Something I have seldom done, read from a work in progress. But an invitation to join the monthly cultural soirée at the U. S, Consulate in Québec gave me an opportunity to try out the voice of my character, my first attempt at a novel-length first person voice and my first historical novel. The tenor of the room indicated that people were paying attention, and comments afterwards assured me that I achieved what I am trying to do, ie create the authentic voice of a young Irish immigrant woman adrift in Chicago in 1919. The rhythm worked, and her quirks of narrative -- mixing tenses, for example. I don't think it was confusing. The next time I do something like this I want to do a better job of setting up the period. Also, it is clear that my idea of paying stylistic homage to Dos Passos needs boosting. Also clear, how important the newspapers are to me, to my character, to my idea for the novel.
If language reflects character..
If language reflects national character, do all les règles du langue françaises indiquent que le français are control freaks? Is it the same in other languages? Sometimes I feel as if I am rolling merrily along when I am stopped by a sign. Interdit! Yes, perhaps you thought you should go the usual way, mon chou, mais, in this case, there is an exception. It is not quite as easy as you thought to get where you want to go. Ay! Mais, ca va, lentement.
Hier, chez Le Palais Montcalm, a haunting piece of music, a surprise to me. Concerto for marimba, vibraphone et cordes by Jaques Hétu.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_H%C3%A9tu Great soloist too, Anne-Julie Caron with the superb Violons du Roy. Complex, beautiful. Outside to the sound de people skating on the patinoire devant Le Palais. Lights sparkling on the wonderful buildings around Place d'Youville.
Hier, chez Le Palais Montcalm, a haunting piece of music, a surprise to me. Concerto for marimba, vibraphone et cordes by Jaques Hétu.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_H%C3%A9tu Great soloist too, Anne-Julie Caron with the superb Violons du Roy. Complex, beautiful. Outside to the sound de people skating on the patinoire devant Le Palais. Lights sparkling on the wonderful buildings around Place d'Youville.
Presto
Back to the novel I began... could it be ten years ago? No, but it was almost seven years ago when I was leafing through materials at the beautiful Newberry Library in Chicago, viewing microfilm of newspapers from 1919, and happened upon the week I soon after decided to use as the basis of an historical novel I am now calling Presto. I talked a bit about this on artchat podcast, 11/12/12 The title could change. With so much having happened that week, I would need a long story, I thought, but in the process of discovering and writing my first historical novel, I came to the simple and not so simple story of a young woman who happens to be living in Chicago during a week when catastrophe after catastrophe filled the pages of the many newspapers published in the city. Ah the old days. Newspapers! Part of what amazes me is what must have been so absolutely memorable to the people who lived through that week, in the same sense that we who lived through Kennedy's assassination or the attack on the World Trade Center towers ask...what were you doing then? .. are virtually unremembered now. Until I read the front pages of the Daily News and the Trib, I had no idea what a dramatic week began July 21, 1919.
A commission to write a play, Imperfect, interrupted my progress and gave me time to reflect. Now I am back for the finish.
A commission to write a play, Imperfect, interrupted my progress and gave me time to reflect. Now I am back for the finish.
Parfois je manque ma langue!
Here I am super-stimulated by my francoĥone environment, loving the excellent course I take/suivi - intermediate level French, designed for immigrants -- all kinds of opportunities to let myself be immersed, meaning I could watch TV in French at night, listen to Radio-Canada in the morning. The latter I often do, but in the evening I feel too tired and lazy and find I miss the easy pleasures of my langue maternelle, my native tongue, langue literally meaning tongue. Does one have to live in Québec to understand the importance of language to identity, to the comfort in being oneself? My goal is to become truly bilingue. What a pleasure if will be if I can achieve that, enlarge my identity, my sense of self, the comfort I might feel in les deux langues officielles. What a country we have!
For better or worse: rediscovering older work
The long process towards re-publishing two novels (Shinny's Girls, 1989 and Flashing Yellow, 2001), but electronically this time: I think the conversion went well, except that the converter seems not to have liked one of my characters, Elfie, whose name was consistently left out from the scanned in versions of both the first and second novels, not even pronoun references.
b became h's... punctuation miscues, i.e. exclamation marks where l's should be. r's for t's c's for e's, Morn for Mom capital W for small W very often, maybe because so many Why's begin sentences? Is this like autocorrect, the program trying to decide for itself? Finally, at the end, Elfie is converted as Ellie. Then Elrie. Finally, Elfie... 25 pages before the end of Flashing Yellow.I think of the program, struggling to figure it out..Does the computer prefer standard useage, common names? Then, as if tired, it left out whole phrases near the end. Started to reproduce Flashing as \flax/jing. Yet, on the whole rather miraculous to be able to do this. to scan actual pages from published books, upload to Google docs, download as Word documents. Over 90% correct, I would say.
