Sacha Rosel's Blog, page 4

My Heart is The Tempest Q&A Session 2

The cover of my dark fantasy novella My Heart is The Tempest, Vraeyda Literary 2022

Who was your favourite character to write?

Apart from the protagonist Sycorax, of course, Eysteinn [‘æsten] was my favourite character to write. He came out of my head very easily, I didn’t really have to polish much when it came to his parts in the novel. What I like about him is his vulnerability. Eysteinn actually is the most conflicting character in the story: what he feels constantly clashes with the role he represents, and this causes him a lot of pain. I like exploring these elements in a character, I’m not usually a fan of supercool heroes and heroines without flaws nor dark sides.  

My Heart is The Tempest Q&A Session 1

The cover of my dark fantasy novella My Heart is The Tempest

I have recently been asked several questions about my book and my writing, and I’ve decided to include some of these questions and answers in my blog, hoping readers might be intrigued by them. Let the Q&A sessions begin!

If you had to describe MHITT in 3 words, what would those words be?

Visceral, lyrical, visionary. Regardless of the genre I choose for my writing, be it science fiction, horror, dark fantasy or poetry, what I write is always a combination of these three elements, and a combination of different literary genres. What I write and what I read tend to be attuned.

In other words 2

Berlin, 2012

“Writing in another language represents an act of demolition, a new beginning.”

Jhumpa Lahiri, In other words

I can see what Lahiri is trying to say here: how liberating choosing a language that has no connection to your family history can be. How completely pure and aerial it can turn your breath into ̶ no mother tongue standing in the way. A demolition of a sort like all kinds of personal choices may feel like, but a breaking away from constraints too: who we are mutating into what we create, the invisible slipping into the word which is the only shining that matters. Writing may express this constant shift, this existential statelessness that makes you want to embrace the ultimate flight into a language without barriers nor judgements, just sounds reaching for l’azur, Mallarmé’s dream of absolute revelation effacing all despair and madness.

I chose English to be free, as Lahiri chose Italian to be free. My situation strikes me as oddly connected to hers, though in reverse: I moved away precisely from the language she embraced as her means of expression to find unlimited love into writing, where words are both other and alike, in other words transformed by their very own protean self into fireworks endlessly exploding.

 Words and Picture Copyright © 2022 Sacha Rosel

In other words

The Boxers, sculpture by Keith Haring, Berlin, 1987

Ever since I was a child, I’ve belonged only to my words. I don’t have a country, a specific culture. If I didn’t write, if I didn’t work with words, I wouldn’t feel that I’m present on the earth”

Jhumpa Lahiri, In other words

I deeply relate to these words by Lahiri. As a writer, I consider words to be my only home and my only country. Yet I also feel writing to be a realm beyond realms, the only country where all need of a country can become useless and obsolete. Writing can truly be a transnational dimension where such dubious, potentially dangerous concepts as “national boundaries”, “patriotism”, and “fatherland” may be dismantled and replaced by geographical, as well as physical and spiritual, fluidity.

Purify your heart

Purify your heart. That’s the highest task a woman should try to accomplish in her life, according Mary Wollstonecraft. I couldn’t agree more. A woman should constantly try to break the veil of illusion and become the best possible version of herself, without falling prey to delusions and false cravings  ̶  being beautiful, desired, finding prince/ss charming and the like. We are enough, in our own way, and we should learn to be kinder to ourselves.

The Magdalene Feast Reading Series

Sci-fi and fantasy writer Sapha Burnell, the cover of my dark fantasy novella, My Heart is The Tempest, dark fantasy writer Sacha Rosel.

My book is officially out! My Heart is The Tempest, inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest, published by Vraeyda Literary. Meet me and sci-fi writer Sapha Burnell talking about the feminine and the strange on Twitch/Youtube on March 27th, 2022 at 5 pm PDT.

http://www.saphaburnell.com/readings-appearances/the-magdalene-feast-march-2022?fbclid=IwAR3-Rus8UfYq5ylonP44xrk1M8I2k1BIe1q48FXhaQJJo5iRhp2aDjwkS64

Cover by Lis Goryniuk- Ratajczak

ON MY HEART IS THE TEMPEST

My Heart is The Tempest describes an imaginary place made of ice and snow, Niveal, metaphorically covered in a shroud of silence. Inhabited by ghostly-white creatures who have no connection to the human world despite their outer appearance may look familiar, it is a fantasy realm suspended out of space and time and characterized by a bare landscape which perfectly mirrors society’s inflexible rules of conduct.

In this land where light is synonym to cruelty and blindness, emotions are muffled and inhibited. Despite the narration constantly shifts from one main character to another, providing relevant insights into their deepest motives and secrets, much of what happened to them in the past or is happening to them in the present is often left unsaid, because reality is ultimately shown from the protagonist’s perspective, Sycorax, a young girl whose naïveté and ignorance of the world influences the way the story is presented to the readers. Besides being at odds with everything and everyone surrounding her, she doesn’t understand much about Niveal and its inhabitants’ rules, consequently what the reader knows relies on her blurred, imperfect point of view. This in turn leads to many events and characters remaining out of focus or simply on the background, so that many of Niveal’s mysteries, such as the genesis of the insect-like creatures or the way they reproduce, are left unspoken, hidden and unclear.

The main inspiration beyond the novella being a theatrical work, namely The Tempest by William Shakespeare, many elements in the story are simply suggested and left to the readers’ imagination also as a tribute to the play, so as to both allow for the unfolding of the events to take place in a stage-like dimension and to enhance the general sense of suffocated, indirect oppression the world of Niveal is characterized by. Besides, as it happens in theatre, only some characters are given preeminence and full focus in the story, while others function as a backdrop against which the main characters’ moves become possible and are thus enacted.

