The Powell's book launch for The UNTOLD GAZE

I had my first professional art exhibition in May of 1995. I started working at Powell's "City of Books" in May of 1995.

The famous book store and I have had a rather complicated relationship these past twenty-three years. (Twenty-three years!) And for a good percentage of that time, certainly after my art career was better established, I've been saying I need to move on; honestly, I'm a bit embarrassed that as a respected, relatively successful artist, I still have a "day job". And I know that when I do quit some day, I'll finally be forced to make myself the real driver of my career, rather than just waiting for galleries to find me... which is what I've always done. But it's an odd tethering I have to the place, matched by the connection I have with my art career. These two things, born at exactly the same time, have been the greatest constants in my life - the two imperatives - for nearly a quarter century. How will it be when I eventually let the one go...?

And now - tonight - the two come together in a way they never have before. Powell's "City of Books" is one of the most important venues in the entire country for a writer to promote or debut a new book; the Powell's book launch is pretty much legendary. Even though they usually don't grant events to expensive, privately printed, primarily pictorial publications - so many "P"s! - they were enthusiastic about giving us an event. Five of the writers who have pieces in the book - Lidia Yuknavitch, Monica Drake, Scott Sparling, Margaret Malone, and Jude Brewer - will be reading tonight. And I know it will be a wonderful, happy night. And, for me, it will also be - because of all my history with the place - a bit... surreal.

Burning patterns and burnt language

This past Saturday, I co-emceed at a literary event.  Gigi and several other fantastic writers - some real heavy-hitters among them - read at the second of an ongoing, quarterly series, Burnt Tongue.  "Burnt" refers to writer and teacher Tom Spanbauer's workshop challenge to "burn" language, deconstructing/reconstructing language in the service of defining character, as a way to discover literary "voice".*  A central figure in Portland literary life - most of the writers who read are, or have been, students of his - Tom read last, a beautiful/awful passage from his current novel.

And everyone's work was really wonderful - funny, smart, touching, challenging - and the audience was rapt and appreciative.  But being as incredibly self-absorbed as I am - I'm an artist; I'm supposed to be that way, right? - I still found time to be overly critical of my emceeing performance.  Because it wasn't what I had imagined it would be; I certainly got the job done, but I wasn't the brimming font of charm I'd hoped to be.  That, combined with the dislocating effects of only-on-Facebook friendships - and more than half the crowd were FB friends of mine - got me snuggled up against old, negative behavioral patterns, the kinds of social (non)interaction I thought I'd gotten past, grown out of.  And then, finding myself down that rabbit hole, turning and wondering, "hey, I remember this unpleasant locale; how the hell did I wind up here again?"  Sunday - on Facebook, bien sûr - I mused a bit on my experience of the previous night.

*** 

First thought about last night's Burnt Tongue reading:

 
Married to a writer, I go to a lot of readings and hear a lot of great writing. But last night was something very special. And one of the incidental delights of the evening was watching Lidia Yuknavitch** across the room - she was in my direct line of sight - just beaming as she listened to the other writers read, her love for what her fellow writers do and who they are was so obvious. And I keep thinking that it was just the perfect expression of the amazing, loving camaraderie that is what Portland's writer's community is all about.

Second thought about last night's Burnt Tongue reading:

I got a good smacking from that weird FB condition. You know, that thing where you know SO much about your FB friends - their politics, their love life, their kids, their family, their job, their vacations, their health, on and on - and you have great, smart FB interactions, but in person, you don't know them AT ALL. I often find that gulf very hard to bridge, makes me paralytically shy. And when that FB friend is someone whose work I tremendously respect, or even if I just think them very cool, it gets that much harder. So, trying to break the cycle, I'm outing myself to my top three from last night: Dear Monica Drake, who is a good egg to be sure, in the future I will try to do more than just bid goodnight as you and Kass exit the building. Mr. Mingo I will attempt more than a handshake or a wave; we might speak of large vegetables and France, even. And Miss Lidia - great, lustrous, vibrating soul of a woman - I will try to make it past just telling you that I'm kinda scared of you. Oy!

Third thought about last night's Burnt Tongue reading:
 
When I was younger, whenever anyone complemented me on anything, especially on my art, I - always - felt compelled to tell them what was wrong with the thing at hand, to tell them where I had failed in whatever way. Somehow, I guess I felt my over-critical self-honesty would be a service to us both; no one should be fooled. But at some point, someone pointed out that that was actually a pretty ungracious thing to do, that it denied, even disrespected the experience of the other; it spurned the gift of their complement. And really, it was very selfish, saying that my experience was more valid than theirs. And at some point, I stopped doing that.

We all try and grow up and come to an acceptance of the muck of our experience, remold ourselves into a shape that better suits who we really are on the inside. And then, there you go. In an unplanned dive, you find yourself back in an almost forgotten, but still awfully comfortable, uncomfortable place. Which sounds - terribly - important but, really, I'm just trying to say that people were so nice to me last night about my co-emceeing stint. And because - I - didn't do quite what I imagined I'd do, I proceeded to bat away their kindness. Well, basta! Thank you, sweet people. I do appreciate it. xo 

Fourth (and final) thought about last night's Burnt Tongue reading: 

It was really all about the WRITING! (Beautiful, beautiful writing....)

