Terri Windling's Blog, page 108

Reading and resting

I'm afraid I'm out of the studio for another day or two. It's frustrating to find myself back in bed again, but it's only a stomach flu this time and will surely be over soon. Meanwhile, there are plenty of books to read, and the Faithful Hound cuddled beside me.

"Reading is a co-production between writer and reader," says Ben Okri. "The simplicity of this tool is astounding. So little, yet out of it whole worlds, eras, characters, continents, people never encountered before, people you wouldn���t care to sit next to in a train, people that don���t exist, places you���ve never visited, enigmatic fates, all come to life in the mind, painted into existence by the reader���s creative powers. In this way the creativity of the writer calls up the creativity of the reader. Reading is never passive."

''Beware of the stories you read or tell," he warns; "subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.''

The pictures today: reading and resting. Artists are identified in the picture captions.

The quotes by Ben Okri are from his essay collection A Way of Being Free (Phoenix, 1998); all rights reserved by the author.

Myth & Moor update

I'm afraid I'm out of the studio for another day or two. It's frustrating to find myself back in bed again, but it's only a stomach flu this time and will surely be over soon. Meanwhile, there are plenty of books to read, and the Faithful Hound cuddled beside me.

"Reading," says Ben Okri, "is a co-production between writer and reader. The simplicity of this tool is astounding. So little, yet out of it whole worlds, eras, characters, continents, people never encountered before, people you wouldn���t care to sit next to in a train, people that don���t exist, places you���ve never visited, enigmatic fates, all come to life in the mind, painted into existence by the reader���s creative powers. In this way the creativity of the writer calls up the creativity of the reader. Reading is never passive."

The art today is " Reading by the Window" by Charles James Lewis (1830-1892), "Red Berries" by Albert Moore (1841-1893), and "Evening Reading" by Georg Pauli (1855-1935).

Recommended Reading

Howard and I truly enjoyed last week's Chagford Show, and also the final Widdershins event at Green Hill Arts on Saturday night. But with all this gadding about, I've managed to pick up some kind of stomach bug. I'm hoping it passes quickly and I won't be out of the studio for long.

A few reading recommendations for you in the meantime:

W. W. Tarn, The Treasure of the Isle of Mist by Rob Maslen (The City of Lost Books)

Kazuo Ishiguro, The Buried Giant by Rob Maslen (The City of Lost Books)

Sister Act: female friendship in fiction by Alex Clark (The Guardian)

Simplicity or Style: what makes a sentence a masterpiece? by Jenny Davidson (Aeon)

The Race to Save a Dying Language by Ross Perlin (The Guardian)

Encyclopedia Blue, a history of the color by Bernd Brunner (The Smart Set)

Watch Out, Little Red, on wolves in Germany by Bernd Brunner (The Smart Set)

Bird Song Found to Somehow Protect Babies from High Temperatures (The New York Times)

A World Away, So Near by Julian Hoffman (People Need Nature)

Reclaiming Ritual by Lucy Purdy (Positive News)

Recommended listening: Tolkien: The Lost Recordings on BBC Radio 4 (time-limited)

Recommended viewing: Lunette by animator Phoebe Warries on Vimeo (with thanks to Sarah C. Hines & Jennifer Ambrose)

The paintings today are by Jeanie Tomanek, whose work graced the poster for the "Power of Story" talk. Go here to see more of her luminous art.

The poem in the picture captions is from Evening Train by Denise Levertov (New Directions, 1992); all rights reserved by the author's estate.

Howard and I truly enjoyed last week's Chagford Show, a...

Howard and I truly enjoyed last week's Chagford Show, and also the final Widdershins event at Green Hill Arts on Saturday night. But with all this gadding about, I've managed to pick up some kind of stomach bug. I'm hoping it passes quickly and I won't be out of the studio for long.

A few reading recommendations for you in the meantime:

W. W. Tarn, The Treasure of the Isle of Mist by Rob Maslen (The City of Lost Books)

Kazuo Ishiguro, The Buried Giant by Rob Maslen (The City of Lost Books)

Sister Act: female friendship in fiction by Alex Clark (The Guardian)

Simplicity or Style: what makes a sentence a masterpiece? by Jenny Davidson (Aeon)

The Race to Save a Dying Language by Ross Perlin (The Guardian)

Encyclopedia Blue, a history of the color by Bernd Brunner (The Smart Set)

Watch Out, Little Red, on wolves in Germany by Bernd Brunner (The Smart Set)

Bird Song Found to Somehow Protect Babies from High Temperatures (The New York Times)

A World Away, So Near by Julian Hoffman (People Need Nature)

Reclaiming Ritual by Lucy Purdy (Positive News)

Recommended listening: Tolkien: The Lost Recordings on BBC Radio 4 (time-limited)

Recommended viewing: Lunette by animator Phoebe Warries on Vimeo (with thanks to Sarah C. Hines & Jennifer Ambrose)

The paintings today are by Jeanie Tomanek, whose work graced the poster for the "Power of Story" talk. Go here to see more of her luminous art.

