The Hanged One

“The Hanged One has chosen his current state of his own free will. He has not been forced; he has deliberately suspended himself in order to discover a new perspective and new way of seeing both the world and himself. The Hanged One can also indicate total surrender or self-sacrifice for the greater good. He asks us for readjustment and re-centering. He advocates for stillness, for a shift in one’s vision, in order to gain new understanding. He simultaneously signifies change, transition, and also a deep uncertainty. He asks for meditative consideration, thought before action. He is suspense, the pause, the brief respite before and after a seismic shift. He is the moment between the transitory void and a decision, the gap between choice and manifestation.” 

- The Library of Esoterica TAROT edited and written by Jessica Hundley

THE HANGED ONE PLAYLIST

In the days leading up to the 2023 WGA strike, I slowly came unglued. If you’ve read my essay on The Fool you know that one of the most excruciating processes that I put myself through in life is writing, but unfortunately the only thing more painful than writing is not writing. In the 15 or so years that my husband and I have been together, he has annoyingly solved more than one nervous breakdown by saying something like, “Hey, maybe you should write something?” As the strike loomed, and its inevitability became clearer with each passing day, my anxiety avalanched. 

For the first time in many years (and many medications), I was having intrusive and repetitive thoughts again. Suddenly I was obsessing about people I had wronged who were definitely mad at me, important things I was forgetting that would probably land me in jail, violent crimes I committed and somehow forgot about, and various rare illnesses from which I was definitely about to die.

My friend, Angelina Burnett, a writer and a member of the WGA Negotiating Committee, was staying with us during the negotiations. The NegCom has a very strict policy about leaking (they just don’t do it), because rumors run amok in negotiations, and can very quickly throw a wrench in things. Angelina made no exceptions for me, but I would creepily study her body language after she returned from the meetings and report to Zack, “She looked subdued today” or “Angelina seems peppy, look at the way she’s walking to her car, that’s a good sign, right?” It was deranged.

The day before the deadline, Zack and I kept the kids home from school and went to the beach to perform family bliss while rapidly unraveling. We brought the dog who swallowed so much sea water (and a large stick!) that she puked multiple times. The kids were cranky, we were freaked out, the dog shit in the ocean and barked at birds. There were moments of levity, but there were also moments of, “Did we really keep our children out of school and drive over an hour to the beach in the middle of April?”

When I was drinking, I could temporarily change my mood or make things festive with the simple pop of a cork. If there was something I didn’t want to think about, I could have a couple glasses of wine and forget for a while. Though it never worked as well as I imagined, it was a quick fix that I relied on for years to pull me out of any number of funks. Now that I don’t drink, I have to drive over an hour in overcast weather and traffic to go to a pretty mid beach.

Once the strike was called, I experienced a temporary euphoria. At least now I knew the outcome. The WGA released the studios responses to our proposals (and in many cases non-responses) and I was incensed. It was clear that the AMPTP made no effort to meaningfully negotiate. I attended the huge WGA strike meeting at the same venue where I had seen Caroline Polachek perform days earlier. I screamed and cheered and clapped and stood and got hyped up. I was stopped on the street by a KTLA reporter with a microphone after the meeting, and I said something like, “I feel amazing, I’m so proud of us, we’re going to win! GO TEAM!” Honestly, I may have screamed “WOOOO” into the microphone. I was fired up. At least now there was something to do.

Picketing was fun at first. I bought half a dozen strike shirts, both official and unofficial. I walked thousands of steps every single day. I bought sun protection gloves after burning the shit out of my fingers. My mother made dozens of WGA earrings and I gave them out to people I met on the picket line (I was the gal running up to strangers asking if they had pierced ears). There were picket line reunions of shows I had written for ages ago and I got to see friends I hadn’t seen in years. One day, my friend Vanessa and I drove around to all the east side studios on a kind of picketing crawl. 

