Soul Stuff ...

 

The practice of any art isn’t to make a living, it’s to make your soul grow.

Kurt Vonnegut.

Kurt's quotes seemed like an answer to my angst about money and art. 

Meanwhile, this singer is making me smile. Most particularly, her song, 'You and I'. 

I love the lines: let's get rich and buy our parents homes in the south of France
Let's get rich and give everybody nice sweaters and teach them how to dance.

I was out early this morning, 5 celsius, a clear-sky day but the air hurts the lungs we decided.  Cold or pollution, or both, we couldn't decide.

I'm using Frances Mayes book, Under the Tuscan Sun, to pull me through the quieter moments.  The tram was packed coming home but I was off in my mind and wandering with her in Sovana, where she wrote of being in ancient places, We can walk here, the latest little dots on the time line.  Knowing that, it always amazes me that I am intensely interested in how the map is folded, where the gas gauge is pointed, whether we have withdrawn enough cash, how everything matters intensely even as it is disappearing.

 

Eleanor Catton talks with Kim Hill

I must share ... my favourite New Zealand radio personality, Kim Hill from NZ National Radio, interviewed the Man Booker Prize winner, Eleanor Catton.

I knew Kim would have done this thing ... a 41 minute interview, that really explores Eleanor's life and work.  Thank goodness for Radio New Zealand's archives.  So many treasures found there - Sam Hunt is another special NZ love of mine.

Radio New Zealand wrote: Catton, 28, is only the second New Zealander, and the youngest author ever, to

win the presitigious literary award. She is also the youngest short-listed writer in the competition's 45-year history.

The prize, announced at a ceremony in London, carries a cheque for £50,000. The Luminaries is a murder mystery set on the West Coast during the 1860s gold rush that relies on an astrological narrative. It follows in the footsteps of Mr Pip by Lloyd Jones, which was shortlisted in 2007, and The Bone People by Keri Hulme, which won in 1985.

Here's a collection of Radio New Zealand's interviews with Eleanor Catton from recent years.

On Days Where Joy Bubbles Up ...

Perhaps it began yesterday ... that bubble of joy that floated up out of me as I laughed with my new hairdresser.  He's about 65 and he's a delight.

I took my long hair to him a couple of months ago.  I went in knowing it was serious, that I hadn't had a professional cut in a very long time, maybe 2 years ... and that the time of the supermarket, do-it-yourself, dyes had to come to an end.

He sighed, he worked for hours, he fixed everything, cutting away so much hair I wondered, over the days that followed, if I wasn't related to Samson ... that my strength hadn't disappeared with my hair.

But a strange thing happened.  It wasn't as short as it initially felt but, even better, I had more hair than I'd ever had.  He had worked some magic that made it all lively and almost wavy.  A miracle really but one that I hadn't thanked him for.

Some colour 'adjustment' is required and so I biked over to book an appointment and voila, before I knew it, joy was simply bubbling out of me as we talked of my hair.

Last night, after a very warm 27 celsius day, I slipped outside with my laptop and sat in the  garden a while.  The swallows were still screaming around like the kamikazes they are but as the sun went down, out came the bats ... on an insect-eating mission.  I didn't know we had bats but we do.  It was beautiful out there in the garden that Gert made.

This morning began with the arrival of a most exquisite and much-longed for book.  Eduardo Galeano's Children of the Days - a calendar of human history had arrived.  Thank you very much, Gert!  I opened it and fell in.

It's as beautiful as imagined, more beautiful than I knew a book could be perhaps.

29 January

HUMBLY I SPEAK

Today in 1860 Anton Chekhov was born.

He wrote as if he were saying nothing.

And he said everything.

But there was still more joy out there waiting for me.  I had promised to phone Dave and Jude, another set of old friends from far-away.  We had enjoyed catching up with them when back home at Christmas. visiting just as they were just setting off on their grand return to Africa, with children.

Talking with them is like drinking from an ocean of joy.  Somehow they fill me up.  We talked for 2 hours and more about everything important and good.

The bell rang again and more parcels arrived.  Gifts for Miss 9, all the way from New Zealand, t-shirts for Gert, and voila, a  gift of music all the way from Australia.  I'm listening to that as I write this.  Thank you to Paul.

Tonight I have a 3-hour photoshoot.  I'm working with a friend who has pulled me into an exciting project of hers.  I suspect it will be intense but foresee more joy is entirely possible. 

Money ruins so much and while I need it, getting involved in projects that engage my heart and soul ... they're not to be sneezed at. 

In these days I tell myself that, okay, perhaps I'll die poor but by crikey, I feel so rich in stories ...

I owe email and phone calls.  Please forgive me.  Replies to follow in the weeks ahead. 