The poem in the picture captions is from Evening Train by Denise Levertov (New Directions, 1992); all rights reserved by the author's estate.

Tunes for a Monday Morning

This week's music is from Rhiannon Giddens,  a wonderful singer, bluegrass banjo picker and fiddle player from Greensboro, North Carolina. Giddens began her career playing with a postmodern string band (Sankofa Strings) and a Celtic band (Gaelwynd), but she's best known as a founding member of the country, blues, & bluegrass band Carolina Chocolate Drops.  She's released seven albums with the latter group, and one solo album (Tomorrow is My Turn), all highly recommended.

Above: "Julie," a song by Giddens, with lyrics based on a slave memoir. The video was filmed in North Carolina last year.

Below: Giddens and her band perform "Last Kind Words" on the American program A Prairie Home Companion (2015).

Above, Gidden sings "Black is the Color (Of My True Love's Hair)" for WFUV Radio in New York (2015). This old Scots/Irish folk song is also a staple of Appalachian folk music in America.

Below, Giddens performs "Mouth Music," in Gaelic, at Celtic Connections in Glasgow, Scotland (2016).

The final video is an old one: "Sowden's Jig," performed by Danny Barberin, Giddens, and two fellow-members of Carolina Chocolate Drops in an alley in Fresno, California (2010).

For more Carolina Chocolate Drops, go here for their video of "Country Girl" (a charming send-up of stereotypical country music videos, complete with babes in pickup trucks), and here for a fine selection of bluegrass tunes recorded for Liveset.

This charming sculpture is by Virginia Lee, who says: "...

This charming sculpture is by Virginia Lee, who says: "My onion can barely contain his tears knowing there is only week left of being in Widdershins, at Green Hill Arts, in Moretonhampstead." The exhibition closes on Saturday, August 27th.

Many, many thanks to everyone who came to share the "Power of Story" evening with me & Howard at Green Hill last night.

One last reminder

I'm giving this talk on Saturday evening, woven with storytelling by my husband Howard Gayton, an actor and dramatist. Perhaps we'll see some of you there? More information on the event can be found on the Green Hill website. Also, there's just one more week to see the Widdershins exhibition. Then, like faery gold, it's gone....

Off to see the sheep

 No post today because we're off to Chagford Show, our village's annual agricultural fair, to look at sheep, cows, tractors and vegetables; watch horse trials and dog contests; and consume locally grown, baked, brewed or bottled things in the company of our rural neighbors.

On Friday, I'll be preparing for the "Power of Story" talk on Saturday night. I'll be back to Myth & Moor on Monday.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

The pictures here are from last year's Show.

Who do you write for?

The editors of 2paragraphs asked 21 international writers the following question:

Tolstoy wrote: "I know that my unity with all people cannot be destroyed by national boundaries.'" Is a similar belief essential in your work?

"I believe in the fundamental unity of all people," answers Ben Okri, who was raised in both Nigeria and England. "It is not possible to write truly well without that fundamental belief. One does not write for a class, religion, race or nation. Writing is an unavoidably inward activity. One writes to the reading mind, to the mind that thinks, dreams, feels, and experiences all the dimensions of reality. It could be said that one is really writing to one living mind which is the mind of all people. This does not mean that one's life has not been affected by historical facts, geography, the mood of one's times -- events that shape a life. But when one sits down or stands up to write, it can really only be to the minds and hearts of the living.

"Writing well is a mysterious adventure," Okri continues. "It is an art; and an act of faith that the right words in their best order will be received through the eyes of readers and pass into their minds, drawing upon their emotions and their life experiences. From the meeting of the reader's spirit and the text something altogether new is created in the consciousness. Writing is primarily the art and craft of activating another consciousness. The effect of this at its best is immeasurable."

"I think my answer lies, rather indelicately, somewhere between the two sentiments," responds Cumbrian writer Sarah Hall. "I am very interested in how place shapes people, historically, culturally, for good and ill, the rich specificity of each place and its commonalities, and I try to investigate this in my work. I would not say that this necessarily limits me to the North of England, where I was raised, though much of my work is set there. A tragic damn-building novel set in the Lake District in the 1930s might appeal and chime with societies in contemporary India and China -- hopefully it will. And perhaps it is fair to say that the more local, the more intimate a writer becomes with characters and regions, paradoxically the more universal the fiction might become. If one is detailing the experiences and make-up of a character, their emotions, their plight in a changing world, one is likely to create a 'real' human being, with a meaningful and complex psychology, motivations, capabilities and incapacities -- at best, humanely transferable between cultures. I like to think that readers, and people generally, are wonderfully empathetic. Similarly, the fate of nations, districts, square miles, though varied the world over and individually unique, if catalogued well, might begin to seem shared and understood. We, and our habits, are really only 'exotic' and 'other' if not entered into, if left at surface level.