The weeks went by and turned to months, and the euphoria faded. There were many days when I would show up to picket in a big hat and headphones so I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone. Angelina, and her extremely sweet elderly three-legged dog, Whitley, stayed with us through the summer. I grilled Angelina daily about when she thought this would end. To her credit, she was patient and kind, even though she’s also a writer and was going through the same anxieties I was with the added bonus of hundreds of people badgering her every day. 

I’ve always loved being married to a writer, but that summer was rough. As our savings dwindled and our credit card debt increased, Zack made elaborate picket signs to hand out to people on the lines. Every day I’d find him in the back yard testing out new “prototypes”: “This one has a bike handle for easy gripping” “This one rests perfectly in the crook of your arm” “This one says ‘I am so distressed by the strike that I decided to try weed AND NOW I’M ADDICTED!”

In early July, Deadline quoted an anonymous executive who said, “The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses.” I responded by eating a handful of peanut butter cups and an Oreo ice cream bar in under thirty seconds. It didn’t help. 

In a show of true solidarity, Angelina watched every single episode of Vanderpump Rules before driving from her home in Nashville to Los Angeles to live with us for the summer. Scandoval had broken in early March (if you don’t know what Scandoval is, I’m honestly angry but here's a primer), and my enthusiasm registered on the Richter scale. Angelina dove headfirst into the show from the very beginning of season one, promising that by the time she came out to LA for the negotiations, she’d be caught up. It was a steep (but glorious) ten season assignment, and she performed beautifully. The one bright point of each week was when Zack, Angelina and I would watch Vanderpump Rules on the projector in our backyard. We’d shout at the screen, look for hints of infidelity, parse various participants’ motivations and subtexts. Zack, who’s always been vocal about his distaste for reality TV, ended up a true believer. When we watched the finale, he was rapt, and at one point he exhaled deeply and with zero irony muttered, “This is so fucking good.” 

It’s what we needed in one of the most uncertain summers of our lives.

Eventually, it became clear that there was nothing I could do to change the outcome of the strike. I understood that picketing was not only a show of solidarity but a way to keep idle hands in use. Even though it was scary to watch my savings dwindle and disappear, it's a luxury in this business to have savings at all. There was a lot of hardship in those months. There was also an incredible amount of solidarity, resolve, generosity, and ingenuity.

There were also complainers. Plenty of them. I’m not gonna rehash things in detail that I’d rather forget, but I found it really interesting that the people who had the most trouble with union solidarity were those who have had the most success. There were those who reportedly “tried to help” by going around the union to try to bring things to a close. There were those who actively undermined the union both in public and behind closed doors. It was disappointing, and there were plenty of moments where I felt disillusioned and discouraged listening to extremely successful and wealthy people complain about collective action.

It all comes down to control (or lack thereof). People in this business who are used to a modicum of power do not like to give up the reins. A strike is, by definition, an exercise in sacrifice and collectivity. We were asked to trust the people we elected to negotiate on our behalf. As often as I could I tried to remind anyone who was fretting that the people on the NegCom were writers just like the rest of us, that they were also suffering, and they had our backs.

The Hanged One usually depicts a figure hanging by their foot in a noose, suspended in mid-air. Their expression is not one of pain, but serene meditative calm. They have surrendered control and accepted their fate. That doesn’t mean they aren’t suffering (and some decks do depict the figure suffering), only that they have ceased struggling against the ropes. When you pull this card in a reading, you are being asked to pause, to exercise patience, to stop trying to control your situation. Perhaps you need to turn your perspective upside-down. Sometimes you are being told that the suffering you are experiencing now will lead to positive transformation in the future. Though the Hanged One can look scary (it heavily features a noose, after all), it’s a card about surrender, sacrifice, suffering or discomfort that ultimately leads to profound breakthroughs.

Throughout the strike, I thought about the Hanged One. When my hips ached and my sunburnt fingers started peeling, I reminded myself that this was necessary suffering, sacrifice for the greater good. I tried to channel the Hanged One, who stops struggling and trying to control his situation, and instead surrenders. The strike would end when it ended. It couldn’t go on forever. The more I resisted, complained, ruminated, or felt sorry for myself, the more pain I would feel. It would change nothing about my circumstances but it would make me miserable. Eventually, my brain got the message. Show up to picket, put one foot in front of the other, don’t forget sunscreen, cheer when you pass a picketer from a sister union, do it again tomorrow for as long as it takes.

