Zadie Smith | on fittingness

"She spoke often in her poetry of the idea of ‘fittingness’ : that is, when your chosen pursuit and your ability to achieve it - no matter how small or insignificant both might be - are matched exactly, are fitting. This is when we become truly human, fully ourselves, beautiful.

To swim when your body is made for swimming. To kneel when you feel humble. To drink water when you are thirsty. Or - if one wishes to be grand about it - to write [the words] that are the fitting receptacle of the feeling or thought that you hoped to convey."

Zadie Smith, On Beauty 

this sounds something like Aristotle's idea of arete, or "excellence." To him (and Zadie) excellence is not a scale. Not a grade, not a number, not a yearly review. We are most excellent when we fulfill our purpose, to the best of our abilities.

A good thing to keep in mind, I think. And now ... back to the books.

(photos) on film with pentax k1000 | study sesh at Sip Cafe in Northampton

two for | Keeping a Notebook

In my desk I have a file folder titled "unfinished thoughts". It's full of writing on restaurant pads and receipt papers.

there are notes about the things I saw : Henri Edmond Cross painting Beach at Cabasson.  

notes about the things I heard : song from Girls ... I Make the Same Mistakes (?)

notes about remembering : buy tweezers.  

notes even about forgetting : "what was that phrase that infuriated me? how did they like their coffee? It's all been eroded, and all that's left is a caricature of who they are ... or, were. A hazy figment - recognizable but sad in it's flatness. No longer part of the living"

Maybe it's that scratch paper is low commitment or that there's no pressure to write well on the back of brown paper bag.  I hestitate, though, to write in my notebook. I let a thought roll around in my head until I can tease something out. I wait for ideas in full form. But, there are countless observations that are lost and dissipate into others - never making it to paper because I think they're too mundane or murky. 

in my first reading for grad school Joseph A. Maxwell writes that the key to good research is keeping a notebook.

"You should think of them as a way to help you understand, not just as a way of recording or presenting an understanding you've already reached; writing is thinking on paper." Qualitative Research Design

It reminded me of Joan Didion's essay On Keeping a Notebook, Joan Didion : 

"See enough and write it down, I tell myself, and then some morning when the world seems drained of wonder, some day when I am only going through the motions of doing what I am supposed to do, which is write - on that bankrupt morning I will simply open my notebook and there it will all be."

A notebook can be a place for one to return to, a reserve of inspiration. 

How do you use your notebook?

(p.s) two thoughts : the end of life | the length of life

to achieve the marvelous.

"To achieve the marvelous, it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought." 

Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

(photo) on film with pentax k1000 | Jack Kerouac Ave, San Francisco

David Foster Wallace | we are the real rebels.

“the next real literary ‘rebels’ in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching. Who treat plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in the U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Too sincere. Maybe that’ll be the point.

The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of the gifted ironists, the “oh, how banal.” To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness.”

David Foster Wallace, E Unibus Pluram
An essay on the role of irony and television in U.S. Fiction.
Written in 1990, long before blogging began.

two for | The Merit of Meaning It

1.

"the merit of originality is not novelty, it's sincerity"

Thomas Carlyl

2.

"If something inside you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write towards vulnerability.

Don't worry about appearing sentimental. Worry about being unavailable; worry about being absent or fraudulent."

Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

I want to be interesting, but I'm always erasing because I find myself mushy, and frilly, overly descriptive, and trite.  I liked these two passages - because they reminded me that the important thing is just to mean it.

(photo) on film with Nikon FM

a list of things Maya Angelou was before "published poet"

in honor of her birthday today

and in case you thought the creative life was linear. 

Miranda July | Writing, a Practice of Self-Love

"I'm probably kindest to myself in my work," she says, "It's how I practice self-love. I'm cripplingly critical of myself in every other area, not permissive, not letting myself be free, and feeling like I'm doing every single thing wrong all the time. But in this one area I tell myself : 'you can do no wrong. Let's just try this. It's OK.' Like a really wonderful teacher or something. I'm saying, 'no one belongs here more than you,' to myself - because I totally don't belong."

Miranda July, Paper Magazine November 2011

(photo) with my new iPhone. I read this sitting outside - shivering but sundrenched - in Director's Park on Saturday.  (p.s) an interdisciplinary connection from Hila about sincerity : Krzysztof Kieslowski and Miranda July

Chandler Burr | When We Read Fiction

"When we read fiction, we pour our own particular store of emotions - say, the sense of loss we feel for those disappeared from our lives - into the characters set before us. We take the few words with which the writer sketches these characters, the things he said, the pain she felt, where they were, and our own emotional stockpile magically creates people. As the human eye fleshes out the pixilated image. Fictional characters are highly sophisticated Rorschach blots, and we, along with their author, are their authors.

