MUSE*LI:

I have to stop running away from people and start running towards them.

I had an alarming thought recently.  Even though I have been going deep and saying yes and slowing down and being in the moment and doing all the things that I promised myself I would do this year, I have lost the one thing that got me to where I am in the first place.

That’s right, I’ve lost my boldness.

To be honest, I’m not sure I’ve ever had it.  Although I remember being extremely imaginative as a child, I was always too shy to put my hand up for anything.  My parents thought that the best way to give me some confidence and some initiative was to send me to speech and drama classes.  For years on end I recited poems at eisteddfods, analysed Shakespearean metre, and acted opposite my mirror in my bedroom.  There were many lost years, of course, including my stint at uni studying that which shall not be named, but eventually, this love of language and literature led me to drama school, where I am happily ensconsced today.  However, despite my outwardly confident demeanour, my talkativeness, my genuine interest in people and their lives, and my genuine happiness to be diving deep into something I love every day, sometimes it seems easier to bury myself in a book or a piece of writing and pretend it all never happened.

It’s a funny thing, boldness.  Commonly the idea of hard work, commitment, going deep into a concept, saying yes and listening are all things that get tossed around at institutions.  And indeed, these are all qualities that I have, and have thrived on developing, at high school, and at my current institution.  The only time boldness is ever mentioned is in the discussion of fear.  And yet I think this is the most important thing that anyone, especially an artist, must look into seriously and take the measures to face.

When I left med school to travel overseas and audition for drama school, people kept calling me ‘brave’.  I have always found this confusing, as I never saw that it was a ‘brave’ or ‘courageous’ thing to do.  To me, I had no other choice.  I didn’t like what I was doing; I knew what would; so I took the steps to make myself happy.  I had to leave medical school.  To make it as an artist, I had to close my eyes, and take a giant leap.

I propose that to continue to survive as an artist, I must continue to take bold steps into the ether.

I don’t mean to say that I must be stupid.  The decision I made in leaving med school was a bold leap after having considered the options from every angle.  I decided that the only way that I would get into drama school was if I gave myself no other option.  And I left med school. I had to go to drama school.  There was nowhere else for me to go.  It was a bold decision, but it was a premeditated one.

The months leading up to my audition were fraught with many unconsidered and uneconomical attempts to make myself feel bold, while actually just making me look like stupid.

I refuse to go back to that kind of ‘boldness’.  I don’t think that is true boldness or courage anyway.  It was more of a bravura, a recklessness that made me feel like I was progressing along with life.  I was not truly scared or fearful of any of the things I thought I was overcoming.  I didn’t give them enough thought to be timorous.  I was just jumping into situations as I thought I saw fit.  I can’t even say that I was being impulsive and listening to my instincts.  I was merely acting out what I thought I wanted, or what I thought was expected of me.

No, I’m advocating for a gentler kind of boldness, a deeper boldness.  A boldness that is derived from life.  One that is stimulated by a genuine desire to make a change in the world.    The word, according to the dictionary, is akin to the Welsh proud, and the Irish Gaelic strong.  Courage, too, is associated with ’strength of heart’.   I don’t think boldness is to do with wildly grasping at something that might be right.  I think boldness is saying Yes, this is who I am, this is what I want, and I’m going to do it.  And I believe I need the kind of boldness that recognises I’m going in the right direction and gets out my way so that I can follow it.  The kind of boldness that will be there every chance it can.  The kind of boldness that puts a gentle arm around my impulse and gives it a gentle nudge that says ‘go on, shoot.’

I must admit, it’s hard being bold.  I think when I was younger, it was so much easier to just go out there and do whatever I feel like doing.  There’s no precedent, no-one tells you what to do, you just do what feels right.  Then you get older, you get hurt, people expect things of you, life has its effect.  So I suppose it should be no surprise that at the end of the day I’m still the shy, quiet thing who prefers to type out her feelings on a Sunday night instead of head out with friends.  Who knows what characteristics are the real me? (those questions are for another time)  I used to send out my writing on a regular basis and get accepted pretty much 100% for publication for various things.  Now I wouldn’t dare, lest I be rejected.  Or worse, be accepted.  Then I would have to choose.  Would I not?