Eduardo Galeano, Writer

Scientists say that human beings are made of atoms, but a little bird told me that we are also made of stories. And so, each one has something to tell that deserves to be heard.
Eduardo Galeano, extract from an interview about his new book Children of the Days.

I so very much believe this ... that everyone is a story, everyone is full of stories.  His interview is fascinating and made me think I should look for this book of his.

 

Truth, by Justine Musk.

I am enjoying wandering through this woman's website, reading her ideas about writers and creativity and women and all kinds of other interesting things.

She caught me with this one tonight, part 3 of 'why you need to write like a bad girl'.

‘Honesty’ is one of the traits that psychologist and creativity specialist Eric Maisel lists as being key parts of the successful artist’s personality (the others, in case you’re curious: intelligence, introspective stance, empathy, self-centeredness, self-direction, assertiveness, resiliency and nonconformity).

“Standing apart, holding your own counsel, attuned to both the beautiful and the moral, you are the one able and willing to point out the naked emperor, the stench coming from the closet, the starvation right around the corner, the colors of the far mountains as the eye really sees them.

Ren Powell - poet, playwright, translator & teaching artist

The book released here in Norway in December is An Elastic State of Mind, which is an imaginative autobiography in formal and free verse. Three years of intense work with form, two years of historical research, and another two years with the translator: this baby was a long time in coming. The review that came out last week was positive, with the caveat that it was demanding of the reader. 

The book I am editing now, which will be finished in March, is Ewe in the Rain. It's more of a seduction than a demand.

Ren Powell, an extract from her post over on Mad Orphan Lit. 

Fascinating reading!  Take a peek. 

The photograph ... Boccadasse, Italy.


 

Terri Windling and Brenda Ueland

"But the moment I read Van Gogh's letter I knew what art was, and the creative impulse. It is a feeling of love and enthusiasm for something, and in a direct, simple, passionate and true way, you try to show this beauty in things to others, by drawing it. And Van Gogh's little drawing on the cheap note paper was a work of art because he loved the sky and the frail lamppost against it so seriously that he made the drawing with the most exquisite conscientiousness and care. ”

Brenda Ueland, from If Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit.

I found this extract this morning, just as I had set up my work station for the day, down here in the big country kitchen, and I thought it was surely something to share. 

I have Terri Windling's blog in my google reader and most days, she has something like this to share with whoever cares to read her.  She is a writer, artist, and book editor interested in myth, folklore, fairy tales, and the ways they are used in contemporary arts.


 

Yasmina Khadra ... aka Mohamed Moulessehoul, Writer

What to keep of all these reels of film, what to throw away? If we could only take 1 memory on our journey, what would we choose? At the expense of what or whom? And most importantly, how to choose among all these shadows, all these spectres, all these titans? Who are we, when all is said and done? Are we the people we once were or the people we wish we had been? Are we the pain we caused others or the pain we suffered at the hands of others? The encounters we missed or those fortuitous meetings that changed the course of our destiny? Our time behind the scenes that saved us form our vanity or the moment in the limelight that warmed us? We are all of these things, we are the whole life that we have lived, its highs and lows, its fortunes and its hardships, we are the sum of the ghosts that haunt us… we are a host of characters in one, so convincing in every role we played that it is impossible for us to tell who we really were, who we have become, who we will be.
― Yasmina Khadra, What the Day Owes the Night

Tonight, I had the pleasure of attending a talk given by Yasmina Khadra ... aka Mohamed Moulessehoul.

Mohamed was an officer in the Algerian army, a man who was forced to adopt a woman’s pseudonym to avoid military censorship as the writer he was. Despite the publication of many successful novels in Algeria, Moulessehoul only revealed his true identity in 2001 after leaving the army and going into exile and seclusion in France.

It was fascinating, despite being in French and Italian.  Sometimes that just leaves a person free to watch and examine body language and location, and the people around them.

It was held in Genova’s exquisite Palazzo Ducale ...

It was an enjoyable interlude.

And yes ... I regret not taking my camera but I was running late. 

Cees Nooteboom, photography

Photography is a more intense way of “looking”. No photographer simply travels. He cannot allow himself the luxury of just looking around. He does not see landscapes; he sees photographs, images of reality as it might appear in a photograph.
Cees Nooteboom in 1982 in the Holland Herald, KLM’s in-flight magazine.

Uncertainty, Innovation, and the Alchemy of Fear, by Jonathan Fields

The ability to live in the question long enough for genius to emerge is a touchstone of creative success. In fact, a 2008 study published in the Journal of Creative Behavior revealed tolerance for ambiguity to be “significantly and positively related” to creativity.

I had to smile.  I believe I might just have that tolerance for ambiguity.  It’s been so much of my life ... the uncertainty of what’s next and how to go forward.  It might even be said that doing things like moving alone to Istanbul, in 2003, had a degree of seeking out that uncertainty-washed place.  Mostly it’s without realising it.  It seems to be me. 

