Bulletin Board of the Brain » Cultural Shifts

The Memorial Coatroom Literary Society Reads Colette

Kj — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 05:14:40 +0000

Last month, the Memorial Coatroom Literary Society met to discuss Colette’s “The Vagabond” (1910). By an odd chance (or inclination?) we chose yet another book translated from French, written by a famous woman author. None of us had read any Colette, though Courtney directed a play about Colette’s stint as a stage performer, so we opted to try The Vagabond (fiction based on her performing life) rather than her more well-known Claudine books.

And to discuss this post-fin-de-siècle (I guess just siècle?) story of the French stage, we decided to meet up at Seattle’s greatest Burlesque show and bar, Can Can. Buried under Pike Place Market, Can Can is the creative home of the Can Can Castaways: in my opinion, the best artists bar none in Seattle, regardless of genre. The Castaways are avante garde, witty, beautiful and truly celebratory of the human body. (And the bar has some fabulous absinthe cocktails).

So the three of us drank our cocktails and disussed a hundred-year-old book, cuz that’s how we roll.

We all identifed with the protagonist in some enlightening and disturbing ways. We were also suprised to find the story far more existential than plot-oriented. Shasti said she would have liked it more if it been actually written as memoir instead of as veiled biographical fiction. And I agree, since the main character was compelling (or at least authentic feeling) but there was little in the narrative to keep you turning the pages. Courtney called the book more a philosophical exercise than story.

But though we didn’t fall in love with the book by any means, we found it fascinating, and well-worth reading.

AND, since the editions we read were greatly lacking in annotations or informative footnotes, I created an online home for our literary society where we can upload our annotations, research as well as update our list of potential bookclub books!

Yes. Be amazed at our awesomeness.

Here’s my official book review. And coming soon…we dive into 18th century gothic sensationalism! Woo hoo!

The Vagabond by Colette

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

For those expecting “Diaries of a French Burlesque Dancer”, prepare to be disappointed. While one may approach Colette’s behind-the-scenes of a traveling pantomime artist in turn-of-the-century France expecting it to be flavored with salacious frivolity to match Colette’s reputation, what you’ll find is more an existentialist rumination on ambivalence, than story of a passionate life. In fact, if there’s one thing that most defines the divorcee-turned-stage-performer Reneé Neré, it’s her distrust of passion. Colette’s largely-biographical novel tracks the frustrations, distractions and depressions of a woman in her early thirties whom, in the fallout of a disastrous and damaging marriage, chooses a life of solitude on the stage, rather than one of societal rules. But it’s not a story of the gay and free life of an artist. Instead, the monotony and doubt expressed by Reneé are all-too-recognizable for any single woman reader today, particularly if that reader is in-between jobs and still trying to figure out what to do with her life, with men, and with herself. (ahem).

Did I enjoy this book? Not particularly. The protagonist’s reflections on self-doubt and self-denial are disruptive, and even at times, numbing.
Do I respect this book? Absolutely. To read something that speaks so frankly about women’s experience, women’s fears and women’s strength much less about a woman living in her own apartment and making her own living during a time when corsets were still ubiquitous, is both humbling and empowering. But to spend time with Reneé Neré, is to linger in a space of dissociative hesitation and unconscious compulsion. It’s uncomfortable, but truthful.

Read, respect, but do not expect to revel.

**The Dover Edition is terrible. Stanley Applebaum’s introduction is meant to replace what endnotes would be, but this book desperately needs endnotes for the cultural and historical references. Also, Applebaums new “Americanized” translation reads at times like an Archie comic book. The Enid MacLeod translation may be 60 years old and egregiously British, but it’s still better.**

View all my reviews

Haiku

Kj — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 08:59:38 +0000

Station wagon, you

rolling monument to Time

Inescapable

Little Did She Know…

Kj — Wed, 18 May 2011 02:23:43 +0000

Late at night, Friday April 15, I wrote yet another post about the many businesses in my adopted neighborhood of Lower Queen Anne that were closing their doors. What I could never have predicted, is that only 12 hours later, I would receive notice that the place where I’ve worked since 2006, the entire reason for Lower Queen Anne having a gravitational pull on my life, was closing it’s doors, THE NEXT DAY. Yep. I found out during the Saturday matinee that the next day’s show would be the theatre’s last for the rest of the year. After an emergency board meeting that morning, Intiman Theatre announced it was going on hiatus for all of 2011.

