On Post: You Were Good

Date: January 4, 2014

First off, apologies for flip-flopping the January 5th WC (which ended up as yesterday’s post) with this one (which should’ve ran yesterday). It happens.

A lot of disparate elements went into this one. First, I wanted to do the piece from the opposite perspective of the song. The song is a man singing about/to the woman who wronged him, so I wanted to come at it from the supposed guilty party.

Simultaneously, I had read several pieces about the Bechdel test. Of course, it is impossible to do a piece about a break up of a man and a woman and not involve that man at least being mentioned (since the piece is using that as a jumping off point) so I could not actually pass the test. And then I also had that brief flashback of Gail, the friend, remembering her husband back in their college days to establish the difference between the two. So I really couldn’t pass it.

So instead, I sought to minimize the role of men. They exist in this world, they are “in the room” if you will, but they’re not the focus. Gail’s husband is referenced in Naomi’s annoyance at he and Gail being a “we” all the time and as a part of Gail’s new life, but he has no lines and is the focus of jealousy or the like. Similarly, two of Naomi’s exes are mentioned, the one she just broke up with and the one from long ago, but neither are the focus of her unhappiness. They are tools that she expresses her unhappiness through but, again, they have neither form nor voice.

That was my idea anyway. I hope it worked for people in the same way.

What did not work for me though, was the ending. I struggled and struggled with it but I just couldn’t make it dance for me. Alas and alack.