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awlenroseHello, dear Reader!
Now that you’ve hopefully read the fic (And Cry Like “L’Chaim”; Hallelujah), behind the cut you’ll find my thoughts about the-making-of. All tags for the fic are fair game to be discussed. Please note that I am talking about my own experiences and my own research-- I don’t claim to be an expert or the one true arbiter of religion/spirituality. (And not one of our beloved show, either.) This meta also assumes that you've seen pretty much all TS episodes. If there's anything I've missed you'd like to ask about, please feel free.
Without further ado...
(Relevant tags reminder: suicidiality, Character in peril, Mental Breakdown, Whump, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Soul Bond, Spirit walk, Grief/Mourning, Shaman!Blair, Jewish!Blair, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Episode: s04e01 Sentinel Too Part 2, Episode: s04e08 The Sentinel by Blair Sandburg)
The Inspiration
This fic started out entirely differently.
My first draft was a purely self-indulgent idea based on one of my favorite angst/whump tropes-- what happens when Character A stumbles upon Character B about to harm themselves, whether or not Character B is acting with deliberate intent? That led me to a post-TSbBS scenario from Blair’s POV, natch, because count me in as part of the fandom that is captured by the sheer enormity of how his life shatters.
It was originally much more of a tense dialogue between the boys-- Jim misunderstanding the situation, because Blair just wanted a bit of peace and quiet and wasn’t going to throw himself off the fucking roof, Jim, really, and Blair getting the chance to properly express the anger he felt that somewhere along the line, everything that he was had become wrapped up in Jim’s life, Jim’s future, at the cost of his own. That he’d make his choices again, but goddamn it he just wanted someone to witness this with him and fucking see what he’d done.
It was when I was trying to add the connecting material, rewatching the episode to get the details, that the threads of the story I didn’t even know were there started taking shape. Blair telling Naomi “I always wondered if my work would ever amount to anything. If it's taught me one thing, it's taught me that Jim is right.” The press conference where Blair seems near tears the entire time (hell of a job done by GM, there and in this whole episode). Subdued when he tells Jim “You know, you were right,” when he says “where do I get off following you around for three years pretending I was a cop, right?”. His conviction when talking to Joel that “I'm a fraud, man. I don't think Simon's going to want me hanging around,” “I don't deserve this,” when Jim tosses him his (future) badge.
And what cried out to me from the last half of the episode was grief.
The Judaism We (Don’t) See
From what I remember, we get two instances to indicate that Blair has a canonical connection to Judaism. They’re both one-off lines in separate episodes, but have different levels of significance.
From “Night Train” (01x06):
Blair: My backpack. I want to get my Swiss army knife.
Isabel: Why?
Blair: Well, it's sort of a good luck charm. I got it for my bar mitzvah.
From “Mirror Image” (03x14):
Blair: I got a bad feeling about this.
Jim: Yeah, well, tell your rabbi.
To me, the latter reads as one of those tongue-in-cheek “hey we established this characteristic about a character and haven’t done anything with it in over 40 episodes; maybe we should call back to it even irreverently?” sort of things.
The former, though? Now, that is fascinating.
I know there’s debate/discussion on exactly how much Blair said he’s experienced that he’s actually done, but given that we do have that line from Jim in “Mirror Image”, I’m going to take Blair at his word about having a bar mitzvah.
So first we need to clarify the term “bar mitzvah”. The actual term is not about any kind of celebration or ceremony itself; it’s something that a Jewish child automatically becomes when they are of age (12-13, depending on the movement), marking the transition to adulthood in the eyes of Judaism. At this point, a child is responsible for their own religious and moral development outside of their parents/guardians, and can be considered adults in religious obligations-- keeping mitzvot (commandments), reading from the Torah for the congregation, and participating in a minyan (quorum of 10+ men and/or women conducting public prayer, depending on the movement), among other things.