Needless to say, we were shocked. While we were acquainted with the financial challenges we and NEARLY EVERY arts organization in the US are facing, we thought we’d cleared the major danger for 2011 and were more or less, set for a solid year of shows. Instead, the closing day of the season’s first production, became the closing day of the entire season.

St Germain, Chartreuse, Violette. We did not get enough time together

Intially, after the shock, I thought I’d blog about it immediately. The excrutiating irony of having just written about the closed-doors of Lower Queen Anne and finding that the doors were closing on me as well, seemed like it had to be addressed, and quickly. But unsuprisingly, the pain was one I couldn’t write about without some distance. I can say now, that on that final Sunday, since I was House Managing, I was the last person in the building- I locked the gates outside, went in through the access door to turn off the lights, stood there in the upper lobby where I’d first walked into the building for my interview in October 2006, and just started sobbing. That building, with it’s green sofas, enclosed courtyard, giant hallways and tall columns, had been a holding place for me during the greatest time of transition in my life. There was only one month of my living in Seattle, where I was not employed at Intiman, and spending some 30 hours a week there.

My last specialty cocktails on display

The loss of the job is certainly upsetting in terms of needing to find a new one, but mostly what I’ve lost is the home and holding place of so many memories. I stood behind that bar reading Martin Buber in my first term of graduate school and sat in front of the bar with my laptop plugged-in writing my thesis in my 4th year. In 2007 I sat in the courtyard and did my Hebrew homework. In 2008 I had to stay downtown during the blizzard so I could make it to our Black Nativity performances. In 2009 I sat in the conference room watching Dr Horrible with Ian. in 2010 I got my first taste of not having to do any class work during my breaks, because I had graduated. And all this doesn’t cover the friendships I made, the friends who joined me in working there, the five years of inside jokes, cocktails created, play-dialogue memorized and repeated, and wine-wrapper dubloons made.

All my Signature Cocktail Menus standing at attention on the tables

It took a while to have a sense of what the rest of the year will look like for Intiman and the building that’s been our home. On the last Sunday, I told my staff, “Just think nuclear winter. Anything you wouldn’t want left to dust and rot for the next year, throw away or lock up.” But the past few weeks have been encouraging as we now know that we’re still going to host some rentals and other performances as usual. It’s our shows that aren’t happening. And that last day when I walked out fearing that I’d ever get to step foot in the building again? Well, I’ve actually been working there a fair bit the past month, manging some events that were planned for the month break between shows.

My last batch of intermission pre-orders

But safe to say, if Intiman recouperates and is able to reopen in 2012, it will be a very differnt Intiman. New staff, new mission, new structure. So even if I end up working for them again, the Intiman I’ve known, loved, served, and been loved and served by, is gone.

With only 2 hours notice that my Saturday April 16 bartending shift would be my last time behind the bar until who-knew-when, I took some pictures as a last-ditch sudden effort at closure. It was only that morning that I’d let myself into the building, walked to the bar which I’d closed down the night before, and breathed a sigh of delight, feeling deep gratitude for how much I loved working there.

Goodbye Intiman of my (late) youth. I treasured every moment of our time together.

Block-Busted

Kj — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 06:47:29 +0000

Only a few weeks ago, I stepped out of the Closing Sale of the Lower Queen Anne Blockbuster holding the copy of Jane Campion’s Bright Star I’d just purchased for $5.99, and found myself facing the closed movie theater across the street where I had seen the film one year ago. Both businesses now bereft of life…and movies.

Not that I feel much sadness over the loss of a Blockbuster, but my neighborhood-away-from-home seems to just keep going bust. The Blockbuster is officially closed now. They spent over a month in closing sale, lowereing prices by $1 each week. Naturally, I found more and more used DVDs to purchase as the prices sank. What I passed up at $6, I took home at $4.

What will take over the Blockbuster storefront? What will they do with the fake marquee? This marqee facade that faces a real, 85 year old marquee, also empty until it’s hopefully rescued by another movie theater company.

While I ponder these sad notions and wander the movie-less block of Queen Anne Blvd between Mercer & Republican, I am “comforted” by the expansion of my own film collection. Welcome, new friends. Your arrival bears sad tidings elsewhere.

