Kathe Koja | Writing about writing

From here.

From what’s seen, what occurs in the environment around you; from the filter of your eyes augmented by the filter of your imagination. From nothing you can name. From books, stories, things you read that made you want to go, immediately, and do likewise. From the conversation you heard on the train, on the stairs, on the way into the building; on the phone in the dark.

They rarely come from writing assignments.

They are unreliable in the best sense: you don’t snap your fingers to make them happen, or dig out a prompt: you don’t do anything at all.  They occur. The more you write, the more they occur. Many of them are charming and useless.  Some are unreachable. Some will always be unreachable; that certainly doesn’t mean you stop reaching for them. Some will change your life. Some will change the lives of others. Some will never be forgotten, maybe.  You’ll never know which ones were which.

Where do ideas come from? Every writer’s conduit is different.

Where do your ideas come from?

[Photo: Marche du Nain Rouge, Detroit, 2012]

… or, how we meet, surprise, and greet each other. Last night Rick and I went to the Book Beat bookstore for a reading and signing by Joseph Mattson, where stories were told of snow and black ice in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and a chomped-off fingertip in a flustered California hospital, and admirers toting bags of illegal samples to signings to thank the author (not last night!). J. Mattson was great fun and we were glad to have met him.

But before the event began, there in the stacks, I saw two artists I already knew, whose work I admire intensely, conjoined between covers – Odd Nerdrum and Christopher Marlowe, one imagining the other in a piece called “Marlowe” in a book called How We Cheat Each Other.

Is there a large intense hilarious affair going on at all times, wherein mind uses art to speak to mind, and distance is just a fiction (albeit one sometimes coated with black ice)? Maybe the formula is distance equals speed times time, divided by art. Demonstrably, it works.

Normally I start the other way around – with the image of characters; with the words – but this time I began a new way: with paper; with beeswaxed thread; with glue. With patience and excitement and frustration. With elation, when, at the end of the evening’s work, I held in my hand a physical book, made entirely by myself.

There’s something very exciting about this, for a writer whose work has always gone – as if down a conduit; off to the pixies – into the publishing process, to reemerge months and months later, printed and bound. Something greatly pleasurable; something incendiary.

And all thanks to Leon Johnson and Megan O’Connell and Signal-Return, based in Detroit’s historic Eastern Market, making history there themselves, page by page.

… the puppets played: humans playing puppets, and a puppet among them, gleeful and self-contained, borne by a puppeteer in a plague mask and a long black cloak … Watching the characters of the Poppy come to life in this way meant something different to those present who were new to the story; those who knew the story well; the actors; and the writer. 

Having considered and created the script for this performance event – an exercise in performative fiction: not only a script, not only the book, but an ongoing amalgamation of the story itself, incorporating the performed events that came before this evening, with the page and its language as the guide – to watch it happen in real time, real actors and a real puppet and the shadow puppetry on the screen; the video projections of earlier moments – call them chapters – of the story, was a way to see the story in motion, to observe and learn … And it was a joy.

And being able to do so at the Detroit Institute of Arts, surrounded and buoyed by art, the doors of our playing space facing the puppet cases holding citizens of the stage, just like us – it was an amazing evening. One night only, standing room only (we had to turn away some would-be patrons), ephemeral and unforgettable – what a show!

[Photo credits: KK, Rick Lieder, Diane Cheklich, Gary Schwartz, KK. Actors: Brooklyn Dimitrie, Vanessa Ellen Hentschel, Mona Lucuis, Steven O'Brien, Annabelle Young.  Puppeteer: Megan Harris, with Pan Loudermilk.]

Do stop and see the puppets, won’t you? [Graphic design by Jackie Zimmerman.]

If we are sighted, we read with our eyes. We take in character – from the story; from the world in the room around us, the bus, the top of the stairway, the cubicle hallway – with our eyes. Actors act with their eyes, as well as with their bodies, their voices, what is said and how; or not.

Watching the auditions for our performance of Under the Poppy – watching the rehearsals – watching the actors, a body quiet in a chair: I’m taking in the story with my own eyes, as if I were reading it again; anew. As a writer this is humbling and exhilarating and so very valuable, seeing what the actors make of the words, seeing how they take in, then decide to use or not use, the rhythms there, finding and making a way with their bodies through the landscape of the text, explorers, buccaneers, tricksters, charmers. Will this change the way I see, the way I work? How can it not? Thank you, actors. I’m watching you.

Under the Poppy comes to the Detroit Institute of Arts – save the date, 2/17/12, 8 PM – a sentence it gives me great pleasure to post. Many thanks to Larry Baranski, DIA director of public programs, for the invitation and hospitality.

Collaborating with filmmaker Diane Cheklich and puppet artist Megan Harris, and co-producing with Julanne Jacobs, we plan to create an atmosphere as darkly pleasurable, as we bring the tale of the Poppy to the halls of the museum, watched – and no doubt watched over – by the puppets of the Paul McPharlin Collection. Come to Detroit and be part of that pleasure. And if you have a top hat, you might want to bring it along, too . . .

Your life is the paintstick and Life is the wall. Tagging allowed. Happy New Year!

Holidays are for giving: this is encoded into our cultural DNA. The right gift for the right person means you yourself are a good person, a wise shopper, a perfect parent, the best BFF/partner/whatever ever.

But do you know how to take?

So much of what writing is is based on learning that very lesson: how to accept, to let go of the way the words “should” go, and thus create the space for what needs to grow: sometimes in silence; sometimes in a long, long silence. Sometimes this is very hard for a writer to accept; sometimes it’s painfully impossible. But it’s what we have to learn to do if the work we need to do is to be done.

And may I suggest that it’s a lesson transferable to daily life as well? Especially now? Don’t worry so much about giving – gifts, help, opinions, egg nog, advice . . . Open your hands. Try to wait, to take, to accept. See what happens. Happy holidays.

“Love Is A Puppet” made its passionate and singular appearance at Victorian Opulence, the elegant phantasmagoria of an evening at District VII Detroit. Jordan Whalen reprised his role as Istvan, and Andrick Siegmund played Gabriel, the very earthy angel, as the audience watched from the secluded booth and perched high up on the stairs. . . . A wonderful performance, a wonderful night. Bravo, gentlemen of the road!