol — I should drink alcohol, considering what they put my heart through"), her way of addressing the judge as ma'am.
I truly believe this conservatorship is abusive, and that we can sit here all day and say oh, conservatorships are here to help people. But ma’am, there is a thousand conservatorships that are abusive as well.
Also, in my personal tradition of not discovering bands until they've broken up or authors until they're dead, I've been reading some Lauren Berlant articles that Critical Inquiry has made publicly available since her death this week.
If I were a smarter person, I could say something here that brings these two very different writers together -- something about intimacy, celebrity, the state, the state's definitions of sanity and competence, the reason I find it so emotionally compelling to learn that Britney Spears has been forced to keep an IUD she doesn't want in her body. Maybe someone smarter will write it. I am at my usual place -- the edge of my understanding, almost grasping something but never quite there yet.
Love,
M.