Jet Bike Steve, Jimmy Fallon and Other Signs of our Changing Textual Identites

Kj — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 05:10:32 +0000

In “Introduction to the Hermeneutical Task” today at MHGS, I got to lecture on some questions that have been buzzing in my brain for quite some time now. I am obsessively curious about and amazed by the changing role of text and author in a culture where, due to blogs and social media, we are now largely the authors of the texts we read. What do the expressive capability of Twitter, Facebook and the like, bring to bear on our perception of “Author” and ourselves as “Reader” and what opportunities might this provide us as interpreters of scripture?

My hope was not to provide application ideas or explore “internet-as-metaphor,” but rather, in a class focused on the art of interpretation, to wonder what about ourselves we might be able to learn through the now ubiquitous presence of free and instant global communication. Does the new social landscape show us something about ourselves that has been obscured significantly since the printing press?

I certainly don’t have answers to these questions, and indeed, I hope the questions themselves are more helpful than the answers one might come up with. But today I finally got to talk about Twitter in an academic setting! I used some examples of new text and content being spawned by Twitter, as well as the displacing of “author”ity due to readers’ presence on the internet. I used an article I really enjoy by Dr. Bridget Cowlishaw, which I was lucky enough to hear her present at this year’s SWTX Popular & American Culture Conference.

Basically, since 2006, the word “text” is officially a verb. We also now live in a world where a 20-something guy can tweet stuff his dad says, and within a year, it becomes a sitcom starring William Shatner. This amazes me, and i believe it merits reflection.

Here’s some presentation images.

Also, here’s a link to an excellent TED talk by Clay Shirky. I used a clip of it as well.

Watching “The West Wing” For The First Time Haiku

Kj — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 07:54:29 +0000

Proof that I’m in my
30′s: Timothy Busfield
kinda turns me on.

Reading & Writing as Heroic Acts: The Heroine’s Bookshelf

Kj — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 22:44:44 +0000

The Heroine’s Bookshelf: Life Lessons, from Jane Austen to Laura Ingalls Wilder by Erin Blakemore

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sometimes you love a book not so much for the new things it brings you, but for how it names what you’ve always known. Such is The Heroine’s Bookshelf. By profiling twelve of the most influential female literary heroines of the past two centuries and the women authors who created them, Blakemore narrates the soul-shaping encounters we have with literature. While the process of internalizing life lessons from fiction may be a largely unconscious process for many, Blakemore allows readers into her own transforming encounters with each book and its author, thus inviting readers into deeper awareness of how reading can be challenging, healing and sustaining, rather than escapist or avoidant. Blakemore not only provides insightful looks into the courageous, contentious and sometimes tragic lives of authors such as Zora Neale Hurston and Charlotte Bronte, but assists readers in thinking deeply about how we allow ourselves to shaped by the stories we enter. As this topic is something I’m already deeply passionate about, reading Heroine’s Bookshelf was a tender and encouraging reminder of the women who have knocked down walls so I could walk freely, and the literary heroines who have strengthened my imagination and my own sense of courage. I hope this book will reach those whose literary journeys have yet to venture beyond consumer chick-lit tailored to the status quo and wallet, rather than hope and integrity. I’m sure it will.

Further, while I loved the book for resonating where my heart already rings, there were still whole chapters that found me shocked, intrigued and totally inspired to pick up books that somehow never made it on my radar. And while Blakemore advocates passionately and compassionately for the heroines and authors who fought for their faith and freedom against adversity, her real victory is her ability to offer that same passion and compassion on behalf of characters and authors who’s integrity is less obvious and are more recognizable for their flippancy, selfishness and scandals. My favorite chapters were on Collette’s “Claudine” novels and Margaret Mitchell’s Scarlet O’Hara, whom Blakemore proudly proclaims as literature’s “most famous bitch.”

Heroine’s Bookshelf is a delight, both encouraging and entertaining, and definitely stirred my own sense of heroism with gratitude and gumption. Thank you Erin Blakemore.

View all my reviews >>

William Emmert On My Wall

Kj — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 07:04:46 +0000

While at MHGS, I spent three years on Student Leadership. Part of what my particular team (Sacred Space) did was to curate the two art galleries in our building. The main floor gallery is for local artists and the upstairs gallery is for artists from the MHGS student body. For my final summer as a student, I was stoked to get to bring in my buddy William Emmert as the main floor gallery artist.