I am really terrified of writing a story and for it to be good.  I am terrified of sitting down and hanging out with my flatmates in case I might actually enjoy their company.  I am terrified of getting out there and meeting people, in case I do meet the right guy and god forbid, actually be happy.  I’m terrified of finding a new place to live, in case I end up completely unhappy in a new environment.  I’m terrified of hanging out too much with my classmates, in case I get bored with them.  All these fears I can’t justify, and they are seriously preventing me from moving on with my life.  I have no problems with courage as an actor.  Being at drama school is enough confirmation that I am an actor enough.  Even if I left now, I would still have the self belief and skill to get me through what I need to get through.  One and a half years of training has been enough to give myself confidence in that aspect of my artistry.  But the only reason why I feel this way is because I have stood up myself and said, ‘Yes, I’m an actor.’  And no person is going to give me this confirmation about my other wants and desires except for myself.

So.  This year not only am I going to continue to go deep, say yes, slow down, commit to action, listen to others and be changed, I’m going to be bold too.  And feel my life truly change.

From ‘From the Soul of Artists and Writers’, Human, All Too Human, by Friedrich Nietzsche:

163

The seriousness of craft. Speak not of gifts, or innate talents! One can name all kinds of great men who were not very gifted. But they acquired greatness, became “geniuses” (as we say) through qualities about whose lack no man aware of them likes to speak; all of them had that diligent seriousness of a craftsman, learning first to form the parts perfectly before daring to make a great whole. They took time for it, because they had more pleasure in making well something little or less important, than in the effect of a dazzling whole. For example, it is easy to prescribe how to become a good short story writer, but to do it presumes qualities which are habitually overlooked when one says, “I don’t have enough talent.” Let a person make a hundred or more drafts of short stories, none longer than two pages, yet each of a clarity such that each word in it is necessary; let him write down anecdotes each day until he learns how to find their most concise, effective form; let him be inexhaustible in collecting and depicting human types and characters; let him above all tell tales as often as possible, and listen to tales, with a sharp eye and ear for the effect on the audience; let him travel like a landscape painter and costume designer; let him excerpt from the various sciences everything that has an artistic effect if well portrayed; finally, let him contemplate the motives for human behavior, and disdain no hint of information about them, and be a collector of such things day and night. In this diverse exercise, let some ten years pass: and then what is created in the workshop may also be brought before the public eye.

But how do most people do it? They begin not with the part but with the whole. Perhaps they once make a good choice, excite notice, and thereafter make ever worse choices for good, natural reasons.

Sometimes when reason and character are lacking to plan this kind of artistic life, fate and necessity take over their function, and lead the future master step by step through all the requisites of his craft.

170

Artistic ambition: The Greek artists, the tragedians, for example, wrote in order to triumph; their whole art cannot be imagined without competition.  Ambition, Hesiod’s good Eris, gave wings to their genius.  Now, this ambition demanded above all that their work maintain the highest excellence in their own eyes, as they understood excellence, without consideration for a prevailing taste or the general opinion about excellence in a work of art.  And so, for a long time, Aeschylus and Euripides remained unsuccessful until they finally educated critics of art who esteemed their work by the standards that they themselves applied.  Thus they strive for victory over their rivals according to their own estimation, before their own tribunal; they really want to be more excellent; then they demand that others outside agree with their own estimation, confirm their judgement.  In this case, to strive for honour means ‘to make oneself superior and wish that that also be publicly evident.’  If the first is lacking and the second nevertheless desired, one speaks of vanity.  If the latter is lacking, and not missed, one speaks of pride.

172

Making the audience forget the master. The pianist who performs the work of a master will have played best if he has made the audience forget the master, and if it has seemed that he were telling a tale from his own life, or experiencing something at that very moment. To be sure, if he himself is nothing significant, everyone will curse his loquacity in telling about his life. So he must understand how to capture the listener’s imagination for himself. On the other hand, this also explains all the weaknesses and follies of “virtuosity”.

