"A great piece of fiction can demand that you acknowledge the reality of its wildest proposition, no matter how alien it may be to you. It can also force you to concede the radical otherness lurking within things that appear most familiar…. great writing forces you to submit to its vision. You spend the morning reading Chekhov and in the afternoon, walking through your neighbourhood, the world has turned Chekhovian; the waitress in the cafe offers a non-sequitur, a dog dances in the street." --Zadie Smith
I don't love her writing, but I do dig that quote. I'm working on a play that dips in and out of reality a bunch, and I need to keep reminding myself that the writing has the power to define its own rules.
Though I need to run away from it for a night or two, go hide in a small dirty alley somewhere and wait for it to stop following me... the play is an obese woman squatting fatly on my head, thinking she's a dainty little chapeau, and my back hurts from holding her up. Bad Sheila.
Do you know Scopitones? Oh, you should.
They were early video-music-playing machines. Huge in France in the 60's.
Made from surplus World War II airplane parts.
Came to America, didn't do as well. Fizzled out by '65.
I love the shit out of them.
This one too!!
I feel like these would be the plays I would write if I could find the perfect language for them... weirdly colorful, totally artificial, ridiculously awesome costumes, and loads of foxy women.
From Saturday's Times:
"Her last entry, dated July 10, the day she died, includes a blurry photograph of a woman putting on a mask and quotes the novelist Reynolds Price: 'A need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species Homo sapiens -- second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter.'"
Entire article here.
As a friend of mine said, it's always so fucking heartbreaking when brilliant people give up.
ADDENDUM: A more in-depth article can be found here (thanks, Kyle).
Okay, I realize that posting those pix wasn't very nice of me... but folks, it was JUST ONE WEEKEND. My life in Greece does not look like that on a daily basis, much as I'd like it to.
Most of my time here thus far was spent in Cyprus, land of bananas and carob trees and pomegranates and olives and wild rosemary, and tens upon hundreds of cousins. I worked days on my computer in Soph's cousin's kitchen and spent nights at another cousin's house for dinner with everyone speaking rapid-fire Cypriot-- which is essentially Greek, but slangier. There, I'd either strain to glean some meaning from the conversations ("she 'went' somewhere! he 'wants' something!"), or just sit there with a pathetic smile, eating and nodding along to the rhythmic throb of my stress headache. We did go on two beautiful beach excursions (of the family variety rather than the romantic-getaway-type)... we also visited the Turkish section of Cyprus, which required a passport, a "car insurance" payment, and an inspection by several armed Turkish guards. That visit was strange and heartbreaking, and I'll talk more about it maybe at some point.
But afterwards... Santorini. Singular and brief, but viciously stunning. And oh, the views. I keep staring at those photos like someone else took them.
Those pix very nearly didn't back it back to the mainland, BTW... we dashed off to the port 1/2 hour before our boat left for Athens and discovered we had left the camera at the hotel. I bawled the entire cab ride back to the hotel, then bawled the entire ride back to the port (a 38 € crying jag, if you must know). We scrambled to the dock and the boat was NOT THERE... but soon found it had been delayed an hour. All those wasted tears.
Life back in the village here on the Peloponnese is considerably calmer-- less family, more English. We try to wake up early enough to miss some of the heat, breakfast on yogurt and fruit and cereal, hang some laundry on the roof, go about our day-- me writing or doing freelance design work, Soph practicing bass or transcribing interviews for his dissertation. Occasionally we'll head to a nearby beach before lunch for a quick swim... the closest beach is a little seaweedy and polluted, so we drive a bit to the cleaner beaches, where the outdoor bars play UB-40 and the Greeks play aggressive paddle ball and everyone smokes endlessly.
Then there's lunch at home, usually cheese and bakery bread and salad and fresh summer veggies cooked in oil from Soph's uncle's olive groves. Then, folks either nap through the midday heat or occupy themselves while all the shops close for a few hours. "Afternoon" lasts until 8pm, sunset is at 8:45, then we exercise in the cool night air and sit down to dinner no earlier than 10pm.
So, not much to complain about, but by no means a cool blue paradise. Here, the land is dry and cracked, spurting fig trees and wild tomatoes and brilliant fushia and white bouganvilla. And the world is noisy. From roughly 4am to 9am every day the air is full of roosters crowing and dogs barking. Unbroken sleep is difficult. Afternoon sounds are mostly revving motorbike engines and trucks straining to get up the tiny hilly roads. At night, the sounds of cicadas and bats and squealing feral cats saturate the air, along with the smell of jasmine and lately smoke from nearby forest fires.
Oh, there's been a bunch of those, sadly. The unusual wind has made the summer fires devastating this year, but the smoke-filled skies have served up some pretty glamorous sunsets. We watch from the balcony as propeller planes swoop down low and loud, dip into the Gulf of Patras, skim the surface to suck up a tankful of water, then fly back to the blazing trees to dump their load. Then we retire to the rooftop with our foamy frappes and wait for the bruised, bloody horizon to swell up around us.
Soph just asked, "are you writing the longest blog EVER?" I forgot for a second I was writing a blog. I thought I was writing you an email. I guess I miss you. I wish you could see all this. It's pretty cool.
...the year when Greek musicians explored their complicated relationship with their Swedish roots...
...can be found here. It's called Song of an Apron. I wrote it to be sung by an apron. Literally.
Rough translation:
I am an ardent woman.
I have ardent thoughts.
The way my eyebrows knit together.
Ardently.Have you any idea.
The damage.
I could wreak.Watch my hair rise in fury
over a boiling kettle.
Watch my nails grow
at the sound of you sleeping.The sound of you sleeping
turns my tongue to stone.
Sometimes I cry.Have you any idea
About damage?
Have you any thoughts about
Two curls of smoke
From each one of my ears?Can you not smell the burn
Of the awful yearning?
Yearning in my pail,
My pockets full of nails,
My hands full of sin.
Let us begin.My hands full of stain.
Let it rain
(sung by April Matthis)
