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February 5th, 2002 ||| Thinking out loud

Andrea Barrett (Ship Fever, Voyage of the Narwhal) is interviewed in this month's Atlantic:

The way I write is just grotesque. If somebody saw me, they would be sick. It's awful. And in some sense very wasteful. My own particular obsessiveness and my own emotional make-up dictates to me that I have to research something in obsessive detail before I can write about it. And while I'm writing about it, I can't stand to get things wrong. I'm kind of crazily fussy, so I read and I read and I read and I read. Often for a story, I will do enough research to write a couple of novels, and for a novel I'll do enough research to have written an encyclopedia... I do stuff too much into my early drafts, and a lot of the process of my later drafts is to take it out chunk by chunk, painfully and kicking and screaming the whole time, realizing I'm interested in this or that fact, but nobody else is. I do this until finally all that's left is a sort of whiff of the original or a kind of distilled particle of what was a great vat of research. But in the end fiction is about the characters, the image, the language, the poetry, the sound; it isn't about information.

The words sick, obsessive, and crazy here suggest not only how difficult it is to describe (for lack of a better phrase) the creative process--making things up, imagining, constructing. It also stands as an example of how closely the vocabulary used for discussing creative work is entwined with the vocabulary of (for lack of a better word) madness. Mitsu has been posting thoughts and links about creativity and mental illness, which I've been following with interest, especially the follow up comments over at Caterina's. The mental illness most often mentioned here is what used to be called manic-depression, and to which is often attributed (in the links Mitsu posted) almost magical qualities--creativity, insight, powers of various kinds. With the greatest of respect to Mitsu, I would never wish even for a moment to be touched with a bipolar condition; I've known those who have struggled with it. The arts world/bohemia may have its share of depressives and bipolars, but is also populated by those who never could rise above such disabilities, their novels unwritten, music abandoned, drugs taken up instead, marginal livings eked out. Mental illness, particularly depression, is impairment, not inspiration; those who compose great poetry or music or visual art do so in spite of their illnesses, not because of them. And the characteristics of the "manic creation" phase, broken down into a list here (scroll down) are those that are accessible to anyone doing concentrated and interesting work. And could it be that artists are just more amenable to fitting their lives into narratives of mania and depression than the population at large, who have, perhaps, not so much invested in identifying themselves in such a way? Seeing that the archetypal figure of the "artist" in this culture has more to do with Byron than with the middle-aged lady down the street who paints every day from 10 to 3? Why (and this is a whole other tangent) do we want artists to gain authenticity through suffering?

Otherwise: Graham tried to post a link to the Best.Metafilter.Post.Ever. but Matt shot it down before I arrived... from what I gather, it didn't have anything to do with sex, or sex with strangers, though someone did post a picture of a 40 pound cat, which reminded me of my childhood, life in University, and my annoying neighbours, who take up way too much space, as I saw today in the paper while drinking tea and pondering who is actually on the "A" list (I don't really have a clue). HA! HA! BLOGGO! Do I win a prize now? Huh? Huh?

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February 4th, 2002 ||| Chattiness

"Severe dissertation-related crankiness doesn't make for interesting posts, does it?" writes Naomi at Baraita. Au contraire, Naomi! Especially when your audience (me) is sharing some of the same symptoms. More please, yes, more, big pans of macaroni and cheese, another pot of tea and some junky television; I experienced more big-media sick enjoyment through watching parts of the Superblow (you know, that was an honest typo, but I think I'm going to leave it like that) yesterday than in all the months previous. Seeing Paul McCartney singing the chorus of Hard Day's Night along with the sportscasters actually had me shrivelling up in masochistic anguish on the couch, fingers in my ears. I didn't catch the pre-game show, which is just as well, because if I had watched a song and dance extravaganza which included West Side Story's America and Born in the USA (honestly, don't these people ever listen to the words?) I might have completely overloaded on irony. As it is, a little goes a long way, and there is nothing little about American display, is there. Talk about the Spectacular State...

At situ.ca, The Diary of Displacement, "new web-works around the theme of loci and dialogue as expressed through the concepts of diary and autobiography." This is an online work hosted by the local artist run gallery The Western Front, and complements Annotate Space, "a project to develop experiential forms of journalism and nonfiction storytelling for use at specific locations". (Via Jeremy via Judith). Both sites are concerned with experience tracked through space, and with moving through constructions, both social and architectural; Annotate Space explores the effect of communications technology on our sense of spatial orientation and location, while Situ uses the medium to model questions of moving through space, flaneur-like, and to explore ideas of belonging, displacement, and poverty. Also upcoming at the Front: Stelarc will be performing a "multi-media performative demonstration" entitled Zombies and Cyborgs: Obselete [sic], Involuntary and Automated Bodies. I'm tiring a little of the cyborg thing, but the description of the work--Topics will include the Body Supensions, Internal Body Probes, the Exoskeleton walking robot, the Internet remote choreography of the Body, the Extra Ear proposal and the Third Hand events--rings all sorts of bells for me, and the picture of the performance looks, indeed, spectacular.

