"And again I think the obvious idea (that astoundingly obvious idea) that everything that exists (nation, thought, music) can also not exist."
(Milan Kundera, Encounter)
Kundera wrote the above to intervene (from 2008) in his original text: The Total Rejection of Heritage, or Iannis Xanakis (originally written in 1980). His intervention mentions Thomas Glavinic's novel Night Work, a novel about a 30 year old man who wakes to find humanity gone. Left alone he wanders the empty structures of what he knows as civilization: apartments, streets and storefronts.
Night Work takes its place among other somewhat clichéd last man on earth stories. Many people are obsessed with this scenario because they live in ways that make it inevitable. They are taking their place—in an oral and written tradition of destruction. I don't read these works. I was raised with the definitive and authoritative text on the subject, The Bible.
Roman Catholic Doctrine met, married and argued with an old coyote when my Grandmother married my Grandfather. She explained the way it was, and he said, it didn't have to be.
Authority. Be'ashniih. They both had it. Each one undoing the other. I stood between them and saw the power they had, to create one world, and destroy another. Each one did it. They did it over and over again. Every morning. Every evening. In the fight for each others soul they were defeated by two words: no divorce.
Showing posts with label Novels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Novels. Show all posts
15 August 2012
08 August 2012
Novels
"Certain artists of our time, casting a serious look upon what surrounds them, devote themselves to painting wretchedness, the abjectness of poverty, Lazarus's dung-heap. This may belong to the domain of art and philosophy; but when they paint poverty so hideous and degraded, sometimes so vicious and criminal, do they attain their end, and is the effect wholesome, as they would have it."
(George Sand, The Author to the Reader (I.), The Hunted Pool, translated by Frank Hunter Potter)
The question of content dogs the ethical writer aware that words have power and stories shape reality. There are ethics in storytelling, seasons that define when each story can be told, and societies responsible for certain knowledge. Everything is not everyone's domain.
I was raised with this knowledge: it is a shield I walk behind. I was also raised under the influence (colonialism, alcoholism, mental illness and domestic violence). When I encountered the work of radical women of color feminists I felt like I was given breath and in that breath, life. Audre's writings in Sister Outsider and Dorothy's work in Skin pushed me to confront, publicly, what I was ashamed of, in myself and in my family. I've come to understand that life is not an either or, but a balance between each point on the line that defines what seems extreme to some and normal to others.
"When it comes to wars you can never tell who is going to lose their life."
(José Saramago, The History of the Siege of Lisbon)
Welch's Fools Crow, Beckett's Molloy, Gertrude's Three Lives each speak eloquently to and about poverty, both hideous and degraded, but their purpose is neither vicious or criminal. Their end is not to exploit. They do not raise themselves above the world of their work. They take their place within and set a place for you to join them.
During the siege of Leningrad 750,000 people starved in 900 days. When Anna Reid began her archival project many of the younger generation had a sterile notion of the siege and felt it represented the strength of the people and their survival. They were aware of what they had been told: people came together and made it through, alive, mostly. We should honor their fortitude and forget the rest. The survivors themselves knew more. The siege was a "cold, cruel, time when people lost their personalities, relationships broke down, people broke down, [and] turned into beasts."
"There was nobody who escaped death completely."
"Your world becomes smaller and smaller: the apartment, water source and food shop."
These survivors wanted Reid to comprehend and reveal the scope of the damage and the nastiness of that moment. They wanted her to tell their story so that we could not forget it.
"What determined whether someone lived and died?"
After the siege the survivors knew: " A great work had ended, impossible deeds had been done. We all felt that. . . But we also felt confusion. How should we live now?" (N.B.: the images in this link are formidable and dreadful.)
This question informs my work inside and outside of the archives, among the stories I am a part of, and the stories my stories are related to. Sometimes our worlds feel small: the apartment, water source and food. And sometimes we must remember to step outside of what we know and what we are afraid is true and write.
"Except that it still has not been established whether it is the novel that prevents the man from forgetting himself or the impossibility of forgetfulness that makes him write novels."
(José Saramago, The History of the Siege of Lisbon)
(George Sand, The Author to the Reader (I.), The Hunted Pool, translated by Frank Hunter Potter)
The question of content dogs the ethical writer aware that words have power and stories shape reality. There are ethics in storytelling, seasons that define when each story can be told, and societies responsible for certain knowledge. Everything is not everyone's domain.
I was raised with this knowledge: it is a shield I walk behind. I was also raised under the influence (colonialism, alcoholism, mental illness and domestic violence). When I encountered the work of radical women of color feminists I felt like I was given breath and in that breath, life. Audre's writings in Sister Outsider and Dorothy's work in Skin pushed me to confront, publicly, what I was ashamed of, in myself and in my family. I've come to understand that life is not an either or, but a balance between each point on the line that defines what seems extreme to some and normal to others.
"When it comes to wars you can never tell who is going to lose their life."
(José Saramago, The History of the Siege of Lisbon)
Welch's Fools Crow, Beckett's Molloy, Gertrude's Three Lives each speak eloquently to and about poverty, both hideous and degraded, but their purpose is neither vicious or criminal. Their end is not to exploit. They do not raise themselves above the world of their work. They take their place within and set a place for you to join them.
During the siege of Leningrad 750,000 people starved in 900 days. When Anna Reid began her archival project many of the younger generation had a sterile notion of the siege and felt it represented the strength of the people and their survival. They were aware of what they had been told: people came together and made it through, alive, mostly. We should honor their fortitude and forget the rest. The survivors themselves knew more. The siege was a "cold, cruel, time when people lost their personalities, relationships broke down, people broke down, [and] turned into beasts."
"There was nobody who escaped death completely."
"Your world becomes smaller and smaller: the apartment, water source and food shop."
