Scientology: the wrong way to cry

Note to shameful-secret-watchers-of-A&E: I am just as hooked on "that Scientology show" as you are - maybe even more so, because I have a thing about cults. And I have a thing about cults because I have experienced devastating religious abuse, and dealt with it by walking away from it. I have yet to come to the point where I can write about it in any detail, but in two instances, trusted spiritual leaders were ejected or went to jail for breaking every moral and ethical law that exists, up to and including sexual assault. The fact that the religious trauma of my childhood somehow, unbelievably, happened again in adulthood still makes my head spin.

This means that shows like this can "trigger" me. And they do. Boy do they. Why do I keep coming back for more?

But I have to admit, the above video by a former Scientologist (I used only a snippet, and purposely didn't put a name on it) got to me. He literally stuck his face right into the camera and wailed. This is the opposite of what I see on "that Scientology show", where people seem to have an awfully hard time dealing with tears.

It's understandable that everyone cries on this show. If it were me, I would have committed suicide a long time ago, so to a person I think they are heroic, and have the right to display any and all emotions that are left over from this bizarre quasi-military UFO cult.

But to a person, including (and especially) Leah Remini, they cry in a funny way.

I don't think I have ever seen anyone allow a tear to trickle down their face on this show. It's always very carefully dabbed away with a tissue before it escapes the bottom eyelid.

I've seen people cry like this before, and it makes me wonder if they have trouble with emotion, or are even afraid of it, afraid of letting it overflow. 

Is this the Scientology way? Or are these people so emotionally brutalized that they are afraid to let that particular emotional rain fall?

In the case of Leah, the careful dabs are like a science experiment with blotting paper. I wondered at first if she were trying to preserve her perfect makeup. She IS pretty free with the lip collagen, after all (her lips are a different size and shape every week, which is a distraction), and maybe doesn't want puffy eyes to match.

But then I saw others doing it, and it was even more mysterious. In this one, the lady even seems to be offering up her single tear as a kind of sacrifice.

Dab, dab, dab. No nose-blowing either, no rivers of snot such as you'd get with a real flood of tears.

In case you think I'm being flip - all right, I am, but as compelling as it is, this is a reality TV show, which (as with all of them) you have to take with a tiny grain of salt. I have no doubt these people suffered horrendous trauma and will spend a lifetime trying to get past it. But I also get the feeling their ordeal is being packaged by the producers in a way which will appeal to the largest possible segment of the public. And this isn't fair to them any more than it's fair to the rest of us.

Scientologists are lunatics, in my book, and their ugly paramilitary organization is an offshoot of Nazi Germany more than anyone yet realizes. Some day, the connections will be found, whether from Hubbard or that insane little pipsqueak who comes up to Tom Cruise's belly button (and never mind the ramifications of THAT). Scientology rallies have a Nuremberg flavor to them, the wide, dizzying camera angles reminiscent of Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. The histrionic announcer on those pep-rally-style videos is so ludicrous that it's almost funny, sort of a cross between Adolf Hitler and a spokesman for Ron Popeil.

Right. So we've established that this is an evil regime, and brutal for people to exit without consequences. But what about the guy in the first video? I confess I didn't watch the whole thing, because I couldn't, but I know that it's about Scientology and his attempt to escape it. He has a whole series of them, written from the perspective of a persecuted gay man who was lured in by the promise of acting gigs. I've never seen anyone cry "at" a camera before, to the point of nearly jamming it down his throat, and it kind of turned me off. I also noticed there were no tears - I mean, none at all, not even the blotting paper kind, though he wiped away "something" at the end. But he did not have the red or inflamed or even the watery eyes of weeping. HE WASN'T CRYING, folks, which means that he was pretending to cry, trying to make us think he was. And he wasn't.

This video produced a flood of sympathetic comments, the usual Greek chorus of deliberately elicited/stage-managed support. I don't know what's going on here, but my solar plexus gong is ringing, and I feel as if I'm being played. It's powerful stuff, which means it should NOT be played with, at all. Ever.  People have been jerked around enough, haven't they? But here it is, and I know there is a lot more. It just seems offensive to me, like a plea for my sympathy. I also see all sorts of tweets and loyal fan comments and even a "documentary" this guy made, but I have to say to you at this point, I really doubt if this guy was ever a Scientologist. My spidey sense/fake-o-meter is telling me he wasn't. 

Even if he was, I think it was peripheral. He saw an ad in the back of a comic book, walked in and out of his own volition and never spent time licking floors in the Hole. Maybe he even did it to have something to blog about? I don't think he was ever enmeshed or entrenched like the survivors on the Leah Remini show. He walked out, disappointed that he wasn't getting gigs. The YouTube thumbnails are a bit depressing: Sex with Scientology Celebrities and my $5000.00 Tshirt! Mom Interviewing Me about Scientology, Big Blue and Masturbation! Offer to Star in Scientology-Themed XXX Gay Film! etc. etc. etc. He even boasts of meeting Tom Cruise. 