177

Making oneself heard. One must know not only how to play well but also how to make oneself heard. A violin in the hand of the greatest master emits only a squeak if the hall is too big; there the master can be confused with any bungler.

180

Collective mind. A good writer possesses not only his own mind but also the mind of his friends.

209

Joy in old age. The thinker or artist whose better self has fled into his works feels an almost malicious joy when he sees his body and spirit slowly broken. into and destroyed by time; it is as if he were in a corner, watching a thief at work on his safe, all the while knowing that it is empty and that all his treasures have been rescued.

*

Right, better get a move on, then!

I do, I honestly do.

Sometimes I feel that being with someone would be proof that I exist.

(If you do not engage with people throughout the day, do you exist?  It is easier to be responsible for someone else than for yourself.)

*

Our acting teacher said the other day that acting is one of the loneliest jobs you can do.

Anne Bogart says that directing is one of the loneliest jobs you can do.

Writing is most definitely one of the loneliest jobs you can do.

Why am I attracted to lonely professions?

*

On my run this morning:

The stone grey skin of the sea stretched tightly over the drum of the earth.

courage (n.) – the ability to do something that frightens one, strength in the face of pain or grief.  From the Old French corage, from the Latin cor, ‘heart.’

A couple of weeks ago, my acting teacher talked about courage and how as actors one must commit to an action in order to give a clear offer on stage.  She defined courage as ‘having a fear of something yet going ahead and doing it anyway.’  After hearing her talk about this, I realised that I’ve never really thought about what that word meant before.  I know people have called me ‘brave’, especially when I made the decision to leave med, but at the time I assumed they just meant ballsy, which to me has connotations of stupidity.  I’ve never really thought about it in terms of the actual act of acting.  But it really is about the ’strength of one’s heart.’

It’s a strange thing, letting people in.  Letting people watch you at your most vulnerable.  I don’t think I looked at anyone during my scene.  If I wasn’t staring at my scene partner I was glaring at the floor, listening as hard as I could to what he was saying and what to respond to.  I don’t think I’ve listened so hard to anything in my life.  When you listen you suddenly become completely unaware of what you are doing.  In other performances I’ve been told that I spend a lot of time ’showing’.  You can’t show when you’re listening completely.  I think that, if anything, has to be a small achievement.  No matter how many holes I have in my performance, I think I can be proud of that.  Finding the courage to be vulnerable on stage.  I think I found that this week.

I have been reading The Slap, by Christos Tsiolkas over the past week.  In between late nights rehearsing and sleeping, I’ve managed to sneak some time in to settle in with my new favourite Australian author.  Mr Tsiolkas writes with such vitriol and lacerative insight into the lives of middle-aged, suburbian, and straight (or at least, straight so far – I’m pretty sure Mr Tsiolkas is gay) Melbournites, that I almost expect to run into them on the corner of my street.  It’s a real delight to be reading such a novel while actually living in Melbourne – it’s like the city and its inhabitants fill the space around me but also inside me.  The book is filled with so many iconic Melbourne concepts – the traffic (not that I drive, but I have been in cars here, and I get the frustration), the suburbs (Moorabin, St Kilda, Brunswick), the bars (erm, I haven’t been to any in the book but hopefully I will some day!), the cultures (Greeks, Vietnamese, Indians everywhere in this book), the people (Anglo-Indian vets, Jewish screenwriters, Greek car business owners).  Each chapter is told from the perspective of one of the parents at the barbecue that the child was slapped at (this is the inciting incident of the book) and reads like short stories within themselves.  Not only that, but they deal with each adult’s inner turmoil so beautifully that I could swear that they wrote it themselves.  And there’s such anger!  I haven’t read any of Mr Tsiolkas’ other works but I have heard that they are all very passionate and fiery.  It’s such an interesting world view that I’m dying to read more.  I’ll let you know what else to read when I finish them all!

