Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
I haven’t written for a while, I know, but things have been busy. The SF Ballet season has been in full swing this year, and fills every night (and most Sundays) that aren’t filled with rehearsals for CYMBELINE, which started two weeks ago, and have been delightful. I also recently have been hit up for a number of freelance writing gigs, the first of which, an article for the Petaluma Argus Currier, went up at the end of February. With spring hitting in full force, and for those of us in San Francisco, a reminder that four years ago lockdowns began, I find myself in that enviable place of having to debate the single most important question of a single person’s life in March: will I, or will I not, go drinking on St. Patrick’s Day?
I know that for many people, today can be a very contentious day, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the way it gets used by lots of people who are NOT Irish as an excuse to act like an unflattering stereotype of people who ARE Irish (you know… drunks). I myself have my own complex history with the holiday since, as an adopted kid, my parents (one Romanian/Russian Jew, one Anglo/Dutch Protestant) did that thing where they wanted me to be raised both in their own traditions and cultures, and also claim my heritage, which... because I had red hair as a kid, and both of my biological parents had red hair, they assumed was Irish.
Look. It was northern New Jersey in the 80s okay, and if you were white and suburban there were three options: Italian, Jewish, Irish. Hopefully the actual diversity of the greater New York City sprawl (as well as the recognition that Scotland is also a thing and full of redheads) is now better appreciated but, when I grew up in the snow on Uphill Both Ways Boulevard, those were the only ethnicities which got parades and/or extra days off from school.
Anyway, my mother, for reasons never to be fully understood but with her usual unhinged enthusiasm (which in retrospect my sister and I realize was probably deep insecurity but which we also intensely miss in our lives), at some point decided that it would be “important” for me to join the other “Irish” people in our town (which was mostly second and third generation Italian families) when they would walk together at the end of the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade down the main drag of Nutley, New Jersey (aka, the place I often just refer to as “New York City” when being intentionally ambiguous about my past). Since we moved to Arizona a few months before my thirteenth birthday, this means I walked in, I believe, five parades total. One of my most vivid childhood memories is being rather literally shoved into the parade by my mother, who then ran a block ahead so she could take a picture of me in the parade. Considering that as an adopted kid I was prone (and remain prone) to abandonment issues there is a profound irony in my mother assuredly exacerbating those while at the same time trying to honor my heritage.
But is it as ironic as the eventual revelation (at 18) that I wasn’t even the tiniest bit Irish?
The unsealing of my adoption papers was fairly anticlimactic because my 18th birthday occurred during my first semester of college and, since I was slated to go home for Thanksgiving just a few weeks later, I stayed in Portland and had a party in my dorm. My parents sent me a cake, and a birthday card with my adoption papers inside (which explains everything about who I am today, in a nutshell). I remember opening them and finding out I was English/Welsh (fine, I was an Anglophile by then so that was fine) and… oh fuck me… French. Canadian.
Could have been worse, I guess. Could have been Italian.
Identity is weird. On one hand, it can be an incredible source of strength in tough times, and an incredible source of joy in the good ones; on the other hand, it can also be a trap that limits both our idea of ourselves, and our ideas of others. Cultural identity in particular can be troublesome because often our idea of a culture, whether we are on the inside OR the outside of it, is formed for us by others, not by us as individuals. Additionally, often even the collective idea of a culture is incomplete, even when it is held by people who identify as that culture, and contains a mass of generalizations that sort of blend different traditions from different eras and fail to recognize culture isn’t passed down so much as evolved (and thus will keep evolving). What many people consider to be their culture also usually contains untruths (folklore) or spiritual truths (like, you know, mythology) or just flat out historical inaccuracies, because while many people claim to be experts on their culture, few of them are actually historians or anthropologists. It’s the sort of glossed over reality that murmurs beneath the surface of just about every argument around appropriation: the part where most of what people perceive as their heritage, was at one time or another, either not a thing, or someone else’s thing, that found it’s way into the thing they call “our culture”, if they were to look back far enough, or look at it critically instead of reverently.
