Tender Buttons
by Becky Brown
The rapist is such an inspiration that he started a newsletter to share his story. He chronicles his transformation from a nerdy duckling into the muscular entrepreneur swan he is today. The newsletter began as a motivational tool for his annual charity triathlon, but it has become much, much more. It’s a meditation on health, tech, spirituality, culture, and, of course, pushing through limitations and not understanding the meaning of the word “no.”
That’s the opening of Mary South’s “You Will Never Be Forgotten”— a story that tackles the (ever-intertwined) humors and horrors of our technological age. The story’s full of “likes” and “follows”; 5-star recipes that don’t quite come off; an app (“Tender Buttons”) that instructs users to enact meaningful rituals with strangers it’s pinpointed by GPS. Some characters are identified by their social media handles, or by anonymous titles, instead of their names—and those handles and titles are repeated with violent persistence: “the rapist’s girlfriend,” “the rapist’s dog,” “the rapist’s lies,” “the rapist’s rapeloft.”
“There is no such thing as repetition. Only insistence.” Gertrude Stein said that. In “Tender Buttons ”—the book, not South's fictional app—Stein drains words of their existing meanings (the way the word “cat,” repeated over and over again, becomes pure, abstract sound), but new meanings arise all the same. South’s story seems to work the same way: the moves towards abstraction lead somewhere else—to exuberant absurdity, a sense of rhythm, a trance-like state, a transformation. South's climax is grotesque, but her conclusion is heartbreaking, empowering and totally sincere. It’s a potent contrast with the layers of irony in the rest of the story, adding to the list of opposing forces that South manages to hold together.
"There's no such thing as repetition."
What does that mean in our world of instant copy/paste, viral videos, ever-scrolling feeds and ever-refreshing web pages? Does “insistence” today, make us pay attention, or make us numb?
You really should read (or listen to) South’s story, which I first heard online, in my studio, in February. It struck me then, because my work also deals with words and repetitions. Like South, I try to hold opposing forces together by focusing on words—like "shame" and "pride"—that follow closely on each other's heels. I too am interested in whether or not unlimited access to information and communication actually brings us deeper knowledge or intimacy.
I thought about the story more in March, when Covid-19 confined us all to our homes, increasing our reliance on technology exponentially. Pre-Covid, we lived on a precipice between the real and an infinite number of virtual worlds, experiencing social (though not necessarily physical) distance in deep, life-altering ways. Now, I wonder—how will our post-Covid retreat from the physical world affect this precarious balance?
Whatever the answers might be, here’s a batch of songs that have propelled me over the years. Songs that put forth their own timeless power and energy; that always help me find my next footing, in paths creative and otherwise. They, too, contain a healthy mix of irony and sincerity, abstraction and exuberance.
Becky Brown lives and works in Buffalo, New York
