Tuesday, December 19, 2023

BEING OURSELVES

Is anyone ever really themselves to others? Or do we try hard to "fit in" even when the binds of that "fitting in" feel like a straight jacket? I have always been an independent thinker, but as I grew older, I found myself noticing the societal buckles had loosened quite a lot over my past 35 years. I wasn't aware when the last buckle snapped open. But that last snap has created an advanced somewhat curmudgeonly freedom that is filled with hazards, but also with my own truths and some surprising results. Margaret Buffie




To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. Ralph Waldo Emerson


Ralph Waldo Emerson



Ralph Waldo Emerson



This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man. 
Polonious: via William Shakespeare


 Shakespeare in the likeness of Martin Droeshout's etching.


William Shakespeare Artist unknown



There may be a great fire in our hearts, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke. Vincent Van Gogh 
Vincent Van Gogh Self Portrait


Vincent Van Gogh 




We only become what we are by the radical and deep seated refusal of that which others have made of us.  Jean Paul Sartre

Jean Paul Sartre


Jean Paul Sartre, artist (as yet) unknown



If you don't get lost, there's a chance you may never be found.
Anonymous




I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room. Ray Bradbury 


Ray Bradbury by Sci-Fi Artist L.J. Dopp


Ray Bradbury



              ... no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
                                            Eleanor Roosevelt

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt


 Eleanor Roosevelt



And, indeed, if you think you're a genius of something, what you achieve is very much according to your expectations; if you think you're no good, you're not going to get anywhere. Diana Wynne Jones

Diana Wynne Jones


Diana Wynne Jones




Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity, to what we would have others think of us. Jane Austen
The only two "authenticated" drawings of Jane Austen
Jane Austen

Jane Austen By her sister Charlotte



Two roads diverged in a wood and I  
 took the one less traveled by, 
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost

Robert Frost



Robert Frost by  Ercole Cartotto





Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.
Henry David Thoreau

------------
I was not designed to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. 
Henry David Thoreau






I think the reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself. Rita Mae Brown

Rita Mae Brown



I often warn people: "Somewhere along the way, someone is going to tell you, 'There is no "I" in team.' What you should tell them is, 'Maybe not. But there is an "I" in independence, individuality and integrity. George Carlin 

George Carlin

George Carlin by Asamamoru



And my personal favourite!!

The things that make me different are the things that make me.
A.A. Milne



Monday, November 6, 2023

Don't tell me the moon is shining....

 
 


Writing With a Painter's Eye

"Don't tell me the moon is shining: show me the glint of light on broken glass."
Anton Chekov

In this painting, glints of the moon on the road, the walls and the woman.



 
 
 
 
I understand and agree with Chekov's point about how to use language to create strong imagery for the reader.  

As a writer (and an artist) I have always "seen" the images I write about in my head - very clearly. Some writers have told me they don't see the things they are writing about in their mind's eye as they write. When I worked with novice writers, I talked about using their inner eye while writing, in order to describe in words any vibrant visual images they wanted to create in their stories. Many had no idea what I meant.

 
I would try to explain with this example. "When you go for a walk, look up a the sky and try to describe in words in your head what you are seeing. Do the lines of Canada geese flying over look like just a bunch of geese passing overhead? Or do they look like they are playing "crack the whip" in the ice-blue sky"?
 
As a writer and artist I am always looking, looking, looking. When I see something that pleases me, or catches my eyes, or shocks me visually, I try to write it in my mind the way I see it. I probably look a bit gormless at those times, but it works for me. I carry little notebooks to jot down images as well.
 
I think it’s important that we, as writers, use part of “writing time” to look, to examine, to study our  worlds - to help train that inner eye, so our writing will conjure up clear images in our readers’ minds.
 
It seems to me there is a very strong link between visual art and the art of writing. When Chekov wrote, "Don't tell me the moon is shining: show me the glint of light on broken glass." I believe he was telling writers to "see" -- to paint and sculpt and create vivid images in their minds as they write, not to simply state the facts by telling us what we must see. We have all heard the phrase “Show, not tell.”  He said it the best.
 
I decided to see if I could express this connection I feel between writing and “seeing” - by searching out artists and their paintings and pairing them with writers' quotes. I hope this brings Chekov's image of “show not tell” to life in an interesting way - using the expressions and descriptions and visions of the moon and moonlight by writers and painters.