The Irish, in my opinion, understood this not exclusively but fairly frequently true Truth a long time ago, as evidenced in The Book of Invasions, a mythical history of Ireland that starts with the Bible and ends with some actual history of Ireland, but along the way features some pretty epic diversions into Mythology Town, aka Fairyland, c/o Gods And Monsters, Planet Earth. An attempt to reconcile the rich pagan legendarium of the Irish people with the (by the time The Book was first written) much embraced Christian faith (I think Christian and Celtic religious traditions were essentially made for each other, but that’s another article for another time), The Book was also very much a bid for Irish Identity, with it intended to rival the kinds of histories places like Rome and Greece had, the old Long Heritage = Global Importance schtick. What I think is different and particularly interesting about the Irish bid for cultural legacy, though, is that it very much acknowledges (starting with the title) that the Irish of today were not The First People of Ireland, but rather the most recent wave. Before them was another, and before that another, and before that… you get the idea. And since each wave the farther you go back gets more and more hypothetical (or really, mythical) until all of sudden boom, we’re in the Garden of Eden, one can read the entire collection as ultimately saying, there’s no such thing as a First People. Or if there were, they are unknowable, and probably weren’t the First People or (perhaps more importantly) the Only People. After all, who did the sons of Adam and Eve marry?
“Faeries,” my Favorite Ex told me, slamming down his Guiness while screaming it over the din of a packed Vesuvio (in the heart of San Francisco's Italian neighborhood) one St. Patrick’s Day a million years ago, when the First Wave of Stuart’s invasion of San Francisco was at the height of its youth and beauty. “They clearly married faeries.”
“I mean, I prefer that over their sisters,” I replied, raising my Harp to my lips.
And THAT, reader, is how culture is created.
Over the years, the story of my fictional Irish heritage has been told to all kinds of people, in all kinds of situations, but for me it’s sort of an early moment of cognition on my part that who we are (or think or say we are) and who we want to be, aren’t always the same person. In my teenage years, my supposed Celtic heritage had been a huge part of my identity, remaining consistent as I went through the Queer Of A Thousand Faces Journey (Goth Part 1, Theatre Kid, Goth Part 2, Poet I, Dude Who Is Gonna Make A Movie, Goth Part 3: The Druid Years, Poet II, Bisexual) before happily settling into the Edwardian Slacker Forest Wizard Second Rate Giles Season Four of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER that I am today.
Of course, I realize that my Welsh (and English) heritage means there IS some Celt in there, but as my hair darkened and now starts to grey, I see the Norman in me more and more, and I’ve grown to appreciate him. And also not be defined or limited by him. After all, my first great love was and will always be Greek mythology, but the one piece of jewelry I have worn on again and off again (it’s an on year) for most of my adulthood is a triple Koru designed by and purchased from a Maori, not to mention the pomegranate shaped house blessing that hangs on my door (under a horseshoe) is from Israel and was gifted me by a rabbi. And let’s get real: the number of quesadillas I have eaten outnumbers the sum of books I have read added to the number of men I have had sex with, for a sum that still doesn’t make me Mexican.
According to my birth certificate, none of those things are part of my ethnic heritage, but all of those things represent cultures and traditions that have played really important roles in my life and form who I am, just as much as five years in the St. Patrick’s Day parade did. Which is something I think the Irish would understand and celebrate because in my experience there’s an understanding in their culture that ultimately nothing is set in stone about who we are or what we are. Heritage is important, and it should be respected, but it’s not any more “real” than anything else we selectively prioritize as we struggle to figure out who we are, be that as individual or collective, from the bits and pieces of who we have been. One way you can read The Book of Invasions is that Ireland belongs to nobody. And everybody. Or will, at some point or another. All that really matters is where you are now.
But like… were there shamrocks in the Garden of Eden?
Probably.
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Stuart
Obsessed with this piece. I love learning more about you.
Giles Season Four! Love it. Thanks for continuing to write. I always enjoy reading.