***

*  Tom Spanbauer, giving a fuller explanation of the concept of "burning" language: 

[from a workshop description]  "... the first thing we will encounter is voice. How to create it. Saying it wrong, saying it spoken rather than written, saying it raw. By challenging old creative writing workshop language, we will investigate what my teacher [Gordon Lish] called Burnt Tongue. The New York Times, in its review of  The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon [Tom's best known book], called it Poisoned Lyricism. Character lies in the destruction of the sentence. How a character thinks is how she speaks..." 

[from another workshop description]  "Participants should expect a close look at their writing. Sentence by sentence. What we’re really doing is deconstructing language down to the fundamentals, in search of voice. Character lies in the destruction of the sentence. By analyzing parts of speech – adverbs, abstract nouns, received text, clichés, “proper” grammar – each student will get to scrutinize his or her language as it goes onto the page, and in that scrutiny, come up with some new and exciting ways to get rid of that creative writing sound, or that weird way one’s writing sounds formal, distant, boring, drab."

[from an interview]  "Lish’s workshop met once a week, and there were maybe 120 people in his class. Instead of being theoretical, it was all, What does this sentence sound like? How to create a voice, and to get authority of voice by “saying it wrong”—what he called “burnt tongue.” It’s a way of writing as if you were speaking, of making your prose sound raw or strange or off or wrong or weird. Basically of fucking up your syntax."

And a quote from Chuck Palahniuk, Tom's best-known student:

"The next aspect, Spanbauer calls "burnt tongue." A way of saying something, but saying it wrong, twisting it to slow down the reader. Forcing the reader to read close, maybe read twice, not just skim along a surface of abstract images, short-cut adverbs, and clichés." 

**  In case you're not familiar with the names, Lidia Yuknavitch and Monica Drake are two of the best known and respected writers who happen to live in Portland.  (They're also part of the same writing group that includes the above-quoted Chuck Palahniuk and Cheryl Strayed - rare air!)  And their respective - and also very talented - spouses are Andy Mingo, a filmmaker, and Kass Alonso, a writer.

Enfant Gentil?

I spent a literary evening at the side of my wife, last night. I do enjoy being the consort whenever I can. I went with her to class - the Dangerous Writing workshop - enjoyed the wonderful writing and at the break they called it a night and had a little birthday party for Tom (Spanbauer). Then, most of us trucked over to a benefit for poet Walt Curtis. A few months back, Walt lost just about everything he owned in a fire, and this was one of several fundraisers in his honor.

The evening was long and rather...taxing, shall we say. We had all thought that Tom would be reading early in the program; one of the main reasons we went was to hear Tom and Kevin Samsell read. They eventually read, back to back, about three hours in. Before that, there was a lot of poetry slowly read - much of it unintelligible since, apparently, poets are unable to intuit the function of a microphone. The high point of this early part of the evening was Monica Drake, who read a great piece and gallantly fielded the rantings of the honoree.

Walt Curtis is known for being irascible, loudly whimsical, perverse. At least at big public functions. I hear he's quite charming in smaller, more intimate settings; I've never seen him that way. And last night, even though - or perhaps because - he was the one in whose honor the benefit was formed, he displayed behavior - loudly disruptive, antagonistic, insulting - that could only be described by employing the overworked phrase enfant terrible. A nearly elderly enfant, but still.... And I couldn't help but wonder why we laud such behavior in artists - poets - that we would condemn in a florist or a plumber.

We seem to think it's endearing that an artist might run amok that way. I think it goes along with that thing about artists being special. The role of an artist in modern art and literature. Not merely a craftsman, but special. And entitled - encouraged - to be loud and ridiculous. And it shouldn't really matter, I suppose; fools are often quite delightful. Entertaining, certainly. The problem is when we equate behavior with talent. And I think, all too often, we do. If the artist or writer acts extreme enough they're probably really good! We may not think this consciously, but the image of the brilliant, celebrated artist/author who goes about acting like a horse's ass is so deeply iconic, and is just the kind of thing that warps our expectations.

I can't really make any comment on Walt Curtis' talent or skill as a writer. I've only read Mala Noche, and I remember really enjoying it. (Though, I must admit that what I remember enjoying are the parts that related to my own life; when I read it, I'd just moved here from LA, and my experiences there had many parallels with his story.) But Walt is so loved and respected that I must assume he's a good writer. And beyond the nonsense, a good guy.

But I'd just like to make an obeisance to the artists and writers who work hard and are respectful and know how to behave in public. I'd really like to see a shift in the paradigm (I used the word paradigm, oh la!) of the artist's persona. What we think an artist looks and behaves like. I happen to know lots of artists and writers who are respectful and responsible and make amazing work. My wife is one of them. The writers she is in workshop with, who are kind and supportive - and fantastic writers. And Tom Spanbauer, a gentle, soft-spoken man of great dignity and grace, whose work is heartbreaking and fearless and...I honestly don't have the language to be able to describe the beauty and wisdom of his work.

So I'd really love to see a new image of a artist, a new icon of a writer. The sort of writer or artist I'm speaking of. A new terminology. Instead of the well-worn enfant terrible, may I suggest enfant gentil...? Or perhaps even enfant doux...?