Having worked with William for two years, I’ve been witness to the many hours he spends meticulously drawing and painting the images that fill his extensive body of work. I love the mix of nostalgia, strangeness and specificity in what William does. The materials he uses, the images he collects and his crafting process all contribute to the themes of identity, absence and American culture that his work engages. You can see most of his work on his flickr page.

Many of his pieces he showed at MHGS are not framed, but rather, constructed in actual desk drawers hung against the wall. This effect is especially cool for his pieces that use baseball cards. Its art but its also just a drawer full of someone’s card collection.

I enjoy William’s work for a lot of reasons, many of which have to do with my own obsession with nostalgia, collections, pop culture, repetitive images and adaptive reuse, but I also enjoy his work because of how much I enjoy William himself. He’ll be leaving to get his MFA in San Francisco in a few weeks, and I will absolutely miss how much he lets me annoy him with loudly sung pop songs in his very close proximity. Lucky for me, he let me pick a piece to keep! I choose this two piece work which utilizes a 1930′s yearbook. I can’t believe how good it looks in my room! Thank you William.

“Fast Times” By William Emmert

On my wall

More William Emmert links:

The Weird World of William Emmert on ThinkFaest

Unstage.com

Beautiful/Decay

Kj’s Corner: Real Presences & Adaptation

Kj — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 09:38:16 +0000

This summer I had the opportunity to serve as research assistant to Dr. Chelle Stearns for her course on “Theology & the Artistic Impulse.” This meant I got to give two lectures on the class material. (At MHGS we don’t use student TA’s due to dual relationship concerns- so research assistant is a kind of newish thing). Struck with the utter surprise and amazingness of this opportunity, I sort of wondered out loud about it to Chelle, and her response was, that since I’m likely heading into academia moreso than ministry proper, it makes sense that as I got to practice pastoring in my program, I should also get a chance to try on teaching before I graduate. I guess its a good sign that the thought of having two whole hours of class to do with what I wish felt like receiving a ticket to DisneyWorld. Frankly- i would have loved even more time, but two lectures was PLENTY work for this crazy final term. So twice I got to facilitate classtime, focusing on any aspect of the readings- through whatever lenses I felt like bringing to it. Chelle dubbed the time “Kj’s Korner.”

1st lecture: The week’s reading was George Steiner’s “Real Presences,” an incredibly difficult but fascinating text. The amazon review gives a good idea of what I had to work with: “Steiner asserts moral and metaphysical issues are the basis of all art and that our experience of meaning in music, painting and literature presupposes the existence of God as a “necessary possibility.” Dense, difficult, rewarding, this passionately argued essay ranges fluently over aesthetics, linguistics, philosophy, post-structuralism, the range of Western culture.”

As I do with all things, I read, asking myself, “What else does this bring to mind? Where do I see this applied in a way that makes sense to me?” I quickly landed on Charlie Kaufman’s film Adaptation. I used quotes from the book to explore scenes from the film and scenes from the film to explore concepts from the book, etc. Here’s some images my my lecture, as well as the opening scene of the film.

Of Mice and Meals

Kj — Fri, 07 May 2010 19:08:55 +0000

Redwall by Brian Jacques

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Continuing in my process of reading books for young people that I neither read nor heard of as a young person, I’ve started the Redwall series. Actually, my friend Tucker holds Mossflower as one of the most influential books in his life, and I want to read that, but it comes after this first book, Redwall, so I read ths first.

It was sweet. Can’t say I was ever at a loss for what would happen next or which cranky bad guys would turn out to be good, or what monstrous villain would suffer a vicious death or which sweet mouse girl would marry the brave mouse hero, but the world of woodland creatures who inhabit castles, belong to mouse monk orders and gather dandelions for salads, was quite a reprieve from my graduate studies.

But putting the more-than-predictable plot aside, the true delight of this book is the descriptions of food and feasts the medieval woodland creatures create. I leave you with some incandescently hunger-arousing descriptions.

“Tender freshwater shrimp garnished with cream and rose leaves, deviled barley pearls in acorn puree, apple and carrot chews, marinated cabbage stalks steeped in creamed white turnip with nutmeg.”

View all my reviews >>