Hermione Laake's Blog: Thoughts, page 17

Blackbird, new world in the morning #we didn’t start the fire

Thank you to Ben Huberman for suggesting this writing prompt. I’m sat at home listening to classic FM and writing/ editing a 3000 word essay for my MA with Kingston School of Art. This writing prompt is great therapy for me as I’m really missing my 5 children. We are all miles apart and can’t even wave at one other through a window.

Three of my female neighbors are currently chatting in our cul-de-sac whilst maintaining a 2 meter distance, which is nice, I’ve always been an introvert preferring to write out my sorrow than use Freud’s ‘talking cure’; so this writing prompt is a fantastic idea for writers like me and all intoverts.

Coincidentally (do I mean synchronistically?) I felt an overwhelmingly urge to sing McCartney’s Blackbird the other day. In fact I did sing it, my own version, on my own in the bathroom. McCartney sings ‘dead of night’, I sing ‘break of day’ because that is how it is in my head. I’ve recorded it here for you warts and all old lady stuff:

Paul McCartney, Blackbird

Accessed April 3rd 2020

Strangely, a listener rang into a radio show which was being broadcast from my previous home town Shaftesbury, from ‘home’ by Johnny Walker. I can’t remember which day it was. Anyway, I’m sure you can find it. He told her he couldn’t play Blackbird because it was someone else’s territory. I remember thinking what a shame that was, because a great many people must be wanting to hear that song, not just us. You see this spring there have been an overwhelming amount of happy birds outside my window. This seems like the silver lining to the sorrow of this event we are collectively experiencing.

McCartney was never the favourite; people wanted something sexier, more ‘godly’ – Paul was always too sensitive for the world he inhabited. But he was always my favourite Beatle. I used to listen to his rock n’ roll as a teenager, but it was always his ballads I returned to. Maybe your time is now Paul.

Another favourite is Beethoven’s 5 th symphony. My parents used to play me classical music as a baby, and they told me stories of me manically rocking on a rocking horse aged 2 yrs, to Beethoven.

I’m only 53, but I’ve always had an older head on my shoulder. Maybe that’s why my favourite song, and one that keeps returning to me is New World in the Morning.

‘Everybody’s talkin’ ’bout a new world in the morning, new world in the morning takes so long.’ My dad used to have a large vinyl collection, which I might have inherited, but we fell on hard times and he had to sell all his records.

Ben suggested writing a new lyric, here goes.

‘Met a man who had a dream he’d had since he was twenty, met that man when he was eighty one’,

he said nowadays what we have is plenty, and yet our cravings carry on; you’d think we’d learn our lesson and make do and mend, but I’ve only seen it in the young.

Binary ideas tie us to illusions that we’re separated by the sun

But if we’d look around and try a new way of living we’d see we’re freer than we know and more similar than we’d care to show

We’d share and see those who are different and merely thinkers have something in the way of listening that’s creative and creatively cannot be confined to a particular show, oh no

Oh no

It needs to be shared

‘Everybody’s talkin’ bout a new world in the morning, new world in the morning never comes…, new world in the morning takes so long’

Roger Whittaker,

Accessed April 3rd 2020

Hockney, On Love, creatively and Covid

I enjoyed David Hockney’s piece on life, shared with the BBC today, on the ink (Freudian slip), link between creativity and love.

Ending with the words, ‘I love life.’

I’ve been writing a short story for my MA on the virus and I came to the same conclusion. In the end love is all that remains; it’s a biblical refrain: ‘and the greatest of these is love.’

What we are all going through is unprecedented. The key to best navigating the problems we face is creativity.

Hockney observed, there is a connection to creatively in love.

This crisis needs creativity. More and more people are coming forward with innovative ideas. For example, to help supply hospital staff with ventilators, and hopefully there will be more creative collaboration.

Scientists are sharing research without peer reviews. People are finding ways to do things that matter quickly.

Whilst peer reviews are essential, to provide accuracy, there are some things, such as the ability to quickly produce ventilators, that needed creative collaboration to reach fruition.