I feel like the language implies that Blair did have an event to celebrate the occasion, though, which is incredibly common but also brings up an interesting possibility to his childhood. If a child is going to have a bar mitzvah ceremony, it’s not really something that’s done in private. It can be, but Judaism is a highly communal religion, so from what I understand that’s not the done thing. So if it’s going to be public, it’s going to be presided over by a rabbi, which means that Blair would have to have been associated with a temple and going to Jewish school and learning theology, history, and culture. Contrary to most established fanon, he and Naomi would likely have needed to stay in one place long enough for them to have settled in a Jewish community, or else had a very understanding rabbi/set of rabbis that would have allowed him to study remotely, whatever that would have looked like in the late 70s/early 80s.
All that to say-- thinking about these logistics made me think about how much Blair might have been shaped by Judaism throughout the course of his life. I’ve always been a fan of fics that go into this realm and have a couple more in the works myself-- and eventually I’ll get around to my meta about how Blair’s Judaism manifests in the series as a whole without being explicitly named as such-- but this brought me to draft two.
The Kaddish
Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’meih raba,
b’alma di v’ra chiruteih.
V’yamlich malchuteih b’chayeichon
uvyomeichon (...)
These are the opening lines of the Mourner’s Kaddish. Besides the Kaddish being said during the bereavement period for the dead, we say it every week during our Shabbat service to mark the anniversary of the passing of loved ones for members of our congregation. We say it also each week to mark the Shoah (meaning specifically the mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust) and all others who have died for our faith, so we never forget.
A very notable thing about this prayer is that it never mentions dying or death. It’s about exalting God, praising Them for Their works and asking for peace. Exalted and hallowed be God’s great name, the translation reads, in the world which God created, according to plan. May God’s majesty be revealed in the days of our lifetime (...)
It’s one of the prayers that touches my heart the most. I came to Judaism though grief, the entirety of my life crumbling around me. Grief over my upended future, my unstable present, my traumatic past. What I found-- among many other things-- was for me, a faith that said life is terrible but it is beautiful. We are damaged, but we survive. We live, we live, we live.
When it came time to write the moment Blair started melting down, alone and isolated in his anguish, this prayer was foremost in my mind, which made it foremost in his. It was obvious, then, that I was exploring the interplay, the entanglement, of Blair’s grief and his Judaism, but it took me until the final posted draft to get it. I spent probably a good 3-4 days banging my head over an ending that just wasn’t working, thinking that I was still telling a story about Jim and Blair and how they cleared the air and started healing together from the damage they were both carrying.
I found out that I was telling a story about Blair’s journey of recognizing his own worth. That it was about his survival, him choosing life amidst the fear and the pain. In other words, a parallel, of sorts, to Jim’s journey of accepting himself as a sentinel.
The Rest of the Imagery
Once I figured out where this story was going, the allusions just flowed through me. I wrote this fic-- somewhat deliberately, but it also somewhat just sort of ended up that way-- that it could be read with a question if Blair really is experiencing what he sees, or if they’re hallucinations born from a severe mental break. Given canon events, however, I think there is a bit of a lean one way over another. (But of course, now that it’s posted-- death of the author, baby.)
I have any specific stories, themes, or allusions I drew upon here in list form for your convenience/reference, in rough order. I’ve also explained what they mean for the fic, so if you want to keep the suspense/mystery, then you may want to skip this. (An additional note: most of these references are about Judaism, but there are a couple of others thrown in the mix.)
-And Cry Like “L’Chaim”; Hallelujah. As I mentioned in the fic end notes, this is a line from a beautiful Yiddish rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”. Cohen was Jewish, and his original version of the song is written with that understanding in mind. The last lines of verse 4, specifically-- And even though it all went wrong/I’ll stand before the lord of song/with nothing on my tongue but hallelujah-- brought to my mind the Kaddish, so it was an obvious choice. I went with the Yiddish version because I liked the sort of raw, explicit feeling of that English translation.
-Lot’s wife turning back to Sodom, and into a pillar of salt. Bereshit 19:26 and Gen. Rabbah 50:4. Essentially, there’s an interpretation that Lot’s wife was turned into salt specifically because she had sinned by it, so Blair feels like he’s going to turn into a pillar of stone (representative of the station) because he’s sinned by them (all of them, but mostly Jim).
