Terri Windling's Blog, page 196

Art stands on the shoulders of craft

From The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life by Ann Patchett:

"Why is it we understand that playing the cello will require work but we relegate writing to the magic of inspiration? Chances are, any child who stays with an instrument for more than two weeks has some adult who is making her practice, and any child who sticks with it longer than that does so because she understands that practice makes her play better and there is a deep, soul-satisfying pleasure in improvement. If a person of any age picked up the cello for the first time and said, "I'll be playing in Carnegie hall next month!" you would pity her delusion, but beginning writers all over the country polish up their best efforts and send them off to The New Yorker. Perhaps you're thinking here that playing an instrument is not an art
in itself but an interpretation of the composer's art, but I stand by my
metaphor. The art of writing comes way down the line, as does the art of interpreting Bach. Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means to get to the art, you must master the craft.

"If you want to write, practice writing. Practice it for hours a day, not to come up with a story you can publish but because you long to write well, because there is something you alone can say. Write the story, learn from it, put it away, write another story. Think of a sink pipe filled with sticky sediment: The only way to get the clean water is to force a small ocean through the tap. Most of us are full up with bad stories, boring stories, self-indulgent stories, searing works of unendurable melodrama. We must get all of them out of our system in order to find the good stories that may or may not exist in the fresh water underneath.

"Does this sound like a lot of work without any guarantee of success?
Well yes, but it also calls into question our definition of success.
Playing the cello, we're more likely to realize that the pleasure is
the practice, the ability to create this beautiful sound -- not to do
it as well as Yo-Yo Ma, but still, to touch the hem of the gown that is
art itself."

And for those of us who want to write as well as Yo-Yo plays the cello, to use words as fluidly as he moves his bow across the strings? Then the need for practice, work, experience is all the stronger...and to this I'd add: living our lives as richly as possible, so that we have something to say.

Video above: Yo-Yo Ma playing the Prelude to Bach's Cello Suite 1. Photographs: "Cello Hands" by Paul Clarke, a woman writing, and Tilly in the studio, practicing the work of being a writer's muse.

Elucidating the world

''I’ve never known a writer who didn’t feel ill at ease in the world. Have you? We all feel unhoused in some sense. That’s part of why we write. We feel we don’t fit in, that this world is not our world, that though we may move in it, we’re not of it. Different experiences in our lives may enforce or ameliorate that, but I think if they ameliorate it totally, we stop writing. You don’t need to write a novel if you feel at home in the world. We write about the world because it doesn’t make sense to us. Through writing, maybe we can penetrate it, elucidate it, somehow make it comprehensible. If I had ever found the place where I was perfectly at home, who knows what I would have done? Maybe I would have been a biologist after all.'' – Andrea Barrett

“If it is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it's
useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket, or a bit of
rolled bark or leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you,
and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch
or bag, a container for people, and then later on you take it out and
eat it or share it or store it up for winter in a solider container or
put it in the medicine bundle or the shrine or the museum, the holy
place, the area that contains what is sacred, and then the next day you
probably do much the same again—if to do that is human, if that's what
it takes, then I am a human being after all. Fully, freely, gladly, for
the first time....

"[T]he proper, fitting shape of the novel might
be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They
bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a
particular, powerful relation to one another and to us." — Ursula K. Le Guin

''Stories nurture our connection to place and to each other. They show us where we have been and where we can go. They remind us of how to be human, how to live alongside the other lives that animate this planet.... When we lose stories, our understanding of the world is less rich, less true.''
- Susan J. Tweit

"Maybe the most important reason
for writing is to prevent the erosion of time, so that memories will
not be blown away by the wind. Write to register history, and name
each thing. Write what should not be forgotten." - Isabel
Allende

Images above: Black dog in an Alan Lee landscape, March 2013.

Book News: Happy Birthday, Queen Victoria!

No, it's not the actual queen's birthday, but the birthday/publication day of the latest book from Ellen Datlow and me: Queen Victoria's Book of Spells...which has which has already received starred reviews from
both Publishers Weekly and Kirkus. (For a list of authors in the book, go here.)

Ellen and I have chosen the term "Gaslamp Fantasy" rather than the other
common appelation, "Victorian Fantasy" -- for in fact these stories can be set at any time during the 19th century, from the Regency years at the century's start to Queen Victoria's reign at the end.  Steampunk fiction is part of this genre, but there are other kinds of Gaslamp Fantasy too -- including historical fantasy (without Steampunk gadgets and googles), dark
fantasy with a gothic bent, fantastical romance and mystery, and Fantasy
of Manners: a brand of magical fiction that owes more to Jane Austen,
William Thackeray, and Anthony Trollope than to C.S.Lewis and J.R. R.
Tolkien.