Scientology is a way for this guy to get the kind of attention he thinks he needs, and it's working. Behind it is that peculiar stew or fever that means he is working his way relentlessly towards a reality series of his own. 

For after all - isn't that the ultimate goal of every one of us?

Post-blogservations. I noticed today - not that I notice these things - that the above YouTuber announced the reason he went so over the top the other night. He says his grandma died. He never said anything about this last night when he was swallowing the camera lens. At least he could have made it his dog! His Nana must be really pissed, because now he can't write about her any more.

Crying. . . crying. . . crying. . .

This is one of those oh-my-god-i-never-thought-i'd-get-to-hear-this-again moments. This re-finding, rediscovery of buried treasure. The video goes back to 1989, and I had it on an old VHS tape, which of course eventually became unplayable.

k. d. lang kind of goes around in my life in one of those huge orbits, like hair styles, types of Purdy's chocolates, weight fluctuations, breeds of dogs, belief in God. Keeps changing and evolving and rounding the dark side of the moon, but somehow never quite goes away, because it can't. Try to throw it away, and it will boomerang and hit you in the face.

I figured something out as I watched and listened to this incredible performance just now:  it's Muriel, the protagonist of my novel The Glass Character, and her hopeless longing for the silent screen superstar Harold Lloyd.  "I thought that I was over you" is the heart-cry, the howl of the unrequited. Just when she is sure the rend in her heart has healed, well, he just shows up again, not unfriendly - as a matter of fact, he always seems glad to see her again - but he can't, won't love her. Never has loved her, and even if he did, couldn't possibly love her as much as she loves him.

This song is about the unattainable. I've always had a feeling lang's artistry springs from early abandonment: her father left the family when she was a young girl. Compare this to Streisand, whose father died when she was only a toddler. It leaves some trace on a voice, if the instrument is already exceptional. A something extra, ruby-dust and blood, and it makes for that subtle escalating, the reaching, each time she sings "crying. . . crying. . . crying. . ." , the hopeless anguish mounting and mounting until her voice soars and fills the hall and makes the audience burst into applause when she isn't even halfway through the song.

I wrote about this in The Glass Character, the same feeling, and I just realized it now. Goddamn it, I must tell you the process: I am only partway through the editing, and I don't know who wrote this! I don't even like parts of it, hate other parts, and put check marks beside others. I don't know why this is, and I don't even remember writing it, but Muriel cries too much. I'm having to ruthlessly reduce her tears, because I for one am sick of hearing her sniffle and bawl.

Have I ever lived through anything like this? I won't talk about it now, for it did not happen the way you might think. Well, actually it did. When you read the novel (and you WILL read it, won't you?), you might discover the dynamics of how it happened for me. It lasted five years, and for most of that time it felt like someone was steadily grinding out cigarettes on my heart.

No sex took place. Sex does take place in my novel, but not with Harold. So it's disconcerting to Muriel, who really doesn't get a lot of satisfaction that way. Just pining, endless pining. 

I used to say, about the greatest singers, if *I* could sing like that, I'd never have to see a psychiatrist again. Maybe a simplistic view, because God knows most of the popular singers of the day are melting down at a frightening rate. k. d. still sings, but I don't like her voice as much. She has always had certain mannerisms, and I call them "swoop, yodel and groan". She bends notes too much, or far more than she used to, and begins nearly every phrase with a groany little sound. Her "attack" is off and should be cleaner, saving the groans as an accent. The yodel, more of a  half-yodel or deliberate use of the break in her voice, sometimes shows up a bit too often or is too pronounced. I think she'd do just fine standing on an Alpine mountain with a goat. But never mind. We still have her recordings of when she was in her fiery prime. My favorites are still this song and Pullin' Back the Reins, a hairstanding wail of controlled grief and - yes, again - loss.  

I did see/hear lang in concert, quite a few years ago now when she was still singing exceptionally well. She is overwhelming. It reminded me, strangely, of going to a Renee Fleming concert and hearing the most extraordinary operatic soprano voice I can even imagine. When the audience was filing out, most of us still surreptitiously blowing our noses, I overheard a woman say, "If it had been any more, it would have been too much." That's how I felt about k. d. lang.

I know everyone talks about her sexual orientation and her look and her butchness (and this video is probably the only time you will ever see her in a dress). I'm not keen on her look, to be honest, but I don't care about it. She has gained weight and become stolid and, according to my husband who saw her sing at the closing ceremonies of the 2010 Olympics, "she looks like Wayne Newton." Yes, the baggy suits and Elvislike stance are beginning to seem alarmingly Vegas, and one hopes she doesn't pull a Celine Dion and glitz herself into oblivion.

Never mind. The song, the song! Artists express, not just what we all feel and can't say, but what is not supposed to be happening to us. That's an awful lot. The culture is a narrow box. Sex is everywhere, seemingly, but how embarrassing is it when you come right down to it? How awkward? How often does "the act" (always, always referring to penis-in-vagina sexual intercourse and nothing else) match up to the dream? How about never?

Which leaves me crying.

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