And yes, of course, one day I want to write a book like The Slap too…

oneiric (adj) – of pertaining to, or suggestive of, dreams; dreamy. From the Greek oneiros, ‘dream’. From WOD Dictionary.com

bloviate (intrans. v) – to speak or write at length in a pompous or boastful manner. From blow + mock Latin suffix -viate. From WOD Dictionary.com

*

Interview with Truman Capote, The Paris Review No.17

Interviewer:

What did you first write?

Capote:

Short stories.  And my more unswerving ambitions still revolve around this form.  When seriously explored, the short story seems to me the most difficult and disciplining form of prose writing extant.  Whatever control and technique I may have I owe entirely to my training in this medium.

Interviewer:

What do you mean exactly by ‘control’?

Capote:

I mean maintaining a stylistic and emotional upper hand over your material.  Call it precious and go to hell, but I believe a story can be wrecked by a faulty rhythm in a sentence – especially if it occurs toward the end – or a mistake in paragraphing, even punctuation.  Henry James is the maestro of the semicolon.  Hemingway is a first rate paragrapher.  From the point of view of ear, Virginia Woolf never wrote a bad sentence.  I don’t mean to imply that I successfully practice what I preach.  I try, that’s all.

Interviewer:

How does one arrive at short-story technique?

Capote:

Since each story presents its own technical problems, obviously one can’t generalize about them on a two-times-two-equals-four basis. Finding the right form for your story is simply to realize the most natural way of telling the story. The test of whether or not a writer has divined the natural shape of his story is just this: After reading it, can you imagine it differently, or does it silence your imagination and seem to you absolute and final? As an orange is final. As an orange is something nature has made just right.

Interviewer:

Are there devices one can use in improving one’s technique?

Capote:

Work is the only device I know of. Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself. Even Joyce, our most extreme disregarder, was a superb craftsman; he could write Ulysses because he could write Dubliners. Too many writers seem to consider the writing of short stories as a kind of finger exercise. Well, in such cases, it is certainly only their fingers they are exercising.

[...]

Interviewer:

How do you exhaust the emotion? Is it only a matter of thinking about the story over a certain length of time, or are there other considerations?

Capote:

No, I don’t think it is merely a matter of time. Suppose you ate nothing but apples for a week. Unquestionably you would exhaust your appetite for apples and most certainly know what they taste like. By the time I write a story I may no longer have any hunger for it, but I feel that I thoroughly know its flavor. The Porgy and Bess articles are not relevant to this issue. That was reporting, and “emotions” were not much involved—at least not the difficult and personal territories of feeling that I mean. I seem to remember reading that Dickens, as he wrote, choked with laughter over his own humor and dripped tears all over the page when one of his characters died. My own theory is that the writer should have considered his wit and dried his tears long, long before setting out to evoke similar reactions in a reader. In other words, I believe the greatest intensity in art in all its shapes is achieved with a deliberate, hard, and cool head. For example, Flaubert’s A Simple Heart. A warm story, warmly written; but it could only be the work of an artist muchly aware of true techniques, i.e., necessities. I’m sure, at some point, Flaubert must have felt the story very deeply—but not when he wrote it. Or, for a more contemporary example, take that marvelous short novel of Katherine Anne Porter’s, Noon Wine. It has such intensity, such a sense of happening now, yet the writing is so controlled, the inner rhythms of the story so immaculate, that I feel fairly certain Miss Porter was at some distance fromher material.

[...]

Interviewer:

What are some of your writing habits? Do you use a desk? Do you write on a machine?

Capote:

I am a completely horizontal author. I can’t think unless I’m lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy. I’ve got to be puffing and sipping. As the afternoon wears on, I shift from coffee to mint tea to sherry to martinis. No, I don’t use a typewriter. Not in the beginning. I write my first version in longhand (pencil). Then I do a complete revision, also in longhand. Essentially I think of myself as a stylist, and stylists can become notoriously obsessed with the placing of a comma, the weight of a semicolon. Obsessions of this sort, and the time I take over them, irritate me beyond endurance.

[...]

Interviewer:

What are some of your personal quirks?

