Where it is…where it went : London Salons in April 2013

UlyssesGuiness

Coming Salons in London: register now using the links to the events page
08.04.13,15.04.13 Poetry Salon at The Fields Beneath Cafe 3-4 PM (drop-in as room allows, contact me for details)
19.04.13 The Sound and the Fury Salon Intensive 18-22:30
26.04.13 Between the Acts Salon Intensive 17:30-22:00

There are moments (in some cases, weeks, months) when the unending challenges thrown at you make even the weather feel like a personal slam-down. Family illness, friends in need, work eruptions– all seemed to be in cahoots with this endless frigid weather. Even reading that this Arctic Spring may be in fact due to human fault did not lift the mood here–rather made it worse. These events have resulted in a reduced Salon schedule– April claims a new energy, new possibilites both in the Salon and in the world around.

A brilliant work of literature–combined with exceptionally lively minds: well, that’s the ticket. Throw yourself into a challenging read for a few weeks then join with a group of other committed readers and we warmed up the world within and without ourselves.
The recent Salons– the on-going Ulysses study, last weekend’s Moby Dick double-header in Paris–feed us with words, connection, and deeper understanding. Somewhere in the words of a careful craftsman, my own struggles became part of rhythm of life lived in company rather than an individual wound that isolates. The Salons are not therapy, but there is power and embrace in considering the struggles and triumphs of others through literature.

Look man, we’d probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is? In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what’s human and magical that still live and glow despite the times’ darkness. Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it’d find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it.
–David Foster Wallace

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