This opportunity to revisit work I wrote over 20 years ago showed me that I intentionally constrained language in an effort to be true to the level of my character's education in the original Shinny's Girls. (I talked about the project on artchatpodcast 49) I have changed since then, become more confident as a writer. To create a character of whatever type, it is not necessary to try to achieve a dumbed-down narrative. Hmm. I have grown as a writer, too, thank God. In the original Shinny's Girls I used so many passive sentences, weak verbs, imprecise sentences, so much word repetition. They drank so many cups of tea! Flashing Yellow is much better written and the story holds up, in my view.
Allthough I need to go over the work again, to proofread carefully (which has never been my strong point), I sent the first two-thirds of what will be the trilogy called Shinny's Girls to my friend, associate, e-mentor Steve Harlow, who will create the cover art.
It's happening!
This opportunity to revisit work I wrote over 20 years ago showed me that I intentionally constrained language in an effort to be true to the level of my character's education in the original Shinny's Girls. (I talked about the project on artchatpodcast 49) I have changed since then, become more confident as a writer. To create a character of whatever type, it is not necessary to try to achieve a dumbed-down narrative. Hmm. I have grown as a writer, too, thank God. In the original Shinny's Girls I used so many passive sentences, weak verbs, imprecise sentences, so much word repetition. They drank so many cups of tea! Flashing Yellow is much better written and the story holds up, in my view.
Allthough I need to go over the work again, to proofread carefully (which has never been my strong point), I sent the first two-thirds of what will be the trilogy called Shinny's Girls to my friend, associate, e-mentor Steve Harlow, who will create the cover art.
It's happening!
Spirituality, music, art, language
Good to be in Quebec City in September, the week of the Sacred Music Festival. International des Musiques Sacrées de Québec. Among the free events I attended, the first and perhaps my favourite took place at Musée national des Beaux-Arts, Je te Salue Marie. Manon Lefrançois, the vivacious soprano (accompanied by Karina Laliberté on violon and Marine-Hélène Bastien on piano) sang more versions of the Ave Maria than I knew existed, and the spirited Magnificat, so connu to the mostly femme audience that people sang along. The skylights above the grand hall of the Musée, les Plaines beyond the windows, the familiar scuplpture of a giant incomplete circle outside, but, from where I sat, only a partial view, so that it appeared a commas, as if to add, there is also this.
Next day, at the Musée de la Civilisation de Québec, the Choeur Vallon presented a brief but well chosen tour of four centuries of sacred music with great enthisasm, glittery silver clefs on their black shirts and dresses. The sole musical event I paid for, the Harlem Gospel Choir, at the enormous Elgise St. Roch, disappointed. Why? Expectations? I assumed I would leave in high spirits, and yet... while people were clapping and waving their hands, it seemed a bit contrived. The sound was mixed poorly so the voices didn't soar but rather fought with the keyboardist until the singers left the microphones. Or maybe it was that I sat ten rows back, next to a friendly couple who stood and clapped as I did.I talked about this on artchat podcast. For the night before, when I attended the opening concert of the OSQ, with its handsome new conductor Fabien Gabel, my late decision to attend meant the best cheap seat I could get was in row B. Yet, even though the sound may have been more evenly distributed to those sitting further back, it was thrilling to watch my favourite violinist James Ehnes play the Braham's violin concerto, to be able to see him exchange glances with Gabel, to note that Gabel, unlike the previous chef d'orchestre Yoam Talmi, did not seem to need to mop his brow with handkerchiefs set out on the stand so that one could determine the intensity of the performance by the number of hankerchiefs he used. Gabel appeared to be having some trouble with his vest buttons, but was otherwise in precise control for all, but especially the wonderfully orchestrated, Le Chevalier à La Rose, by Strauss. Music can be sacred whether or not it is so named, and I walked home feeling as elated as I thought I would après Harlem Gospel. In final event I attended, the painter Pierre Lussier, whose work is exhibted at both the Grand Théâtre and Espace Hypérion, talked about how he had been inspired by the silence that preceded the voice of the counter tenor Daniel Taylor. The relationship entre silence and music, possibly the pause before the action of painting. Lussier brings wonderful light to his scenes. They are in that way a reflection of his Renaissance influences, and while some might call him representationalist, he says that he expresses how his soul responds to nature. An eloquent talk by a man who seems humble as well as fully engaged. Enfin, à za-zen, les infleunces spirituelles sont venu à moi in trois langes, français, sanskrit, japonais. A week to listen, see, think, enjoy. This has been a good fesitval
