Wet Ink

Believers

A while back I was standing on the train platform, waiting as I often do for the 6.40. Usually, I'm all alone, but that night there were up to twenty standing in a group. The storms had been going all afternoon and the water was up to our ankles. Everyone was huddled beneath the shelter. I was already soaked.

When I heard the train I knew I'd have to walk down the platform, so I stepped from my shoes, rolled up my jeans and began to stride through the pooling water. Setting off, I heard the others behind, chattering excitedly beneath their umbrellas. The more I strode the wetter I was, and I thought "Is this really worth it?" No, I decided. It certainly wasn't. So I turned around, making for home.

As I began to walk away, the people who'd been waiting gave a great communal sigh and turned around as I had. Confused, I called out, "Erm, don't you want the train to Haverhill?" It transpired that because of my confidence they'd thought I had the answers. If I wasn't getting on, they weren't either! The last I saw, they were running down the platform, waving their arms to make the guard wait.

When I have this sort of confidence with my writing my work is more likely to be good. I don't mean over-confidence -- that's not a helpful feeling -- I mean a faith in the world and a commitment to the voice. If we're absorbed, unshaken in our work, I think it enables our readers to connect. We believe, thus our story's more believable.

I remember watching Derren Brown collect money at the dog track on a losing ticket. (View it on YouTube here). He told the guy he was coaching to perform this trick: "It will work if you believe it will work... you say this is the winning ticket and you just believe that from the bottom of your soul."*

I don't suggest for one single minute that we use our self-confidence to trick others! As writers, we know we're giving, not taking. But we might as well use the above for the positive: in terms of believing in our characters, our worlds, belief can surely help.

*In terms of money, this was rectified later!

When Roses Are Red

I've always been a romantic and the rose is a favourite flower, but in the final year of secondary school when studying the Bard, I was shocked to find out why they became the flower of love. "They're nothing like female genitals!" I cried out, in class; but I just wasn't seeing those intricate petals... Of course, I soon realised that the oh-so-romantic Shakespeare was often being suggestive when he mentioned the flower. We'd also just discovered that "death", in the Bard's time, could mean "climax". (When Romeo says to Juliet, "Thus with a kiss I die," it adds a whole new subtext, does it not?). Sex, sex, sex... it seemed we couldn't escape it. But what am I saying? We were sixteen! We loved it that Shakespeare was sexy underneath.

Soon after, I learnt that flower-choice wasn't everything. Apparently, for Elizabethans, the colour was important. If you sent your lover a red and white bouquet, it meant you wanted them dead. If you sent white alone, you wished sickness upon them. Only pure red meant love, and that, my teacher suggested, was linked to lost virginity. Once you consider all this, the layers can leap from stories. In Dexter, when the Ice-Truck Killer buys his lover white roses, his intentions are clear: but might the fact the white rose is his lover's favourite flower read as a comment on her self-esteem?

Mind you, if asking that, I should also ask this: Do nuances from Shakespeare's time matter today? I think the answer is yes, but only to an extent. I believe Jung's right when he says such meanings are carried on through a "collective unconscious". That said, when we're given white flowers, how sad if we grow suspicious! Not everything carries on, thank God.

I received my first red rose at the age of seventeen. It was a beautiful thing that soon began to wilt. As I watched that flower dying, I thought about my boyfriend who I knew was bad news; and I almost regretted what I'd learnt about the symbol. But a part of me also enjoyed the hidden code, which helped me see afresh. As readers, it's exciting to think richly, to question. As writers, what a world we can explore.

Size Don't Matter, Honey

"Think outside the box, collapse the box, and take a fucking sharp knife to it." Banksy

So many of us want to be large. We think, if we don't get an agent, if we don't publish bigtime, if we're not in the New Yorker by the age of twenty-eight, this somehow means we aren't real artists, that our words don't count, that we matter little. Of course, it isn't just we writers that think this way. Those around us ask "Where were you published? In a magazine of what circulation?" These are the milestones by which we're taught to judge. I often get trapped in this mindset. It isn't a comfort.

The other night, at a party, I told a woman I published short fiction and was working on a novel. She replied, "Never mind, keep trying, hey?" When I told her I don't view my achievements as a failure, she gave a cool laugh. "But you want a novel published. Everybody does."

Eileen Myles reminds us in a great piece, "American Poem" (listen to it here), of the importance of being an artist and valuing what we express. In our present society, Myles writes:

"... my art can't / be supported until it / is gigantic, bigger than / everyone else's, confirming / the audience's feeling that they are / alone. That they alone are / good, deserved / to buy the tickets / to see this art."