 
 
 
 
Tom Thomson "Moonlight and Birches"
 
Have you seen the bush by moonlight, from the train, go running by? Blackened log and stump and sapling, ghostly trees all dead and dry; Here a patch of glassy water; there a glimpse of mystic sky?
On the Night Train, Henry Lawson
 
 
 
 
 
 
"Moon" JMW Turner
 
The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The highwayman came riding,
      up to the old inn-door.
The Highwayman, Alfred Noyes
 
 
 

 
"Moonlight" Winslow Homer 
 
 How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here we will sit and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet
harmony.
Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare
 
 
 
 
"The Starry Night", Vincent Van Gogh
 
Crazed through much child-bearing
The moon is staggering in the sky:
Moon-struck by the despairing
glances of her wandering eye
We grope, and grope in vain
For children born of her pain.
The Crazed Moon, William Butler Yeats
 
 
 
 
 
 Dieppe Sketchbook
"Moonlight on the Sea"
JMW Turner
 
 I sat by night beside a cold lake
And touched things smoother than moonlight on still water
But the moon in this cloud sea is not human
And there is no shore, no intimacy,
Only the start of space, the road to suns
Transcanada, F.R. Scott
  









"Dog with Ladder", Joan Miro
 
The squalling cat and the squeaking mouse
The howling dog by the door of the house
The bat that lies in bed at noon,
All love to be out by the light of the moon.
The Moon, Robert Louis Stevenson
 
 
 
 
"Ladder to the Moon" Georgia O'Keefe (Inspired by Miro's painting)

 
That I could clamber to the frozen moon
And draw the ladder after me.
Arthur Schopenhauer, quoted from "Parerga and Paralipomena"
 
 
 
 
 
"Lovers in Moonlight" Marc Chagall
 
Two Lovers watched the new moon hold
The old moon in her tight embrace.
Said she: "There's mother, pale and old,
and drawing near her resting place."
Said he, "Be mine, and with me wed,"
Moon high she stared ... and shook her head.
 Moon Song, Robert William Service
 
 
 
 

 
"The Wandering Moon" William Blake
 
The night walked down the sky with the moon in her hand.
 A Memory, Frederic Lawrence Knowles
 
 
 
 
 
 "Harvest Moon" Samuel Palmer
 
 To lie on the bottom of the sky, like a gold doubloon.
The harvest moon has come,
Booming softly through heaven, like a bassoon.
And the earth replies all night, like a deep drum.

So people can't sleep,
So they go out where elms and oak trees keep
A kneeling vigil, in a religious hush.
The harvest moon has come! 
"The Harvest Moon" Ted Hughes
 
 
 
 
 "Moonlight" Edvard Munch
 
 And then as now you hung above those trees
illuminating all. But to my eyes
Your face seemed clouded, tremulous
From the tears that rose beneath my lids
So Painful was my life: and is, my
Dearest moon: its tenor does not change
And yet, memory and numbering of epochs
Of my grief is pleasing to me. 
 To the Moon, Giacomo Leopardi
 
 
 
 
"Moonlight Spiritual" Bernard Hoyes 
 
 
Music is moonlight in the gloomy night of life.
Titan, Jean Paul Richter
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


Thursday, September 28, 2023

"Almost Forgotten" Women Writers - Stella Gibbons"



Stella Gibbons:





Stella Gibbons was born in 1902 in London, England. She studied journalism at University College and worked for a variety of newspapers. She was the author of twenty-three novels and also published short story collections and books of poems. She died in 1989 at the age of 87. 


Cold Comfort Farm: 

Gibbons is best known for her 1932 novel Cold Comfort Farm

As Gibbons wrote Cold Comfort Farm ... "she believed she might have a hit on her hands early on: the girls who typed her manuscript laughed out loud at it, and when it was published in September 1932 this was proved to be true." (The Guardian c 1933)

The public loved this book it, even if one critic was convinced that Stella Gibbons was a pseudonym for Evelyn Waugh. 


The next year the novel won the literary award Prix Étranger of the Prix Femina-Vie heureuse, which was rarely awarded to "comic novels", and this choice by the judges deeply incensed  the arrogant and entitled Virginia Woolf. "I was enraged to see they gave the £40 to Gibbons," Woolf wrote to Elizabeth Bowen. "Still, now you and Rosamond (Lehmann) can join in blaming her. Who is she? What is this book?".


(This is why writers should always dispose of certain old letters!) Woolf was terribly snobbish about "non-literary" writers. After all, the literary writers she admired were the only real writers (a divine group in which she included herself) -  and this letter certainly doesn't put her in a favourable light, to say the least! But I have heard remarks like this all of my years of writing - awards rarely make anyone happy, other than the winner!












I read Cold Comfort Farm some years ago and again more recently. It is sophisticated, hilarious, strangely dark and unsettling  - but for all that, it is mainly a pointed parody of the verdant, bucolic regional school of writers like Mary Webb, Thomas Hardy, Emily Bronte and especially D.H.Lawrence whose agrarian lustful novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover became a "cause célèbre" almost forty years later.  Before that, only edited versions had been released to the public. When the full unexpurgated version was published in 1960 by Penguin, their daring decision led to a trial under the Obscene Publications Act - where a jury eventually found Penguin not guilty. Lady Chatterley's Lover became revered after that - because of the crusade against censorship - and for its form of extravagantly descriptive writing about a sexual relationship between a young stonemason and Lady Constance Chatterley. 

