Not So Super (Are you a Clark Can or a Clark Can't?)
If you’re at least 40ish..(I can’t imagine why you’d be reading about my mid-life crisis, if you weren’t ...but welcome?) then as a child you probably watched one, if not all, of the Superman movies. I had an older brother, so I definitely did. More than once. I wasn’t much for action/comic book movies and I’m still not, but I’ve always been a consumer of the human condition. This means that I remember certain parts of movies that affected me emotionally.
A scene that has stuck with me my whole life, and still pains me to think about, is in Superman II. Our hero had just given up his powers to live a normal civilian life (and to make sweet sweet love to Lois Lane in that silver space-y waterbed) and he enters a diner with his lover to enjoy a post-coital burger and fries. Well, quicker than you can say “I’ll have the Kryptonite Martini shaken not stirred”, some slimeball dude starts macking on his girl. To protect his or her honour (one can never tell with patriarchy) his mouth proceeds to write a cheque his body can’t cash. He is miserably beaten and humiliated and I was left tormented with the unfairness of it all. Why would he give up his powers in the first place? What the hell was he thinking? Sure love is nice and it’s great to take some time off but how could he just throw away his whole purpose in life, his calling, his POWER? For what?
Maybe even superheros go through their own existential crises.
These days, I can’t help but feel like a bloodied Clark Kent, crouched in the corner of that diner, blinking through my cracked glasses at a mournful Lois. I gave up my power.
A short decade after I first saw that scene unfold, I was a young single woman in the city. Working waitress jobs, playing cafes and clubs and recording whenever I could. When I would invite a young man over, they would always ask me to sing. My sister and I used to call this “using my powers for evil”. The young suitors wouldn’t stand a chance. By the time I had sung the first chorus, they were deep in some pixie manic musician trope fantasy and I would ride that wave as long as I could. But in all seriousness, when I was onstage, I had a room full of hearts and souls just waiting to be captured, riled up and set free. I had the power to make people think, cry, laugh and sing my songs in their head all the way home. Mild-mannered barista by day, sultry, soulful siren by night.
Now I’m not sure what my power is. Unlike Superman, there’s no surefire way to get it back. It’s not as easy as “the city needs me!” and then duck into the nearest phone booth. Inevitably some other girl with a guitar has already taken my place. Snooze ya lose.
A person’s words found their way to me once, through a friend’s anecdote. Her mentor had told her “you’re writing won’t abandon you.”
I believe that’s what one calls a shred of hope. In the meantime, I’m gonna go get these glasses fixed.
Tune in next week where I talk about my dog.
A scene that has stuck with me my whole life, and still pains me to think about, is in Superman II. Our hero had just given up his powers to live a normal civilian life (and to make sweet sweet love to Lois Lane in that silver space-y waterbed) and he enters a diner with his lover to enjoy a post-coital burger and fries. Well, quicker than you can say “I’ll have the Kryptonite Martini shaken not stirred”, some slimeball dude starts macking on his girl. To protect his or her honour (one can never tell with patriarchy) his mouth proceeds to write a cheque his body can’t cash. He is miserably beaten and humiliated and I was left tormented with the unfairness of it all. Why would he give up his powers in the first place? What the hell was he thinking? Sure love is nice and it’s great to take some time off but how could he just throw away his whole purpose in life, his calling, his POWER? For what?
Maybe even superheros go through their own existential crises.
These days, I can’t help but feel like a bloodied Clark Kent, crouched in the corner of that diner, blinking through my cracked glasses at a mournful Lois. I gave up my power.
A short decade after I first saw that scene unfold, I was a young single woman in the city. Working waitress jobs, playing cafes and clubs and recording whenever I could. When I would invite a young man over, they would always ask me to sing. My sister and I used to call this “using my powers for evil”. The young suitors wouldn’t stand a chance. By the time I had sung the first chorus, they were deep in some pixie manic musician trope fantasy and I would ride that wave as long as I could. But in all seriousness, when I was onstage, I had a room full of hearts and souls just waiting to be captured, riled up and set free. I had the power to make people think, cry, laugh and sing my songs in their head all the way home. Mild-mannered barista by day, sultry, soulful siren by night.
Now I’m not sure what my power is. Unlike Superman, there’s no surefire way to get it back. It’s not as easy as “the city needs me!” and then duck into the nearest phone booth. Inevitably some other girl with a guitar has already taken my place. Snooze ya lose.
A person’s words found their way to me once, through a friend’s anecdote. Her mentor had told her “you’re writing won’t abandon you.”
I believe that’s what one calls a shred of hope. In the meantime, I’m gonna go get these glasses fixed.
Tune in next week where I talk about my dog.
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