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letterbladeHave had two of my classes so far. The digital arts project tutorial is just about as I'd expected, and Nino wasn't even put off by my crazy pretentious-as-fuck proposed modeling project. The Literature of Artistic Obsession...well, it's a class with Marguerite Feitlowitz. An advanced lit seminar with Marguerite Feitlowitz. I am in gorgeous brilliant pretentious lit heaven. (And I have to read Pygmalion by Thursday. But, frankly, I'm not worried about that yet. Won't be able to buy my copy until tomorrow anyway.)
Marguerite has as a first-day exercise (she did this in the class of hers I was in last term too) a freewrite/brief response bit of in-class writing. She'll give us a page of quotes and we'll respond to one.
This short Utena fic has been eating my brain. Gah. Brilliant.
I'm posting my freewrite because my hands were shaking when I read it aloud in class, so I know I put something more into it than I normally do with these sorts of things. Emotionally *and* intellectually.
"Je est un autre." [I is an other.
--Arthur Rimbaud
I was, at midwinter, earlier today, February 24th, at the ritual and sacrifice and rebirth, and I saw and felt within and without.
How much is art an interior reality? I think of the puny writings of my childhood. Fantasy and science fiction and other worlds, but always the interior. As I grow and have more knowledge of reality, my interior reality intensifies. I acquire the ability to become transparent, or almost. I have felt and seen the roses of spring grow black and white and green around my bare and slender limbs within minutes, and the thorns grew into my skin and drew no blood, for I was bled dry and frozen and yet awaiting my return to life; I the male consort of my terrible and beloved sister-mother-lover-goddess. Midwinter to spring in a few twining moments, before she kissed me upon mouth and phallus with her mouth filled with my blood and returned my sword to my heart in a cascade of light so I might bloom again and be loved on a bed of roses.
For all of this, I was transparent. Form my soul like glass and words and images come into arrangement; and then I return to my usual self and what I saw and wrote dogs all my waking life and I mutter it to myself in corners.
But surely there must be more than mere becoming? I have always had this imagination. It is only my nascent grown-up definition of reality which makes it unreal, and sends me racing deeper into it, fleet as a red-coated wolf, to pile it up into something exquisite to myself and call it important.
[The question that then dogs me--what is my self? If not my others, what is my self?]
Somehow getting the impression that some of the readings in this class are going to cut too close to home. I've spent how long losing myself in other people's characters? And mostly they are not particularly healthy men to have as shadows. *coughs at Mikage, or whatever his name might be today*
But heightened interior experiences do me good, in their own way, all sorts of them. They keep me from staying all frozen up and walled in. I'd like my feelings to at least be known to myself, and maybe to my art.
And she keeps telling me that I have enough chaos power within me to destroy the world.
Maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to invest myself in my original work again.
I wonder what Becky Godwin will do if I write about werewolves for the short story class.
Marguerite has as a first-day exercise (she did this in the class of hers I was in last term too) a freewrite/brief response bit of in-class writing. She'll give us a page of quotes and we'll respond to one.
This short Utena fic has been eating my brain. Gah. Brilliant.
I'm posting my freewrite because my hands were shaking when I read it aloud in class, so I know I put something more into it than I normally do with these sorts of things. Emotionally *and* intellectually.
"Je est un autre." [I is an other.
--Arthur Rimbaud
I was, at midwinter, earlier today, February 24th, at the ritual and sacrifice and rebirth, and I saw and felt within and without.
How much is art an interior reality? I think of the puny writings of my childhood. Fantasy and science fiction and other worlds, but always the interior. As I grow and have more knowledge of reality, my interior reality intensifies. I acquire the ability to become transparent, or almost. I have felt and seen the roses of spring grow black and white and green around my bare and slender limbs within minutes, and the thorns grew into my skin and drew no blood, for I was bled dry and frozen and yet awaiting my return to life; I the male consort of my terrible and beloved sister-mother-lover-goddess. Midwinter to spring in a few twining moments, before she kissed me upon mouth and phallus with her mouth filled with my blood and returned my sword to my heart in a cascade of light so I might bloom again and be loved on a bed of roses.
For all of this, I was transparent. Form my soul like glass and words and images come into arrangement; and then I return to my usual self and what I saw and wrote dogs all my waking life and I mutter it to myself in corners.
But surely there must be more than mere becoming? I have always had this imagination. It is only my nascent grown-up definition of reality which makes it unreal, and sends me racing deeper into it, fleet as a red-coated wolf, to pile it up into something exquisite to myself and call it important.
[The question that then dogs me--what is my self? If not my others, what is my self?]
Somehow getting the impression that some of the readings in this class are going to cut too close to home. I've spent how long losing myself in other people's characters? And mostly they are not particularly healthy men to have as shadows. *coughs at Mikage, or whatever his name might be today*
But heightened interior experiences do me good, in their own way, all sorts of them. They keep me from staying all frozen up and walled in. I'd like my feelings to at least be known to myself, and maybe to my art.
And she keeps telling me that I have enough chaos power within me to destroy the world.
Maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to invest myself in my original work again.
I wonder what Becky Godwin will do if I write about werewolves for the short story class.
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no subject
Date: Feb. 25th, 2004 03:53 am (UTC)At the risk of being nosy, what sorts of dangers (if any) would that present for you? You're a wonderful writer. Your prose constantly amazes me with its sophistication and style. You're prolific, which implies (to me, at least) a high level of staying-power and an enjoyment (rather than fear) of the work.
I'd love to see your reading list for your Literature of Artistic Obsession seminar.
no subject
Date: Feb. 25th, 2004 04:13 am (UTC)I enjoy the work; I fear the work. Both of those are more surface terms. The amount of personal investment I've had in my fanfiction recently, and the amount of love I've been putting into it fills me with awe--egotistical, perhaps, although I don't particularly control the process so I don't generally consider it as such. If I can put that same energy into original work, if I'll ever be able to...some of my wildest dreams might finally come true.
Recently, I just realized, I've been starting less and starting smaller and finishing more of what I start. (Relatively speaking, anyway. Still not that much. I should just stop promising long works; I and those who read me will be happier that way.) I think this means that something is becoming more honed, more rarified, more constricted. Good, maybe. But I'm twenty. I'm not ready to be constricted in my art yet.
Burble.
"Pygmalion," from Ovid's The Matemorphoses (Chap. X)
Shaw, George Berard, Pygmalion
Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece
James, "The Madonna of the Future" and The Aspern Papers
Kafka, "A Hunger Artist"
Bernhard, The Loser
Ozick, The Messiah of Stockholm
A.S. Byatt, Possession
Duranti, Francesca, The House on Moon Lake
Tsypkin, Summer in Baden-Bade
writing
Date: Mar. 12th, 2004 02:06 am (UTC)into
art
find your terrors face
them
what scares you ?
do it write it failure is impossible/implausible/nothappening
stupid-of-you-to-think-you'd-fail-put-you-self-into everyything
computers are fun-found this. can see it's good. can see it's deep. can see you're scared. can see that's silly
what would make you throw up? maybe that's what you shoud write
wolf writing
Date: Mar. 12th, 2004 02:32 am (UTC)It's only very recently that I've thought of writing as being any sort of introspective or cathartic thing. Strange, I suppose.