Indeed, discrimination and oppression are among the main topics explored in the story: as the only dark-haired, dark-eyed and olive-skinned human girl in a school of ghostly white insect-like creatures, Sycorax is the main target of bullying of her antagonist Tliyel and his faithful servants, Klin and Naklin. Myself a victim of psychological bullying at a very young age, I decided to explore the possible ramifications of violent behaviour towards physical difference, perceived both as possible token of spiritual corruption and as a threat to the sanctity of socio-cultural norms, because I believe this is a core issue our human species constantly struggle with. No matter which country of origin, cultural, religious or political background people may come from, difference is too often seen as a synonym to abnormity and deviation, thus likely not only to be criticized but silenced down or even erased from the conversation. As a woman and a feminist coming from a country where femicide rates are insanely high and women’s dignity and competence are constantly questioned or ridiculed by both mass media and institutions, I feel it is my duty to use writing as a form of resistance against monoculture, machismo and misogyny and as a way to explore possible strategies of empowerment for women as an underrepresented or misrepresented minority. Giving a voice to Sycorax, the “foul witch” whose absence resounds throughout Shakespeare’s play as a dark underwing to Prospero’s flight towards magic and towards The Tempest, was my very personal and special way to reclaim an agency for all those women who are silenced by male culture and its bullying attitude towards anyone who doesn’t conform to the sacred light of rules.

Foundation, subject and final touch

Some months ago, I read an interview to Ringo Starr. I don’t remember the exact words he said, but the concept beyond his words rang particularly true to me. Basically, he mentioned how, comparing a song to a painting, his personal contribution felt very similar to the foundation of the painting, whereas the rest of the band took care of the subject as well as of the final touches. I think writing works in a similar way, though all in the hands of a single person who lays the foundation, develops the subject, then gives the final touch to the whole structure once it’s over. Yet, the process may not be as straightforward as it may seem. One of the most fascinating and scary things about writing is the simultaneous occurrence of different layers: foundation, subject and even final touches may all be there hiding at the same time, waiting for you to excavate and find their raw, fragmented clay and flood their way into the page, their vital mucus watering its desert and gradually becoming voice.

Mud

While dealing with the first draft, writing often feels like rolling in the mud: dirty, messy, chaotic, disjointed fragments that struggle to find their way into a coherent whole. You may have the entire story running in my head, its flight fast you can scarcely breathe, but it would never come out the right way without negotiating with characters. Each of them frantically paces to and fro so as to find their own rhythm in space and time, crying to make their dreams come true. Following their steps and voices can be difficult, because it all happens simultaneously, the entire cosmos that’s being born inside of you and before you a huge mud pool full of ropes, each voice a rope asking you to untangle its truth and let it flow to finally fall into place. So the best thing to do is just diving in this waxing tide, letting go of your need to control and dictate and enjoy the beauty forming out of chaos. Let chaos be, let characters collide with each other, if necessary, but without interfering. Enjoy what comes of this messy, muddy feast, enjoy its extremely powerful  experience – enjoy the insanity it may bring, because it will turn into wisdom, and confidence, and bliss. Explore what the world you are creating can do to grow its own garden without your personal aim and gain standing in the way. Be selfless, and listen. Record their dreams, their fears, their maze-like thoughts and wishes, and let them flourish into full pages.

Remember

“Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.”

Joy Harjo, Remember

This poem sounds like a mantra and reads like a spell. It reminds us how we all come from stardust generated from the sun, atoms colliding and melting into one another, particles moving into waves when seen from a different perspective. As Fritjof Capra says in The Tao of Physics, “all particles can be transmuted into other particles; they can be created from energy and vanish into energy”. Everything inside us, around us and in-between us is energy flowing, falling and rising, and poetry itself is energy, the purest of all kinds. It’s magic and fire. I think this poem also is a reminder of how fluid, relative and impermanent our human shell actually is, if compared to everything surrounding us. It also helps us see how impermanence and fluidity can free ourselves in becoming more than one and not just one. There’s no gap, no distance between ourselves and everything else coming near us, embracing us, and this should open our minds to a leveling off of hierarchies among elements, people, phases. We are not more important than a tree or the other way round, we are all equally singing electric, kissing each other in endless recognition, energy exploding into us and in the inside-out of us. Remembering this is crucial, because it can help us disengage from any possible dichotomy, be it the body and mind divide or the us-versus-them diatribe, to finally see harmony and move past rage and emotional preoccupations.

One Art

Then practice losing farther, losing faster

Elizabeth Bishop, One Art

How scary it must feel, to lose and practice the art of losing day after day, drop by drop. Yet how healthy and nurturing it can be, especially if deliberately chosen, as suggested by this line in Elizabeth Bishop’s poem. Each of us has lost somehow somewhere – people, opportunities, thoughts, visions, hopes, connections that seemed to matter at the time but which, seen from a distance, can be sensibly left behind precisely because we are forced to leave them all behind. There’s no other way, life says, but moving on, and becoming the flow of experience gained through memory lost. But what the poem hints at, in my view, is much more than that: turn this abrasive reckoning with grief into self discipline. Clear-headed, euphoric,  inspiring. Learn to embrace the new us, and the new other we’ll meet along the way. We may feel depleted right now, but strength will rise again. This I think is what One Art is telling us: accelerating loss, escalating loss, up to the point where we no longer know our pain, what our passion originated from, to leap into the unknown epiphany of a clean slate, and embrace life for life’s sake.