Capote:

I suppose my superstitiousness could be termed a quirk. I have to add up all numbers: there are some people I never telephone because their number adds up to an unlucky figure. Or I won’t accept a hotel room for the same reason. I will not tolerate the presence of yellow roses—which is sad because they’re my favorite flower. I can’t allow three cigarette butts in the same ashtray. Won’t travel on a plane with two nuns. Won’t begin or end anything on a Friday. It’s endless, the things I can’t and won’t. But I derive some curious comfort from obeying these primitive concepts.

Interviewer:

You have been quoted as saying your preferred pastimes are “conversation, reading, travel, and writing, in that order.” Do you mean that literally?

Capote:

I think so. At least I’m pretty sure conversation will always come first with me. I like to listen, and I like to talk. Heavens, girl, can’t you see I like to talk?

*

Interview with Jorge Luis Borges, The Paris Review

Interviewer:

What made you decide to study Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse?

Borges:

I began by being very interested in metaphor.  And then in some book or other – I think in Andrew Lang’s History of English Literature – I read about the kennings, metaphors of Old English, and in a far more complex fashion of Old Norse poetry.  Then I went in for the study of Old English.  Nowadays, or rather today, after several years of study, I’m no longer interested in the metaphors because I think that they were rather a weariness of the flesh to the poets themselves – at least to the Old English poets.

Interviewer:

To repeat them, you mean?

Borges:

To repeat them, to use them over and over again and to keep on speaking of the hranrad, waelrad, or ‘road of the whale’ instead of the ‘the sea’ – that kind of thing – and the ’seawood’, ‘the stallion of the sea’ instead of ‘the ship’.  So I decided to finally stop using them, the metaphors, that is; but in the meanwhile I had begun studying the language, and I fell in love with it.  Now I have formed a group – we’re about six or seven students – and we study almost every day.  We’ve been going through the highlights in Beowulf, the Finnsburg Fragment, and the Dream of the Road.  Also, we’ve gotten into King Alfred’s prose.  Now we’ve begun learning Old Norse, which is rather akin to Old English.  I mean the vocabularies are not really very different; Old English is a kind of halfway house between the Low German and the Scandinavian.

[...]

Interviewer:

Your intention is just to describe?

Borges:

I describe. I write. Now as for the color yellow, there is a physical explanation of that. When I began to lose my sight, the last color I saw was yellow, because it is the most vivid of colors. That’s why you have the Yellow Cab Company in the United States. At first they thought of making the cars scarlet. Then somebody found out that at night or when there was a fog that yellow stood out in a more vivid way. . . . Now when I began to lose my eyesight, when the world began to fade away from me, there was a time among my friends . . . well, they poked fun at me because I was always wearing yellow neckties. Then they thought I really liked yellow although it really was too glaring. I said, “Yes, to you, but not to me, because it is the only color I can see, practically!” I live in a grey world, rather like the silver screen world. But yellow stands out.

[...]

Borges:

Just words.  I would even call them real metaphors because in a real metaphor both terms are really linked together.  I have found one exception – a strange, new and beautiful metaphor from Old Norse poetry.  In Old English poetry a battle is spoken of as the ‘play of swords’ or the ‘encounter of spears’.  But in Old Norse, and I think, also, in Celtic poetry, a battle is called a ‘web of men’.  That is strange, no?  BEcause in a web you have a pattern, a weaving of men, un tejido. I suppose in medieval battle you got a kind of web because of having the swords and spears on opposite sides and so on.  So there you have, I think, a new metaphor; and, of corse, with a nightmare touch about it, no?  Te idea of a web made of living men, of living things, and still being a web, still being a pattern.  It is a strange idea, no?

[...]

Interviewer:

You’ve written about that.

Borges:

Yes, I wrote about Wilkins.  But he also invted a wonderful word that strangely enough has never been used by English poets – an awful word, really, a terrible word.  Everness, of course, is better than eternity because eternity is rather worn now.  Ever-r-ness is far better than the German Ewigkeit, the same word.  But he also created a beautiful word, a word that’s a poem in itself, full of hopelessness, sadness and despair – the word neverness.  A beautiful word, no?  He invented it, and I don’t know why the poets left is lying about and never used it.