It is creatively that we need. Innovative change and growth happens through a communicative process.

Through creative collaboration, we will navigate the problems we are facing more clearly and effectively.

Gondola Stand, Venice, Italy

via Gondola Stand, Venice, Italy

Is Aristotle to blame for the linear narrative?

I was reminded today, as I read for my MA in creative writing, that I used to despise that sentence, “A story must have a beginning, a middle and an end” repeated to me by my English teacher.

To Aristotle plot was everything. However Aristotle made the point in Poetics, thus, ‘good poets…draw out the plot beyond it’s potential, and are often forced to distort the sequence’ (Aristotle, Poetics p 17).

I got to thinking, isn’t imposing a structure on something taking away the creative aspect of it, to a certain extent?

In his work Intertextuality, Graham Allen sites Mallarmé’s In Coup De Des, in which ‘narrative’ is avoided’ (Mallarmé, 1994:122, cited in Allen).

Drawing on Barthes, Allen differentiates between ‘readerly’ and ‘writerly’ texts; writerly texts are non- linear. ‘Life…, in the classic text, becomes a nauseating mixture of common opinions, a smothering of received ideas’. (Barthes, 1974: 206, in Barry, p. 89)

Allen observes Barthes suggestion that,

The radically plural text does not allow one code to dominate over any other…liberates the disruptive force of the intertextual. (Allen, Intertextuality, p. 90)

There is hope yet for writers who resist the linear, who perhaps, like me, enjoyed the gaps in stories like The Twelve Dancing Princesses or The Ladybird book, The Discontented Pony, because everything was not explicable and neatly tied up at the end.

Bibliography:

Primary Source

Graham Allen, Intertextuality, (London & New York: Routeledge, 2006)

Aristotle, Poetics ed., Malcolm Heath (London, New York, 1996)

Secondary Sources:

Barthes, Roland, Image-Music-Text, Stephen Heath (trans.) Hill and Wang, New York, 1977

Barthes, Roland, The Pleasure of the Text, Richard Miller (trans.) Hill and Wang, New York, 1975

Grimm’s, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, (various sources)

Ladybird The Discontented Pony, (unknown date)

Voice #reading #arts

@Strava – my diabetes avoidance blog

I want to thank Strava today for their wonderful app, which I have used to motivate me to get back on my bike after 21 years of raising 5 babies to teenagers. I got back on my bike in 2008, and I’ve been cycling with Strava for over two years now.[image error]Last year, I was told by my GP, after several blood tests, that I was at high risk of type 2 diabetes and so I made some radical changes to my diet and started this blog to motivate myself. I gave up chocolate completely, stopped my yougurt habit, and eliminated fruit juice. I still have an occasional fruit juice detox day, but now I drink mostly water.Keeping my fitness levels high is something which has always been important to me. As a mum, I used to swim to stay fit, and do the housework. I taught all my children to ride bikes but I couldn’t ride alongside them because there was often a baby in tow. Swimming alongside them was easier because of the fast and slow swimming lanes. Still we had a couple of years of riding together, and now my son is a keen cyclist which makes me happy. It’s wonderful to hand a legacy of something health promoting to your children. And as my son is studying medicine, I’m pleased he has a hobby which will motivate him to stay healthy. He told me about the Strava app, and I’ve never looked back.It’s great to be back on my bike these past few years, as a friend Mercy gave me my first bike at the age of 9 or 10, and I used to call it my Trusty steed and ride it around the village where I grew up in Ham Richmond, Surrey. It stood in for the horse I never owned. Anyway, there is still time to fulfill my dream of owning a horse. For now I’m happy to be able to cycle around the beautiful south Glos’ countryside in the spring sunshine we are enjoying.For now we are still allowed to exercise outdoors here in South Glos’ and I must say, I’m feeling very grateful for being able to exercise. When you reach your fifties it can be quite isolating and lonely. Luckily I’m a writer and so I’m used to spending time alone. I love gardening, but there isn’t a great deal to do at this time of year in the garden. I have a gardening blog which you can find athttps://hermionelaakeloveslavender.wo... you are interested. I’ll be writing a short blog there soon as the gardening season runs from March to November in my house. Another family hobby was gardening. We planted mostly trees together, and I built several ponds. More about my current garden on the other blog.Bye for now dear readers. Stay healthy!All my love, Hermione