Elsewhere, I seem to be belatedly falling in love with Amnesiac, which I am listening to for the third time this morning. Why didn't anyone tell me?

And I'm not sure that I've ever made a mutual link to Apeirophobia, but I should have done so long ago (much of the page is in Spanish, but keep reading if you don't know the language--which I don't, alas--as there are lots of interesting quotes and speculations, and wonderful links).

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February 3rd, 2002 ||| Catching up

Well, lots has been going on in webland--on January 17 Ms. Gaw noted a poem (via Riley Dog) by Elaine Equi entitled Indecisive Fantasy, "about a woman's train of thought while masturbating and thinking she should be writing." I just have to note here that Canadian writer Gail Scott wrote an entire novel (Heroine) using this premise--the narrator is in the bath, and she's thinking, thinking, thinking. She's thinking about Montreal, and separatism, and the activitism of the 70s, and sex, and her "open" relationship and how it collapsed, and writing, and why she isn't writing, and the "other women", and it's all entrancing and wonderfully well written. The masturbatory undertone ends about half way through, but it takes until the end of the narrative before she gets out of the bath... Of course in her mind and memory we've already been across Canada and back, through endless committee meetings and parties, and watching the revolution that never happened.

Found today Canadiana.org ("Early Canadiana Online"). Early Canadiana Online (ECO) is a

digital library providing access to over 937,800 pages of Canada's printed heritage. It features works published from the time of the first European settlers up to the early 20th Century.

You have to pay for membership to access the whole collection, but don't be put off, as there is much see even without taking out a subscription. There's a guide to the history of the Hudson's Bay Company, made primarily for teachers, but still well put together and worth looking at; and you can browse the databases by title, subject, author, and so on. I went looking around and quickly found Catherine Parr Trail's The female emigrant's guide, and hints on Canadian housekeeping (1854), scanned and uploaded in its entirety. Here is Catherine's advice for women:

As soon, then, as the resolution to emigrate has been fixed, let the females of the house make up their minds to take a cheerful and active part in the work of preparation. Let them at once cast aside all vain opposition and selfish regrets and hopefully look to their future country as to a land of promise, soberly and quietly turning their attention to making the necessary arrangements for the important change that is before them. (From page 14)

There's some biographical information about Catherine Parr Traill at this site on 19th Century Women's Travel Writing; but Traill was far from a Victorian lady investigating the New World for adventure or pleasure. She, with her sister, Susanna Moodie (Margaret Atwood fans will know the name) were pioneers, emigrating to Canada with their husbands in 1832. The National Archives has a web site for the sisters, including transcripts of their letters (excuse contemporary usage of racially insensitive terms):

Three Americans were lately tried at Nevada for murdering a Chinaman. It was a most interesting trial which kept the court sitting for a fortnight. At first the judge refused the evidence of the poor injured pig tails, affirming that their evidence as uncivilized men was not worth taking. The chinamen indignant at this, affirmed that they were civilized and that they were the first discoverers of America, and built all those ruined cities which have filled the world with wonder. And they produced in court an historical book to that effect which was read by their interpreter proving what they said ­ which had the effect of convincing judge and jury, and ended in the murderers being sentenced to dance upon nothing. Dunbar is full of this discovery which he believes firmly. [Susanna Moodie to CPT, December 25, 1853]

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February 2nd, 2002 ||| Resurfacing

Even though "resurfacing" usually carries, for me, images of roads and smoking asphalt, I like it in this context. I'm back--I've been sorting through things physical and abstract, cleaning out real and metaphorical basements, and checking my mail but otherwise limiting my time online. Peter Gzowski died, and Bourdieu, and I went to a surreal book launch, and the B.C. Liberal Party, apparently suffering from the delusion that governments should be run for profit, has instituted a staggering number of cuts to the public sector, including bus passes for low-income seniors, school lunches, legal aid, children's advocates, social workers, and the closing of hospitals and courthouses in small towns. There's the usual talk about "decreasing the role of government" and "inviting the private sector to deliver services"--as if health care were a mere consumable, and as if the public welfare can only be measured in terms of money spent. And all this only a couple of months after announcing a number of tax cuts, which of course reduced revenue... To quote a bit out of context, they know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Today visiting friends of Elizabeth's, a Roma family recently arrived from Hungary, refugees, who hadn't eaten for two days. In this city, overflowing with abundance, where huge amounts of food are tossed into garbage cans daily. We took them food, some bought and some donated, and little Josef, aged six, held up the package of cookies (which we added in for a treat) and politely offered some to me--to share.

On a happier note, the extensive and scholarly site Women and gender in the ancient world, where I found this, by Nossis, in the page of Women's Epigrams:

Nothing is sweeter than desire. All other delights are second.
From my mouth I spit even honey.
Nossis says this. Whom Aphrodite does not love,
knows not her flowers, what roses they are.

And this beautiful image of Athena's owl on a coin.

I have some catching up to do, reading other people's blogs, and reconnecting with the webworld; I'll be back tomorrow.

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