Memorable Snatchs...from my day
Oct. 22nd, 2006 04:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatOdd day. Cloudy. Cool. With breaks of sunlight. Breaks of drizzle. Yellow leaves. Subdued colors. My own clothes - the turqoise purple jacket - a shout of color against the browns. I think this now, looking out at a sun that jumps in and out of gray clouds like a child playing hide and go seek, after a day looking at art, and a morning reading snatchs of writing from word artists.
I have odd obsessions, I know this, and they tend to be culturally oriented. My current one is magazines, and not just any magazines, but literary, science, political, film, art and culture magazines. Fashion mags such as Vogue, Cosmopolitian, and Marie Claire don't interest me - they are ad heavy with more pictures than words. At any rate, I've been compulsively picking up magazines lately the way some people might compulsively buy chocolat bars. They travel well on subways and make great reading during commericial breaks - with one little problem, occassionally the article is more intriguing than the tv show I'm watching. Cultural multi-tasking - yes, I've discovered a way to do it.
At any rate here's a few snatchs from my morning reading my current fav literary mag, TinHouse:
Memories are contrary things; if you quit chasing them and turn your back, they often return on their own. That's what Kamen says. I tell him I never chased the memory of my accident. Some things, I say, are better forgotten.
[Then later this. They do not come one right after each other. One is at the beginning. One at the end.]
He says it's the bad memories that wear thin first. Then, he says, they tear open and let the light through.
- "Memory" by Stephen King. TinHouse, Vol.7, No.4
On the duty of a writer, assuming a writer has one:[Taken from an interview with Roddy Doyle, an Irish writer of teleplays, plays, screenplays, and books, including works such as The Commitments, The Snapper and Paddy Clark Ha HA HA. Each paragraph comes at different points in the interview.These are the passages that shouted out to me.]
I don't think writing, or the duty of the writer should be too tightly defined. The duty of the writer is to write - as simple as that. If more comes out of the writing - an image that demands scrutiny, a story that provokes guilt, joy, rage, impatience - good. I've been lucky. I've written words that have caused controversy here in Ireland, and have provoked people to examine the way we live. But if this is to be the only purpose of writing, we'll be left with a lof of very worthy, but dull, work. Writers can never anticipate the reaction of a reader. That's the magic, and the danger, of the experience. I wrote something to anger an audience, and I got yawns. I wrote something else, to bring people to real life on a TV screen, and I received death threats.
We're living in very ugly, damaging times. When is torture not torture? Has that question been asked before? Language has always been abused but the practice seems to have become routine. Deny, deny, deny: only the stupid tell the truth. Here's where I contradict myself, and perhaps agree with [Harold]Pinter. The duty of the writer is to be stupid - and tell the truth. It's how we tell the truth, how we tell the story - that's where the writing, the hard work, comes in.
When I'm writing and researching, trying to recreate a place that's gone or a place that won't be familiar to most readers, I try to find images that are very visual and promise meaning beyond the visual...
Shadows and sun, and cold, and layers of clothes. They're images that allow readers to imagine themselves there.
On religion:[taken from the same interview]
I acutally think that all religion is ridiculous. I went to a Christian Brothers' school, so my scars are Catholic ones. But I'm glad I didn't go to a Muslim Brothers school; I don't think it would have been a happy alternative. All religion is nonsense. Christianity, all the branches, Judaism, Islam, all the branches, Taoism, Hinduism, and I throw in yoga and vegetarism - they're all silly.
-An Interview with Roddy Doyle by Tom Grimes, TinHouse, Vol.7, No.4.
On Self, [stanzas selected from the lengthy poem Self Search by Dean Young. The selected stanzas spoke to me. I have not reprinted the entire poem because that would be a clear violation of copyright law.]
When we look around for proof
of basic epistemological matters
that life isn't only seemings smattered,
a dream brought on by snaggled mean,
often the self blocks the view
Now this, five or six stanzas later:
Maybe the point's to see the self
as a kind of film that tints everything
bluer, more youer, and yet look through,
whatever you have to do, volunteer
at a shelter changing the abandoned
hamster's litter, put together a coat drive
for the poor, go door-to-door for your canidate,
be devoted to a lover or lose yourself
cheering in a crowd.
And this towards the very end of the poem:
Self, I'm stuck with you
but the notion of becoming unglued is too much
and brings tears that come, of course,
because you're such a schmuck. Some days
you crash about raving how ignored you are
then why the hell don't people let you alone
but I've seen you too perform small
nobilities, selfless generosities.
- "Self Search" by Dean Young, TinHouse, Vol. 7, No. 4
This is the result of an on-going argument that I'm having with my husband who is a writer and believes that words are the only way to truly communicate ideas and thoughts. I'm not so sure. I think we can do it with art. This is an on-going work to prove that.
The work in question is a series of paintings and quilted designs on cloth.
1. Installation one : banned book bracelets. Silver bracelets with tiny covers of the banned books encased in tiny frames looped in a circle.
2. Knitted bracelets depicting the double helix
3. Cards from a card catalogue which are taped together - all about a thing. The thing in the attic, the thing under the bed, the thing about Joe Silverstein, the thing about cards...
4. the Reanimated Book Shelf - books that are no longer available, out of circulation and out of print that are used by artists for research - includes a book on Stage Makeup.
5. The Altered book - a beetle shape is cut from the spine and bindings of a brown book on mathematics and laid across it.
6. A game or maze - you leave the hive and travel through the twisting paths inside two interconnected star shapes to the haven to reach enlightment, the haven is oddly close to the hive but the paths don't lead in that direction. You must be brave and leave the group and journey alone to reach it.
7. The Match Game - according to what I read on the walls - an installation dedicated to Nabokov's memoir Speak to Me about his father a CIA agent in Russia who played a matchstick game, shows how matches can make patterns and the patterns or shapes show the interactions of the countries during the Cold War.
Those are the snatchs wandering about in my brain at the moment, requiring additional pondering.
I have odd obsessions, I know this, and they tend to be culturally oriented. My current one is magazines, and not just any magazines, but literary, science, political, film, art and culture magazines. Fashion mags such as Vogue, Cosmopolitian, and Marie Claire don't interest me - they are ad heavy with more pictures than words. At any rate, I've been compulsively picking up magazines lately the way some people might compulsively buy chocolat bars. They travel well on subways and make great reading during commericial breaks - with one little problem, occassionally the article is more intriguing than the tv show I'm watching. Cultural multi-tasking - yes, I've discovered a way to do it.
At any rate here's a few snatchs from my morning reading my current fav literary mag, TinHouse:
Memories are contrary things; if you quit chasing them and turn your back, they often return on their own. That's what Kamen says. I tell him I never chased the memory of my accident. Some things, I say, are better forgotten.
[Then later this. They do not come one right after each other. One is at the beginning. One at the end.]
He says it's the bad memories that wear thin first. Then, he says, they tear open and let the light through.
- "Memory" by Stephen King. TinHouse, Vol.7, No.4
On the duty of a writer, assuming a writer has one:[Taken from an interview with Roddy Doyle, an Irish writer of teleplays, plays, screenplays, and books, including works such as The Commitments, The Snapper and Paddy Clark Ha HA HA. Each paragraph comes at different points in the interview.These are the passages that shouted out to me.]
I don't think writing, or the duty of the writer should be too tightly defined. The duty of the writer is to write - as simple as that. If more comes out of the writing - an image that demands scrutiny, a story that provokes guilt, joy, rage, impatience - good. I've been lucky. I've written words that have caused controversy here in Ireland, and have provoked people to examine the way we live. But if this is to be the only purpose of writing, we'll be left with a lof of very worthy, but dull, work. Writers can never anticipate the reaction of a reader. That's the magic, and the danger, of the experience. I wrote something to anger an audience, and I got yawns. I wrote something else, to bring people to real life on a TV screen, and I received death threats.
We're living in very ugly, damaging times. When is torture not torture? Has that question been asked before? Language has always been abused but the practice seems to have become routine. Deny, deny, deny: only the stupid tell the truth. Here's where I contradict myself, and perhaps agree with [Harold]Pinter. The duty of the writer is to be stupid - and tell the truth. It's how we tell the truth, how we tell the story - that's where the writing, the hard work, comes in.
When I'm writing and researching, trying to recreate a place that's gone or a place that won't be familiar to most readers, I try to find images that are very visual and promise meaning beyond the visual...
Shadows and sun, and cold, and layers of clothes. They're images that allow readers to imagine themselves there.
On religion:[taken from the same interview]
I acutally think that all religion is ridiculous. I went to a Christian Brothers' school, so my scars are Catholic ones. But I'm glad I didn't go to a Muslim Brothers school; I don't think it would have been a happy alternative. All religion is nonsense. Christianity, all the branches, Judaism, Islam, all the branches, Taoism, Hinduism, and I throw in yoga and vegetarism - they're all silly.
-An Interview with Roddy Doyle by Tom Grimes, TinHouse, Vol.7, No.4.
On Self, [stanzas selected from the lengthy poem Self Search by Dean Young. The selected stanzas spoke to me. I have not reprinted the entire poem because that would be a clear violation of copyright law.]
When we look around for proof
of basic epistemological matters
that life isn't only seemings smattered,
a dream brought on by snaggled mean,
often the self blocks the view
Now this, five or six stanzas later:
Maybe the point's to see the self
as a kind of film that tints everything
bluer, more youer, and yet look through,
whatever you have to do, volunteer
at a shelter changing the abandoned
hamster's litter, put together a coat drive
for the poor, go door-to-door for your canidate,
be devoted to a lover or lose yourself
cheering in a crowd.
And this towards the very end of the poem:
Self, I'm stuck with you
but the notion of becoming unglued is too much
and brings tears that come, of course,
because you're such a schmuck. Some days
you crash about raving how ignored you are
then why the hell don't people let you alone
but I've seen you too perform small
nobilities, selfless generosities.
- "Self Search" by Dean Young, TinHouse, Vol. 7, No. 4
This is the result of an on-going argument that I'm having with my husband who is a writer and believes that words are the only way to truly communicate ideas and thoughts. I'm not so sure. I think we can do it with art. This is an on-going work to prove that.
The work in question is a series of paintings and quilted designs on cloth.
1. Installation one : banned book bracelets. Silver bracelets with tiny covers of the banned books encased in tiny frames looped in a circle.
2. Knitted bracelets depicting the double helix
3. Cards from a card catalogue which are taped together - all about a thing. The thing in the attic, the thing under the bed, the thing about Joe Silverstein, the thing about cards...
4. the Reanimated Book Shelf - books that are no longer available, out of circulation and out of print that are used by artists for research - includes a book on Stage Makeup.
5. The Altered book - a beetle shape is cut from the spine and bindings of a brown book on mathematics and laid across it.
6. A game or maze - you leave the hive and travel through the twisting paths inside two interconnected star shapes to the haven to reach enlightment, the haven is oddly close to the hive but the paths don't lead in that direction. You must be brave and leave the group and journey alone to reach it.
7. The Match Game - according to what I read on the walls - an installation dedicated to Nabokov's memoir Speak to Me about his father a CIA agent in Russia who played a matchstick game, shows how matches can make patterns and the patterns or shapes show the interactions of the countries during the Cold War.
Those are the snatchs wandering about in my brain at the moment, requiring additional pondering.
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no subject
Date: 2006-10-22 10:00 pm (UTC)Self, I'm stuck with you
but the notion of becoming unglued is too much
and brings tears that come, of course,
because you're such a schmuck. Some days
you crash about raving how ignored you are
then why the hell don't people let you alone
but I've seen you too perform small
nobilities, selfless generosities.
...is quite, quite stunning. Painfully acute. "...the notion of becoming unglued is too much..."
Yep. Been there.
;o)