These survivors wanted Reid to comprehend and reveal the scope of the damage and the nastiness of that moment. They wanted her to tell their story so that we could not forget it.
"What determined whether someone lived and died?"
After the siege the survivors knew: " A great work had ended, impossible deeds had been done. We all felt that. . . But we also felt confusion. How should we live now?" (N.B.: the images in this link are formidable and dreadful.)
This question informs my work inside and outside of the archives, among the stories I am a part of, and the stories my stories are related to. Sometimes our worlds feel small: the apartment, water source and food. And sometimes we must remember to step outside of what we know and what we are afraid is true and write.
"Except that it still has not been established whether it is the novel that prevents the man from forgetting himself or the impossibility of forgetfulness that makes him write novels."
(José Saramago, The History of the Siege of Lisbon)
01 August 2012
Novels
"The one discipline you need in the first draft: to follow where anger, or delight, or laughing take you."
(Carol Bly, The Passionate and Accurate Story)
The one discipline needed of any artist is to follow—themselves. This is also the one discipline that requires the most vigilance and courage.
The way of the artist is unpaved. Each artist must make their own path through terrain known only to them. Vigilance is required as many editors, critics and audiences ask you to be, see, write, and feel something you cannot. They then ask you to create from this space, a space that negates you and your vision.
When you experience a person's art you follow them, and the choices they've made. In writing I've heard it say you follow their breath. As you shape the words, reading out loud or even in your mind's ear, you pause and shape the words they've laid before you.
When working, writing, I follow the voices. They come to me and I scramble behind. I've always respected them and devoted, to them, my full attention. I'm not sure I follow anger, delight or laughter, but I've learned to work without an immediate knowledge of direction. Sometimes, when I write, I think this is crazy. I'm cannot write this. If I wasn't destined for hell, I am now—with this chapter I have made my fate certain. During those moments vigilance is required—hush now—keep writing. And I do. In this way the writing asks more of me than I thought I was capable of giving, revealing aspects I had never considered. I've learned to let my idea of the work go and listen.
Like Coltrane I practice everyday, aware that scales (reading and writing, speaking and listening) keep me agile of mind and spirit. Creating requires agility, endurance, and strength.
(In the history of Jazz men and Blues men)
"Who had to find their voices, and not be echoes.
Who had to have a vision, not just a stand.
And in the end, had to be true to themselves.
Because all imitation is suicide.
All emulation is a sign of an adolescent mind.
All of us imitate.
All of us emulate.
But the ones who love us,
the way Monk loved Coltrane,
you don't need to imitate. . .
go on and find your voice."
(Cornell West)
"It's all about the choices "
(Terrance Blanchard)
(Carol Bly, The Passionate and Accurate Story)
The one discipline needed of any artist is to follow—themselves. This is also the one discipline that requires the most vigilance and courage.
The way of the artist is unpaved. Each artist must make their own path through terrain known only to them. Vigilance is required as many editors, critics and audiences ask you to be, see, write, and feel something you cannot. They then ask you to create from this space, a space that negates you and your vision.
When you experience a person's art you follow them, and the choices they've made. In writing I've heard it say you follow their breath. As you shape the words, reading out loud or even in your mind's ear, you pause and shape the words they've laid before you.
When working, writing, I follow the voices. They come to me and I scramble behind. I've always respected them and devoted, to them, my full attention. I'm not sure I follow anger, delight or laughter, but I've learned to work without an immediate knowledge of direction. Sometimes, when I write, I think this is crazy. I'm cannot write this. If I wasn't destined for hell, I am now—with this chapter I have made my fate certain. During those moments vigilance is required—hush now—keep writing. And I do. In this way the writing asks more of me than I thought I was capable of giving, revealing aspects I had never considered. I've learned to let my idea of the work go and listen.
Like Coltrane I practice everyday, aware that scales (reading and writing, speaking and listening) keep me agile of mind and spirit. Creating requires agility, endurance, and strength.
(In the history of Jazz men and Blues men)
"Who had to find their voices, and not be echoes.
Who had to have a vision, not just a stand.
And in the end, had to be true to themselves.
Because all imitation is suicide.
All emulation is a sign of an adolescent mind.
All of us imitate.
All of us emulate.
But the ones who love us,
the way Monk loved Coltrane,
you don't need to imitate. . .
go on and find your voice."
(Cornell West)
"It's all about the choices "
(Terrance Blanchard)
25 July 2012
Novels
URBAN NIZHÓNÍ is my response to D'Arcy McNikle's novel WIND FROM AN ENEMY SKY, Linda Hogan's poem Those Who Thunder, and Gertrude Stein's WARS I HAVE SEEN.
Epigraph:
"A man by himself was nothing, a shout in the wind. But men together, each acting for each other and as one—even a strong wind from an enemy sky had to respect their power."
Part One:
Those Who Thunder
The novel opens to a moment when worlds collide and the people must learn a new language. They must translate between peoples and desires. War: the White Man wants them (Arikara, Mandan, Hidatsa) to make their heads one (becoming Indians, then becoming Americans). The people desire and are responsible to remain Arikara, Mandan and Hidatsa. Part one introduces "those who thunder" through a process of immersion, revealing the way stories walk among us. Like Dorothy Allison's A River of Names the novel is season of stories you step into. You let it wash over you, not attempting to still bits, hoping to identify one drop of water from another.
Indians are not a naked running wild. We live a disciplined life. Reciprocity shapes every relation. War involves a question of enemies. The novel defines these questions of war and warriors. There are no chapter breaks, just a season of stories, one following the other. Illustrating McNikle's point that man alone was nothing. The work assumes and requires the reader develop fluency, through immersion in the oral tradition. Those Who Thunder's narrative cycle and language considers the nature of warriors, war and power, illustrating the role warrior societies have in maintaining order—social and military, among relations and enemies. The novel turns over a stone of truth: once we had each other, that was a lot to have, and that was a lot to lose.