I convinced myself at the beginning of the strike that I would use whatever time we had off from work to write multiple scripts that I could sell immediately when work started up again. I made elaborate lists of all the projects I would finally get to. I developed calendars with made up deadlines for my many screenplays, plays, pilots, and novels. In the end, I wrote very little. The strike felt like those early days of COVID, when time stretched out in every direction and ceased to have any meaning. There was no end in sight, very little information to sift through, thousands of psychotic rumors, and a few people who for whatever reason couldn’t be bothered to follow the rules. It was maddening and necessary. I was proud to be a part of it. 

I berated myself for not getting more done, but every writer I talked to was in the same boat. We were exhausted, demoralized by the companies we had worked for for so long, horrified by the ostentatious displays of wealth from CEOs who were out yachting and throwing Cannes parties instead of paying people fairly. Anonymous executives speculated the strike would last into 2024 and we’d all lose our homes. No one was writing. How could we? We were having recurring nightmares about being forced to rewrite robot scripts for pennies. 

Eventually, I surrendered on this point as well. It was clear I would not be writing, why be cruel to myself? Instead, I did a lot of creative dreaming, I made playlists, I did tarot readings, I read and listened to every single thing I could about Vanderpump Rules.

The strike ended. We won. Its reverberations and aftershocks are still being felt across the industry. I continue to worry a lot about money. I’ve accrued lots of credit card debt. I’ve also tapped into some creative energy that’s been dormant for years. I feel excited to be writing again. I’m bursting with ideas. I'm still angry that the AMPTP didn’t come to the table sooner, that they didn’t negotiate in good faith the first time around, but some things are above my pay grade. I hope they come to the IATSE negotiations with a lot more generosity. If not, I'll lace up my Hokas and dust off my Lindsay Dougherty "Stepping on dicks" shirt.

Recommendations

ALONE - A reality TV competition where participants are sent into the wilderness of Alaska to live, as the title suggests, alone, for as long as they can stand it. They get to bring ten survival items from a very small list. They are dropped off on a beach without a shelter or any sustenance with the winter fast approaching, and they film themselves as they try to survive. The goal is to make it to ONE HUNDRED DAYS which, just to be clear, is over three months.

Most reality competitions are heavily edited, and even those that flirt with danger feel relatively safe. On Survivor, sure they don’t have a lot of food, but they are in a tropical locale with other people, and there are camera crews all around them. On Fear Factor, contestants had to eat weird bugs and cow brains or bungee jump off buildings, not to mention endure being in the presence of one Mr. Joseph Rogan, but there was a full camera crew around at all times and the danger always felt a little put on. Surely there was somebody who’s job it was to make sure nobody died.

It’s absolutely insane that no one has died on Alone. Participants are given a radio as their only form of communication, but if they use it, they’ll be pulled from the game. So each person needs to decide for themselves when to “tap out” — and it’s easy to imagine someone getting eaten by a grizzly bear before they get the chance to call and say, “Hey I think I should probably get out of here, there’s a bear in my tent.”

I love this show. I love it’s meandering pace and the bizarre camera angles (contestants are given a week’s worth of camera training before they are sent off alone into the tundra, but there are times when the lens gets fogged or dropped, put down at a bizarre angle, etc). I love watching a survivalist spend hours building a net. Participants talk to themselves (and to the camera/audience) because they have no one else to talk to, and things get weird quick.

Alone is a reminder that there are still wild places, places where if you leave your freshly caught fish unattended even for a moment, some dastardly river mink will come and steal it. Alone is also a meditation on suffering, surrender, and spirituality – the perfect encapsulation of The Hanged One. Nothing has ever made me want to eat a river trout, a recently snared rabbit, or a barbecued moose more than watching the glee of a starving person who has finally managed to kill their dinner. Highly recommend.