Next day, at the Musée de la Civilisation de Québec, the Choeur Vallon presented a brief but well chosen tour of four centuries of sacred music with great enthisasm, glittery silver clefs on their black shirts and dresses. The sole musical event I paid for, the Harlem Gospel Choir, at the enormous Elgise St. Roch, disappointed. Why? Expectations? I assumed I would leave in high spirits, and yet... while people were clapping and waving their hands, it seemed a bit contrived. The sound was mixed poorly so the voices didn't soar but rather fought with the keyboardist until the singers left the microphones. Or maybe it was that I sat ten rows back, next to a friendly couple who stood and clapped as I did.I talked about this on artchat podcast. For the night before, when I attended the opening concert of the OSQ, with its handsome new conductor Fabien Gabel, my late decision to attend meant the best cheap seat I could get was in row B. Yet, even though the sound may have been more evenly distributed to those sitting further back, it was thrilling to watch my favourite violinist James Ehnes play the Braham's violin concerto, to be able to see him exchange glances with Gabel, to note that Gabel, unlike the previous chef d'orchestre Yoam Talmi, did not seem to need to mop his brow with handkerchiefs set out on the stand so that one could determine the intensity of the performance by the number of hankerchiefs he used. Gabel appeared to be having some trouble with his vest buttons, but was otherwise in precise control for all, but especially the wonderfully orchestrated, Le Chevalier à La Rose, by Strauss. Music can be sacred whether or not it is so named, and I walked home feeling as elated as I thought I would après Harlem Gospel. In final event I attended, the painter Pierre Lussier, whose work is exhibted at both the Grand Théâtre and Espace Hypérion, talked about how he had been inspired by the silence that preceded the voice of the counter tenor Daniel Taylor. The relationship entre silence and music, possibly the pause before the action of painting. Lussier brings wonderful light to his scenes. They are in that way a reflection of his Renaissance influences, and while some might call him representationalist, he says that he expresses how his soul responds to nature. An eloquent talk by a man who seems humble as well as fully engaged. Enfin, à za-zen, les infleunces spirituelles sont venu à moi in trois langes, français, sanskrit, japonais. A week to listen, see, think, enjoy. This has been a good fesitval
Cap du Bon- Désir
Deux belles-soeurs deTremblay votent
September 4th, provincial election day, I spent a couple of hours on the bus. The first woman who reminded me of a character from a Tremblay play boarded the 800 metrobus somewhere on Blvd. Rene Levesque around 2:30. Just over 5 feet, perhaps 60, hair the colour of iron beginning to rust that hung straight to mid-neck except where it was pushed behind her ears, clear tan skin, a round face, no teeth or few of them, cropped red pants, running shoes, a pink t-shirt. Alcohol fumes wafting towards my nearby seat as she conversed in a loud voice with anyone who would respond, the bus driver, for example. She began by announcing that she didn't like the Liberals nor the PQists, but had voted for Francois Legault. In process of getting up to speed en français, I didn't catch all she said, but experienced the wheeling sense of danger that rises from the unpredictable. When a thin, mustached man in, around, his late 50's boarded at a stop or two further along, wearing a cowboy hat and leaning on a cane, grey sweat pants loose over socks he wore inside sandals, she greeted him like an old friend and shouted out to someone to give the man a seat. Someone did. She repeated the Francois Legault story and asked if he and everyone else had voted, she commented on the films and theatre offerings advertised in VOIR. At one point she said tabernac. As the bus filled and she could no longer see the man she must have known, at least as someone who also shopped at Place Laurier, where they were both headed, she continued her thoughts outloud. Her favourite films, les policiers, et les ouesterns avec des cowboys. Aussi, des belles filles. Les belles filles qui aiment les cowboys viriles. For the twenty minutes or so this commentary continued, the same opinions often repeated, the people on the bus smiled, supressed smiles, or outright laughed,not so much to mock her as in enjoyment of the entertainment provided par cette belle-soeur. She had mal à la cheville - a bad ankle - and was going to look for shoes, and the man across was going to look for something, or maybe just stroll, rather limp with her along les Halles to pass the afternoon while waiting to hear the election results to come.