Those Who Thunder refuse to make their heads one and refuse hate. They reveal the way stories provide direction and power through cycles, repetitions, epics and continuity. Part One begins: "The season is here and stories are evenings, one following the other." The first story framing the season, and the entire novel is of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. Alfred, one of the novel's two storytellers begins: "Wah. Now I will tell you about the white man's Dream that we make our heads one."
A season of stories: Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851; NIKIL©; Four Bears the Mandan; Karl Bodmer; Language Is Life; Miss Navajo Nation; The Scalped Man; Mato Tope; Francis A. Chardon; Not Afraid of the Enemy; The Arikara Bear Medicine Men; Arikara Ledger Artists; the Navajo Delegation of 1874; Isaac Many Goats; L. Frank; Speaking from the Earth, We Are Gathering Power; Two Stans; Green Bible; waaRUxtií'u'; Urban Nizhóní; Thomas Short Bull; the Arikara Crazy Dog Society.
Understanding requires you place yourself within their world. Warriors and artists are not like other people. Men together create an immersion. Some of the men promised are women.
Men alone are people who refuse relations. Men together realize that sorrow takes its place in the company of words in the open field of silence. The health of the nation requires every part to complete the whole. Destruction, through hate and extermination, is the wind from an enemy sky threatening us all. The Urban Nizhóní are goats. Power, they possess their own, transforming the artifacts of consumer capitalism into the compost of Armageddon. Their powers of digestion are spiritual, manifest in the real. This is not a metaphor. They are real goats eating real metal and wood, and shitting real goat shit. Isaac Many Goats is their leader.
Part Two:
Putting The Sun Back Into the Sky
The novel continues with the artists (warriors) who have come together, transcending time through language and place. They know art markets and international negotiations—archives and road shows. The economy is in our hands and stomachs as we struggle to control images and narratives. Stories continue to walk the earth; we walk beside them. Isaac Many Goats, his Urban Nizhóní and NIKIL in her studio of the street continue into part two.
Putting The Sun Back Into the Sky describes a different beginning, post treaties intended to end The Indian Wars. In this beginning, place defines our world. We retain possession. Our souls cannot be purchased. Our words become weapons. They travel these newly structured networks, one reservation to another, and one city to another. This is a story of what we (Arikara, Mandan, Hidatsa, Sioux, and Diné) share: experience and power.
Putting The Sun Back Into the Sky opens with connections and conversations between Indians of all Nations, reflecting new alliances, new understandings, and our varied responses to the white man wanting us to make our heads one. These moments of unity reflect a response to our American Heritage, a shared experience under United States' occupation, a belief among the colonists that they have succeeded: The government has made us Indians—our heads are one.
Putting The Sun Back Into the Sky declares: it is best for humans to be human. We eat. We shit. We make survival. Genocide is a mold that grows on every surface. Dead Indians ferment the mind. We live by staying alive.
A season of stories continues: Short Bull; the Ghost Dance; Wounded Knee; One Kernel of Corn Woman; Stuwi; Garbage Warrior; Pine Ridge Earthship; MHA Nation Direct Living; White Headed Eagle addresses the Great Black Father; The Horse and the Hoe; the Gun and the Loyalty of Dogs; the Forgotten Ear; Pawnee Grass Dance, the Diné Policy Institute; and Isaac Many Goats and his Urban Nizhóní.
Putting The Sun Back Into the Sky ends as Isaac Many Goats and his Urban Nizhóní make their way along this warpath, north to the MHA Nation, among the descendants of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, among kitchen and cornfield warriors, those who keep the stories through action. They are those, like Gertrude Stein in WARS I HAVE SEEN, who say: "A long war like this makes you realize the society you really prefer." They run the food joints that can't pass code, publicly declaring our existence. These people live in their own language. They are who they are, strong enough to face the emotion life raises, reaching into the unknown and developing a relationship with it. They live by staying alive. They know war is weak; it cannot destroy everything. They know books and peach orchards can be burnt, but the people go on.
You can read the novel at Urban Nizhóní.
Epigraph:
"A man by himself was nothing, a shout in the wind. But men together, each acting for each other and as one—even a strong wind from an enemy sky had to respect their power."
Part One:
Those Who Thunder
The novel opens to a moment when worlds collide and the people must learn a new language. They must translate between peoples and desires. War: the White Man wants them (Arikara, Mandan, Hidatsa) to make their heads one (becoming Indians, then becoming Americans). The people desire and are responsible to remain Arikara, Mandan and Hidatsa. Part one introduces "those who thunder" through a process of immersion, revealing the way stories walk among us. Like Dorothy Allison's A River of Names the novel is season of stories you step into. You let it wash over you, not attempting to still bits, hoping to identify one drop of water from another.
Indians are not a naked running wild. We live a disciplined life. Reciprocity shapes every relation. War involves a question of enemies. The novel defines these questions of war and warriors. There are no chapter breaks, just a season of stories, one following the other. Illustrating McNikle's point that man alone was nothing. The work assumes and requires the reader develop fluency, through immersion in the oral tradition. Those Who Thunder's narrative cycle and language considers the nature of warriors, war and power, illustrating the role warrior societies have in maintaining order—social and military, among relations and enemies. The novel turns over a stone of truth: once we had each other, that was a lot to have, and that was a lot to lose.
Those Who Thunder refuse to make their heads one and refuse hate. They reveal the way stories provide direction and power through cycles, repetitions, epics and continuity. Part One begins: "The season is here and stories are evenings, one following the other." The first story framing the season, and the entire novel is of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. Alfred, one of the novel's two storytellers begins: "Wah. Now I will tell you about the white man's Dream that we make our heads one."