As a fantasy lover, Jane Austen addict, Victorianist, and obsessive Pre-Raphaelite fan, this is a book I've long wanted to create, with all of these passion explored in its pages. The authors here range from award winners and bestsellers to rising new talent (as is usual for our books), and every one them tackled the theme in deliciously different and surprising ways.

* If you're on Twitter, there will be a "Tor Chat" on Queen V tomorrow night: Wednesday, March 20th, at 4-5 pm
(American eastern standard time). I won't be on the chat, alas, because the
international time difference makes it just too late for me (I am
distinctly not a night owl), but Ellen will be there, along with some
of the very fine authors in the book: Jeffrey Ford, Catherynne Valente, Kaaron Warren, and Leanna Renee Heiber.

* For those of you in or near New York City, please come to the book's release party at the aptly
named Queen Vic pub (68 2nd Ave at 4th Street) on March 27th. It promises to be a fabulous affair, and all are welcome. There will be readings by Ellen
Kushner, Delia Sherman, Veronica Schanoes, Genevieve Valentine and Leanna Renee Heiber...plus a Victorian dessert competition judged by Ellen Datlow. (To enter, bring something sweet for Ellen to try, and extras to share with
other attendees. The winner will receive a hardcover copy of the book signed by all authors in attendance.) Queen Vic will open its doors starting at 7:00 p.m. and readings will commence at 7:30. You can contribute to the mood by attending in your favorite Victorian or steampunk/gaslamp finery--not mandatory by any means, but "lovingly encouraged."

* If you'd like to read Jane Yolen's fabulous contribution to the book, "The Jewel in the Toad Queen's Crown," you can find it on Tor.com here.

Queen Victoria's Book of Spells bas been published by Tor Books (a quick shout-out here to our Tor editor, Liz Gorinsky), and is available, as of today, in hardcover, paperback, and ebook editions. Happy birthday, Queen V!

The cover art for Queen Victoria's Book of Spells is by Allen Williams.

Mist and forgiveness

"Forgiveness. The ability to forgive oneself. Stop here for a few breaths
and think about this, because it is the key to making art and very
possibly the key to finding any semblance of happiness in life. Every
time I have set out to translate the book (or story, or hopelessly long
essay) that exists in such brilliant detail on the big screen of my
limbic system onto a piece of paper (which, let's face it, was once a
towering tree crowned with leaves and a home to birds), I grieve for my
own lack of intelligence. Every. Single. Time.

"Were I smarter, more gifted, I could pin down a closer facsimile of the wonders I see. I believe that, more than anything else, this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people from being writers. Forgiveness, therefore, is the key. I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing. Again and again throughout the course of my life I will forgive myself."

-  Ann Patchett (from The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life)

"I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of
epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping
away unannounced in the middle of the night.”

-  Khaled Hosseini (from The Kite Runner)

"For a writer it's a big deal to bow -- or kneel or get knocked down
-- to the fact that you are going to write your own books and not
somebody else's. Not even those books of the somebody else you thought
it was your express business to spruce yourself up to be."

- Patricia Hampl  (from The Writer on Her Work, Vol. II)

New dishes for the Feast

We have two wonderful new dishes for our latest Moveable Feast on the topic "Desiring Dragons: What Brings us to Myth & Fantasy?"

The first post, "Desiring Dragons," is from Young Adult novelist Katherine Langrish in Oxfordshire. You'll find it on her fabulous books-and-folklore blog, Seven Miles of Steel Thistles (which I hope you're all reading anyway). The second post, also called "Desiring Dragons," is a tasty dessert from writer, artist, and performance artist Christine Irving in north Texas, on her blog Mused by Magdalene, For a full list of the "Desiring Dragons" posts to date, go here.

Also, there's an on-going conversation in the Comments section of last week's Art and Magic post that's worth perusing, if you've missed it or care to join in.

Image above: Sneezle feasting with a house brownie in The Faeries of Spring Cottage, the third book in the "Old Oak Wood" childre's book series that I co-created with Wendy Froud. The art, of course, is by Wendy.

Tunes for a Monday Morning

Today's first two tunes are by Laurie Levine, a singer/songwriter from Cape Town, South Africa, whose voice puts me in mind of a young Lucinda Williams (and that's no small praise). Her infuences come from American Appalachian and country music mixed with British folk and South African rhythms and instrumentation.