Voice #arts

My Diabetes Avoidance Blog – On Writing

Hello dear readers,

I’ve taken a break from this blog, as I’ve been working on my MA and honing my short story writing skills. The past two years, I’ve entered more creative writing competitions than ever. I’ve received some very positive comments about my short stories, and I’ve gained confidence since I became a contributing editor for a journal. The advice you get about revising and re-writing is really very true. When you keep re-crafting your stories, it is really surprising how great they can become.

As a writer, I know how long writers spend simply coming up with an idea and setting it down on paper. It is daunting to rewrite when a story isn’t working, especially when there is no guarantee of publication. I know how much dedication and commitment this requires.

Yesterday, I sat down to rewrite a story which wasn’t going in the direction I had envisioned. When I allowed it to move naturally in the direction it seemed to be moving in, it improved dramatically. The character had taken over and was pushing the story in a particular direction. When I got out of the way, and allowed the story to progress naturally, the story improved and began to sound more genuine.

As a reader of creative submissions for a journal, I often find that what is hampering a story is a sudden authorial intervention which takes me out of the story (interferes with my suspension of disbelief), often with some sort of clever interference, and once the natural rhythm, the author has created, is interfered with, it is impossible to get back into the story.

Many books of advice for writers do not mention rhythm, perhaps because this is difficult to isolate. Aristotle’s focus was on plot and the action that moves the story along, as well as Katharsis – the how are you? – mysterious action ‘how do you fare?’ of storytelling; something that keeps us reading and has only recently been realised by people who are using creative writing as a tool to overcome trauma. I am very interested in this aspect of the process of storytelling, but it is a complex process which requires distance and empathy. Ernest Hemingway used to write a paragraph a day at a coffee shop. Most of us ought to be able to fit this pattern into our daily schedule. When you go back to this writing it can be surprising to find you have written some real gems.

Once you have mastered these important layers, and you find something is missing, what else is there that needs work?

A good practice is to leave your work for a few days or a week and go back to it. It is easier to hear the story when you do this. Another suggestion is to ask someone to read your work back to you aloud. This is not so that you can revel in the glory of being an author, but is a device to help you hear your work. This is a practice I have always followed. Because of this, I have several stories that have never seen the light of day. I know instinctively they are not quite right. I am keeping them for an inspirational moment when I can re-craft them.

As an author, it is important to recognise that sometimes a story won’t work until it’s ready. For example, I had written my short story ‘Black Ink and Anxiety’ and didn’t have an ending. I knew it was a good story but I had to wait until the ending came to me. A month later, I was on Twitter and noticed a painting published with Open Journal of Arts and Letters. I liked it so much, that I got into a conversation with a friend on Twitter about it. She asked me whether I could see the birds. At that time, I couldn’t. The painting just looked like a mass of pleasant lines and colours. I’d been stuck indoors for a week and hadn’t taken the time to look at nature or birds. This was unusual for me. I’d been writing a play about consciousness. I don’t want to give away my idea here because I’ve entered the play into a competition. But it involves language and what is in our consciousness. Because I had been thinking about this subject a great deal, I realised that what my friend Rowena had seen in the picture might not be visible to me because the birds were not in my conscious awareness. I went outside and looked at birds and return to the painting. At last I could see the bird. I now had the ending to my story because the picture had a question with it. Can you write a story about this painting? I asked for permission to link to the painting and finished the story.

I submitted my story to O:JA&L. It was accepted and published in January this year.

You can read it here:

Prose Discourse: Short Story|Hermione Laake|”Black Ink and Anxiety”

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This blog was supposed to be about how I succumbed to two bars of chocolate this week, after giving up my usual daily walk to town for coffee and self-isolating instead. As you can see, my writerly pen had other ideas.

With love,

Hermione

Voice – Hermione #Art #story #listen

Voice