A season of stories: Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851; NIKIL©; Four Bears the Mandan; Karl Bodmer; Language Is Life; Miss Navajo Nation; The Scalped Man; Mato Tope; Francis A. Chardon; Not Afraid of the Enemy; The Arikara Bear Medicine Men; Arikara Ledger Artists; the Navajo Delegation of 1874; Isaac Many Goats; L. Frank; Speaking from the Earth, We Are Gathering Power; Two Stans; Green Bible; waaRUxtií'u'; Urban Nizhóní; Thomas Short Bull; the Arikara Crazy Dog Society.
Understanding requires you place yourself within their world. Warriors and artists are not like other people. Men together create an immersion. Some of the men promised are women.
Men alone are people who refuse relations. Men together realize that sorrow takes its place in the company of words in the open field of silence. The health of the nation requires every part to complete the whole. Destruction, through hate and extermination, is the wind from an enemy sky threatening us all. The Urban Nizhóní are goats. Power, they possess their own, transforming the artifacts of consumer capitalism into the compost of Armageddon. Their powers of digestion are spiritual, manifest in the real. This is not a metaphor. They are real goats eating real metal and wood, and shitting real goat shit. Isaac Many Goats is their leader.
Part Two:
Putting The Sun Back Into the Sky
The novel continues with the artists (warriors) who have come together, transcending time through language and place. They know art markets and international negotiations—archives and road shows. The economy is in our hands and stomachs as we struggle to control images and narratives. Stories continue to walk the earth; we walk beside them. Isaac Many Goats, his Urban Nizhóní and NIKIL in her studio of the street continue into part two.
Putting The Sun Back Into the Sky describes a different beginning, post treaties intended to end The Indian Wars. In this beginning, place defines our world. We retain possession. Our souls cannot be purchased. Our words become weapons. They travel these newly structured networks, one reservation to another, and one city to another. This is a story of what we (Arikara, Mandan, Hidatsa, Sioux, and Diné) share: experience and power.
Putting The Sun Back Into the Sky opens with connections and conversations between Indians of all Nations, reflecting new alliances, new understandings, and our varied responses to the white man wanting us to make our heads one. These moments of unity reflect a response to our American Heritage, a shared experience under United States' occupation, a belief among the colonists that they have succeeded: The government has made us Indians—our heads are one.
Putting The Sun Back Into the Sky declares: it is best for humans to be human. We eat. We shit. We make survival. Genocide is a mold that grows on every surface. Dead Indians ferment the mind. We live by staying alive.
A season of stories continues: Short Bull; the Ghost Dance; Wounded Knee; One Kernel of Corn Woman; Stuwi; Garbage Warrior; Pine Ridge Earthship; MHA Nation Direct Living; White Headed Eagle addresses the Great Black Father; The Horse and the Hoe; the Gun and the Loyalty of Dogs; the Forgotten Ear; Pawnee Grass Dance, the Diné Policy Institute; and Isaac Many Goats and his Urban Nizhóní.
Putting The Sun Back Into the Sky ends as Isaac Many Goats and his Urban Nizhóní make their way along this warpath, north to the MHA Nation, among the descendants of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, among kitchen and cornfield warriors, those who keep the stories through action. They are those, like Gertrude Stein in WARS I HAVE SEEN, who say: "A long war like this makes you realize the society you really prefer." They run the food joints that can't pass code, publicly declaring our existence. These people live in their own language. They are who they are, strong enough to face the emotion life raises, reaching into the unknown and developing a relationship with it. They live by staying alive. They know war is weak; it cannot destroy everything. They know books and peach orchards can be burnt, but the people go on.
You can read the novel at Urban Nizhóní.
19 July 2012
Obsolescence
In Beyond the Writer's Workshop: New Ways to Write Creative Nonfiction Carol Bly presents a challenging project: 100 stories.
She suggests we ask children to endeavor to learn, verbatim, 100 stories by the age of 18. She does not, as emphatically or clearly, state that this attempt, this devotion, requires they have access to 100 stories, and a person to listen to their recitations. I ask that you keep this in mind as you read along and determine how this project can work for you (regardless of your age).
Bly argues for the merits of this project, offering the following observations:
1. Storytellers use Language.
2. If children are asked to memorize great stories—they will use classic language.
3. They will hear themselves speaking great words.
4. They will hear themselves narrating the lives of creatures very unlike themselves.
5. They will directly experience something other.
This lays the groundwork for many things.
I ask you to add to the notion of classic languages, the project of learning and using ancestral languages (often considered endangered, impracticable, extinct, or obsolete) for your own 100 Stories project.
Bly further argues that memorizing and telling 100 stories (to listeners) lays the foundation for empathy. Children will fill their mind with classical feelings and humor. She also writes, for the purpose of this project, "do not translate the language of each story into something familiar, current or provincial." She says you will lose the wonder and the tone—I agree and add you will lose much more.
Bly writes: "Children love strangeness if they're not afraid of it, and they are not afraid of it when they get to say the strange words in their own voice. When they tell stories of unlike creatures and unlike places they free-heartedly exercise curiosity about otherness—about things that will never be like what they know."
Further details about the project, as defined by Bly are on pages 163-170.
Some insights I had while reading Bly's project and her understanding of story. Her 100 stories project provides a concrete way (for people who do know how) to relate to the unknown, without killing it. She asks the young storyteller, and the related listener, to allow the mystery of the unknown and to memorize its language. She asks them (us) to relate to others without changing them, or reducing them to the known, the understandable or the same. She asks the young storyteller not to kill others, but to take the details of them into our mind and memorize them. Perhaps so we can recognize them when we encounter them? Perhaps to know they exist, even if we never have the honor of meeting them.
Many might ask who does this?
I do.
We do.
The Urban Nizhóní do.
Many ask who has the time to do this? (Meaning memorizing stories is impossible, or not worthwhile.)