But this is about Stella Gibbons, not D.H. Lawrence.  The (to some) aureate writing of many of these writers like Lawrence was just too over the top for many critics - and this appeared to be fodder for Stella Gibbons who wrote Cold Comfort Farm - a wickedly funny masterpiece of her own  - parodying this form of (arguably) overwrought pastoral writing. And I, for one, am glad she did.


Recently, I decided to look at some of Stella's other books.  I found that Vintage had brought her best ones out again. Exciting! But which to choose? I read a few articles, and it appeared that three of these novels - Westwood, Starlight, and Conference at Cold Comfort Farm, were highly recommended. So I ordered Starlight and Conference at Cold Comfort Farm. 








I started reading Conference at Cold Comfort Farm and then switched to Starlight, because it kept calling to me. On a superficial level, Starlight's cover promised something a little more intriguing. I will go back to "Conference" soon, because the parts of it I read were clever and funny - such as using the "modern out-there" art to parody the self-congratulatory artists of the mid-forties. The arrival of the the artists and other "thinkers" attending the Conference ruled over by the inept Mr. Mybug has to be one of the best satires about the burgeoning "modern 20th C artist". Gibbons' treatment of their fervent mandate;  the idea that all they needed was to be completely different to anything before them in their art in order to be noticed and celebrated. 

The conference was to be called the, "Conference of International Thinkers' Group"

Her descriptions of these creative people is wonderful. The artists of the novel are stunningly similar to some of today's installment artists or anti-artists  - some of whom destroy their art right after making it. Her take on them, and others at the conference, is hilarious. In the novel the artists are referred to as "transistorists." Included in this group are also writers, sculptors, neo-scientists, nutritionists and others. All crazy as loons.

Her characters are described perfectly - with a few short short, pithy observations from Flora. A good example of this is when Flora meets Mr. Mybug again after a number of years has passed and reflects "that the passing years had done nothing to mitigate Mr. Mybug's boundless asininity."  I will definitely return to it!


Starlight:





Starlight. Mmm. Whole different story. While reading Starlight, I kept wondering how Stella Gibbon's mind worked. No holds barred brain comes to mind. Brave writing. Risky writing, in a way, too. I envy her freedom to take a very unlikely story and run with it in directions that are pretty bizarre at times and yet strangely believable.

Starlight probably isn't for everyone, for it's deeply atmospheric, sad, hopeful, unpredictable and disturbing. Also droll and wicked. It is about the dank and cold muddy lanes that slant past dilapidated houses in the back byways of post war Britain; it's about old age and poverty, and running away from life. It is also about facing life stalwartly, and accepting the outcome of certain events you have no control over. It is complicated and yet simple. It is unique.

The first characters we meet are two elderly sisters, Gladys Barnes and her sister Annie who live in three unkempt rooms on the middle floor of twin-joined cottages in a cloistered, almost rural, back street of London. They are very close to poverty, but Gladys has a cleaning job that just makes ends meet. She takes care of "invalid" Annie, who sits on their bed all day wearing two coats, and covered in shawls and blankets. Annie wears a balaclava of large proportions on her head. When upset (which is quite often) Annie's small face retreats like a turtle into the depths of the balaclava. Gladys is all business and bustle. They play off each other and yet both and evolve and change as the story moves forward.

Above their small apartment, living in a single room, is another tenant - a peculiar, but gentle old man, Mr. Fisher, who feels compelled to change his name once a week, but who has a determined mission in life. Which you can discover on your own.

There has been news that their shared joint cottage may be sold and all three  become fretful and frightened about losing their homes. 

These characters' lives are, indeed, turned upside down when a "rackman" buys the dual cottage from the previous owner and puts his beautiful, frail wife into the other half of the building. There is something very odd about the wife who seems to be suffering from something ... or some thing that is sucking away her energy. Her husband, Mr. Pearson, appears as  a tough gangster-like figure from the shadows. He both intrigues and frightens the sisters. Mr. Pearson has also hired an Eastern European young woman to tend to his wife. The girl is raw and strange and off-putting. Each character's development is a strong theme in this book as well, but the changes often do not develop the way you expect them to go - which is also fascinating.


 More importantly, at this point in the book, is the question - what is so wrong with Mrs. Pearson? Why is she clearly hiding away in the second half of the old cottage. And why does her only daughter avoid being near her mother and run away to work as rich woman's companion?


Add to that cast, the local Vicar, Mr. Geddes, and his curate  - and throw in a "devilish being" and you have a novel that is unlike any story you have read.  I would advise you to stay away from reader reviews to avoid getting the whole story before you need to. I won't say more about this book, as it is yours to discover and explore.


I think about this novel at the strangest times. I am still trying to decide what it is that makes me wonder about it again and again..... but maybe that is what good writing is meant to do, right? 



-------------------------------------

At the beginning of the book, Stella Gibbons wrote:

The fated people- the
worshippers and poets,
the magicians and lovers - 
who live by the light of the stars


Van Gogh's Starry Night on the Rhone (portion)

I was reminded of Shakespeare's famous line reading this novel:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

(Hamlet to Horatio)