It was when I finished my business near a stop past Place Laurier that I met the second belle-soeur, who was also waiting for the 800 metrobus. Brassy blonde,over 60, with hair pulled into a knot, wearing a patterned visor and running shoes and several large rings, including an amethyst the size of a three-stack of Hall's lozenges, she asked me right away if I had voted. She had, she declared, for Francois Legault .Not as talkativeas the first , but clearly engaged, she immediately rose to offer her seat when a mother carrying a baby boarded with two little boys traipsing behind her.
The earthy frankness of the two women, who assumed they immediately belonged to whatever group they happened to be in,reminded me of some of the characters I have met in Michel Tremblay's work. What did they think later when Francois Legault won fewer seats than, perhaps, expected, and the newly elected Pauline Marois was strong armed from the stage of her victory speech by security police wanting to protect her from the gun-crazed fishing lodge proprietor who tried to spoil the night and did, in a big way, by killing the stage hand who barred the door. Ah, Québec! From the time I moved to Canada in 1970, I always thought it perhaps the most imteresting place in Canada. Never disappointing, and yes, sometime dangerous in its unpredictability.
Finished!
One novella and one novel scanned in and ready to edit! A tedious process and this is just step one. When I am finished I will have a three-novel volume called Shinny's Girls.
Podcasts as art...
On Artchat Podcast today we talked about the nature of the podcast itself. What is it exactly and what is its purpose? Steve gave some context by describing three different types of podcasts he listens to, which vary from the very produced on-demand style; to the flexible time, still somewhat produced on-demand types; to the anything goes style, inspired, in Steve's case, by the Gilmor Gang.
The discussion was sparked by a specific question, should we be recording the tedious process of getting everyone connected? Isn't it boring for listeners? Who listens anyway?
To me, what "artists" make and present for public consumption should be carefully wrought. To me, it is not enough to put a frame or book covers or the open-close of a broad/podcast around just anything. ACP is not "art", but if it is a product of some kind that we are making available to listeners, should it not be something more than casual talk recorded with every kind of sound mishap remaining? Most of the regulars felt that we can do without the tedious process of connecting. Steve wants to leave room for the listener. He does not like art that leaves him out. I understand his point of view on one hand, and yet am wary of an attitude lazy students used to express. When I would ask about the point of a story, which, to me, was the organizing principle, some would say, I wanted the reader to figure it out for himself.
On the other hand, some works of "art" can be overwrought. I felt that way reading Sebastian Barry's On Cannan's Side, which was recommended to me by a couple of good friends whose taste I respect. But..so contrived, so mannered! I did not believe Lily's voice but heard the author and his efforts at making original phrases. I admired the original phrases at first, but then I felt I was being attacked by them.
Ten published pages...
..per day, both sides. Flashing Yellow is a book of 250 pages. I have scanned in 128. Scan one side, scan the other. Upload to Google docs, download to Word. Select all, make typestyle and spacing consistent. Whew! On the road to making an e-book. My goal is to finish Flashing Yellow by the end of the summer, but if I am disciplined, I will have it completed by the end of July, or the first week of August. While I am in Quebec I will edit that and Shinny's Girls, then Steve and I can make them into one volume, with a new cover: Shinny's Girls should be the title. Good practice à ici et maintenant. When I avoid distractions, the input time shrinks to 50, even close to 45 minutes.
Scanning Text Into Google Docs' OCR
http://goo.gl/fq1P5
People who fall asleep on the bus...