I've heard and been persecuted by the notion that the oral tradition is always one generation from extinction. Stories need someone to tell them. They need someone to listen to them. Given the state of books and libraries I have an easier time now when I make my argument that books and archives are equally vulnerable to loss (by decidedly different means and methods). They need someone to care for them and read them too.
Devoting our lives to the stories that walk among us is more then a contemporary possibility, or a creative nonfiction workshop idea, it is an essential part of the project of life.
This project has merit, especially when you make a devotion to the stories themselves and the ethics of storytelling. Please remember, this project is not founded on theft. Do not go stealing stories. Make an honest and true devotion to story and start there. Start with your own stories, respect them. If you do not have access to them, start asking around, start reading.
She suggests we ask children to endeavor to learn, verbatim, 100 stories by the age of 18. She does not, as emphatically or clearly, state that this attempt, this devotion, requires they have access to 100 stories, and a person to listen to their recitations. I ask that you keep this in mind as you read along and determine how this project can work for you (regardless of your age).
Bly argues for the merits of this project, offering the following observations:
1. Storytellers use Language.
2. If children are asked to memorize great stories—they will use classic language.
3. They will hear themselves speaking great words.
4. They will hear themselves narrating the lives of creatures very unlike themselves.
5. They will directly experience something other.
This lays the groundwork for many things.
I ask you to add to the notion of classic languages, the project of learning and using ancestral languages (often considered endangered, impracticable, extinct, or obsolete) for your own 100 Stories project.
Bly further argues that memorizing and telling 100 stories (to listeners) lays the foundation for empathy. Children will fill their mind with classical feelings and humor. She also writes, for the purpose of this project, "do not translate the language of each story into something familiar, current or provincial." She says you will lose the wonder and the tone—I agree and add you will lose much more.
Bly writes: "Children love strangeness if they're not afraid of it, and they are not afraid of it when they get to say the strange words in their own voice. When they tell stories of unlike creatures and unlike places they free-heartedly exercise curiosity about otherness—about things that will never be like what they know."
Further details about the project, as defined by Bly are on pages 163-170.
Some insights I had while reading Bly's project and her understanding of story. Her 100 stories project provides a concrete way (for people who do know how) to relate to the unknown, without killing it. She asks the young storyteller, and the related listener, to allow the mystery of the unknown and to memorize its language. She asks them (us) to relate to others without changing them, or reducing them to the known, the understandable or the same. She asks the young storyteller not to kill others, but to take the details of them into our mind and memorize them. Perhaps so we can recognize them when we encounter them? Perhaps to know they exist, even if we never have the honor of meeting them.
Many might ask who does this?
I do.
We do.
The Urban Nizhóní do.
Many ask who has the time to do this? (Meaning memorizing stories is impossible, or not worthwhile.)
I've heard and been persecuted by the notion that the oral tradition is always one generation from extinction. Stories need someone to tell them. They need someone to listen to them. Given the state of books and libraries I have an easier time now when I make my argument that books and archives are equally vulnerable to loss (by decidedly different means and methods). They need someone to care for them and read them too.
Devoting our lives to the stories that walk among us is more then a contemporary possibility, or a creative nonfiction workshop idea, it is an essential part of the project of life.
This project has merit, especially when you make a devotion to the stories themselves and the ethics of storytelling. Please remember, this project is not founded on theft. Do not go stealing stories. Make an honest and true devotion to story and start there. Start with your own stories, respect them. If you do not have access to them, start asking around, start reading.
18 July 2012
Novels
"The situation [K. looking for the crime himself—in his actions and history] is not at all unreal: this is actually the way some simple women hounded by misfortune will wonder: what have I done wrong? And begin to comb her past, examining not only her actions but her words and her secret thoughts in an effort to comprehend God's anger." (Kundera, Testaments Betrayed)
I recommend Breon Mitchell's translation of The Trial released as The Trial: A New Translation Based on the Restored Text, Cornell University Edition, ©1998 Schocken Books Inc.
Just as Beckett sat with Caravaggio's The Beheading of St. John the Baptist, I invite you to sit with The Trial yourself. Read it—not what other people say about it (practicing this week's theme, making a relationship to original art yourself).
I believe it is necessary to experience the novel—for the first or for the 100th time. Give yourself over to the world of it. Do not let go of your own world (you have the responsibility to know that world, reside in it, and participate in it). Be able to hold in place, across time, both worlds simultaneously, the world of the self and the world of the text. Bring them together without losing the integrity of either. From there we can discuss. This is not a forum for me to tell you what to think about a particular piece of art, but to encourage you to read specific pieces (novels in this case) that have changed me.
Calvino devotes the entire chapter (11) of If On A Winter's Night A Traveler to describing readers. [The whole book can be said to be a description of reading, but chapter 11 is particularly pointed.]
Last week's novel entry also discussed being a competent reader.
link: http://jaatarats.blogspot.com/2012/07/novels_11.html
"A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us." I accept a world where this is true. I seek it out.
Hearing Radmilla: http://vimeo.com/13113380
"The creation of an integral self is the work of a lifetime, and although that work can never be completed. It is nonetheless an ethical responsibility." (Morson & Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics)
Ms. Radmilla Cody and Ms. Angela Webb, do not believe in simple women. Many of us comb our pasts, sifting through actions, words, and secret thoughts in an effort to comprehend God's anger. Many of us know the Gods are not angry—in this sense, seeking personal retribution, and exacting daily punishments for our existence. We are not simple women. We have stood before life and made a statement—some times lacking in eloquence, but statements nonetheless.
I recommend Breon Mitchell's translation of The Trial released as The Trial: A New Translation Based on the Restored Text, Cornell University Edition, ©1998 Schocken Books Inc.
Just as Beckett sat with Caravaggio's The Beheading of St. John the Baptist, I invite you to sit with The Trial yourself. Read it—not what other people say about it (practicing this week's theme, making a relationship to original art yourself).