When you read a fictional character, you too are creating her."

Chandler Burr, You or Someone Like You (p. 148)

(photo) Pentax k1000 on Kodak Ektar 100. straight out of the camera - hyperblue saturated color is a product of the film

Azar Nafisi | On Writing, Depsite.

" ... despite all their fears and anxieties for a future without jobs or security and a fragile and disloyal present, they write about their search for beauty"

Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran 

sounds a bit like blogging, yes?  
(1) my friend cassy on film, with my pentax (per the usual) (p.s.) more writing about writing 

Dan DeLillo | On Why We Write

"As the novelist Dan DeLillo once said : Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals."

Anna Quindlen, Write for Your Life. Newsweek, 2007. 

Take It Easy On Those Adjectives

"If  I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written."

Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

"Nearly twenty-five years ago I was called into the office of Anna Wintour, my boss during her brief interregnum at House & Garden magazine before she ascended to fashion glory as editor-in-excelsis of Vogue. "You use too many adjectives," she told me. "I don't like adjectives. That's all."'

Martin Filler, via The Cut

I'm an abuser of those useful, plentiful, expressive words called "adjectives". I especially love them in sets of three.  I've been trying to cut-back, inspired by my little Hemingway phase.

I love the plainness of his text. Even when he uses adjectives, as in "first true simple declarative sentence", there aren't any commas. They aren't separate qualities. It is a compound of words to describe one very specific thing - the way one would describe an East African Desert Mole Rat.

It would be even more of a challenge to work for Anna Wintour. I can't imagine trying to describe clothes with out adjectives.

Do you have any tips for telling it like it is?

[ (p.s) A few new words. ... and only one is an adjective]

ThisRecording | What Nobody Tells Beginners

"You're probably going to hate your blog at first (and maybe forever, actually) but doing it every day decreases your odds of having everyone else hate it, too.

Make sure you use spellcheck."

Molly's advice column on This Recording, a spot-on and snarky blog on popular culture.

[ (p.s.) Ira Glass's advice for beginners ]

Ira Glass | What Nobody Tells Beginners

"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it's just not that good. It's trying to be good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit.

... It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions."  

Ira Glass, radio personality and host of This American Life. You can watch this interview at the donut project, or read it at NPR.  

I've been thinking a lot about this quote from Ira Glass. It came to in the serendipitous way internet wisdom tends to; a few clicks and I'm face to face with the reassurance I was searching for.

I think most blog-girls can tell you that they've been tempted to sneak out of the internet world, and erase their steps behind them. Because the difficult thing about writing, or radio work, or acting is that you learn by doing it in a public forum. There's a record of where you began and where you are. 

It's not just a back-log of failed attempts and bad ideas, because those are scratched out and buried in notebook pages. The writing that's made it here passed some sort of bench mark. We thought it was was good once, or just good enough to see the light of day.

And then we look back, a year later (or for me, the next morning) and think "what is this crap? I thought this was good?".  From here it all looks like a trail of garbage, like the one swirling and stretching behind the space shuttle. Just when I reach somewhere new, and look out into the vast wide open, I spy that trail. It weighs me down, reminding me that despite my grand aspirations I am simply an earthling, afterall. 

It makes it hard to trust myself, and to move forward. But, that's where Ira comes in. He tells me this disappointment in my work is good. It means, that though my grammar is faulty and my words often fail, my taste is still in tact.

Brave New Word

Joanna posted a list of the words that editor Kurt Anderson wanted to keep out of New York Magazine. It made me smile to see words like "eatery" and "flicks" that writers use to avoid the repeating themselves. (I am so guilty of that!)

I know we've all spent time trying, trying, trying to find replacements for blog-land cliches like of "lovely" and "lusting". So, here are a few new girly words that I learned this week from Word of the Day.

Now those strands of Tiffany jewels won't just "gorgeous", they will be clinquant. (... right, Newt Gingrich?)

p.s. if you are a word collector, you will love Cori Kindred's Rock Collection art pieces.  

This one featuring heartache, piano strings, and chrysalis is my favorite.

[(1, 2, and 3) Freehand script stick and ink, with Higgin's black]

Danielle Steel | On A Writer's Life

"Writing is a solitary endeavor, but not a lonely one. When you write, your world is populated by the characters you invent and you feel those people filling your lives"

Danielle Steel, author of 97 books. The Wall Street Journal May 7-8, 2011.

