Kathe Koja | Writing about writing

Who’s the DJ when you read?

Full disclosure: every novel I write has a soundtrack; Headlong had a lot of Pixies, for example, and Under the Poppy and The Mercury Waltz were buoyed and sustained by Rufus Wainwright, Roxy Music, CocoRosie, Lhasa de Sela, Teddy Thompson …. But those were the songs I heard, wanted to hear, chose to hear, when I wrote the books. Would they be your auditory choices, too? They would be indelibly when you were done reading, wouldn’t they?

And do you really need sound effects?

But I haven’t heard BookTrack in action yet, so I ought to listen, first, before I judge, right?

“[I]t’s been said that the opening line sells a book whilst the closing line sells the author’s next one.” Hmmm. Really? Ugh. Anyway, 100 lines to open the door.

I offer

“You must and will suppose (fair or foul reader, but where’s the difference?) that I suppose a heap of happenings that I had no eye to eye knowledge of or concerning.”

from one of the books I love most in the world, Anthony Burgess’ A Dead Man in Deptford which if you have not read, consider yourself importuned to do so stat, and enjoy its magnificent last line for yourself.

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 great poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe was baptized on this date in 1564, Canterbury, England. The human race was damned lucky to have had him, if only for 29 years.

If you’ve never read him, do yourself an enormous favor, get Doctor Faustus or Edward II (my personal fave), or, if you’re feeling particularly wild, Tamburlaine. “O rare Christopher Marlowe!” Nobody wrote like him, nobody flew higher.

.

… 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.]

Poetry (from ‘poiesis’/ποίησις), a making: forming, creating, or the art of poetry, or a poem) is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities, in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning.

So says Wikipedia … I love that “apparent” more than I can say.

Emily Dickinson. Christopher Marlowe. Rumi.

Do men die miserably for the lack of a poem? Who explains the world to you? Do you do it yourself?

Franz Wright. Sylvia Plath. Arthur Rimbaud.

Edgar Guest?

Wislawa Szymborska.

I first titled this post “Go and write a poem.” The title it has now means the same thing.

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!