This is so true. Thank God there are those who commit to touching a few. Here are some stories that remind me of this:

-- Sarah Maitland's On Becoming a Fairy Godmother was published by Maia, a small British press. Her use of fairy tale, myth and folklore is gorgeous, humorous. I recommend the book.

--My friend Frances once stood up in the middle of London and recited her poem. Those that listened loved it. Now that's real art.

--Peter Chappell's famous grafitti campaign once helped free George Davis from jail. Words matter, as do guts.

--I bumped into an old student of mine, who gave me a hug and explained, in detail, how the story I once told of Sir Gawain had accompanied him as a moral for life. Though I used oral storytelling a lot as a teacher, I don't recall telling that tale. But somehow the story moved that kid. To find this out, felt good.*

I'm not saying we mustn't try the New Yorker. Neither am I saying we shouldn't dream. But it's important value our contributions, regardless of size.

Here's a truth I tell myself, when I feel small: Art's bigger than we are. It's not about fame.

*Well, hell, I'm including myself here. I thought I deserved a pat on the back.

How New York Found Me

I'd been feeling lost, so I went to New York. The aim was to write in new places, be alone, absorb. I thought if I wrote around art, my work would flow. This certainly happened at MOMA: I was penning frantically, energised, inspired. Yet in the Whitney by the Calders, I was too wowed to write. I blew on mobiles, watched them move.

Later, over a glass of wine, I pulled out my diary. I'd brought it with me idly, thinking I might use it. I'd rarely written in this book, but always aimed to do so: I view diary-work as some of the bravest. Well, I'm glad I had it because, in a rooftop garden, I started writing about my past. Fifteen pages swept out of me, and after, I felt freer.

The work I don't aim to publish can be the deepest of all. I realised I've been blocked because I push myself too hard. Those Calders reminded me that art is for itself: when I stand near work I love and allow myself to feel it, I'm at my most creative. While writing solely to express, I'm more truly an artist than at any other time.

Out of the Calders, the diary came; and out of the diary, freedom; and out of the freedom, stories.

That, my friends, is how New York found me.

In January, I'll be teaching a Grub Street seminar entitled, "Transformations". If you fancy working with fairy tales to create vivid short-shorts, do check out the course details (scroll down: they're second from the bottom) and bio.

Like Velvet on the Tongue

"In my dreams I gorge on chocolates, I roll in chocolates, and their texture is not brittle but soft as flesh..." Joanne Harris, in Chocolat

Last week, I was in a coffee shop (a well-known chain) where the baristas were being trained. They were packed in a corner, gazing at the manager, who was reading from a binder about a new product. Every so often she'd pause and pose questions. "If you're asked why this coffee costs so much more, what's your response?" A voice called out, "It's higher quality". The manager nodded. "Far higher."

What I wanted to know was had they tried the new coffee? Where was it? Behind the counter? Why was no one tasting? Would it not be better for all to take a sip, then rave together about these particular beans? To sell something well, it helps if you love it; and what better way of loving than through direct experience? I don't want to be told that my drink "is better quality". This doesn't speak to our senses, which, with coffee, must be aroused!

Back in Cambridge UK, I once wrote a piece about coffee. The guy at Cambridge market (you'll know him, if you shop there) asked me what I wanted and I told him about my writing. His eyes brightened. "You'll need to try them all!" He began scooping the beans from the open sacks in front of him, filling tiny plastic bags, scenting the air. Sumatra, he said, was rich, but smooth. The espresso? Dark and gutsy. Another kind was heady; another, intense. Feeling his passion, I said, "YOU could be writing this story." He laughed. No, he told me. It was coffee he adored. Then he gave me ten samples and didn't charge a penny.

The true artists in life are the ones who feel the love. We go back to them again and again.

"The Moth Catcher" Read and Reviewed

"The Moth Catcher" has received a cool and very perceptive review, along with the rest of "Salamander", from Holly Monacelli at The Review Review. 

It's also a fitting time to mention that I'll be reading "The Moth Catcher" at Newtonville Books on October 9th from 7pm.  Hope you can make it.