I believe it is necessary to experience the novel—for the first or for the 100th time. Give yourself over to the world of it. Do not let go of your own world (you have the responsibility to know that world, reside in it, and participate in it). Be able to hold in place, across time, both worlds simultaneously, the world of the self and the world of the text. Bring them together without losing the integrity of either. From there we can discuss. This is not a forum for me to tell you what to think about a particular piece of art, but to encourage you to read specific pieces (novels in this case) that have changed me.
Calvino devotes the entire chapter (11) of If On A Winter's Night A Traveler to describing readers. [The whole book can be said to be a description of reading, but chapter 11 is particularly pointed.]
Last week's novel entry also discussed being a competent reader.
link: http://jaatarats.blogspot.com/2012/07/novels_11.html
"A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us." I accept a world where this is true. I seek it out.
Hearing Radmilla: http://vimeo.com/13113380
"The creation of an integral self is the work of a lifetime, and although that work can never be completed. It is nonetheless an ethical responsibility." (Morson & Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics)
Ms. Radmilla Cody and Ms. Angela Webb, do not believe in simple women. Many of us comb our pasts, sifting through actions, words, and secret thoughts in an effort to comprehend God's anger. Many of us know the Gods are not angry—in this sense, seeking personal retribution, and exacting daily punishments for our existence. We are not simple women. We have stood before life and made a statement—some times lacking in eloquence, but statements nonetheless.
11 July 2012
Novels
"Only purely mechanistic relationships are not dialogic, and Dostoevsky categorically denied their importance for understanding and interpreting life and the acts of man. " (M. Bakhtin)
"Thus all relationships among external and internal parts and elements of his novel are dialogic in character, and he structured the novel as a whole as a 'great dialogue.'" (M. Bakhtin)
This is not about Dostoevsky.
This is about being a competent reader.
"What does it mean to be a 'competent reader' of Bakhtin? Surely it means to hear a dialogue, perhaps even to recognize the major voices embedded in it, but it must be a dialogue where no voice is done the 'slightest violence.'" (W. Booth)
Life requires competent readers. Novels require life. Stories describe and ensure our survival, our continuity, our particular understanding of being human. Novels offer us a point of entry into the great dialogue itself. Hearing, recognizing and ensuring that no voice is done even the "slightest violence" can create a world very different from this one. I have taken this project on as a moral and ethical responsibility.
"suffice it to say . . .'the whole' is not a finished entity; it is always a relationship." (W. Booth)
A relationship between the work (art) and the worker (artist). T'áá ałtso ałhił ka'iijée'go. Every thing in the universe is related. A relationship between the speaker and the listener. T'áá ałtso ałhił ka'iijée'go. No word exists in isolation. T'áá ałtso ałhił ka'iijée'go. No person exists without place. T'áá ałtso ałhił ka'iijée'go. Every relation requires an ethics of exchange, an agreement between beings, a willingness to be inside oneself while another is wholely inside themselves as well. Unity and empathy are not achieved by dissolution. The great dialogue is an exchange over time and across terrain (metaphysical, ideological, and geographical), where we do not disintegrate, or retain such rigid exteriors that we cannot hear, and perhaps even recognize the major voices.
Recognition requires developing an ear.
Recognition reaquires familiarity.
Recognition requires vulnerability and a willingness to being seen yourself.
all quotes are from: Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, Edited and Translated by Caryl Emerson, Introduction by Wayne C. Booth, Theory and History of Literature, Volume 8
"Thus all relationships among external and internal parts and elements of his novel are dialogic in character, and he structured the novel as a whole as a 'great dialogue.'" (M. Bakhtin)
This is not about Dostoevsky.
This is about being a competent reader.
"What does it mean to be a 'competent reader' of Bakhtin? Surely it means to hear a dialogue, perhaps even to recognize the major voices embedded in it, but it must be a dialogue where no voice is done the 'slightest violence.'" (W. Booth)
Life requires competent readers. Novels require life. Stories describe and ensure our survival, our continuity, our particular understanding of being human. Novels offer us a point of entry into the great dialogue itself. Hearing, recognizing and ensuring that no voice is done even the "slightest violence" can create a world very different from this one. I have taken this project on as a moral and ethical responsibility.
"suffice it to say . . .'the whole' is not a finished entity; it is always a relationship." (W. Booth)
A relationship between the work (art) and the worker (artist). T'áá ałtso ałhił ka'iijée'go. Every thing in the universe is related. A relationship between the speaker and the listener. T'áá ałtso ałhił ka'iijée'go. No word exists in isolation. T'áá ałtso ałhił ka'iijée'go. No person exists without place. T'áá ałtso ałhił ka'iijée'go. Every relation requires an ethics of exchange, an agreement between beings, a willingness to be inside oneself while another is wholely inside themselves as well. Unity and empathy are not achieved by dissolution. The great dialogue is an exchange over time and across terrain (metaphysical, ideological, and geographical), where we do not disintegrate, or retain such rigid exteriors that we cannot hear, and perhaps even recognize the major voices.
Recognition requires developing an ear.
Recognition reaquires familiarity.
Recognition requires vulnerability and a willingness to being seen yourself.
all quotes are from: Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, Edited and Translated by Caryl Emerson, Introduction by Wayne C. Booth, Theory and History of Literature, Volume 8
04 July 2012
Novels
Almost everyone agrees: Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves.
"You told me that that man we visited today, the one with the hollow eyes, put an end to slavery, huh? But I'm afraid that our people are still being bought and sold, even though they are dead—and have been for hundreds of years! Even worse, some of the people are not whole. They remain in bits and pieces, and yet these people are also being traded, bought and sold, like so many sheep! When does it stop?"
