Reflections While Watching a Netflix Special

By Yaschen Dlima

Today I showed my mother the Hannah Gadsby special ‘Nanette’, and she fell asleep midway. We drank coffee while eating the raspberry danish-like pastries she just baked. I wanted to show her the entire special. I felt something deeply moving in her tired bold words that drew from her story through suffering, humiliation and the pangs of shame, suffocating her brief moments of childhood innocence that often than not leads to creativity out of boredom and self-doubt. I felt happy and inspired. A change of perspective. Something new to hold and feel. I am young and full of opposing silly identities through which I jump from one moment to the next, assuming one role, then another as the moment fits. I forget that maybe I might just be following something empty and incomplete, as I’m motivated by my own juvenile ambitions which in themselves have yet to mature to see the other perspective independently.

I happily assume a singular position and wrongly assess the happenings that consume a fraction of my awareness; afraid of being contradicted and only wanting to prove myself. To whom? To me. I don’t know exactly and that may indeed be the point. That I don’t know, I take shelter in this thought and resign any motivation to argue. But this is counterproductive, for no argument can remain unresolved and so I am left to resolve this apparent debate against myself with myself, in myself, using so and so tools like broken thoughts of ignorance, arrogance, self-doubt and a sudden confidence in the overall meaninglessness of my path. Maybe it was me who had to watch Hannah Gadsby and not anyone else. Not my mother. I don’t have to convince anyone of its worth, especially myself. I understand if you don’t want to see it. She really did bake something delicious. Again the coffee was bitter, and this played against the tangy sweetness of the raspberry compote in a colourful dance of flavour and diversity. The crispy patty of pastry-dough came into the pot of sensation coyly, offering a slightly salty yet firm flatness to the marriage of bitter and sweet flames of the coffee and raspberry compote daring each other with swords and pistols, as though in a most boisterous duel. Then just before dear Hannah could begin her story of the unsolicited opinion of a man on how suffering is the source of creativity, where Vincent’s sunflowers were laid mistakenly before her as an example to support his silly opinion that medication offers no boon to creative art, my mother began to feel drowsy. She herself was surprised the coffee failed to act as she thought it would, and was slowly welcoming the supreme comfort of an evening nap. I sat there beside her on the sofa remembering her enthusiasm to watch this show at the beginning of our conversation and my own eager expectation of her reaction to something strangely beautiful and powerful as Nanette. But then she placed a red cushion to the side of her head and dozed off into that unexpected nap, much like dear Hannah does when she isn’t off “lesbian-ing”. Well, now what? I think it’s okay for my mother to not watch it. Maybe it was for me to see, to learn, understand and change my perspective as much as I can. In that way she would watch Nanette through my own actions.

By Yaschen Dlima