Above: The video for "Oh Brother," written and performed by Levine, from her third and latest album, Six Winters. Her first two albums are nice, but she seems to have really come into her own with the new one. The celle, or is that fiddle?, at the end the end of this song is just delicious. (On a more frivilous note: I love the neo-Victorian/country flavor of her clothes in this video. Back when I younger and living in Tucson, I adopted a personal style that I dubbed "Pre-Raphaelite Cowgirl." These clothes would have worked a treat.)

Below: A really lovely rendition of "Ring of Fire," written by the great Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash. I have a real weakness Cash's for music, which was the music of my childhood. Levine does the song proud.

Third:

The American punk band Social Distortion, with a very different take on "Ring of Fire," bless 'em. I suspect Johnny and June would have loved it.

And last:

The Man in Black himself, performing the Nine Inch Nail's song "Hurt" in a video made shortly before June and Johnny died in 2003 (June in May, and Johnny in September). It's a remarkable and haunting piece of film.

I'm not yet recovered from ...

I'm not yet recovered from illness, so there are no words today, just pictures to tell the story. Or perhaps you can supply the words....

“Precipitate as weather, she appeared from somewhere, t...

“Precipitate as weather, she appeared from somewhere, then evaporated, leaving only memory....”
- Haruki Murakami

I'm under the weather myself at the moment. I'll be back just as soon as I can.

Art and magic

One of my favorite paintings in the world is Piero della Francesca's "Madonna del Parto," so I smiled to read this in "Heaven on Earth," Peter Schjeldahl's review of the current Piero della Francesca show at the Frick in New York:

"One hot August, when I was twenty-three," he writes, "I traversed Tuscany on the back
of a Vespa driven by a painter friend, George Schneeman. We had seen
Piero’s magnum opus, the 'Legend of the True Cross' frescoes, in Arezzo,
which I found bewildering, and were headed northeast, to the artist’s
home town of Sansepolcro, the site of his famous 'Resurrection of
Christ' ('the best picture in the world,' according to Aldous Huxley),
which I also failed to make much of. Then we stopped at a tiny cemetery
chapel, in the hill town of Monterchi, to see Piero’s highly unusual 'Madonna del Parto.' An immensely pregnant but delicately elegant young
Mary stands pensively in a bell-shaped tent, as two mirror-image angels
sweep aside the flaps to reveal her. One angel wears green, the other
purple. Here was the circumstantial drama of a ripeness with life in a
place of death. George told me a sentimental, almost certainly untrue
story that the work memorialized a secret mistress of Piero’s who had
died in childbirth. This befitted the picture’s held-breath tenderness
and its air of sharing a deeply felt, urgent mystery. In another age,
the experience might have made me consider entering a monastery.
Instead, I became an art critic."

Some years ago I made the same pilgrimage to Arrezo, Sansepolcro, and the Tuscan hilltown of Monterchi -- but unlike Schjeldahl, I was already under Piero's spell when I did so. Although what I really wanted was to see the Madonna del Parto freshly painted on the wall of the Chapel of Santa Maria di Momentana (which would have required travelling back in time to the 15th century), it was a deeply moving experience nonetheless to stand before the Lady at last, even in her rather sterile new home in the small Museo della Madonna. 

A print that I purchased that day in Monterchi hangs framed beside my drawing board still, where I draw and paint underneath the Lady's calm, enigmatic gaze. I am not Christian, so for me Piero's luminous figure represents the feminine and maternal mysteries, and the fecund spirit of creativity. This is not, of course, what the painter intended...but works of art, if they have any power, take on lives of their own once they leave our hands.

As Samuel R. Delany once wrote (in his ground-breaking novel Dahlgren):  "The artist has some internal experience that produces a poem, a
painting, a piece of music. Spectators submit themselves to the work,
which generates an inner experience for them. But historically it's a
very new, not to mention vulgar, idea that the spectator's experience
should be identical to, or even have anything to do with, the
artist's. That idea comes from an over-industrialized society which
has learned to distrust magic."

Indeed. But I do trust magic. Especially the magic of art.

Art above: The Madonna del Parto in Monterchi, a detail from the Legend of the True Cross fresco cycle in Arezzo, and a detail from the Piero's unfinished Nativity, which is now in the National Gallery in London. Photographs: Monterchi, The Lady of the Studio, and the other lady of the studio.

Tunes for a Monday Morning

Today's music is from The Staves, an alt-folk trio of sisters (Emily, Jessica and Camilla Staveley-Taylor) from Watford, Hertfordshire. All three songs come from their debut CD, Dead & Born & Grown.

Above: "Winter Trees," with an enchanting video from Aardman Animations in Bristol.

Below: "Mexico," another magical video -- in a dreamlike, Tord Boontje kind of way.

And one more...

Below: a (mostly) a capella song, "Wisely and Slow."