Anna Lee Walters, Ghost Singer
While the nation has been celebrating Juneteenth—"the oldest known celebration commemorating the end of slavery in the United States"— few know that the Emancipation Proclamation, issued on January 1, 1863, was not applied to Indian slaves. Our slavery was not regarded involuntary. When Union soldiers reached Galveston, Texas, on June 19th,1865, with news that the civil war had ended and slaves were freed Indian slaves, Navajos among them, were still being held in bondage. Joint Resolution No. 65 was passed five years after the Emancipation Proclamation, on July 27, 1868. The resolution gave "General William T. Sherman power/authority to use the most efficient means at his disposal to reclaim from bondage the women and children of Navajo and other tribes then held in bondage and return them to their respective reservations."
New Mexicans resisted and fought. They were successful and maintained their hold, culturally and legally, upon their slaves. Revealing that "[l]aw . . .is merely that complex of rules which has the coercive power of the state behind it." (Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study)
"For the most part, Indians carried to Rio Grande settlements and sold into slavery were lost forever to both tribe and kinsmen—as no treaty clause could induce New Mexicans to release property they had paid as high as $200 per head for." (Lynn Baily, Indian Slave Trade in the Southwest)
Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter began as a novel.
I'm not suggesting you read it.
Briefly, (from the film adaptation):
"History remembers the battle but forgets the blood."
"However history remembers me before I was president, it shall only remember a fraction of the truth."
"I shall always think of myself first and foremost, as a hunter."
"I shall kill them all."
I've written about Lincoln and his historical record before: http://reidgomez.blogspot.com/2009/02/ke-heathens-and-homosexuals.html
Vampires want a nation of their own.
"Eye Killer awakened beneath a shroud of soil. Sand and dead wood pressed upon his body. He worked the muscles of his arms and flexed each cord in his hands, relishing the pull of reknitted tendons. Taut as bowstrings, he thought. And at the tip of each finger, arrowheads of iron." A. A. Carr, Eye Killers
Vile necromancers—we have warriors too: Johnnie Navajo (Ghost Singer), Anna and Wilbur Snake (Ghost Singer), Nasbah Navajo (Ghost Singer), Michael Roanhorse (Eye Killers), and Diana Logan (Eye Killers)
"Truth is facing ourselves, and seeing what we is, and swallowing the taste of it. We have to know this to live and to keep on living."
Anna Lee Walters, Ghost Singer
For the truth about slavery read: Ghost Singer
For the truth about vampires read: Eye Killers
"You told me that that man we visited today, the one with the hollow eyes, put an end to slavery, huh? But I'm afraid that our people are still being bought and sold, even though they are dead—and have been for hundreds of years! Even worse, some of the people are not whole. They remain in bits and pieces, and yet these people are also being traded, bought and sold, like so many sheep! When does it stop?"
Anna Lee Walters, Ghost Singer
While the nation has been celebrating Juneteenth—"the oldest known celebration commemorating the end of slavery in the United States"— few know that the Emancipation Proclamation, issued on January 1, 1863, was not applied to Indian slaves. Our slavery was not regarded involuntary. When Union soldiers reached Galveston, Texas, on June 19th,1865, with news that the civil war had ended and slaves were freed Indian slaves, Navajos among them, were still being held in bondage. Joint Resolution No. 65 was passed five years after the Emancipation Proclamation, on July 27, 1868. The resolution gave "General William T. Sherman power/authority to use the most efficient means at his disposal to reclaim from bondage the women and children of Navajo and other tribes then held in bondage and return them to their respective reservations."
New Mexicans resisted and fought. They were successful and maintained their hold, culturally and legally, upon their slaves. Revealing that "[l]aw . . .is merely that complex of rules which has the coercive power of the state behind it." (Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study)
"For the most part, Indians carried to Rio Grande settlements and sold into slavery were lost forever to both tribe and kinsmen—as no treaty clause could induce New Mexicans to release property they had paid as high as $200 per head for." (Lynn Baily, Indian Slave Trade in the Southwest)
Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter began as a novel.
I'm not suggesting you read it.
Briefly, (from the film adaptation):
"History remembers the battle but forgets the blood."
"However history remembers me before I was president, it shall only remember a fraction of the truth."
"I shall always think of myself first and foremost, as a hunter."
"I shall kill them all."
I've written about Lincoln and his historical record before: http://reidgomez.blogspot.com/2009/02/ke-heathens-and-homosexuals.html
Vampires want a nation of their own.
"Eye Killer awakened beneath a shroud of soil. Sand and dead wood pressed upon his body. He worked the muscles of his arms and flexed each cord in his hands, relishing the pull of reknitted tendons. Taut as bowstrings, he thought. And at the tip of each finger, arrowheads of iron." A. A. Carr, Eye Killers
Vile necromancers—we have warriors too: Johnnie Navajo (Ghost Singer), Anna and Wilbur Snake (Ghost Singer), Nasbah Navajo (Ghost Singer), Michael Roanhorse (Eye Killers), and Diana Logan (Eye Killers)
"Truth is facing ourselves, and seeing what we is, and swallowing the taste of it. We have to know this to live and to keep on living."
Anna Lee Walters, Ghost Singer
For the truth about slavery read: Ghost Singer
For the truth about vampires read: Eye Killers
28 June 2012
Novels
"If the novel should really disappear, it will do so not because it has exhausted its powers but because it exists in a world grown alien to it." (Milan Kundera, The Art of the Novel)
Skins, Whiteclay, Alcoholics and Alcoholism
Alcoholics need to stop drinking. There is nothing easier to say or to accomplish. We all have our own way. Some take the steps. Other's take the waters. Some just white knuckle it and end up being sober a-holes everyone avoids or hands a cold one.
There's nothing poetic about pissing your pants and waking up somewhere you don't remember going. Before they knew me, someone told me, "alcoholics tell the best stories." Someone else answered, "that's 'cause they're liars."
