Under The Table - Himeros Backstage Conversation With Special Guest, Matthew Clark Davison
Join Davey, LeoRising, and Finn with a special guest - Matthew Clark Davison, author of Doubting Thomas. We discuss the latest release from Himeros.tv, Under the Table, a film by Finn Deerhart, as well as Matthew's new novel and the intersecting forces of homophobia, racism, and family dynamics that underly the novel's ensnaring plotline. Join us!
Davey, Finn, Gabriel, and Clark enjoy French cakes in Under the Table.
Under the Table
The majority of us may never examine the many hidden factors that motivate us toward sex, power, fulfillment, or connection. While we may succeed in sculpting a polished image on the outside with which we greet the world, we tend to obscure the darker facets of our beings that make us more vulnerable to judgment and potential rejection. It’s just what humans do: we lie without realizing it in an effort to retain a sense of likability. That is a kind of power, albeit brittle. It may buy us more social capital and superficial acceptance; however, to maintain it, we must continue hiding parts of ourselves that may jeopardize our good standings with others. Instead, if we tap into the forces that we have cut off from ourselves—our shadows—we stand to gain the experiences of power that cannot be taken from us: undeniable self-knowledge and true self-compassion.
Western culture prioritizes certain qualities like strength, size, economic power, speed, roughness, productivity, to name a few. We lump these qualities together into a category described as masculine. In sex, these qualities are then translated further into types like bros, jocks, doms, tops, masculine-presenting individuals; even biological maleness itself supersedes all others. Everywhere we turn, sex is depicted as a phallocentric affair that downgrades any of the pleasures that can be experienced in submission, slowness, sensuality, femininity, vulnerability, and weakness. Unfortunately, for those who effortlessly fit the preferred frames, they must hide all these additional aspects that might destabilize their positions at the top of public opinion.
If we broaden our perspective, where a man cannot be fully seen by others, his strength is actually rendered useless, because it is tenuous; it must be constantly performed, reaffirmed, propped up by the cultural context that lauds him. Beneath the line of sight—Under the Table—he is merely a servant to these values that enslave him. For, he cannot wield his strength or size as a means to suppress his inherent need to surrender. Likewise, he cannot rely on the mere reactions of others to reveal to him a sense of his own authentic self-identity. Deep within himself, only he knows what lives therein.
Being Under the Table is a metaphor for the subconscious. In our film, an exciting counter-narrative, a man is demonstrated to be most fulfilled within his hidden nature. Therein, he experiences greater permission to express because he is out of sight; he thrives in a world beneath the judgments of others.
The question remains: will he, or any of us, be able to bring harmony to the divergent worlds that we inhabit? That is the work of surrender, truth-telling, and acceptance.
Our cultural values are much more malleable than we may realize. True: culturally quintessential cis-men may be keepers of outward power, but if any of us can accept ourselves—especially in our qualities that are unattractive, smaller, softer, in need, or in grief—we can touch a kind of power that is not reliant on the appraisal of others. In this ongoing process, we can begin cultivating compassion for fleeing whatever has been difficult along our journeys, for pretending to be strong at all costs, for resisting our pain, our surrender, thereby severing our only access to the wellsprings of our fragile lives. How could we not have hidden behind a facade; many of us have led very difficult lives on our ways to being out of the closet and living our best gay lives. Our defenses often become major aspects of our personalities.
To cultivate a practice of compassion for yourself, it can be really helpful to first get in touch with your hidden self. Daily, journal your thoughts, judgments, and automatic negative self-talk that you witness in your head. Make a point to track what the non-public parts of yourself are truly saying. Tune in deeply.
At the end of each week, spend some additional time meditating upon what you’ve written in your journal. From where do you think these thoughts, beliefs, or judgments of others have originated? Try to link specific memories or associations that come to mind.
To conclude your reflection time, spend a few minutes lying on your back with one hand on your heart and the other on your genitals; breathe deeply, and do your best to accept whatever you have discovered in yourself. Visualize yourself being let off the hook for the ways in which you may have been conditioned to defend yourself. If someone else comes to mind, let them off the hook, too. Then, think of something or someone for which to be grateful. Maybe try having a conversation with a friend about what you’ve been noticing in your thoughts, and inquire about their hidden self. Bring it above the table!
Video concept by Finn Deerhart, produced by Himeros.tv