...sometimes lean against me. A gentle pressure, unaggressive. The first time, a young first nations man with bush fever wheeled onto the 257 and greeted me enthusiastically. Mind if I sit here, he said, and talked and talked, about how he had to get out of there... there being Dogpatch, so-called, the former site of the company town in Port Mellon. There are only a few houses left, perhaps some mobile homes. Port Mellon shivers in the thick dampness at the far end of Howe Sound; steepsided mountain slopes, mostly grey and green, are brightened in spring by the optimistic lime of the budding alders and broad leaf maples. It is dark down there, and in winter, which it was, the gloom never lifts because the sun is too low to struggle over the mountains. Everyone knows everyone else. Everyone drinks too much. Soon he stops talking, this 20- something guy in shirt sleeves and a ball cap on a February day. The 257 rolls along Highway 1, above West Vancouver. He closes his eyes, nods off. Soon his head falls on my shoulder and rests there, not too heavily. When the bus turns veers right onto the 15th Street exit, he stirs, moves away, then back into position as the bus turns left onto Marine Drive at the bottom of the hill. Only when we reach downtown Vancouver does he fully wake, look around. This is the excitement he's been missing. He says goodbye before he steps off.
The second sleeper, also a young man, even younger, tall, short brown hair, dressed in red shorts and a t-shirt. Perhaps 18, or even 17. Obviously having come from one of the summer camps on the Coast, he was carrying a big pack into which he had stuffed a rolled up sleeping pad, the one and a half inch, medium blue"mattress," which may have explained his weariness. He also carried a white plastic bag that appeared to hold some garbage. The bag would drop, he would rouse himself to pick it up from the floor of the bus. His head did not fall onto my shoulder but his arm and shoulder pressed against me, and when the pressure penetrated his sub-conscious as actual resting against a stranger, he straightened himself before sleep returned and he bent, head over chest, the shape of an elongated cane head.
Silent eating
Of the 15 people in the dining hall, I am the only Caucasian. Each place is set with a stainless steel bowl, chopsticks, a spoon resting on a brown sheet of paper towel and covered by a yellow terrycloth hand towel. The food - a slow cooker of rice, a large stainless steel bowl of a pink soup, a casserole containing pasta, a dish that may feature tofu, with a sauce containing rice vinegar and chopped nuts, a plate of something dark purple and shredded - seaweed of some kind? Bright green cabbage and carrots nicely sauteed. The lady in the pink sweatshirt urges me to help myself, points to where I should sit, asks, by holding up her stainless steel bowl, if I would rather have that than the ceramic bowl at my place, the only ceramic bowl. No, it's appropriate that the different one should eat from the different bowl.
A spoon clinks against metal, there is chewing behind closed mouths, gazes are downward, inward; there is the rub of the wooden chopsticks against the bottom of the ceramic bowl.
one thing I believe...
... is that the newly dead are lonely, they want us to talk to them; we want to talk to them, to find them somehow in the space that is everything. It's a gradual wind down for the dead, for the rest of us still living. Wind down or wind up. I hear engines revving, the high whine that precedes take off.
Bev
When you see an 80 year old woman, pale, bony, weak-voiced, it may be hard to believe that a younger sister always thought her a glamorous figure, beginning from the time she filled the gaps in the household when our mother was in hospital having a baby. Was it Bev who said I want just a sliver of cake, and Dad cut a sliver off the bread board and put it on a plate; or was it Dad who asked for a sliver of cake, and Bev who took him at his word and made us all laugh at the cleverness? She had much in common with our Dad, more than skinniness. They both had tremendous and sustaining faith. Inspiring faith. They both believed in conservation, Dad with his bucket in the tub to catch drips from a cranky tap, Bev putting away dabs of this and dabs of that until they’d been in the fridge so long you couldn’t recognize them. Whenever I save a tea bag for the next cup, I think of Bev.
Friends started coming by Oneida Street, including Johnny Borg with Bobby Clark in his Studebaker convertible, boyfriends who brought candy bars for us little kids. Bev getting dressed up for a date, in clothes she’d sewn herself. Bev going off to nursing school in New Jersey. The letters I wrote to her, the distinctive handwriting, with her characteristic abbreviations, on letters that came back. Bob Brophy, how much fun he was. A big football player with big friends. Bob helped us move into Taylor Street, drank beer out of a 16 ounce Pyrex measuring cup. Then the marriage, and one of the few formal Burns family portraits, taken by a Herald News photographer. The reception at the country club. Vogue cigarettes in pastel-coloured paper, with gold filter-tips. Champagne! See what I mean by glamour? On the honeymoon, in Florida, they saw real alligators!
When Brian was born and she stayed with us on Taylor Street, Bob brought her milkshakes to fatten her up while she was nursing. The move to Orchard Lane. Bev staying up half the night, with papers on the table, accounts, or text books; getting the kids off to camp, being the camp nurse and neighbourhood nurse, looking cool in summer with her stretchy strapless tops, oil glistening off her freckled shoulders. Being someone we younger kids could count on, a second mother.
When I married she gave practical advice such as, if you can only afford hamburgers or hot dogs, go for the hamburger because at least you know what’s in it. That was 1963. She championed nursing as the best way to give babies a good start, and sent me brochures from the La Leche league when I was pregnant with Elisabeth. In fact whenever I fold a napkin carelessly or neglect to use brillo on a stainless steel sink, I think of Bev, and while it’s funny on one hand, it also illustrates how she continues to thread through my daily life. When I visited her October, 2009, ostensibly to help, she stood by my side watching me chop vegetables for soup, teaching me an easier way to peel garlic. She said, when you get to my age, you’ve learned a few things.
Even with cancer Bev had more energy than most people, and outlasted me shopping by hours on that October trip, choosing boots - if not glamourous, at least stylish - to match her winter coat. She thrived on half the amount of sleep most people need. Midnight, one, two in the morning? Sure but just a few more stitches would finish off the Halloween costume for a grandchild; and then there’s the new cake recipe she’s been wanting to try on her bridge group. Wouldn’t it be nice to have it done so she could get to mass in the morning?
Amazingly, she pursued her university degree and additional training while working and mothering, and received her bachelor’s the same year as Brian. She was fused to her chosen life role as a care giver, yet could laugh at her own heedless enthusiasm, such as the time she took down someone’s yellowed curtains to wash and bleach them, and discovered, too late, that they had never been white to begin with, but the shade called tea-stained.
In our talks that October she told me about her constant conversations with God; her acceptance of the inevitable. It was just how it would happen that worried her. She didn’t want it to hurt, the moment of passing, and she craved to know what she was going to be doing in heaven. Though she didn’t want to assume anything, there seemed a good chance she would get there. “But I couldn’t sit around playing the harp all day,” she said. “I suppose I could do laundry.” Her green eyes got big, as they did at such moments. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t kidding.
Who knew she would survive double pneumonia in the spring of 2012, be one of the few people to ever be kicked out of hospice. That she would recover to the extent that she could join some of her siblings in Phoenix to celebrate our brother Tim's 65th birthday in July 2011, and make nurses hats for us all to surprise Tim, since he had broken a vertebrae shortly before we were due to arrive. That trip she showed me how you could peel under ripe peaches as you would peel a potato, and offered to sleep on an air mattress on the floor at Brigid's house because she knew I liked a bed to myself. It would be easier, she said, I'm lighter.
Then - was it only January of this year- the 80th birthday party arranged by the kids and hosted by Rob. As many people to celebrate her as she had years to celebrate. She was tired after the round of parties for Christmas, all the visitors, but her wish was to avoid doctor's visits for the whole year and had gained some weight. Would she finally get a break from the lymphoma she had been holding off since 1995, using everything from traditional medicine to magnet therapy?
As we know, it was not meant to be. But the great thing was, Bev didn't stop being Bev until she lost consciousness. Concerned, even on the morning of her death, about the CNA who had to bend over to wash her; advising Beth on the proper method of removing the iodine the kind hospice nurse had inadvertently dropped on the carpet when she came to administer help earlier, as day was breaking. Hugging her granddaughter-roomie Kerry and saying what were probably her last words, “It's always better in the summer,” a phrase that had special meaning for them, but also expressed the relief Bev felt as death approached quickly, at last.
Preparing for "At Work"
Geoffrey Smedley has been invited to participate in an exhibit, "At Work," at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. This is part of his response to the CCA.
“I am, for better or worse, conditioned to work. I do so partially in order to find out what I am doing. Drawing, making machines, photographing and writing are processes of exploration, discovery and invention that are conditioned by thought, intuition, improvisation, blunders, accidents, pleasure and luck. About everything there is an unbounded zone, a penumbra; the soliloquy goes - well yes, possibly, but then there is this, and that- and by the way there is...
“I work reasonably but not rationally. I am in sympathy with Hamlet’s tactic Let us by indirection find direction out. My way of working is sometimes rigorous, and sometimes not, often straightforward yet frequently oblique - I shall provide a number of studies, maquettes, and drawings to illustrate this.
“As to the substance of my undertaking I reckon that like Pound’s Cantos my work has a long rhythm. I did not foresee that it would be so in the earlier stages of the project (Descartes Clown). In hindsight I have come to realize that the whole undertaking concerns the dissection of the idea we have of ourselves, in other words is a process of taking to pieces what might be called the Architecture of Man.”
April in Vancouver
I hope to spend every April of my life in Vancouver. Intoxicating blossoms. Rolling purple clouds spread to grey, break to sun and it's warm.
From the earthquake last year in Japan, objects are rolling and floating across the Pacific to British Columbia. This week, a container that stayed upright and held intact a Harley Davidson, a set of golf clubs. Someone moving his belongings, anticipating a life of fun. The tsunami snatched his equipment and sent it rusting to the shores of Haida Gwaii. The someone in Japan who lost these things also lost three family members, a house. A young man smiling, incredulous, at the news of the far away find.
Ironic, on the last day of the month, at the main intersection downtown, Georgia and Graville, a drum circle and dancers to honour the women who went missing from the Downtown Eastside. People, mostly First Nations people, wearing the photos of their missing loved ones on their t-shirts. Many if not most of the women were taken and slaughtered by Robert Pickton. Such huge disrespect for women, on his part, but also on the part of the police who did not seem to take the crime investigation seriously for too long. Members of the same Vancouver police force stood guard at the intersection while the drum dancing proceeded and the faces of women who died were renanimated by the gestures of the people who wore them in memory.
Home in the neighbourhood, dogwoods newly in bloom. Their flat leaves small stages displaying the light of the sun.
Step One of step one complete
First book available for revising after I scanned it page by page, uploaded it to G docs, downloaded it to Word, copied each page into a master file. Tedious work, but an opportunity to revisit what's there, in glances for now, until the time comes for a long, close look.
Now to start scanning in the second book, which is three times as long. Think zen, think the dramatic power of repetition, though significant repetition.
So wordy
Class, morality an issue in books by Dreiser, Booth Tarkington, Farrell...Dos Passos.In general, many of the novels from the early 20th century develop around class issues, poor wanting to be rich, rich falling from grace. Lots of social foment, which is what I used to love. But so wordy. Every thought examined... in Dreiser, especially.
In The Genius, which my Dad's brother, Uncle Ray, bought in New Orleans in 1926, Drieser's main character Eugene ponders quite a bit, through the voice of the author. Eugene is an artist and he loves women, but...
"One of the particular weaknesses of Eugene's, which should be set forth here and which will help illuminate the basis of his conduct was that he was troubled with a dual point of view - a condition based upon a peculiar power of analysis - self-analysis in particular, which was constantly permitting him to tear himself up by the roots in order to see how he was getting along.He would daily and hourly and when not otherwise employed lift the veil from his inner mental processes as he might lift the covering from a well, and peer into its depths. What he saw was not very inviting and vastly disconcerting, a piece of machinery that was not going as a true man should, clock fashion, and corresponding in none of its moral characteristics to the recognized standard of a man. He had concluded now, by watching various specimens.."
This introspection continues for a few more pages before something significant happens to move the character along, and, action is often summarized in favour of long passages of exposition. When I talked about this with David Zieroth, he reminded me that Dreiser and his contemporaries came before Hemingway revolutionized prose.
Another revolution...e-publishing. Does it demand a different style of writing?
Chatting about the new world
Another artchat podcast this morning, with Steve, Emory, JimmythePeach, Ruth, and, this week, David. Steve and Ruth, and Peach too, lead we old time writers, musicians, painters into the new world of media or the world of new media, and what they say is confirmed by most people who are thinking about it, that it is the individual's responsibility to reach an audience, readers, listeners, viewers. The dialogue includes e-publishing versus traditional publishing and Steve referred us to a talk by Seth Godin on that subject. I love Steve's enthusiasm for the artistic possibilities of Twitter, for example, but I lack his ease with the medium and I resist spending time on it. Work, yes, and more hours at the computer, but I will persevere. Next step is to convert the pdf files into editable text. My goal is to create a volume consisting of Shinny's Girls and Flashing Yellow. I would still like to see You Again published traditionally before I publish it online, but since the first publisher backed away, I haven't found another to take it. Still looking.
Meantime, robins are expressing the beauty of this perfect spring day.
Meantime, robins are expressing the beauty of this perfect spring day.