-The Mourner’s Kaddish. Described in more detail above (see “The Kaddish” section), but here's the reference link.
-(my memory will never be a blessing). When we talk about someone who has died, we can say “May their memory be a blessing” to reflect that their goodness will be remembered in those of us who live to speak of them. Blair, in his despair, believes that no one will remember his name positively.
-Again, hours-old perfume. That unpleasant synthetic base underlying it all… above it, something spicy. Nutmeg? Lighter notes of bergamot and violet… and—coconut, wait—. Reader, when I tell you the journey I went on for this one-off sentence. First I had to determine what soap Blair uses that would be unscented and organic so inoffensive to Jim (I love this headcanon that he does this to try to make things easier, plus with him being all “hippie” it fits), and I decided on Dr. Bronner’s Pure-Castile. It has coconut oil, and coconut is not in CK One (which, I loved the thought of Megan being in America and wearing one of the most popular fragrances of the time), so, great! Something for Jim to track!... Except. Except when I went to check to figure out if coconut was considered a light fragrance note or not, I came across this site that kept abbreviating coconut as cnut and I just… I lost so much writing time in helpless, near hysterical laughter. Yes I am secretly 12 (for legal reasons this is a joke).
-Once, the sea parted on Blair’s word. The story of Moshe parting the Red Sea. Shemot 14. A twist on it, of course, in that the miracle fails, because Blair has tried and tried and tried to make something good out of his years of sentinel research in vain. (Reader, you will notice that there is a lot of water imagery in this story. I’d like to say that I would have put it in there anyway and it’s not entirely because Blair canonically drowned, but…)
-I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there. God telling Moshe that he will not be allowed into the Promised Land. Devarim 34:4. A corollary to the previous point.
-Stones to mark me. We don’t place flowers on graves; we place stones. The potential reasons vary, but a common one is to signify permanent, enduring memory. Blair’s very in his angst feels here. (Also, more Moshe imagery here with the stone tablets.)
-For every lupuna standing tall. Lupuna is the Peruvian word for the ceiba pentandra tree. (When I tell you how long I researched what tree might belong in the Peruvian jungle…)
-there’s a cedar laid heavy with pomegranates, glistening silver instead of red. From Jewish legends of what heaven might look/be like. One of the legends is that upon entering heaven a person becomes like “the grains of a silver pomegranate upon which fall the rays of the sun". There are also different paradises depending on one’s merit; the second paradise is made of silver and cedar for penitents (which, given Blair’s state of mind at the end of TSbBS, felt appropriate).
-he recognizes this being hovering before him, wreathed in writhing prisms and colors Blair has no names for, so fluid they nearly look like flames. This is Eliyahu, prophet, borne to God on a fiery chariot at the end of his life, said to return to Earth to help Jews in their time of need. (I promise I didn’t realize until my last editing pass that my description in the fic also could be reminiscent of the burning bush Moshe encountered. Oops?)
-B’nei Yisrael. Child of Israel; a name for the Jewish people.
-a hundred plus strong with covered eyes and swaying bodies, reciting the Sh’ma as one. The Sh’ma is essentially our call to worship, the cornerstone of Jewish prayer. It’s common (required, depending on the movement) to cover one’s eyes while saying this prayer, in order to focus only on the words and on God. Swaying bodies; also known as shuckling.
-The vibrant, rhythmic drums and singing of the toque de santo, hidden in a little corner of NYC Blair visited the first time for credit, but returned just because he wanted to. Technically this is a canon inspiration, but I’m calling it out because I had to do a bit of extra research on this one. I’m referencing Santería, which was featured in episode 03x13 “The Trance”. Blair seemed to know a lot about the practices and rituals, more so than simply one reference line, and I had the thought that maybe it was something he was really drawn to.
-“Prophet. Diviner. Shaman. Many names for the joining of human and holy.” Here’s the thing. I’m aware of the mitzvot. I’m aware of the sort of… narrative complications that leaning more on Blair’s Jewish heritage brings. But I don’t think they’re incompatible. For one, Judaism doesn’t believe that only Jews are going to heaven. There are Jews that don’t even believe in God. (I’m one who does, which is why this story has a strong religious/spiritual bent. That said, I don’t believe in the God specifically as written in the Tanakh, and I know I’m not alone in my belief.) I think all of these things-- Blair’s Judaism, his connection to the cultures and peoples he’s met through his anthropological work, him specifically being named by Incacha to take up the way of the shaman-- coexist, again, as a parallel between Blair and Jim. Blair has been called to explore and understand and support the world, by birth, by choice, and by something mystical/spiritual, no matter what name is given for it.
-“Fear not, Moshe Yaakov ben Naomi.” Jewish children are given a Hebrew name shortly after birth that is then used for all lifecycle events, or when called to read Torah, etc. Parents/guardians choose a name often after deceased relatives, though they can also choose one that is based on other meaningful qualities. The middle name was easy-- Yaakov is the Hebrew for Jacob, which from what I can tell is Blair’s fanon middle name, and I’ve always loved it-- and Moshe was, well… kind of the obvious choice for his first name. To connect it to a possible headcanon, though, I love the idea of Naomi naming her only child after a wanderer destined to make a difference in the world, a man who belonged to multiple places throughout his life and had a strong sense of ethics and justice.
The Conclusions
As is probably pretty evident, this is one that stuck with me beyond a simple desire for fun id fic. Likely will stick with me. At last count, this meta is more than half the length of the actual story I ended up with. It’s not because I feel like I have to proselytize (we-- Reform Judaism, the movement I’m converting to right now-- don’t do that). It’s not because I feel like my fic doesn’t stand alone/needs to be explained to be enjoyed (I hope it’s good enough as is, but I’ll leave that decision to you, Reader). I think it’s because, for as much meaning as I’ve found in my spiritual exploration, as much as I know that I’m on the right path… healing takes years. Decades, sometimes.
Part of me is still standing on the edge of a rooftop somewhere, wondering if I'm supposed to leap forward or backward. Part of me is still drowning in the life I lost. If I can use this fandom that I love to throw a heartfelt exploration of grief and resilience into the world for someone to cling to, then I’ve done what I believe I’m still here for.
And I cry: to life, hallelujah.
Now that you’ve hopefully read the fic (And Cry Like “L’Chaim”; Hallelujah), behind the cut you’ll find my thoughts about the-making-of. All tags for the fic are fair game to be discussed. Please note that I am talking about my own experiences and my own research-- I don’t claim to be an expert or the one true arbiter of religion/spirituality. (And not one of our beloved show, either.) This meta also assumes that you've seen pretty much all TS episodes. If there's anything I've missed you'd like to ask about, please feel free.
Without further ado...
The Inspiration
This fic started out entirely differently.
My first draft was a purely self-indulgent idea based on one of my favorite angst/whump tropes-- what happens when Character A stumbles upon Character B about to harm themselves, whether or not Character B is acting with deliberate intent? That led me to a post-TSbBS scenario from Blair’s POV, natch, because count me in as part of the fandom that is captured by the sheer enormity of how his life shatters.
It was originally much more of a tense dialogue between the boys-- Jim misunderstanding the situation, because Blair just wanted a bit of peace and quiet and wasn’t going to throw himself off the fucking roof, Jim, really, and Blair getting the chance to properly express the anger he felt that somewhere along the line, everything that he was had become wrapped up in Jim’s life, Jim’s future, at the cost of his own. That he’d make his choices again, but goddamn it he just wanted someone to witness this with him and fucking see what he’d done.
It was when I was trying to add the connecting material, rewatching the episode to get the details, that the threads of the story I didn’t even know were there started taking shape. Blair telling Naomi “I always wondered if my work would ever amount to anything. If it's taught me one thing, it's taught me that Jim is right.” The press conference where Blair seems near tears the entire time (hell of a job done by GM, there and in this whole episode). Subdued when he tells Jim “You know, you were right,” when he says “where do I get off following you around for three years pretending I was a cop, right?”. His conviction when talking to Joel that “I'm a fraud, man. I don't think Simon's going to want me hanging around,” “I don't deserve this,” when Jim tosses him his (future) badge.
And what cried out to me from the last half of the episode was grief.
The Judaism We (Don’t) See
From what I remember, we get two instances to indicate that Blair has a canonical connection to Judaism. They’re both one-off lines in separate episodes, but have different levels of significance.
From “Night Train” (01x06):
Blair: My backpack. I want to get my Swiss army knife.
Isabel: Why?
Blair: Well, it's sort of a good luck charm. I got it for my bar mitzvah.
From “Mirror Image” (03x14):
Blair: I got a bad feeling about this.
Jim: Yeah, well, tell your rabbi.
To me, the latter reads as one of those tongue-in-cheek “hey we established this characteristic about a character and haven’t done anything with it in over 40 episodes; maybe we should call back to it even irreverently?” sort of things.
The former, though? Now, that is fascinating.
I know there’s debate/discussion on exactly how much Blair said he’s experienced that he’s actually done, but given that we do have that line from Jim in “Mirror Image”, I’m going to take Blair at his word about having a bar mitzvah.
So first we need to clarify the term “bar mitzvah”. The actual term is not about any kind of celebration or ceremony itself; it’s something that a Jewish child automatically becomes when they are of age (12-13, depending on the movement), marking the transition to adulthood in the eyes of Judaism. At this point, a child is responsible for their own religious and moral development outside of their parents/guardians, and can be considered adults in religious obligations-- keeping mitzvot (commandments), reading from the Torah for the congregation, and participating in a minyan (quorum of 10+ men and/or women conducting public prayer, depending on the movement), among other things.
I feel like the language implies that Blair did have an event to celebrate the occasion, though, which is incredibly common but also brings up an interesting possibility to his childhood. If a child is going to have a bar mitzvah ceremony, it’s not really something that’s done in private. It can be, but Judaism is a highly communal religion, so from what I understand that’s not the done thing. So if it’s going to be public, it’s going to be presided over by a rabbi, which means that Blair would have to have been associated with a temple and going to Jewish school and learning theology, history, and culture. Contrary to most established fanon, he and Naomi would likely have needed to stay in one place long enough for them to have settled in a Jewish community, or else had a very understanding rabbi/set of rabbis that would have allowed him to study remotely, whatever that would have looked like in the late 70s/early 80s.
All that to say-- thinking about these logistics made me think about how much Blair might have been shaped by Judaism throughout the course of his life. I’ve always been a fan of fics that go into this realm and have a couple more in the works myself-- and eventually I’ll get around to my meta about how Blair’s Judaism manifests in the series as a whole without being explicitly named as such-- but this brought me to draft two.
The Kaddish
Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’meih raba,
b’alma di v’ra chiruteih.
V’yamlich malchuteih b’chayeichon
uvyomeichon (...)
These are the opening lines of the Mourner’s Kaddish. Besides the Kaddish being said during the bereavement period for the dead, we say it every week during our Shabbat service to mark the anniversary of the passing of loved ones for members of our congregation. We say it also each week to mark the Shoah (meaning specifically the mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust) and all others who have died for our faith, so we never forget.
A very notable thing about this prayer is that it never mentions dying or death. It’s about exalting God, praising Them for Their works and asking for peace. Exalted and hallowed be God’s great name, the translation reads, in the world which God created, according to plan. May God’s majesty be revealed in the days of our lifetime (...)
It’s one of the prayers that touches my heart the most. I came to Judaism though grief, the entirety of my life crumbling around me. Grief over my upended future, my unstable present, my traumatic past. What I found-- among many other things-- was for me, a faith that said life is terrible but it is beautiful. We are damaged, but we survive. We live, we live, we live.
When it came time to write the moment Blair started melting down, alone and isolated in his anguish, this prayer was foremost in my mind, which made it foremost in his. It was obvious, then, that I was exploring the interplay, the entanglement, of Blair’s grief and his Judaism, but it took me until the final posted draft to get it. I spent probably a good 3-4 days banging my head over an ending that just wasn’t working, thinking that I was still telling a story about Jim and Blair and how they cleared the air and started healing together from the damage they were both carrying.
I found out that I was telling a story about Blair’s journey of recognizing his own worth. That it was about his survival, him choosing life amidst the fear and the pain. In other words, a parallel, of sorts, to Jim’s journey of accepting himself as a sentinel.
The Rest of the Imagery
Once I figured out where this story was going, the allusions just flowed through me. I wrote this fic-- somewhat deliberately, but it also somewhat just sort of ended up that way-- that it could be read with a question if Blair really is experiencing what he sees, or if they’re hallucinations born from a severe mental break. Given canon events, however, I think there is a bit of a lean one way over another. (But of course, now that it’s posted-- death of the author, baby.)
I have any specific stories, themes, or allusions I drew upon here in list form for your convenience/reference, in rough order. I’ve also explained what they mean for the fic, so if you want to keep the suspense/mystery, then you may want to skip this. (An additional note: most of these references are about Judaism, but there are a couple of others thrown in the mix.)
-And Cry Like “L’Chaim”; Hallelujah. As I mentioned in the fic end notes, this is a line from a beautiful Yiddish rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”. Cohen was Jewish, and his original version of the song is written with that understanding in mind. The last lines of verse 4, specifically-- And even though it all went wrong/I’ll stand before the lord of song/with nothing on my tongue but hallelujah-- brought to my mind the Kaddish, so it was an obvious choice. I went with the Yiddish version because I liked the sort of raw, explicit feeling of that English translation.
-Lot’s wife turning back to Sodom, and into a pillar of salt. Bereshit 19:26 and Gen. Rabbah 50:4. Essentially, there’s an interpretation that Lot’s wife was turned into salt specifically because she had sinned by it, so Blair feels like he’s going to turn into a pillar of stone (representative of the station) because he’s sinned by them (all of them, but mostly Jim).
-The Mourner’s Kaddish. Described in more detail above (see “The Kaddish” section), but here's the reference link.
-(my memory will never be a blessing). When we talk about someone who has died, we can say “May their memory be a blessing” to reflect that their goodness will be remembered in those of us who live to speak of them. Blair, in his despair, believes that no one will remember his name positively.
-Again, hours-old perfume. That unpleasant synthetic base underlying it all… above it, something spicy. Nutmeg? Lighter notes of bergamot and violet… and—coconut, wait—. Reader, when I tell you the journey I went on for this one-off sentence. First I had to determine what soap Blair uses that would be unscented and organic so inoffensive to Jim (I love this headcanon that he does this to try to make things easier, plus with him being all “hippie” it fits), and I decided on Dr. Bronner’s Pure-Castile. It has coconut oil, and coconut is not in CK One (which, I loved the thought of Megan being in America and wearing one of the most popular fragrances of the time), so, great! Something for Jim to track!... Except. Except when I went to check to figure out if coconut was considered a light fragrance note or not, I came across this site that kept abbreviating coconut as cnut and I just… I lost so much writing time in helpless, near hysterical laughter. Yes I am secretly 12 (for legal reasons this is a joke).
-Once, the sea parted on Blair’s word. The story of Moshe parting the Red Sea. Shemot 14. A twist on it, of course, in that the miracle fails, because Blair has tried and tried and tried to make something good out of his years of sentinel research in vain. (Reader, you will notice that there is a lot of water imagery in this story. I’d like to say that I would have put it in there anyway and it’s not entirely because Blair canonically drowned, but…)
-I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there. God telling Moshe that he will not be allowed into the Promised Land. Devarim 34:4. A corollary to the previous point.
-Stones to mark me. We don’t place flowers on graves; we place stones. The potential reasons vary, but a common one is to signify permanent, enduring memory. Blair’s very in his angst feels here. (Also, more Moshe imagery here with the stone tablets.)
-For every lupuna standing tall. Lupuna is the Peruvian word for the ceiba pentandra tree. (When I tell you how long I researched what tree might belong in the Peruvian jungle…)
-there’s a cedar laid heavy with pomegranates, glistening silver instead of red. From Jewish legends of what heaven might look/be like. One of the legends is that upon entering heaven a person becomes like “the grains of a silver pomegranate upon which fall the rays of the sun". There are also different paradises depending on one’s merit; the second paradise is made of silver and cedar for penitents (which, given Blair’s state of mind at the end of TSbBS, felt appropriate).
-he recognizes this being hovering before him, wreathed in writhing prisms and colors Blair has no names for, so fluid they nearly look like flames. This is Eliyahu, prophet, borne to God on a fiery chariot at the end of his life, said to return to Earth to help Jews in their time of need. (I promise I didn’t realize until my last editing pass that my description in the fic also could be reminiscent of the burning bush Moshe encountered. Oops?)
-B’nei Yisrael. Child of Israel; a name for the Jewish people.
-a hundred plus strong with covered eyes and swaying bodies, reciting the Sh’ma as one. The Sh’ma is essentially our call to worship, the cornerstone of Jewish prayer. It’s common (required, depending on the movement) to cover one’s eyes while saying this prayer, in order to focus only on the words and on God. Swaying bodies; also known as shuckling.
-The vibrant, rhythmic drums and singing of the toque de santo, hidden in a little corner of NYC Blair visited the first time for credit, but returned just because he wanted to. Technically this is a canon inspiration, but I’m calling it out because I had to do a bit of extra research on this one. I’m referencing Santería, which was featured in episode 03x13 “The Trance”. Blair seemed to know a lot about the practices and rituals, more so than simply one reference line, and I had the thought that maybe it was something he was really drawn to.
-“Prophet. Diviner. Shaman. Many names for the joining of human and holy.” Here’s the thing. I’m aware of the mitzvot. I’m aware of the sort of… narrative complications that leaning more on Blair’s Jewish heritage brings. But I don’t think they’re incompatible. For one, Judaism doesn’t believe that only Jews are going to heaven. There are Jews that don’t even believe in God. (I’m one who does, which is why this story has a strong religious/spiritual bent. That said, I don’t believe in the God specifically as written in the Tanakh, and I know I’m not alone in my belief.) I think all of these things-- Blair’s Judaism, his connection to the cultures and peoples he’s met through his anthropological work, him specifically being named by Incacha to take up the way of the shaman-- coexist, again, as a parallel between Blair and Jim. Blair has been called to explore and understand and support the world, by birth, by choice, and by something mystical/spiritual, no matter what name is given for it.
-“Fear not, Moshe Yaakov ben Naomi.” Jewish children are given a Hebrew name shortly after birth that is then used for all lifecycle events, or when called to read Torah, etc. Parents/guardians choose a name often after deceased relatives, though they can also choose one that is based on other meaningful qualities. The middle name was easy-- Yaakov is the Hebrew for Jacob, which from what I can tell is Blair’s fanon middle name, and I’ve always loved it-- and Moshe was, well… kind of the obvious choice for his first name. To connect it to a possible headcanon, though, I love the idea of Naomi naming her only child after a wanderer destined to make a difference in the world, a man who belonged to multiple places throughout his life and had a strong sense of ethics and justice.
The Conclusions
As is probably pretty evident, this is one that stuck with me beyond a simple desire for fun id fic. Likely will stick with me. At last count, this meta is more than half the length of the actual story I ended up with. It’s not because I feel like I have to proselytize (we-- Reform Judaism, the movement I’m converting to right now-- don’t do that). It’s not because I feel like my fic doesn’t stand alone/needs to be explained to be enjoyed (I hope it’s good enough as is, but I’ll leave that decision to you, Reader). I think it’s because, for as much meaning as I’ve found in my spiritual exploration, as much as I know that I’m on the right path… healing takes years. Decades, sometimes.
Part of me is still standing on the edge of a rooftop somewhere, wondering if I'm supposed to leap forward or backward. Part of me is still drowning in the life I lost. If I can use this fandom that I love to throw a heartfelt exploration of grief and resilience into the world for someone to cling to, then I’ve done what I believe I’m still here for.
And I cry: to life, hallelujah.
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Date: 2023-02-19 06:08 pm (UTC)