Bringing the Pain

"Life is difficult. / This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it." The opening lines from M. Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled

"Life includes pain. It's impossible to live life without pain."
Anais Nin, in Fire: A Journal of Love (p. 45)

Perhaps it is a need to face pain and feel it, which draws me to stories that bring hard emotions. As a person, I don't invite pain. It isn't something I want. (Though in a story, it's different. In a story, I do invite). Emotional suffering is hard, but repression of pain can be harder. After all, through pain we grow, learn and toughen up. Thus stories that connect us with characters who suffer can put us in difficult places and make us strong for it.

There's more to this, of course. In New York, I went to a talk by poet Eileen Myles, who ran for president in 1992. In an inspiring hour, Myles reminded us of how the lone burden of pain can be divisive. When talking about the health system as it currently stands, she said we all suffer, but in a society where this hardship becomes the norm we get used to being silent and thus feel alone.

To listen to Hamlet's suffering, or Frankyl's extraordinary courage, or Steve Almond's characters who feel and feel and feel, is to connect and remember that we are not alone: that pain, as well as pleasure, is human. The power of reading a description of pain that's expressed quite specifically -- one that we connect with and know too well -- can help us move on. Similarly, the expression of a comfort for that pain can be deeply cathartic. This happened for me when I started reading Amy MacKinnon's beautiful Tethered. As a child stands by the corpse of her mother whose salvation is being debated by the guests upstairs, the undertaker's kindness speaks deeply to me as a reader: "'Never mind what the others say. We're all sinners and all sinners are welcomed by God.'"

Drown the Clown

This evening in Little Italy, I wandered among the fairground stalls.  Such pretty lights and bustle!  A gorgeous place. Though I stopped here and there, the event that held me longest was "Drown The Clown".  Let me explain.  Dozens of us gathered around an elevated guy, who was wearing clown's get-up (white mask with red nose).  There were targets either side of him, which, if hit, would plunge this clown into the water below.  But as folks threw their balls, trying to achieve this, he shouted cruel phrases like, "LOSER!" and "Look!  You're ridiculous!"

Truth is, when someone scored and the clown was dunked, it only lasted a moment.  Though soaked, he returned quickly, being mean.  Well, it was all just an act, of course.  We all could have simply left: there was no onus on us to wait this out!  Our presence was the only reason for this panto - as an audience, we were complicit.  But I tell you, I was desperate for his demise.  That's why I couldn't leave!

This made me think about our inner voices as writers:  How difficult to write when we've a clown inside our heads who acts like he knows best.  "LOSER!" he might shout.  Or "What would your family say?"  But dammit, he's simply a sad guy in make-up.  Why do we take notice?  I guess it's captivating: that's why I stayed so long. 

I reckon the guys who were taking a shot were perfectly capable of scoring.  Under different circumstances they'd have probably won out.  Yet just one of them succeeded because of the endless goading. 

Sour, cold voices keep us back. 

Time to drown the clown?

New York 2: The Oyster Bar Bard

I had lunch in the Grand Central Oyster Bar today.  Ever been there?  It's amazing.  There's a golden sheen to everything and the low arches lined with lights make the place feel almost cloistered.  Anyway, as I was eating my plate of broiled oysters, I couldn't stop staring at the boards above my head: the chalked names of the oysters and clams were just too gorgeous.  Why did these words make me think of lovers' tiffs?  Well they did, and what followed was a poem, which drew on the seafood names displayed on the boards.

CLAMMING UP

What the Cuttyhunk is it

With this Beavertail boy?

Me, I'm a Topneck, want more

Than Widow's Hole,

Deserve some Mystic River,

Some Moonstone Cove.

What's the Gudden use

Of Littlenecking, honey,

If you won't even Rocky Pass

Or do the Meximoto?

I'm Wellfleet, baby,

Want Summerside and Rome.

Here's the Sister Point:

We're clamming up.

--

As you can see, I had quite a lot of fun.  And the oysters were darn fine too!

New York, at Night

I thought I'd share three New York scenes that gave me the urge to write tonight:

- The stone eagle that crowns Grand Central Station.  I mean, talk about magestic.

- Umbrellas everywhere, softened by the rain.  At the gallery I visited, they were giving out plastic bags - long, transparent cylinders - to put the things in.  I can see why they do that.  Good idea.  But I love the way umbrellas drip and gleam.  Is that the Brit in me, I wonder?

- The long, empty platform at Canal Street subway (I went the wrong way by mistake!), with those cold, yellow lights and the bland silence; plus, on the bench, abandoned, a bottle in brown paper.  Having just been to a talk about writing and politics, this moment really struck me to the bone.