"Who I write for is perhaps harder to answer," she continues. "There is no manifest or ideal person -- a mother, mentor or devil -- sitting on my shoulder, encouraging me or provoking me. The instinct to write is endogenous, much to do with imagination and modes of expression, but there are external vectors too, of course -- the desire to play adult make-believe, to be inspired by and to add to the exquisite chorus of writers' voices, and to move readers. Readers: how tricky it is to know who those people will be. I write for neither men nor women specifically, no type, no age, no political sect. And I am constantly amazed by the great mix of people who approach me to say they have found something worthwhile, exhilarating or off-putting, companionable or challenging, in my fiction. It is far better to try to write persuasively and compassionately, with an open heart and an investigative mind, than try to gauge who might like what kind of story or why."

"In my writing, as in my life, I tend to blur boundaries," says Eduardo Halfon. "Cultural boundaries, national boundaries, boundaries between genres, boundaries between languages, boundaries between myself and my narrator (he too is named Eduardo Halfon, he too has my same bio and background and salt-and-pepper beard), boundaries between what���s fiction and what���s not. My unity with readers, to follow Tolstoy, comes precisely by destroying all boundaries, by removing them, and thus letting my voice be whatever it needs to be, at anytime, to anyone.

"Although I���m Jewish, I���m also Arab. Although I���m Latin American, I���m also not. Although I���m a writer who plays by ear and improvisation, I���m also a systematic and neurotic engineer. Although I only write in Spanish, as I write, the words, in my head, are always in English. Although I was born in Guatemala, grew up in Florida and North Carolina, spent time in Spain (even became a citizen), and am now living in Nebraska, I have no idea what it means to be Guatemalan or American or Spanish -- but I can dress the part and modify my accent and perfectly pretend to be any of these. I���m whatever you want or need me to be. I���m the blank tile that completes the word. I���m the joker in the deck, maybe smiling, maybe not."

So, who do you write for?

A related post from 2014: Who do you write for?" - in which 8 authors answer that question...and so do I.

Writing as a spiritual practice

From an Interview with Terry Tempest Williams by Jana Bouck Remy (Irreanteum, 2002):

"I do not write every day," says Williams. "I write to the questions and issues before me. I write to deadlines. I write out of my passion. And I write to make peace with my own contradictory nature. For me, writing is a spiritual practice.

"A small bowl of water sits on my desk," she continues, "a reminder that even if nothing is happening on the page, something is happening in the room -- evaporation. And I always light a candle when I begin to write, a reminder that I have now entered another realm, call it the realm of the Spirit. I am mindful that when one writes, one leaves this world and enters another.

"My books are collages made from journals, research, and personal experience. I love the images rendered in journal entries, the immediacy that is captured on the page, handwritten notes. I love the depth of ideas and perspective the research brings to a story, be it biological or anthropological studies or the insights brought to the page through the scholarly work of art historians. When I go into a library, I feel like I am a sleuth looking to solve a mystery."

A little later in the interview, Remy asks: "How did you become a writer? In what ways do you think you've developed as a writer during the course of your career? Are there things you can do now that you don't think you could have pulled off successfully when you were first starting to write? What do you do to keep developing as a writer?"

"These are tough questions," Williams answers. "How does anyone 'become' a writer? You just write. I have always written, I have always kept a journal, always loved to read. Perhaps as writers we are really storytellers, finding that golden thread that connects us to the past, present, and future at once. I love language and landscape. For me writing is correspondence between these two passions.

"It is difficult to ever see yourself. I don't know how I've developed or grown as a writer. I hope I am continuing to take risks on the page. I hope I am continuing to ask the hard questions of myself. If we are attentive to the world and to those around us, I believe we will be attentive on the page. Writing is about presence. I want to be fully present wherever I am, alive to the pulse just beneath the skin."

Words: The quotes above are from "An Interview with Terry Tempest Williams" by Jana Bouck Remy (Irranteum, Summer 2002), reprinted in A Voice in the Wilderness, edited by Michael Austin (Utah State University Press, 2006). The poem in the picture captions is from Sixty Odd: New Poems by Ursula K. Le Guin (Shambhala, 1999). All rights reserved by the authors.
Pictures: Writing by the little stream on our hill, with the hound at my side. The water is low and green grass has turned gold aftter weeks of unusually dry weather. I'm loving the heat and sun, but the hills need rain.