The Chocolate Factory N22 Studio 28
kate@collage-arts.org
£90 for six-week course
Wednesdays 10:30 – 1 PM starting May 11th
Workshops led by Jehane Markham
Month: March 2016
Making Meaning —Reflections on the weight words may carry
The trouble with the BIG life moments is that when I attempt to capture & contain them in language, I hear my own clichés rolling out like chicks and bunnies at Easter. Knowing this doesn’t stop me—although I have in my head Proust’s disgust at the weakness of language re-played—the way this disrespects the moment you are trying to revere.
A dear friend and Salon participant died a few weeks ago—died terribly fighting cancer in the vigor and passion of living. I am stuck trying to spin out words to contain this moment and our response to it: how sharply life shows in reflection of death, how the simple moments I hold of him suddenly become precious, easily lost gems, the rage of inequity, the meaninglessness that sneaks into the narratives I attempt to weave around his death.
My head is full of words—full of offerings of the best minds around the humbling moments of life and the meaning we seek in spite of the inexplicable horrors and random tragedies– those next to us, or in Lahore, Brussels… I am honored to read at the celebration of my friend’s life- and I choose a favorite passage from Ulysses that is deeply sensuous—infused with hope in the first passion of new love against the years of living that threaten to diminish those fresh, wild explosions of the heart.
I offer Joyce’s beautiful images in a voice strained through tears—and when I have made it- barely- through the reading—I am left choking and empty. How can we shape meaning in the vortex of dying?
But the words continue to hum in my mind, wrapped in the image of my friend—it was a strange choice perhaps for a funeral reading—but the passage evoked my friend’s incredible love for his life partner—and that ultimately was what I wanted to hold against the void.
Below are some quotes that speak to me just now as I move through the aftermath of the rituals of burial, of a weekend bursting with friends visiting from across time, from the daily struggle to wrest meaning from the simple and necessary acts of living in the blast of tragedy, the transcendent recognition of human connections and rituals– and the power of language in literature to try– against the odds– to say what we mean.
From Reflections on the Novel as Tool for Survival by Arthur Krystal
There is something “primitive” in the great issues that have traditionally concerned writers, Lionel Trilling submitted in “The Meaning of a Literary Idea.” Questions about the nature of thought and man “match easily in the literary mind with the most primitive human relationships. Love, parenthood, incest, patricide: These are what the great ideas suggest in literature, these are the means by which they express themselves.” Completing the thought, Trilling went on to write, “Ideas, if they are large enough and of a certain kind, are not only not hostile to the creative process, as some think, but are virtually inevitable to it. Intellectual power and emotional power go together.”
–from http://chronicle.com/article/The-Novel-as-a-Tool-for/235565
“Meaning is a shaky edifice we build out of scraps, dogmas, childhood injuries, newspaper articles, chance remarks, old fillms, small victories, people hated, people loved; perhaps it is because our sense of what is the case is constructed from such inadequate materials that we defend it so fiercely, even to death.”
And…
“Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be bloody-minded. Argue with the world. And never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things–childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves–that go on slipping , like sand, through our fingers.”
― Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991
London studies coming in April
Hamlet Intensive April 26th— One Meeting study of the extraordinary play in honour of Shakespeare’s 400 year anniversary
“What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?”
Light in August by W. Faulkner seven week daytime study starting April 18th “It is just dawn, daylight: that gray and lonely suspension filled with the peaceful and tentative waking of birds. The air, inbreathed, is like spring water. He breathes deep and slow, feeling with each breath himself diffuse in the natural grayness, becoming one with loneliness and quiet that has never known fury or despair….”
To the Lighthouse by V. Woolf five week evening study at SAP in Hampstead
“What is the meaning of life? That was all- a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.”
Why am I getting this newsletter again???
You may be asking– or you may be seeing this for the first time…amongst the ecstatic flight of our Proust and Joyce studies, the terrible beauty of our Faulkner work– our discussions around meaning and language and gender and identity– there is also the banality of technology and its limitations. As the Salon community grows, the pressure on the website and my VERY limited technical knowledge means breakdowns: so many may not have received recent news or the communication was unreadable.
Let us hear from you…
As I am proposing coming studies and starting to consider the line-up for the September offerings or possible short summer study, your input is invaluable– and confirms the newsletter has been received. And simply: it is always enjoyable to hear from members of the Salon community.
Salon Community happenings: One of the current Ulysses travellers, Annabel Abbs, has a book on Joyce’s daughter launching in June so watch the site for more information: 15 June, at Waterstones on the Kings Rd, SW3. 7-9pm
Poet Jehane Markham will be running a six-week poetry workshop starting in May on poetry-making from myth that sounds delicious…
A small group of us will be celebrating our journey through the Search for lost time in Proust with a few days following in Prout’s footsteps– and later in June there will be celebrations all over the world for Bloomsday–and the Salon will join in those here in London.
Paris Salons April 2nd and 3rd
- Antigone Salon Intensive April 2nd 5:30-10 PM
- Transcendentalists Intensive April 3rd 4-9 PM
After the joy and exuberance of our February studies, I am so pleased to be able to return for more digging in the realm of language and ideas with the shimmering Paris Salonistas.
Why am I getting this newsletter again???
You may be asking– or you may be seeing this for the first time…amongst the ecstatic flight of our Proust and Joyce studies, the terrible beauty of our Faulkner work– our discussions around meaning and language and gender and identity– there is also the banality of technology and its limitations. As the Salon community grows, the pressure on the website and my VERY limited technical knowledge means breakdowns: so many may not have received recent news or the communication was unreadable.
Let us hear from you…
As I am proposing coming studies and starting to consider the line-up for the September offerings or possible short summer study, your input is invaluable– and confirms the newsletter has been received. And simply: it is always enjoyable to hear from members of the Salon community.
Here is how one of the participants described a recent Salon:
“And once again, there we were, somehow suspended in space and time, flying above the bridges of Paris in B’s little cabin in the sky, singing the praises of Ms Morrison, dancing along with her rhymes and rhythms, swimming in a foreign language that was so, but not so, familiar, wondering how the voice attached to words makes different sounds in our heads…it’s all so mysterious and wonderful.”
The registration is on the website– please let me know if you have any questions.
See you in the pages….