Jonathan Fields has written an interesting article you might enjoy if you’re working as a creative person: There may, in fact, be a very thin slice of creators who arrive on the planet more able to go to and even seek out that uncertainty-washed place that destroys so many others. But, for a far greater number of high-level creators, across all fields, the ability to be okay and even invite uncertainty in the name of creating bigger, better, cooler things is trained. Sometimes with great intention, other times without even realizing it.

Books Read Recently

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
Jorge Luis Borges

All Kinds of Magic - A Quest for Meaning in a Material World, by Piers Ede Moore.  I also loved his first book, Honey and Dust, found after I had finished the first but entirely enjoyable in this wrong order too.

The Places In Between, by Rory Stewart.  Loved it, and it reminded me of a favourite book that I’ve carried with me since forever, William Dalrymple’s, In Xanadu - a Quest.

I love books where people set out walking, across countries.  The first 4 probably make this quite clear so I’ll move away from mentioning Cees Nooteboom and Ryszard Kapuscinski

Mornings in Jenin, by Susan Abulhawa, blew me away and left me exhausted at the end.  Beautifully written.  Actually, it reminded me of another old favourite, I Saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti.  Mourid is a poet who wrote his story in the most beautiful prose.  His second book has just come out.  I must find it. 

One of his poems appear on page 100 of my copy of the book.  I have never been able to forget this poem he wrote about his mother:
She wants to go to a planet away from the earth
Where the paths are crowded with people running to their rooms
And where the beds in the morning are chaos
And the pillows wake up crumpled,
Their cotton stuffing dipping in the middle.
She wants washing lines full and much, much rice to cook for lunch
And a large, large kettle boiling on a fire in the afternoon
And the table for everyone in the evening, its tablecloth dripping with sesame of chatter.
She wants the smell of garlic at noon to gather the absent ones
And is surprised that the mother’s stew is weaker than the power of governments and that her pastry in the evening
Dries on a sheet untouched by any hand.
Can the earth contain
The cruelty of a mother making her coffee alone
On a Diaspora morning?
She wants to go to a planet away from the earth
Where all directions lead to the harbour of the bosom,
The gulf of two arms
That receive and know no farewells.
She wants airplanes to come back only.
Airports to be for those returning,
The planes to land and never leave again.

I discovered Yasmina Reza’s book, A Year with Nicolas Sarkozy, and enjoyed it immensely.

But enough of books and me.  As I have worked here tonight, Gert has been discovering just how easy Squarespace is to work in ... this as he creates my new website.  It’s all rather exciting, almost as exciting as moving countries.

Orhan Pamuk, Nobel Lecture, 2006

Some extracts: A writer is someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is: when I speak of writing, what comes first to my mind is not a novel, a poem, or literary tradition, it is a person who shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a table, and alone, turns inward; amid its shadows, he builds a new world with words.

He can write poems, plays, or novels, as I do. All these differences come after the crucial task of sitting down at the table and patiently turning inwards. To write is to turn this inward gaze into words, to study the world into which that person passes when he retires into himself, and to do so with patience, obstinacy, and joy.

As I sit at my table, for days, months, years, slowly adding new words to the empty page, I feel as if I am creating a new world, as if I am bringing into being that other person inside me, in the same way someone might build a bridge or a dome, stone by stone.

The stones we writers use are words. As we hold them in our hands, sensing the ways in which each of them is connected to the others, looking at them sometimes from afar, sometimes almost caressing them with our fingers and the tips of our pens, weighing them, moving them around, year in and year out, patiently and hopefully, we create new worlds.

The writer's secret is not inspiration – for it is never clear where it comes from – it is his stubbornness, his patience. That lovely Turkish saying – to dig a well with a needle – seems to me to have been said with writers in mind.

...I believe literature to be the most valuable hoard that humanity has gathered in its quest to understand itself. Societies, tribes, and peoples grow more intelligent, richer, and more advanced as they pay attention to the troubled words of their authors, and, as we all know, the burning of books and the denigration of writers are both signals that dark and improvident times are upon us.

But literature is never just a national concern. The writer who shuts himself up in a room and first goes on a journey inside himself will, over the years, discover literature's eternal rule: he must have the artistry to tell his own stories as if they are other people's stories, and to tell other people's stories as if they were his own, for this is what literature is. But we must first travel through other peoples' stories and books.

Sir Richard Burton, a quote

After a long and toilsome march, weary of the way, [the wanderer] drops into the nearest place of rest to become the most domestic of men ...

But soon the passive fit has passed away; again a paroxysm of ennui coming on by slow degrees, Viator loses appetite, he walks about his room all night, he yawns at conversations, and a book acts upon him as a narcotic.

The man wants to wander, and he must do so, or he shall die.
Sir Richard Burton, Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah, 1855