Won’t Be a Ghost
Scene 9
FRANCIS
When Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years, the military judge also stipulated that she could not give interviews for the length of her imprisonment. With so little access to Chelsea’s own words, our knowledge of how she thinks about herself is limited mostly to the chats with Adrian Lamo. When Manning reached out to Lamo, she was pending dishonorable discharge under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell while sitting on the secret of the largest data leak in military history. In the chats we see someone cracking under the weight. Manning seems like she just wants to be relieved of her secrets, even if that means punishment, even if that means death. I’ve wondered if some part of her felt like these chats were her final confession, her acceptance of martyrdom.
But on the day following her sentencing, Manning granted us another point of access. She wrote a public letter shared by her attorney:
CHELSEA
“As I transition into this next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real me. I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female.”
FRANCIS
On the day she entered an all-male military prison, Chelsea chose to publicly to affirm her identity as a transwoman. To come out is a commitment to life. In coming out as transgender, Chelsea is committing to express what had been a mental, internal experience outwardly in her physical body.
When a martyr dies, their story is released to the imagination and needs of their acolytes. In escaping the physical, the martyr gains the power of their divine legacy and the erasure of whatever difficult or humiliating things may have plagued their actual life. Chelsea, however, has chosen a different sort of power—the power to embody, to take control of her own narrative.
LAMO
What’s your greatest fear?
MANNING
Dying without ever truly living. Cliché, but honest.
LAMO
I keep forgetting you’re 22. I had my first really long term relationship at 22. They went on the run from the FBI with me. That’s love/ Crazy as a shithouse rat, tho.
MANNING
lol. I’ve seen far more than a 22 y/o should.
__________Choir sings “Passion of Chelsea.”
CHOIR
He who at her breast suckled,
hath become a serpent.
With her veil she was strangled
daughter, share my mourning.
He who at her breast suckled,
hath become a serpent.
_____[Her own breast, her own veil, her own breast, her own veil]
With her veil she was strangled
Daughter, share my mourning
_____[Her own breast, her own veil, her own breast, her own veil]
Daughter, share my mourning.
In the morning,
she is rising.
In the morning,
she is rising.
In the morning
_____[In her own body, her own body, her own body, her own]
She is rising
_____[In her own body, her own body, her own body, her own]
In the morning
_____[In her own body, her own body, her own body, her own]
She is rising
_____[In her own body, her own body, her own body, her own]
__
_____[In her own body, her own body, her own body, her own]_____
_____[In her own body, her own body, her own body, her own]
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