On Earth As It Is In Heaven

The Rehearsal, Sky Daddy, and the line between discipline and devotion

Hello!

Here with one of those previously promised “make the Barbies kiss” essays. A friendly heads up that spoilers follow for Season 2 of The Rehearsal (HBO). However, anything about Sky Daddy is spoiler-free beyond what you’d find on the jacket copy and in the opening pages.

When you think about Nathan Fielder, you probably do not think about reverence. This is a man famous for doing things like pitching poop-flavored frozen yogurt as a viable business strategy and creating a too real situation for a fatherless child actor. But Fielder loves nothing more than to play God.

The Rehearsal, which recently wrapped its second season, is the ultimate exercise in this, providing Fielder with a seemingly unlimited budget to bend reality to his whims. Season two takes its audience through the TSA and into the world of the airport, specifically, into the interpersonal awkwardness between pilots and co-pilots that Fielder believes causes plane crashes. At first, I assumed this would be another meandering Rehearsal ride. As in all of his projects, Fielder would begin with trying to fix this whole plane crash issue and end up somewhere else entirely, with his own vulnerability carefully preserved on ice, somewhere far from his audience’s grasp. But it turns out there’s only so much emotional masking one can do while aboard a 737. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Kate Folk’s novel Sky Daddy.

On premise alone, Sky Daddy is classic “weird girl lit.” It’s about a woman named Linda who is sexually obsessed with planes, so much so that she spends all the money she earns from her hellish content moderation job on flights in hopes of “marrying” a 737. But Linda is both more tender and more earnest than your average weird girl main character.

Of this marriage plot, she says, “Only such a cosmic force could bring about my dream of marriage to a plane—what others vulgarly refer to as a “plane crash.” I believed this was my destiny: for a plane to recognize me as his soulmate mid-flight and, overcome with passion, relinquish his grip on the sky, hurtling us to earth in a carnage that would meld our souls for eternity.”

Love a woman who knows what she wants! If you’re thinking, “Oh, she’ll probably just cause a plane crash and lock one of these plane fellows down”—absolutely not. Linda has a strict moral code: “A crash I’d caused myself would not satisfy my desire, as it would be a fraudulent victory….I wanted a plane to choose me, as human lovers choose to marry. I wasn’t greedy, nor was I impatient when it came to something as important as marriage. I’d wait a lifetime if I had to.” It’s an almost Austenian kind of devotion, but ratcheted up to oblivion. Linda worships at the altar of aviation, and relinquishes control to forces greater than herself.

Her desire is no different from Fielder’s fear. They both watch plane crashes with the same fervor and attention to detail. There is unabashed horniness across the board. Readers who find it a bit too much that Linda is constantly using a piece of 737 she purchased on eBay to bring herself to orgasm need not forget that Fielder went to great lengths to justify masturbating in a flight simulator to explore what made Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger such a good pilot. Contrary to what organized religion might lead you to believe, devotion does not need to be devoid of sex.

But does Fielder show up with true devotion? Before this season, I’d argue his entire filmography is rooted has been rooted in devotion’s opposite: discipline. While they might seem similar, discipline and devotion are energetic opposites.

Chelsea Bieker

has written about this extensively in the context of her writing practice, but the same logic applies here. Discipline is about tightly controlled systems and self-flagellation. It is the Nathan Fielder way, to obsessively train and manipulate until nothing is left to chance. Devotion, on the other hand, is about love, loyalty, enthusiasm. If discipline is self-will, devotion is surrender.

It isn’t until Fielder is in the cockpit, preparing to pilot a 737 full of passengers, that anything resembling reverence appears. This is a man who, whether intentionally or not, has let his discipline in becoming a licensed pilot turn into something like devotion. It’s evident by body language alone. Fear, joy, exhilaration—Fielder is as close to “real” as we ever see him in that cockpit. His many layers of masking begin to slip.

To be clear, when I talk about masking, I do not mean it in a “Nathan owes us his true self” way, although I do believe The Rehearsal is most interestingly viewed as a piece of art that holds onto a neurodivergent worldview. The Rehearsal is intentionally vague about Fielder’s neurodivergence. Sky Daddy never makes it known whether Linda has any kind of official diagnosis, either. The point is not to consult the DSM-5. It’s to consider, like Dr. Devon Price suggests in Unmasking Autism, how unmasking and unlearning shame can be liberating for everyone, autistic or not.

Linda experiences exactly this. She begins the book with an on-and-off approach to masking. When a coworker invites her to a vision board brunch, she covers her poster with pictures of planes and the tail number of the 737 she most adores alongside some other more palatable manifestation imagery. It’s not a full performance of normalcy, but Linda doesn’t quite tell the girlies she yearns to marry a plane. I will not spoil the climax, but as the book progresses, Linda goes increasingly mask off with her desire. Each step toward all-consuming worship of her beloved machines ironically deepens her awareness of what it means to be human. In 12 step culture, these types of serendipitous moments, often punctuated with epiphany, are often referred to as “God shots.” This framing is impossible without some semblance of faith.

What makes both Sky Daddy and the finale of The Rehearsal so captivating is the stubbornness of their devotion. As straight as Fielder attempts to play it, the flight scenes make it undeniable that, like Linda, he has spent years fixating on his special interest. By the end, neither of them are able to abide by societal norms about how much devotion is too much devotion. Fielder’s multi-year journey to become a pilot and his ongoing work for a company that flies empty 737s around the world make this even more evident. Both Fielder and Linda enthusiastically careen toward possible public humiliation, job loss, and literal death, all in hopes of closer, more frequent communion with the god of their own understanding. God might be a 737. Whether one’s relationship with this god began as discipline or devotion is besides the point when you’re careening through the air at 500 mph.

There is a cheeky saying that “prayer is whatever you say on your knees.” The Rehearsal and Sky Daddy take this further. Faith is whatever you do when the fasten seatbelt sign flickers on. It might be masturbating while dreaming of euphoric death. It might be chasing humanity in hopes of something like heroism. Piety can come in many forms, but no one is immune in such moments of grandeur.

Linda refers to other air travels as “spiritual siblings.” Because indeed, “there is no greater intimacy than to be fellow passengers of a doomed flight.” And what is life on this planet but to be a fellow passenger on a doomed flight? Maybe faith is about harnessing our most otherworldly discomforts, transmuting them into a twisted but tender devotion, and carrying that onward, whether we land safely on the ground or not.

This newsletter brought to you by:

• Being stuck standing last week on the jet bridge for 30+ minutes at Dallas Love Field Domestic Airport.

• Chipping my tooth on a KIND bar (second time this has happened in the last decade!) while flying somewhere above Arizona.

• Not having dental insurance, and accepting that a busted incisor is going to be my signature look for a minute. [Insert serenity prayer here.] If you’re feeling generous, you can also buy me the equivalent of a coffee worth of tooth-money here.

• Separately, please consider donating to CHIRLA, Jail Support LA, or your local mutual aid fund. We’re all we got.