[ (1) digital snapshot of me and my bedroom. Not lonely .. but alone (except for the company of Cleopatra) ]

Me and Mary Oliver | On Finding Time

"That's when I began to get up early in the morning - so I could write for a couple of hours and then give my employer my very best second-rate energy" Mary Oliver

My goal this week is to wake up earlier. With my new nine-to-fiver, I just haven't had much time to feel refreshed and creative. Mornings used to be my time, and then I'd go to work at the restaurant in the evenings, during my less productive hours. Now, I exhaust myself at work (to the benefit of my employers), come home, and sit on my bed and become a vegetable. And, I don't mean I become loaded with vitamins - think more like wilty, soggy, cauliflower (does anyone actually like cauliflower? It doesn't count if you like 'cauliflower au gratin', because anything is good covered in cheese.)

Anyway ... hopefully that will mean I have a few more things to share with you. And, maybe washing my hair more than once every five days. I hope you all find an extra hour this week too. If you think it's impossible, try looking in your coat pockets. That's where my favorite lipstick is always hiding.

(photo) a generic coffee cup photo from a breakfast at Gravy with Eli 

(p.s)  Thanks so much for your kind words yesterday. Writing something sad on a holiday makes me feel like a total downer, and I'm always nervous when it comes to sharing my less sunny feelings. But, something inside me always says it's important to be honest - if it's just for that one day a year.

Judith Thurman | On the Point

"I once heard of an East African farmer who, in the 1920s, traded his vast flax plantation for a much smaller plot devoted to damask roses. He liked the notion of being able to transport an entire harvest to Paris in a suitcase, attar being worth more, per gram, than cocaine.


I like that notion myself. Every writer's ambition is to distill the truth irreducibly from a thorny subject."

Judith Thurman, in her essay collection Cleopatra's Nose : 39 Varieties of Desire

[ (1) The Meadow on Mississippi Ave, on Valentine's Day morning. On film, with my pentax k1000 (p.s.) another great line from Judith Thurman | On Gumption ]

Charlie Kaufman | On the Writing Process

"To begin... To begin... How to start? I'm hungry. I should get coffee. Coffee would help me think. Maybe I should write something first, then reward myself with coffee. Coffee and a muffin. Okay, so I need to establish the themes. Maybe a banana-nut. That's a good muffin."

--

* Have you ever seen the movie Adaptation? It's kind of old, but I recommend it if you have ever struggled with writer's block. Charlie Kaufman wrote the movie, which stars two semi-autobiographical characters : Charlie Kaufman (played by Nicholas Cage) and his 'twin brother' Donald Kaufman (also played by Nicholas Cage). 

In real life, Donald doesn't actually exist. These two characters are 1. an embodiment of the person that others see and 2. the one he secretly believes he is  -  academy award nominated screenwriter Charlie (part of the movie even takes place on the Being John Malkovich set) and Donald, who is a total buffoon.  He has done nothing with his life and decides, on a whim, to write a screenplay. But he is a simpler Charlie, one who isn't plagued by self loathing.

It is Donald's naivety that protects him from the doubt that cripples Charlie. It's his fear of writing something bad, of being Donald, that keeps him from writing at all. While Donald's thriller screen play, which is loaded with cliches, is completed and picked up ... Charlie has written nothing.

Its an interesting statement, not just about the artistic standards of Hollywood, but about how the search for something great has a futile way of destroying every start.

Mary Oliver | On Writing the Good

"I don't usually mess around with what makes me unhappy when I'm writing. I want to write poems that will comfort, maybe amuse, enliven other people. I don't mean that the world is all great and wonderful. But I'm careful to - I try to keep the emphasis on the good and hopeful"

O Magazine

--
* Sometimes I struggle with the work I do. I rarely give a face to my shadows, and instead focus here on the little moments of clarity. Oliver puts it so perfectly; about the intention we both have when writing.

(photo) double exposure, with Diana on 120mm. (quote) O Magazine. April 2010 'The Poetry Issue'. Just maybe my favorite issue ever!

Inspirational Speaking

During my interview the ladies at One Kind Word asked me "What inspires you?"

I told them that sometimes a glass of white wine with an ice cube floating in it will do the trick but, most of the time, what inspires me is music.

Not in the abstract Radiohead way – but more in the Flashdance way. I like to listen to the same shamelessly optimistic song over. And over. And over. The kind of song you would hear playing over a climactic scene in a movie montage. (I’m anyone’s worst nightmare on a roadtrip!) Living in Portland, you get to know a lot of ‘real music lovers’ who tend to be unimpressed with my one-track love affairs. But, certain songs have a way of drowning out the doubt that bullies me away from inspiration.

Lately, I’ve been all about : Sigur Rós – Inní Mér Syngur Vitleysingur . Who cares if the lyrics are in Icelandic - it's the feeling!

I'd love to know, Darling Readers

What inspires you?