Lately I've been following the popular debate about Whiteclay. The heat got turned up with Ms. Sawyers's report and the Lakota response "We're more than that!" I watched the youth's response first. I don't have a television, but their video was making its way around the electric circuit. Then I spent a day slowly dragging my way through Sawyer's original segment on You Tube. I made notes, sent out several inquiries, planned an essay for my blog K'é. Frustrated I destroyed what I had done, threw out my notes and here I am writing about the same ole shhht. I can't shake it. More important I can't loose myself from the magnet of mass media that relentlessly pulls me towards it: should we boycott the brewers? how do we deal with Whiteclay? How did we come to this? Why these people? What can we do about them?
I am one of them.
I come back to the fact that alcoholics need to quit drinking. Keep it simple. No one can do it for you.
If you want to talk about Pine Ridge, Whiteclay or Indians you need to talk about colonization. And who wants to talk about that?
Adrian C. Louis does.
For starters read his novel: Skins
Make the commitment to open it and read it. Don't watch the movie! (If you really need to see Eric Schweig watch Big Eden, you won't be disappointed.)
Where to find it: Louis's Website or Ellis Press
Read the novel.
Kundera's words challenge—writers and readers. Can we sustain the energy and the care necessary to follow where a writer leads. If we follow them into their world, our world may take the shape of something we are, at our core, afraid of. The novel's world may ask more from us than we care to give, even in waking moments. A good reading involves stepping into the novel's language and being changed.
"I have always, deeply, violently, detested those who look for a position (political, philosophical, religious, whatever) in a work of art rather than searching it for an effort to know, to understand, to grasp this or that aspect of reality." (Milan Kundera, Testaments Betrayed)
Read the novel. Put yourself among the people of Pine Ridge, not above them, or beneath them, but face them as the human beings they are.
Kundera wrote, "If the novel should really disappear, it will do so not because it has exhausted its powers but because it exists in a world grown alien to it," in 1986. In the same paragraph he asked "Hasn't it already mined all its possibilities, all its knowledge, and all its forms?. . .Isn't it more like a cemetery of missed opportunities, of unheard appeals?"
Kundera is especially tuned to the appeals of: play, dream, thought and time.
Louis's work makes several appeals, appeals to metaphysics and personhood. What constitutes a person? And what shapes our place in the cosmos? His world is familiar to me, and still I am changed. Yet I have not answered the question: has our world grown alien to it? To answer that we must look intimately at specific novels and our willingness to allow them space in our lives—paying for them, reading them, considering them sincerely enough to allow them the power to change who we are and how we live. In effect giving ourselves over to them in a way utterly impossible via electronics or propaganda documentaries.
Skins, Whiteclay, Alcoholics and Alcoholism
Alcoholics need to stop drinking. There is nothing easier to say or to accomplish. We all have our own way. Some take the steps. Other's take the waters. Some just white knuckle it and end up being sober a-holes everyone avoids or hands a cold one.
There's nothing poetic about pissing your pants and waking up somewhere you don't remember going. Before they knew me, someone told me, "alcoholics tell the best stories." Someone else answered, "that's 'cause they're liars."
Lately I've been following the popular debate about Whiteclay. The heat got turned up with Ms. Sawyers's report and the Lakota response "We're more than that!" I watched the youth's response first. I don't have a television, but their video was making its way around the electric circuit. Then I spent a day slowly dragging my way through Sawyer's original segment on You Tube. I made notes, sent out several inquiries, planned an essay for my blog K'é. Frustrated I destroyed what I had done, threw out my notes and here I am writing about the same ole shhht. I can't shake it. More important I can't loose myself from the magnet of mass media that relentlessly pulls me towards it: should we boycott the brewers? how do we deal with Whiteclay? How did we come to this? Why these people? What can we do about them?
I am one of them.
I come back to the fact that alcoholics need to quit drinking. Keep it simple. No one can do it for you.
If you want to talk about Pine Ridge, Whiteclay or Indians you need to talk about colonization. And who wants to talk about that?
Adrian C. Louis does.
For starters read his novel: Skins
Make the commitment to open it and read it. Don't watch the movie! (If you really need to see Eric Schweig watch Big Eden, you won't be disappointed.)
Where to find it: Louis's Website or Ellis Press
Read the novel.
Kundera's words challenge—writers and readers. Can we sustain the energy and the care necessary to follow where a writer leads. If we follow them into their world, our world may take the shape of something we are, at our core, afraid of. The novel's world may ask more from us than we care to give, even in waking moments. A good reading involves stepping into the novel's language and being changed.
"I have always, deeply, violently, detested those who look for a position (political, philosophical, religious, whatever) in a work of art rather than searching it for an effort to know, to understand, to grasp this or that aspect of reality." (Milan Kundera, Testaments Betrayed)
Read the novel. Put yourself among the people of Pine Ridge, not above them, or beneath them, but face them as the human beings they are.
Kundera wrote, "If the novel should really disappear, it will do so not because it has exhausted its powers but because it exists in a world grown alien to it," in 1986. In the same paragraph he asked "Hasn't it already mined all its possibilities, all its knowledge, and all its forms?. . .Isn't it more like a cemetery of missed opportunities, of unheard appeals?"
Kundera is especially tuned to the appeals of: play, dream, thought and time.
Louis's work makes several appeals, appeals to metaphysics and personhood. What constitutes a person? And what shapes our place in the cosmos? His world is familiar to me, and still I am changed. Yet I have not answered the question: has our world grown alien to it? To answer that we must look intimately at specific novels and our willingness to allow them space in our lives—paying for them, reading them, considering them sincerely enough to allow them the power to change who we are and how we live. In effect giving ourselves over to them in a way utterly impossible via electronics or propaganda documentaries.
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