Interviewer:

Have you used it?

Borges:

No, no, never.  I used everness, but neverness is very beautiful.  There is something hopeless about it, no? And there is no word with the same meaning in any other language, or in English.  You might say impossibility, but that’s very tame for neverness – the Saxon ending in -ness.  Neverness.  Keats uses nothingness: ‘Till love and fame to nothingness do sink’; but nothingness, I think, is weaker than neverness.  You have in Spanish naderia – many similar word – but nothing like neverness.  So if you’re a poet, you should use that word.  It’s a pity for that word to be lost in the pages of a dictionary.  I don’t think it’s ever been used.  It may have been used by some theologian; it might.  I suppose Jonathan Edwards would have enjoyed that kind of word or Sir Thomas Browne, perhaps, and Shakespeare, of course, because he was very fond of words.

*

Interview with Kurt Vonnegut, The Paris Review

Interviewer:

What is a twerp in the strictest sense, in the original sense?

Vonnegut:

It’s a person who inserts a set of false teeth between the cheeks of his ass.

Interviewer:

I see.

Vonnegut:

I beg your pardon; between the cheeks of his or her ass.  I’m always offending feminists that way.

Interviewer:

I don’t quite understand why someone would do that with false teeth.

Vonnegut:

In order to bite the buttons off the backseats of taxicabs.  That’s the only reason twerps do it.  It’s all that turns them on.

[...]

Interviewer:

Did your sister try to write for money, too?

Vonnegut:

No.  She could have been a remarkable sculptor, too.  I bawled her out one time for not doing more with the talents she had.  Shre replied that having talent doesn’t carry with it the obligation that something has to be done with it.  This was startling news to me.  I thought people were supposed to grab their talents and run as far and fast as they could.

Interviewer:

What do you think now?

Vonnegut:

Well – what my sister said now seems a peculiarly feminine sort of wisdom.  I have two daughters who are as talented as she was, and both of them are damned if they are going to lose their poise and senses of humour by snatching up their talents and desperately running as far and fast as they can.  They saw me run as far and as fast as I could – and it must have looked like quite a crazy performance to them.  And this is the worse possible metaphor, for wat they actually saw was a man sitting still for decades.

Interviewer:

At a typewriter.

Vonnegut:

Yes, and smoking his fool head off.

The sun

microwaves

my forehead

as a hill

nipples up

from the ground

and dams

are silver coins

dropped from the sky.

Notes from Spencer St station:

There’s a real sense of people coming and going at Spencer St station.  Much more so than Flinders St station, and definitely more so than at Central in Sydney.  In fact, I can think of no other station in Australia that gives that sense of infinity.  I have a feeling it’s due to the huge expanse between the roof and the trains, allowing you to see every carriage creep in like a caterpillar.  In my mind, being able to see every train coming and going, all in relation to one another, is the thing that gives the impression of space and distance.  Even in much larger stations around the world, like Victoria in London, the sense of coming and going is not as strong as it is here.  There’s not even a board of destinations here, there’s just…space.  Perhaps I’m reading too much into this and it’s actually to do with the escalators that send people up to the heavens, or the rolling ceiling like an upside down sea.  But whatever it is, the sense of long journeys nibbles in the air at this station, and it’s palpable and fresh.

On the bus, from Spencer St to the airport:

If I do not have my camera with me, I must take photos with my eyes.

It’s mid-afternoon.  The bus is flooded with the blue haze of the mid-afternoon slump.  The Korean tourists next to me discuss their travel plans under their breath.  Opposite and to my right, a traveller nods his chin into his chest.  The red foil of his headphones nestled like a tiny Easter egg in his ear.

The sky as we travel on the bus:

The crackling gold of space suit insulation material hugging the clouds.

A river of orange flows below the horizon.

My camera phone cannot do these sunsets justice…I must try to justify them with my words.

I’ve been walking past this dumped couch for a few weeks now.  The other day, this message popped up on it:

Before the magic happens #2!:

My brother at the train station: