“Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not simply due to the bad influence of this or that individual writer.”

– George Orwell

George Orwell had a sixth rule for writing: Break any of these above rules sooner than say anything barbarous. George Orwell was perhaps not talking about political barbarisms alone, but the barbarity of inappropriateness in general. His sixth rule pretty much gives the licence to write or say anything, short of being barbarous. But because barbarity is itself a relational call, where does it leave us?  George Orwell’s sixth rule intrigues me.

Or, is there a universal understanding taken by all of us on what constitutes barbarism? I do not think so.  Let me therefore deviate partially here, before I disclose the other five rules. The other day on TV, I saw the launching of a new US troop carrier, named the New York. Its bow is made from steel melted from the WTC shell retrieved from “Ground Zero.” Now the Navy spokesperson, talking to the CNN reporter, very solemnly invoked the memory of those who had died on September 11th and proudly also stated that, “this ship can take our forces to go to war anywhere in the world.”   There is a barbarous choice of words here. It is the righteousness in the voice of the young Navy spokesperson, when she talks about the readiness to “to go to war” anywhere in the world, that is worrisome. Why do the big powers inculcate such marauding language in the mental makeup of their citizens? Should someone break the news to this person, that there is an element of barbarity she is engaging in?  Can language and literature be removed from the politics of the times? Can literature be independent of social development? Of course not!

Why is Literature Still a Must?

Without being disdainful about blog and twitter/facebook language (being a partially active practitioner myself) there is an emerging need to uphold the literary event, that is the written word. The book. The novel. The work of fiction. The well-written, well explained document that does not simply engage in a pop haze, a txt language miasma that passes off as literary expression. There is a place for that and there is need for pop culture experimentation, but literature needs to be preserved for distilling the truth, instead of promoting a haze in the name of experimentation.  In the social conditions we inhabit, or in Orwellian language-the times we live in, the word is blurred by sound, fury, effects and Mbps transmissivity. If you don’t trap it in a blitzkrieg millisecond, it has gone past you and delivered to those who live in bytes and pixels. Their needs are fundamental and cannot be suppressed. The flamboyance of the web and the 140 space compact with Twitter is actually a curious deal with the devil. It forces the truth to be stated in a precise and economic manner, for those who wish to convey anything seriously. And for those who don’t wish to do so, the obscure 140 space ramble is possible. It is self serving. Unless one can use this same medium and invent a way of telling the truth. I know of someone who is writing a whole novel on Twitter. Space by space in 140 space releases!  Literature is however, for the time being, only conceivable as the permanently printed hardcopy version! And there is a dire need to preserve that medium.

Now obviously there are five other rules, which we are all interested in and which if stated first would make the life of an aspiring writer considerably self-conscious, restrictive and possibly miserable. I could have blithely started out on this essay by saying, “When I first dived into writing this editorial essay…etc etc etc  ” and I would have ended up on a well travelled path.  Incidentally, one of Orwell’s first rules is: “Never use a metaphor, simile or figure of speech, which you have seen before in print.” There are several other rules about not using long words, when short words exist, cutting out superfluous words, using foreign words unnecessarily, not using the passive when you can use the active —- violations which we have carried out and which I am doing right now, instead of stating simply that “We violate the rules, often.” But most of all we often write stuff, that we have seen somewhere else.

This essay and editorial is not so much about the rules of writing as much as it is about the need for Literature to be preserved and allowed to flourish, as a significant means of mass communication and artistic endeavour in changing times.  Literature is all about telling a truthful story.

What is of the essence in Orwell’s writing, and more so in Homage to Catalonia, than in 1984, is to state the distilled truth, the absolute truth, the feeling that is at the heart with as few words as possible. Are we always able to achieve what we really intended to say? Can we say in a single word, or a phrase, or a sentence what lies at the core of our mind? With half a million words available in the “official” English language to play with and the new words that we can create and introduce,( because the language does not belong to any ethnocracy), can we come across with the clarity of a freshly poured glass of water in a super clean tumbler? Is there a morning that we can describe that best reflects the news that we read in the newspaper? Is it a coffee morning? Is it an alcohol morning? Is it a flower morning? Is it a blood drenched morning? Is there an inherent deficiency in language that disallows true expression or do we garnish the truth with unnecessary eloquence?

Writers, novelists, authors cannot live by rules. The rules are there to assist. In fact writers must settle down to earth early in the morning, after flying around late at night in a daze of expressions and words. The task of the editor then sets in.  Seeking the truth and expressing it, is the cardinal need. It is the essence. But, style, eloquence and a certain cadence intercedes as technique. In fact, writers do engage in deception. Juxtaposing words in an unexpected manner to wake the reader up and cause some interaction and interest. Thus careful and accurate choice of words is followed by an attractive style. Such is the essence of Literature.

In this issue of Montreal Serai, we have combined several poems, short stories, book reviews,  filmmaker interviews and essays that uphold the idea of telling the unambiguous truth.  Included are award winning writers like Rawi Hage and Jaspreet Singh, as well as our own prolific and much published Maya Khankhoje and frequent contributors Nilanjana Iyer, Lesley Pasquin, Anna Fuerstenberg and others.

 

Click on pictures to enlarge them.

Literature has always been important, is still important and will continue to be important for as long as human beings have a speech centre in their brain. And were an errant blood vessel to flood this important area of the command centre of the human body,  we might survive as living organisms but  our life would be immensely impoverished for there isn’t a sadder sight than that of a human being who can no longer communicate -or commune- with fellow human beings. Because literature is all about communion,  memory, beauty, need, desire, feelings, conviviality and expression,  most importantly expression.  As a species we call ourselves homo sapiens, the human who knows, but we might as well call ourselves  homo affabilis , the human who communicates. In other words, we are chatterboxes who, for the sake of expediency and a larger audience,  invented writing which then morphed into literature.

The Bible, one of the most-often published and translated books in recent millennia and more, got it right when it pronounced: In the beginning was the word. Those who  are a  product of the Judeo-Christian tradition might take all its pronouncements as a literal or metaphorical explanation of life on earth and beyond, or  not. That is their privilege. However, simple lovers of literature recognize that its endurance is due to its ability to capture our imagination and to understand the trials and tribulations of a  wandering people who lived long ago and far away. And if we don’t quite agree with what it has to say, we can always turn to another magnificent piece of literature called the Koran which also calls for empathy and love for our fellow human beings. And yet again, if we can’t read from right to left, and like our letters to hang down from the line instead of being perched on top of it, we can always light an oil lamp in front of an image of Lord Ganesh hoping that he grants us the gift of imagination. After all, Ganesh, besides presiding over weddings and other auspicious (or potentially difficult!) endeavors, is the most prolific author of them all. It is said that he wrote the whole of the Mahabharata, the great epic of the Bharat dynasty that ruled India in a distant past. Some refine this tidbit of information by explaining that  Vyasa, a great Sanskrit poet, was the true author of the Mahabharata and that Lord Ganesh merely took  down his dictation. Closest to the truth is the version that states that this epic poem, the longest in the world with its 90,000 verses, was really an accretion of accounts written across generations. Its structure is that of a story within a story, one of the most complex -and satisfying- literary genres. Be it as it may, every time I turn my computer on, a  jovial bronze Ganesh holding the tip of his broken tusk in his right hand  and scribbling away on a book in his left hand stares at me from the screen  daring  me to do likewise. 

There are other examples of great literature from other continents. The Odyssey and the Iliad tell the story of gods who mingled with humans and warriors who went on long voyages leaving their wives behind busy at a loom. The  Popol Vuh explains to  the Mayan people from the Yucatan Peninsula  how the world was created.  The Kalevala, an epic poem of the Finnish people, actually inspired them to become independent from the Russian empire and establish modern Finland. The Altjeringa or Australian Aboriginal Dreamings,  map out the path Aboriginals must take  in their long journeys across the continent  and the griots or story-tellers  from Africa keep the culture alive. Literature is the vessel that contains the immense story of humanity across  time and space.

 Modern society has the internet, that network of electronic highways, by-ways and lanes that move the word around with electronic alacrity. The down side is that it is giving rise to another form of literature that is concentrating memory in virtual spaces away from physical supports like stone, parchment  and paper and most importantly, debilitating the  synaptic  resiliency of the human mind. But it has brought about other advantages. The internet revolution has actually made it possible for lovers of literature to immediately disseminate the work of and rally around the cause of writers who are threatened by their governments because the latter feel threatened by them. This proves that the pen -read literature- continues to be mightier than the sword. Writer Vaclav Havel, who as last president of Czechoslovakia and first president of the Czech Republic led his country through a difficult transition without shedding blood, validated this saying. Literature was also a life-saver for Shehrazade who survived thanks to her ability to tell a thousand and one enthralling tales.

It is difficult for a writer to get started but once on a roll, it is difficult to know when to stop. One can go on and on about the importance of reading and writing since writers have examined their profession more intensely than any other professional group. So  I will  arbitrarily stop here with a quote from Canadian author Yann Martel. When interviewed about his obstinacy in sending Canadian Prime Minister Harper a novel every two weeks for two years in the hope of eliciting a reaction, he explained that he would have liked to know what Harper read, because he would hate to have a leader whose bedside book is  Mein Kampf. Know your enemy by the friends he keeps and the books he reads!  He also suggested that the importance of literature resides in its ability to open doors and make us more empathetic. “You read a story about a boy soldier in Afghanistan and it opens your heart, even if you’ve never been to Afghanistan”.

Ergo, literature is still important because the hard times we live in require that we open our  hearts, and open them wide.

 

Often inflated and possibly misleading, the titles I chose for my college Lit essays were always picked last and were usually the invention of unpardonable puns and last-minute panic. In my first and second year, those amateurish instincts did not end there; my essays though full of conviction and argument, failed to translate what it was I meant to say. Words were words were words were words. What I didn’t know then-though it seems stock to say, ‘…but what I do know now,’ considering I’m only six months out of college-is how to read. Writing came after. In Howard Bloom’s book, whose title inspired my last sentence, How to Read in Why, Bloom quotes Sir Francis Bacon in the prologue, and begins to answer the Why: “Read not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.” Bacon’s counsel, to weigh and to consider, behaves in life as a slowing down; to absorb, appreciate, question, expand, feel, and ultimately grow. Though reading was done quietly and alone, and only sometimes in the company of others, literature became my way of reconciling with everything around me and widening my scope. As Bloom urges, although we read for varied yet familiar reasons, to “read deeply,” is the truest motivation.

And so with the right guidance, a couple of teachers endowed with that mentoring eye-half warmth, half craze-and the sort of vitality that a student who first appears brittle and unimpressionable, me, but who is utterly vulnerable and seeking, latches onto, I soon abandoned the impulse to empty the library’s shelves of secondary readings, and embrace the book alone. I began to read a novel’s first sentence as if it were its overture, and soon discovered that unwitting instinct to treat the first page as if were a foundation, securing and revealing, both, the novel’s path. Of course there was no formula for reading, no checklist to follow, instead, after having deserted the option of reading others’ thoughts and studies, I began to understand pattern, to notice as themes and ideas recurred and connected, as if in certain parts the letters themselves were thicker and bolder on the page. I started appreciating what was being inferred, learning the subtleties of a writer who often describes things as they appear or seem as oppose to the writer who claims to capture everything as it is.

 It was once this phenomenon started happening, that I really became a reader. To think that this only ensued in college is unfortunate, though I’m not sure any time before would have made much sense. These were the years allotted for me to inquire, to be more drastic and to create. I was filling myself with influences and memorizing favourite passages, and romanticizing characters only to recreate them in my own writing; I was, in my own art, “deforming the model,” as Barthes states. Suddenly, despite earlier resistance, I was turning to my parents for their take on things and finding solace in shared journeys. But more crucially, these were the years I chose to read as much as I could; the 19^th century novel, French lyrical poetry, Greek Tragedy, Proust, Contemporary American short fiction. Invariably, my certainties shifted frequently. With each writer, came an era or war, came revolutions-French, sexual, student. But more significant was when I began to understand that certainties were needless, preventable even.

Prior to graduation last May, I made a list of books I hoped to read, ones I had no time for in the year. It was the only thing I’d planned to do; I had yet to find a job, or an apartment, or even consider something more classic , like a road trip with friends or a summer class, something light and indulgent, like printmaking or cooking. Instead, I was excited to begin devouring my reading list, each book, one by one, in no particular order. Somehow, having choice was order enough. I should have predicted what happened instead. My first months this summer were spent re-reading. Some books were still fresh in my mind and I caught myself anticipating favourite parts. Others, short fiction or essays, I hadn’t returned to in a couple of years, yet those too were suddenly alive again; that haunting perfection of a great short story, its timing matching my ride into the city. I found myself assigning my fellow passengers Dickensian names to pair with their Dickensian quirks: the way they sat squished in their seats, sweaty, even grotesque.

Each book was animated in a new way, as if cohering somehow with my daily thoughts and interactions. That nervous, existential post-college fear was quieted one afternoon as I re-read a Raymond Carver essay on writing. I read it three times, as if asking it to accompany me until I’d calmed down a bit. I learned the pleasure of returning to a book, of reading sentimentally and wistfully, with all of me. To be once again in the throes of a narrative, a romance, a familiar pursuit, reminded me that reading was something I had learned to do and that it needed practice and attention, and that despite the years each book had on me, I too was bringing something to the page. “Find now what comes near to you,” Bloom reminds-weigh and consider, weigh and consider.

The novel encourages – a form of storytelling that promotes our sense of being individual, but never forgetting the bond of our “common humanity” and of the “universal experiences” that we believe the best novels elucidate and comment on. – From Noah Richler’s blog

 

Like most candidates for a Masters Degree in Communication and Theatre, I searched for a text that summarized some obscure, but relevant information. I found Kenneth Burke’s Philosophy of Literary Form. It gave me way of thinking about literature and a reason to start writing.

Burke began by analyzing proverbs “Proverbs are designed for consolation or vengeance, for admonition or exhortation, for foretelling.”  They describe recurring social relationships and events and provide advice for surviving almost anything. Proverbs are essentially “equipment for living”. Literature is” proverbs writ large.”

The books that we read, the poetry and the plays and films that we view, are there to provide in a post technocratic society, what existed in the one-liner proverbs of a pre-literate world. Marry in haste regret at leisure becomes Pride and Prejudice. Red sun at night sailor’s delight, red sun in the morning sailor’s warning becomes Moby Dick; the higher up the monkey climbs the easier to see its ass becomes the Great Gatsby.

There is also my mother’s philosophy of literature which sounds like a proverb. She used to say that books are like food. Some books are great appetizers, others the meat and potatoes and there are lots of desserts. She said that we have a little of everything in our cupboards. To this day I read research books in the morning, meat and potatoes during the day and dessert books are piled untidily by my bed. 

My mother used the books that she had read as a girl to keep my brother distracted from the horrible hunger of a war time sojourn in Siberia and Kirgizstan. She told him the plots of Dickens and Victor Hugo. When he finally learned to read, my brother went through the entire library of the refugee camp in Germany so quickly that Eleanor Roosevelt gave him a prize.

I have written screenplays and theatre plays and short stories and there is a big difference between them.  In film and theatre, the subtext or motivation and thoughts and deepest feelings of the persona, are left to the actor. One writes the dialogue on the surface and prays for intelligent interpreters. I realized when writing stories that subtext was my responsibility.  The only way the reader would know what some event felt like was when I described those feelings. It seems so obvious but it really is the most difficult thing to learn. The performing texts need narrative drive, atmosphere, believable personae and dialogue. A good novel provides feelings, thoughts and subtle changes in attitude so that the journey of the characters remains engaging. Great literature provides ways of thinking about the unthinkable. It addresses the most difficult situations that human beings might experience. Literature makes us laugh out loud, helps to ease our pain, provides clues about human nature and teaches how to surmount desperate times.

A novel can take you anywhere in any timeframe on any personal or social journey. We enter the reality of the anthropological “other”. A good book transcends the limitations of our own circumscribed time and space. It can change or enhance the difficult challenges we face.

A friend of mine from Turkey had just enough English to discover Margaret Laurence. He spent weeks alone in the cab of an eighteen wheeler and he fell in love with Canada as he crossed it while struggling painstakingly through “The Diviners” by Margaret Laurence.

Everyone wants to survive and to live better. In agrarian societies, the proverb served as a textbook rich with life enhancing advice. Today we need proverbs with greater subtlety and complexity to provide us with strategies for living. Notwithstanding the information bombardment of internets and multichannel television, we continue to seek the beauty and intricacy of a Huckleberry Finn, Wuthering Heights, Fifth Business, Cat’s Eye, Tom Jones, Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina or The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.

There are theories about the loss of the habit of reading. The internet and Google fast information bites, face book and twitter cause our brains to multi-task and condition them in ways that make it difficult to concentrate on large bodies of print. Yet, when we are most at risk or stressed, there is one remedy that can serve us better than any chemical panacea – a good reading light, a long and ample sofa and an engaging book. Literature matters and it survives when parents can keep their children distracted from pain and hunger with the tales of David Copperfield and the Hunchback of Notre Dame. It survives so that we can know each other. It allows us to internalize the global collective wisdom that lives in great books.

 

Quebec’s Robert Lepage and his company, Ex Machina, collaborated with Theatre Sans Frontieres to bring  Lipsynch, to The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 2009 Next Wave Festival (Oct 3-11). It would be an understatement to state that this production transported its audience, with breathtaking images, into the magical realm of nine intertwined lives through the window of his vertical space of theatre and opera in a marathon, nine-hour production. 

 Lepage began his exploration of the human voice by literally flying us into his universe. On his magic carpet Lufthansa airplane, from Frankfurt to Montreal, are Ada, an opera singer, (Rebecca Blankenship) rehearsing in first class while a crying baby is in coach, held in the arms of her deceased mother, a Nicaraguan prostitute named Lupe (Nuria Garcia).  Lepage uses a surgeon’s scalpel to juxtapose these two lives and all that follow.  One is left with the visual metaphor of the plane as a birth canal.

 We are introduced to a number of intersecting lives: Marie (Frederike Bedard), who while attempting to understand what her deceased father had to say on old 8mm films, hires a lip-reader to assist her; Thomas (Hans Piesbergen), the German neurologist, whose fascination with the human brain destroys and leaves a female patient speechless; a sex worker (Sara Kemp) who struggles with issues of incest; Ada, who makes the decision to adopt Lupe’s baby whom she names Jeremy (Rick Miller), whose journey is to make a film, loosely based on his biological mother’s life.

My first introduction to Robert Lepage’s visionary work was the Metropolitan Opera’s production of La Damnation de Faust, currently in repertoire at the Met.  His inventive use of technology, without sacrificing the artistic integrity of the opera, enthralled me.  It should be noted that Mr. Lepage has been commissioned for the Metropolitan Opera’s 2012 Wagnerian Ring Cycle, to be conducted by Music Director, James Levine.  So anticipated is this Ring Cycle that audiences are urged to become Diamond Ring ($25,000) and Golden Ring ($10,000) pre-subscribers to secure priority seating.

In Lipsynch, his set pieces, which break apart and reconfigure from an airplane in to the London tube, for example, are not a distraction to the story line, instead they engage and focus our attention.

Lipsynch is layered with multiple languages.  As an audience member, if we do not understand German or French, we must make the decision to focus our attention somewhere between the subtitles and the actors. But if we do not speak Spanish, as there are no subtitles here, does the physicality and emotionality of the actors justifies this?  Or does he want to scramble our brains and challenge us?  

 Remembering and forgetting -some haunting images: an elongated goodbye between Ada and Jeremy as the train pulls out of the station.  The last act, when Lupe is reduced to a sexual commodity and wraps her hands around her transparently exposed breasts.   And then there is Lupe’s lifeless body cradled in Jeremy’s arms.

One of the central themes of Lipsynch revolves around the sex industry and those who are exploited by being seduced with false promises only for the profit of sex traffickers: Lupe’s story is sadly commonplace.  Currently on view in New York, is JOURNEY, an experiential installation designed by well known artists such as Anish Kapoor, Emma Thompson, who worked with and assisted Elena in retelling her story in the Resurrection room, and Sam Roddick, who designed a shockingly filthy (and smelly) room with a pulsating bed and a mirror that is inscribed in lipstick with the words, Help Me.  The central figure is Elena, a Moldavian woman, who was tricked and sold for 500 British pounds, to a sex ring in London.  Her story and that of Victoria, Tina, Isabella, Yolanda, Saphire and Ola is recorded and honored with painful first-hand descriptions of humiliation, sexual brutality and submission.  It is important to note, and this ties directly into the multiplicity of language in Lipsynch, that half of these women spoke poor or very little English.  How are they to speak and who will listen?

Ex Machina engages its actors through the improvisational process of building a theatre piece, stuck by stuck, from clinical research to personal stories, in powerful workshops that are reminiscent of the late choreographic genius of Pina Bausch, as well as other theatre luminaries such as Anne Bogart, Robert Wilson, Philip Glass, Andrei Serban, Ariane Mnouchkine and Peter Brook.  As a creative tool, this process is a force that both stimulates and gives authenticity to each sequence, actor and Act.

Robert Lepage defined it best, “I often compare our evolving artistic process to the image of a tree.  The audience only sees the trunk, bark, branches, and leaves.  But the artist should be preoccupied by the growth happening underground, in that unseen network of roots digging erratically yet so expertly that it can hold, sustain and nurture the whole tree…we often confuse voice, speech, and language, but those are indeed three very distinct and totally different things.  Lipsynch is about the signification of all three and their interaction in modern human expression.” 

 I am looking forward to 2012 and being in the audience for the Met’s Ring Cycle.  The only question is, can I afford it?

 

 

            Samira sat on the floor of her adobe hut studying her hands as carefully as if she were plucking  a daisy  or reading the constellations on a bright night or counting the drops of water that dripped into the kitchen sink like a metronome. Her hands had five appendages each, five, just like her feet, which also had five. Like  starfish. Like Christ’s wounds.

            She stroked her hands slowly like Tony used to do. Tony would stroke her waistline, she would stroke his back, their lips would  touch, their tongues  would intertwine until they no longer knew where her taste-buds ended and his began.  But that had been  a long time ago and the first  baby was now a young lady with boobs and all poking under her blouse like small mounds of brown sugar  and fine corn silk grew  under her arms.   And after the first girl they had a second one.  

            Samira’s eyes ran over her hands. Her left index finger traced the lines of her right palm. Her right thumb touched  the finger-pads of her left hand.  As she did this, she felt that slight frisson that hardened her nipples and made her mouth water,  moistening her lips into a pink gloss, just as her other lips used to  turn deep crimson under her bushy tropical tangle. Samira remembered how Tony’s tongue would explore until it sunk into those depths that tasted like zapote  fruit   and smelled like wet soil. But that pleasant memory also brought back dark memories of how Tony’s tongue could also make her hurt. Tony’s inflammatory tongue, which could stir red-hot coals in her body and rouse rabbles at the university had become so caustic of late  that Samira no longer remembered why they had married at all.    

            Samira traced the lines on her right palm. They spelled a perfect capital M,  deep and clear, without any breaks, or sidelines or alleyways or anything that was not as clear-cut and bright as the wonderful  future that was theirs for the taking.  

            They say that the lines in the left hand  show a person’s destiny and those on the right one  show the struggle between destiny and will. The lines in Samira’s left palm remained unchanged  throughout her life, while the ones in her right hand had started changing at some point. Samira no longer remembered when this had started to happen.

            How could hands change so drastically?  First the head line of her right hand broke off, when she had to have her appendix out in a hurry. Then another line went haywire, when her tiny  baby boy was born, a candle flickering  in the wind to be snuffed out two hours later. Then Tony started acting strange and fine lines started appearing on her right hand like branches in a creeper.

            Whenever Samira would reach this point in her ruminations the crazed lines in her hand took over her brain like a creeper that strangles anything that crosses its path. What mattered most, Samira repeated to herself, was that her destiny and her will had parted ways and the rest of her body had also started breaking apart. Her tongue no longer said what her brain really thought,  her brain got disconnected from her heart, her heart and her reason were at odds leaving  her soul bereft.  At the end of the day  all she could do was stare at that bottomless pit  that nothing and nobody could fill.

            Samira’s reverie was interrupted by a  volley of hail that  hit the French windows of the main house. When they had bought the plot to build their dream house, they had decided not to touch the adobe hut built by the previous owner at the back of the garden. It would be  their love nest. As it  turned out, not only had Tony started an affair, but he had the gall to tell the children that Samira needed to be sent to a rest home, “until she felt better”.

            The hail stopped pounding and the rain dissolved into a light drizzle. Lucerito had her nose glued to the French window. The tears running down her face mirrored the curtain of water on the other side of the glass. She was looking at the adobe hut where her mother lived trying to remember the last time that she had buried her face in her mother’s warm bosom.   

            -Why does mummy spend so much time all by herself in the little hut?

            Tony  was about to say something but then changed his mind.

            Samira looked across the garden at her daughters and her husband wishing she could be on the other side of the French windows.  She couldn’t afford to mull over the past.  Whenever she thought of Tony with the other woman,  a   dark viper would slither up her vagina all the way through her gut boring its way to her heart, pushing the air out of her lungs and if she was lucky, coming out through her mouth, nose and eyes in a torrent of wails and tears.

            So instead of trying to deal with a world in which there was no room for her, Samira  decided to create a world of her own. It was a place were time stood still and the present was suspended in the middle  while the past and the future whirled round and round like a giant Ferris wheel, producing a strobe effect in which lights moved back and forth,  where the future and the past were one blur and the present was where you wanted it to be.  

            The drizzle stopped  and the sun melted the dampness that still clung to the window panes into thin tendrils of steam.

            – Look at mummy, she is wading in the fountain!  Can we go play outside?

            Tony opened the French windows and stared at his wife.  Samira was standing in the middle of the fountain  holding water in her hands as if offering it to the sun. Her hands looked like  starfish, with five fingers, like the five senses, like Christ’s wounds,  like the Gutierrez family, who had been five, and then became four and now were three plus one and soon  would be one minus one minus one, because children grow up and grownups grow apart and go their  separate ways. At the end of the day, everything that adds up has to be subtracted, although who is to say that everything that has been subtracted can’t  add up again? The trick is to do it yourself before life does it for you.     Samira’s lips moved and her soft voice floated over the fountain and stopped at the French windows of the main house.  She looked at her children. Then at her husband. Their eyes met.   The Ferris wheel came to an abrupt stop. The past and the future became an indistinct blur. The sky burst into light. In a flash, Samira ran to the main house with her arms outstretched   until  they were covered in a tangle of fingers and palms and crazed lines.

            Samira no longer knew where her hands ended and those of her family began.  

 

[This story is a translated  extract from Las Manos de Samira awarded a first prize by A Quien Corresponda, a Mexican literary review whose demise was due to budget cuts.]

 

 

In October 1975 Roy Lowther was charged with the murder of his wife, Pat, a gifted and renowned Canadian poet, when her two young daughters, Chris and Beth, were seven and nine. In this film, the two women revisit the circumstances surrounding the violent death of their mother and try to make sense of their father’s brutal act and its aftermath.

 

         

BATTLE OF WILLS tells a story of obsession and intrigue in the art world worthy of Shakespeare himself. It travels from the high-tech labs of North America, to the art galleries of Bond Street and the windswept castles if the English midlands to unravel the mystery behind a painting that shook the art world.

 

 

Interview:

 Q. How did you choose the subject for your film Water Marks?

A. I was in British Columbia, about ten years ago now, and I found a book called Furry Creek written by Keith Harrison, which was a fictionalized biography of a poet, Pat Lowther. It included her poetry, the story of her murder and references to her daughters. I was immediately attracted to the story for a very personal reason. My brother Alex had been a west coast lawyer and his very first law case was to represent Roy Lowther, Pat Lowther’s husband. Alex was a young lawyer starting out and she was a much beloved Vancouver poet.  The whole arts community was outraged at the murder. I remember my brother telling me about this case and how high-profile it was for a young lawyer. I knew the back story from my brother’s point of view but I hadn’t yet investigated the larger story, the story of Pat and her husband and her children. And of her poetry. I had studied English literature at Mcgill was going to be a English professor until I got side tracked into film. So a lot of things came together in the subject matter.  I wanted to do a film on the west coast, because it is a second home for me.  My brother had lived there, my parents. I grew up in Montreal but everyone else in my family had migrated west. Pat Lowther was a great poet of the West Coast landscape, much of her imagery conveys that rain forest feeling of the West Coast. I read her poems when I began that film.  There were a number of levels that interested me, there was the tragedy of two young girls, the West coast, poetry.  There was a lot of creative room for me to explore. Plus it was a strong feminist story, a story of the two daughters of Pat Lowther trying to reclaim their childhood which was robbed from them and to  reclaim their family history.

 

Q. How long was it after Pat Lowther was killed that you did the film?

A. She was killed in the mid-seventies and I did the film around 2001. It is a story that has continued to resonate in poetry circles in Canada. There is the Pat Lowther prize that is given to an emerging female poet every year.  She had been active in the League of Canadian Poets and a much beloved figure in those circles. I would not have considered doing the film without that. She was an important figure in the mythology of the West Coast literary circles. The seventies had been a particularly fertile period for writers. With the aftermath of the sixties, the West Coast was laid-back, bohemian and people drifted to that area. Visual artists as well.

 

Q. Where did Pat Lowther live?

A. She lived in the city of Vancouver. She and her husband owned a tiny rudimentary cabin on Mayne Island, which is in the film. After  Roy Lowther murdered her, he took their two children over to this cabin and hung out there until he was arrested. And that was another way in which the story overlapped with my own life. My brother had a rustic cabin just off Mayne Island. So it was a place I knew well.  There were all these resonances for me and it seemed that I was supposed to do it.  So I did.

 

Q. Was the murder more important than the other aspects, the children, the poetry and the family context.

A. I would not like to think it was more important. One cannot sum up the life of an artist by a catastrophe that happens to her in one instant.  That would be diminishing her, but I cannot deny that as a film maker I am always trying to find the drama and murder, of course, heightens the stakes. Particularly in documentary, you are trying to find some element that is going to give the drama of fiction.  So, yes, the murder ended up being an important dramatic element. I tried very hard not to fall into that “Allo Police” kind of mentality, which is all about blood and gore, so there are no scenes of the body or anything like that, instead I let Pat Lowther’s voice come through, by using her poetry, her voice is present on the screen, in a collage of images. I was giving a sense of who she was. The end of the film, doesn’t end up with her murder, it ends up with her daughters who put together her collective work, a beautiful book – a heartfelt attempt to reclaim a painful history and to move on from it.

 

Q. What I mainly remember from the film, which I saw quite a few years ago, is the lushness of the scenery and the colouring.

A. The entire film was tinted blue and I had never done that before. I worked with a genius cinematographer, Marc Gadoury. I wanted to film some scenes underwater – we have scenes of jellyfish floating, and a scene where the camera is underwater and Chris Lowther is swimming above.  Both the daughters are writers too, not as well known as Pat, but Chris has published a collection of poetry.  All these women’s voices come through.  When I told my cinematographer that I wanted the film to have this watery feel to it, images of water, the wetness, the fog of the west coast, he suggested that we tint it blue. I was terrified, I thought it would look hokey.

 

Q. The second main memory, other than the fluidity and lushness, was the daughters, their emotional sense that came across.

A. They are fascinating.  They have a complicated relationship. In the aftermath of that kind of tragedy, where both parents are missing, the mother dead, father in prison (where he died), it is not surprising. The younger resented the older because she was the surrogate boss. But they are of course very close even though the relationship is complicated. They are opposites. The older one, Beth, was urban, edgy, lived in the east side of Vancouver, part of the bohemian milieu. The other had escaped to a wilderness part of the west coast, in Tofino. She and her boyfriend had an apartment in Tofino but even that was too urban for her and they lived on a houseboat most of the time in a bay off Clayoquot Sound which is all rain forest and many uninhabited islands and bays. If you don’t have a lot of money, you can spend ten thousand dollars on a houseboat, take it out, moor it in a bay and you have a mile of waterfront. That’s what Chris Lowther and her boyfriend had done. Living in this paradise, growing organic vegetables on the deck of her houseboat. That was interesting to me, the differences between the sisters.

 

Q. What did you most like about this film?

A. I always like stretching the creative chops. As a documentary film maker, you are essentially a story teller trying to create a narrative using music, imagery, poetry, character.  How to be true to your subject and how to create a story that will engage and this one was rich with those elements.

 

Q. Eight years later, is there anything you would do differently?

A. Yes. I have never done a film where I have felt one hundred percent satisfied. I will never be the type of film maker who says “that was just right”. I learned one thing in that film. The subject was charged because the daughters had so many emotions about what had happened and because my brother had represented their father. I was walking on eggshells during the time I was making the film. Because of this somewhat tense situation, I pre-interviewed them a lot before we ever shot. Their best interviews, their best responses, were before the cameras were on. When I repeated the questions on camera, they didn’t have the same freshness, spontaneity. I could have done better interviews if I hadn’t been nervous and over prepared. That is tricky about documentary. It is so much about creating trust and comfort with the person you are interviewing. If they are trying to respond to the question, they are having to think harder because it is a new question, they can get distracted from the camera. I should have trusted my instincts as a film maker and not over prepared. I don’t do that anymore.

 

Q. Do you like Pat’s poetry?

A. Yes. Some of it’s quite challenging. She writes a combination of poetry that is an homage to the west coast. She writes political poetry, about Chile, and poetry about women’s lives;  she worked for the NDP, and her husband, Roy, was a quasi-communist, they were always left-leaning and that comes through in her poetry.

 

Q. Is there a poem of Pat Lowther’s that would represent her?

A. Yes.

 

 ANEMONES

 

Under the wharf at Saturna

the sea anemones

open their velvet bodies

 

chalk black

            and apricot

                        and lemon-white

 

they grow as huge

and glimmering

                        as flesh chandeliers

 

under the warped

and salt-stained wharf

  letting down

      their translucent mouths

                                                of arms

 

even the black ones

have an aura

like an afterimage of light

 

Under our feet

   the gorgeous animals

        are feeding

                                    in the sky

 

© Pat Lowther

 

Q. Were you changed in the making of the film?

A. I am changed by every film I make. It was not an easy film to make as the daughters were quite prickly. I cannot fault them considering the circumstances.  But I felt that I had to keep them happy. Documentary film making can be intrusive since you are asking personal questions. 

 

Q. What was their reaction to Water Marks?

A. I think they were happy. Initially they didn’t quite know what to make of it because it was so personal to them, but they received a huge amount of feedback. It went to different festivals, to screenings and it brought attention to their mother’s work, their mother’s life and to her book which they had just brought out, which was a labour of love.  We are still in touch, it goes on. Allan Safarik, a Canadian poet who was in the film because he was Pat Lowther’s best friend wrote his memoirs and sent a chapter about Water Marks to me. he said that participating in the film, was a huge catharsis because he had kept so much emotion bottled up about Pat and the children and he had felt guilt, and seeing them again and giving them some of her work was incredibly important.

 

Q. Your latest film Battle of Wills is about Shakespeare. Both films have something to do with writing and literature.

A. In the film I just did, I used Shakespeare’s poetry and “his voice comes through” in the sound track. Like Water Marks, it is about a writer and also about landscape, this time about England. Battle of Wills tells the story of two portraits that are duking it out, both claiming to be the only image of Shakespeare painted from life. It is a deconstruction of two portraits, from the point of view of the outsider, the long shot; the Sanders portrait is owned by Lloyd Sullivan an elderly man in Ottawa whose family has owned this portrait for four hundred years, passing it from generation to generation. It’s an engaging face, an authentic 17th century Elizabethan portrait. Sullivan has spent almost all his lifetime savings vetting this portrait and it is 100 percent Elizabethan painted on oak. But is it Shakespeare? The contending portrait is owned by the National Portrait Gallery in London, a huge, august institution and it is the founding portrait in their collection and they have a huge stake in it being Shakespeare. The film is about the politics of the art world, the dishonesty of the authenticity debates, the hidden agendas in the world of Shakespeare, because Shakespeare is an industry. The film is about the mysteries around him, because we know his works so well and absolutely nothing about his life. He is a big cypher and there are theories upon theories about him. This film plays into those theories. And I have some sexy people in it, like Joseph Fiennes and Simon Callow. It was filmed at Yale University in Ottawa, Toronto, London, Stratford-upon-Avon, the British Midlands and Montreal.

 

Q. What was your push to do this film?

A. It was a series of articles from the Globe and Mail dating back to 2002, about a new portrait of Shakespeare that had been discovered. It was a big story and then a book by Stephanie Nolen came out. I always thought there has to be a good story here. There were three or four film companies that were competing to tell the story and I lucked out. I love Shakespeare. Water Marks is a serious film, Battle of Wills is tongue-in-cheek. It was my chance to make fun of English pomposity and the art dealers from Bond street with their noses stuck right up in the air – a romp with serious questions.

 

Q. Is there anything else you want to add about film making.

A. Making documentaries is the most wonderful thing imaginable, except I only get to do it five percent of my time, the rest of the time I am looking for money to do it. It is not for everybody. Young film makers starting out think they will be going into the film industry and spend all their time making films, it is just not the case.

 

 

 The Last Room

 

I am waiting for you

In the lowest room beneath the building

 

I am smooth as a gourd

without resistance

my shape spreads

            downwards

                        seeking the lowest

centre of gravity

 

I spend hours memorizing

the labyrinth

            beneath our skins

                        by which I came

 

waiting for your long shadow

in the passage

 

I am green as a gourd

but inside I am red

 

All through the folded hours

I am burning

            quietly

 

I am becoming a red hollow

skin

 

            a gourd for drinking

 

Only now do I recognize

shards patterning the dust

between my legs

 

they are my former skins

 

How many times

have I come here

 

How long have I been waiting

 

© Pat Lowther

 

 

KITCHEN MURDER

 

Everything here’s a weapon

i pick up a meat fork,

imagine plunging it in,

a heavy male

thrust

 

in two hands

i heft a stone-

ware plate, heavy

enough?

 

rummage the cupboards:

red pepper, rape-

seed oil, Drano

 

I’ll wire myself

into a circuit:

the automatic perc, the dishwater, the

socket above the sink

 

i’ll smile an electric

eel smile:

whoever touches

me is dead.

 

© Pat Lowther

 

 

 

For further information on Battle of Wills by Anne Henderson: http://www.informactionfilms.com/en/productions/battle_of_wills/index.html

 

For further information on Pat Lowther:

www.poets.ca/linktext/awards/lowther.htm

 

Anne Henderson has been writing and directing documentaries for 25 years, with many international titles to her credit. Her documentaries encompass a wide variety of subjects concerning culture, human rights, history, and the environment. She likes to tell stories about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. She makes her home in the midst of Montreal’s vibrant arts community.

 

 

WOMAN WILLING TO DEFEND HER HOTEL – MEXICO CITY [ZOCALO]

HOTEL ISABEL 2003

 

I was invited to Mexico City in the fall of 2003 on a research and production grant from the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Quebec with six other female artists during the “Voila Quebec Festival”, a Mexican – Canadian Artists Cultural Exchange.

‘woman willing to defend her hotel’ is a performance work that took place at the entrance to the Hotel Isabel close to the Presidential palace. In this highly suggestive and transient environment of a hotel, this intervention became an interactive space concentrating on points of friction between public and private space.

I stood outside the hotel for about three hours and guarded the hotel in a burlesque kind of fashion, with the security guard dressed in a sort of “Lara Croft/Patty Hearst” military uniform. As I handed out a soft-pliable toy or “lookalike grenades” to a passersby or tourists from the hotel, I advised participants in Spanish that the object and its purpose was “for protection…”.

I had stuffed fake Mexican money in my pockets and army jacket and awarded this out generously to the public security force or/and police in uniform outside the entrance to the hotel (there is a very large security presence felt in Mexico city, especially protecting the streets of the Zocalo, the historic district close to the Presidential Palace and they are dressed in different forms of uniform and stature). 

• Performing in front of the camera has always seemed so immediate.
• Since the 1960s, if not before, artists have centered their work more increasingly and offensively on issues of socio-political parameters
• In action, performance can reveal the way in which body language and gesture interact and define our relationships with one another and the world around us.

As one examines the “culture of fear” that appears to be of increasing magnitude and importance all over the world, humanity is far from convinced that social order is recovering – rather, that the present populace is living through and in an age of terrorism, environmental disaster and widening inequality.

I have also been very interested in manifestations of fear both on a personal and social level, and as captured in the popular imagination. This early body of work also serves as an inquiry into how some of the phenomena associated with fear are constituted and negotiated.

The digital stills [self-portraits] and the recording of the video that resulted from this performance led to my return to Mexico by invitation to a private gallery, ‘Galeria Nina Menocal’ in order to present this work once again to the art community at large.

Photography’s relationship to reality has been irrevocably transformed by the numerous ways in which images are now constructed.

Using this kind of documentation is fundamental for artists today who seek to articulate concerns relating to contemporary global events and experiences as they evolve in the world around us, rather then simply capture the memory of them.

 ~~~~~~ 

You can see more of her work at: http://cargocollective.com/julianaespanakeller

 

 In the tradition of Sadat Hasan Manto:

 

A man by the name of X hopped from one shelter to another telling families that the enemy had crossed the line and to be prepared for the worst. When he entered our dark shelter in the underground and told everyone the news, the women wailed and children cried. In the dark my father struck a match and reached for a candle. He called my brother and together they walked to a corner. I followed. My father handed my brother a gun and said: No one should touch your mother or your sisters. You know what to do.

My brother whimpered, “I don’t want to do it. I can’t.”

I stepped closer, picked up the gun from my brother’s hand and said: I will do it.