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@ellenadair.bsky.social

A Brief Autobiography.

I can't imagine these details being very interesting, but you were the one to click on 'About,' so I will indulge your kind curiosity.

 

For a geographical overview, I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but also grew up partly in Indiana. I went to Boston University, and stayed in Boston for a few more years, working in the lovely, warm theater community there. Now, I live in dear dirty New York: Queens, specifically. When the state of domestic or global affairs fills me with angst or ambivalence, I still always feel that I would fight and die for Queens' right to exist, exactly the way that it does. If anyone knows where to find a gold necklace with the word "Queens" in script-----not Queen, to be clear-----I am in the market for one.

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I also lived for a brief time in Oxford, England, studying abroad; Oxford is so beautiful that either it should not exist or the rest of the world should not exist. Anyone who visits Oxford should be forewarned that leaving it may ruin the rest of the world for you. I also lived in Istanbul, Turkey when I was a wee child. I don't remember anything about actually living there (though I do remember Turkey from other visits), but I learned in my adulthood that it was the origin of a tiny scar in the middle of my forehead. My father came home with a broken leg because he fell into a kiln, and out of some attempt at empathy, I ran and bashed my head into the wall. This may be why I do not remember anything about living in Turkey. It may also be why I am the way that I am.

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Falling into a kiln is the kind of professional hazard one has as a professor of Folklore, which is what my  father does. My mother is an Art Historian. This is also why I am the way that I am. Both of them written way more books than I ever will, though really, one of my greatest aims in life is to write several, if I possibly can. I am deeply grateful that their professions afforded me, as child-in-tow, many travel opportunities. So, for example, as I alluded to, I do remember other trips to Turkey, since I’ve been there about ten times. Fieldwork and conferences for my parents also led us to Mexico, Newfoundland in Canada, England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, France, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, China, Japan, India, and Bangladesh. Though I may have somewhat hazy childish memories of some of these countries, this blessed childhood is also why I am the way that I am. As an adult in charge of my own finances and time, I have also been to: Italy, Portugal and Colombia. It's really hard to take vacations as an actor. But anyone who visits Florence should be forewarned that it ruins the rest of the world for you.

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When I was in first grade, my parents took me to see the film version of Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V. I think I fell in love with Shakespeare, Henry the Fifth, and Kenneth Branagh simultaneously. I made my parents take me back to see it------five times. Ultimately, I wrote a letter to the movie theatre, asking for the poster. As I imagine that not many other children were requesting that particular poster, they sent it to me. I still have it, but it's about as tattered as a prop of a war-torn flag, and it reads ‘I saw Henry V five times’ in first-grade penmanship. But the fact that at age five (young for my grade) I ran around the house yelling some variation of ‘Once more unto the breach dear friends, once more’ has a lot to do with why I am the way that I am.

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But the Shakespeare/Henry/KennyB triumvirate is not the first man that I loved. The first man that I loved was either Charles Barkley, when he was playing for the Philadelphia 76ers, or Von Hayes, of the Phillies. I don't know why these were the athletes I selected; I was in pre-school. But when Charles Barkley was out for an injury, I drew him a drawing of him in bed with his teddy bear, and all of his teammates standing around like ministering angels in their basketball jerseys. He sent me back an autographed photo that read ‘To Ellen Best Wishes Charles.’ I still have the photo. It less resembles a prop war-torn flag because it came in a frame.

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Most likely, if you're this deep into the website/autobiography, you already know this: I have an unhealthy love of baseball. People will say, "Ha ha, how can love for baseball be unhealthy?" and I say to them: "You have not seen me when the Phillies have lost a game because of bad defense." But the Phillies are my life partner; I have no memory in my life of not loving the Phillies. Love of my parents (you read the paragraphs above; they're pretty great, right?) and love of the Phillies are the only things that stretch back unto the first syllable of my recorded time. But also, I have so much baseball-love to spread around that I have an always-changing complex flowchart of baseball allegiances allowing me to root for many teams. Given any random match-up, I will be able to find a reason to root for or against one of the teams, including particular players that I like. But know that I would never, not in this life or the next, root for the Yankees.

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But truly, my favorite thing besides acting is writing, both the act of it myself, and the reading of others' writing. My favorite all-time book is Joyce’s Ulysses (you can see me reading some of it here). Generally, the more complex the language and the storytelling, and the more you could plausibly use the heft of the book as weapon, the more I like it. This tracks with my second-favorite book, Infinite Jest. I'm aware that this opinion is far more obnoxious than cool, so I hope you believe my sincerity. Other favorite books include, in a nonsensical unordered jumble: Cloud Atlas, The Bone Clocks, Middlemarch, Detransition Baby, Life After Life, A God in Ruins, Piranesi, The Left Hand of Darkness, The Underground Railroad, In the Dream House, The Years, Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, One Hundred Years of Solitude, At Swim-Two Birds, The Art of Fielding, The Corrections, Freedom, War and Peace, Absalom Absalom, The Sound and the Fury, Blood Meridian, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Brothers K, Imajica, Persuasion, Frankenstein, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. I also love Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials series.

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Also, as the author of a book of poetry, one might surmise I like poetry. I am about as uncool here as the previous paragraph might lead you to imagine. W.B. Yeats is my favorite poet, and I challenge anyone to persuade me that there is a better poem in the English Language than “The Second Coming.” I am also a great fan of the English Romantics, particularly Shelley and Keats. Other favorites include Dylan Thomas, Seamus Heaney, Whitman, Tennyson, Eliot, Rilke and Louis MacNiece. Non-favorites include people who do not use interesting words or images and just have a ragged right-hand margin in a gesture of profundity. That's great if those are your favorites! Just not for me.

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Apropos of Tennyson, he wrote a poem titled “Edward Grey” about a woman named Ellen Adair. I was not named after this Ellen Adair, as much as I might be pleased by this Victorian heritage. I was named after Ellen Cutler, an Irish woman with whom my father did fieldwork, and a maternal ancestor of mine named Ellen Adair White, who was the wife of a Florida statesman and purportedly a famous nineteenth-century beauty. I suppose I'll get my Victorian heritage one way or another.

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My favorite genre of TV and film to watch is People Fighting with Swords. Be it 300 or The Three Musketeers, I will be there, even if I can tell from the previews that it will be bad. I am drawn to it like the proverbial moth to the proverbial movie projector playing films of people fighting with swords. I also enjoy Anything Set Before 1950, and Philosphical Science Fiction, particularly the sub-category of Universe/Reality-Hopping. Everything Everywhere All At Once? "Severance"? "Russian Doll"? "Loki"? "MANIAC"?! I can never stop thinking about "Maniac!" I'm IN. I think "The Good Place," an all-time favorite, plausibly belongs in this sub-category. However, I do enjoy shows and movies in every genre.

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My sweet and long-suffering husband, Eric Gilde, is also an actor and a writer. We've been lucky to do five plays and three different films together, and, of course, regularly collaborate on our podcast. We have a shih tzu named Mabel, who is much beloved, and we delight to watch her go through the five stages of shih tzu between haircuts, which I have named: Lamb / Muffin / Muppet / Walt Whitman / Cro-Magnon Dog.

Gender Journey Musings.

should they be interesting to you

I originally posted this on social media in the summer of 2022.

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A few years ago, I changed my profile to include they/them pronouns. It’s the pronoun I really prefer. But I never felt like I wanted to make A Huge Post about it.

 

The reasons for historical Huge Post Aversion are varied. My whole life, I've felt like both genders: like the gender that I was given was arbitrary. Apparently, when I was in my mother’s womb, it was thought at first I’d be a boy, because I had a boy’s heartbeat. Not sound science, clearly, but as long as I’ve known it, this little anecdote meant a lot to me. When I was six and seven years old I wanted to be Peter Pan and Henry the Fifth. As a pre-teen and teenager, I dreaded and hated every marker that was going to make me into a young woman. I didn't want to be one. I combatted this by dressing more-or-less androgynously, but not so much that it would stand out.

 

But I remember, clearly, somewhat late in my high school tenure, having a realization that-----I thought-----I had to be a woman. That I needed to figure out how to conform to the burden of everything that femininity requires. And I capitulated to it, in my own, clumsy, poorly-executed way. I’d be lying if I didn’t say it had something to do with wanting to be an actor, which has been my wish for my entire life (belying a lack of personal development, I always say). I thought, I need to learn to be like a girl if I'm going to play one. But also, I’d be lying if I said that was the entirety of it. I felt like I had to learn how to be conventionally attractive (as attractive as little ole me can be, anyway). Because being attractive so often equals existing in our society. Perhaps especially for people born into women’s bodies. It carries professional, financial and social implications. I could talk more about the different ways I tried to make femininity more comfortable to me as a young person and young adult, but blah blah blah, let’s fast-forward the biography.

 

I didn't know about the existence of non-binary gender expression until I was a Full Grown Adult. Absolutely my first lightning-bolt, knee-jerk, thought, was: "If I had known that was an option, that's what I would have been the whole time!" (Clearly…I was.)

 

But as aforementioned, I was a Full Grown Adult. I'm embarrassed to put a date on it. I already had a full acting career, recurring TV roles. I had spent YEARS, well over a decade, becoming practiced at putting on being a woman. With practice, I’d gotten more comfortable, even if it still didn’t feel intrinsic. I often bristled at interactions that I felt really made me into a gender, but fundamentally, it was also what I was doing to myself. I thought it was what I had to do.

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In talking with a friend about this once, they smartly compared it to speaking a language. At seventeen, I realized I had to learn this language. I practiced it for decades, day in and day out, and now I'm fluent. But is it me? Is it my mother-tongue? Or am I just making my mouths form its shapes?

 

What I felt as a teenager, and what I continue to feel now, is guilt. There had been a world of other people who, whether or not someone else told them about the existence of a non-binary way of thinking about gender, were living outside of the binary, anyway. They did not capitulate, the way that I capitulated. Perhaps, on the Kinsey scale of gender identity, they felt it more strongly than I did, but in either case, I continue to feel guilty: lesser than them in bravery and integrity. Because I’ve lived a very hetero-normative, cis-normative life, despite not feeling like I’m either of those things. (I also identify as pansexual, though, being married to a man, I can't claim experience with the same discrimination or prejudice. No court is threatening to legally nullify my marriage.) I have many different kinds of privilege—white, middle-class—but I also have straight-passing, cis-passing privilege. Because that’s the choice I made. Nothing to celebrate about that.

 

And so the main reason that I’ve never wanted to make A Huge Post about it is because I haven’t felt worthy to do so. I don’t feel worthy of centering myself in any conversation about gender identity and queerness. Unlike so many brave, beautiful queer people that I’d rather uplift than myself, I haven’t suffered marginalization at anyone’s hands, except for maybe my own. I’m not saying that the queer experience needs to be one of marginalization, to be clear; I wish it were just one of joy and self-expression. But I do know the world we live in, that it’s rarely, if ever, unambiguously the case. Though I know without question that I have a genderfluid soul, and though this is a conversation I’ve had with many friends and loved ones for a decade, now, I still struggle to feel like the life that I have, and the life that I’ve lived, deserves verbiage in a public space.

 

But what has inspired me to make A Huge Post now—because clearly, this is nothing if not A Huge Post—is the increasing threat we’re seeing to trans rights in this country. Already, fourteen different states had passed laws that limit the rights of trans youth, to healthcare, to use the bathroom that fits their gender identity, to play in sports. And the developments in the Supreme Court this year seem to suggest that worse may be on the way, and for a larger constituency of LGBTQ+ folk. For many on the far-right, anti-trans scaremongering has become the frenzy du jour, and the threat of violence for trans people----always present-----is seeing a terrifying escalation. And when some people see any kind of non-conforming gender presentation to be more of a threat than unchecked firearm use, or a pandemic that has killed more than one million people in this country, I don’t want to be quiet. I don’t think I’ve been silent, but I have been quiet. It doesn’t rhyme with violence, but the upshot is the same. And though I’ve been quiet out of what I’ve felt to be deference, not fear, the upshot is the same. And even on the positive side, being quiet also feels antithetical to the spirit of pride.

 

To be clear, I’m not saying I identify as trans. Some things I read or hear from the trans experience deeply resonate with me. But if I imagine myself magically transformed into a man, it sounds great in a number of ways, but I still think there would be a lot about me that wouldn’t fit that mold, either. What I have found about feeling like both, is that it’s also about not feeling quite like either. If you’re half a watermelon and half a copy of War and Peace, are you either of those things?  I still don’t mean to center myself, nor do I think A Huge Post equals bravery, or activism. I just hope that by being honest about my own experience, even if it means surfacing my feelings of my own inadequacy, I can stand up more genuinely for those who need the support. And I think there’s value in a true spectrum of gender identity being visible. I assume there are other people, like me, who feel betwixt and between even the very concept of being betwixt and between.

 

The truth is, I’ve realized that I lived much of my life with the assumption that everyone feels like both male and female, simply because it’s how I felt. And my greatest frustration is that I can’t ever be rid of the bias of my own lived experience, but in looking at the world, I have to admit, at last, that it SEEMS like not everyone feels this way. Or there would be more understanding for our trans siblings, as an expansion of a part of ourselves that we recognize. Sometimes I think that the virulent hatred that any non-cis gender identity stirs up in people must be a sign that they’ve never had a dysphoric thought in their lives; other times, I think it’s a sign that they must have, or they wouldn’t push it away with such ferocity.

But many days, even now, I feel that life is simply the struggle against the multiplicity of the soul being forced into the singularity of a body. I know that I long for multiplicity like I long for the coastline of a homeland I’ve never known, and the multiplicity of gender, that I’ve known and possessed for as long as I even vaguely understood the concept, is only one of the infinite facets for which I’m so frequently homesick.

 

To this point, there is nothing closer to my identity, or to my spiritual requirement, than to embody this multiplicity whenever I’m given a chance. I know some non-binary actors don’t want to play women; I have no problem with it, because I can imagine a life in which I simply feel like a woman without complication, and in fact, to imagine being in that skin brings me relief. Because I happily continue to portray female-identifying people, I continue to accept she/her pronouns. (Though I always prefer they/them.) But it is always a real gift to me to get to play, or even audition for, characters who, regardless of their gender identity, don’t have to put femininity on. As a professional actor, I’ve even played a number of male characters, and some days the gratitude I have for getting to have those experiences, and express that part of myself, brings me to tears.

 

 

But my final point is this, and it is my final point, because it is the one I struggle most to forgive myself for, and accept in myself, past and present. Nonbinary does not have to look a certain way. Genderfluid does not have to look a certain way. Whether I’m wearing makeup or I’m not, whether I’m wearing a tie or I’m not, I’m the same. And if you choose to use the pronouns I prefer, I’ll feel really loved. Because I know you’ll be seeing beyond my surface, and acknowledging who I actually am.

© 2022 by Ellen Adair.

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