twelve: apparently not see you in September?
This was technically supposed to go out last Tuesday, but despite the rising case numbers, September is apparently still and always September, which means my inbox is overspilling with work obligations, events, and new directions--and I'm thrown into schedule triage. So this is late, sorry: needs must when the deadlines start smashing into each other like bumper cars.
Things watched
Something about the cooler weather sends me back into the arms of Netflix -- maybe it's the dark coming earlier, and it feeling different to sit up and read. So we watched a heroic amount of movies this month, including a lot of classics catchup.
I dipped into Summertime (1955), because it occurred to me I'd never seen any David Lean movies except Lawrence of Arabia and it had Hepburn and Venice in it, so why not? There's something to be said for a movie which so finely captures the experience of being set loose in a new city, and all the kinds of tourists you run into traveling. There was one shot, just of the narrow street she's walking down on the way to the penisione, with all the sounds of this new place emphasized--singing, laundry, chatter--that was so vividly that novelty of travel, that sharpened-senses feeling. It made me desperately want to go to Italy, but also feel like I'd been there for just a moment.
That same week, Mansfield Park (1999) showed up with Jonny Lee Miller (we're very glad Sick Boy got clean and found a place in an upper-class Regency estate). I don't think I've ever seen an Austen adaptation go hard on the question of where all that genteel country-estate money was coming from, precisely, and while that thread--the slave-powered sugar interests in Antigua--doesn't entirely go resolved, that inclusion made this version feel a little more awake to the world at large, and put the class tensions between the Prices and the rest of Fanny's extended family into a more serious light.
The other major surprise was finally watching You've Got Mail (1998), a movie I have never seen before, and which I therefore had no idea was an absolutely cold-blooded takedown of the entire publishing industry and not just a movie in which Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan have an emotional affair on AOL instead of World of Warcraft, like normal people. (Also a modern loose adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, who knew?)
Notably, in 1998 (!) it encapsulates the entire discourse on indie versus big-box booksellers--curation and personal service versus discounts and larger stock numbers--in a way that...is still the entire argument on indie bookstores versus big-box and Amazon. Both proponents' justifications ("you are a lone reed standing tall, waving boldly in the corrupt sands of commerce!")--are still the same. Indie bookstores with branded tote bags! People walking in anxiously asking if you're still going to be in business in two months! Lots of publicity and impassioned campaigns around saving neighbourhood institutions like indie bookstores, and your sales don't even blip. Whisper about closing, mark everything down to the ground, and abruptly the store is full of people you've never seen before in mourning, and nobody appreciates the skills 'til they're dead. I lived this entire conversation--this universe--once.
In seriousness: I was a little stunned to realize that the discourse on indie bookselling hasn't actually changed in 22 entire years. People born when that argument was advanced who are now old enough to legally drink and fight unpardonably unethical foreign wars. That combination of romanticism and appeals to sanctity, hand in hand with no actual business, was apparently older than my whole bookselling career. When the industry discussion on a primary business model hasn't actually evolved in a generation, from the stores' end or the customers', that is...perhaps a problem.
Back to the art bit though: there is a lot more going on in that movie than anyone ever represented to me--about the gap between the roles you fit yourself into for family and work (those are both family businesses) and who you are; about what you do with the parts of yourself and others you don't entirely like, about the scarily powerful way you can be bent by your own bullshit or seduced into flattening others out into papercraft. About the mechanics of forgiveness: Birdie and her crush on Franco, the columnist boyfriend's declaration that he could never date someone who doesn't care about politics and then, not five minutes later, throwing that out the window for someone he's really truly fascinated by.
Peel it back and it's extremely thoughtful, and before diving into a certain wish fulfillment, rather smart. You are daring to imagine that you could have a different life is a rather bold thesis; so is Whatever else anything is, it ought to begin by being personal. I was pleasantly surprised.
Hands work
Last week marked the first of my research for the 2021 novel project, which just got its funding (yay!) this month (more on that later). It's set in and around the prison system, so I signed up to watch a panel on decarcerating mental health care from the Institute of the Development of Human Arts.
This week's built upon that, but for a different project (the trouble is, Jake, I need to finish more projects so I can have fewer projects), at a weeklong symposium organized by the Dallaire Institute on peacebuilding through centering children. This is absolutely the kind of fishing expedition that's most worthwhile, because there's a terrific amount of expertise in the room and where it doesn't apply to the book I'm writing, someone's going to say something that sends me spinning in a productive direction. And probably generate more projects.
It's been interesting finding where those discussions interface with each other. It's been a wonderful window into what people are doing with this moment. Some of it is just surviving, and the imperatives of surviving aren't less than right now. But some of it is taking advantage of the pause and suspension in business-as-usual to try out new systems that would help people better survive, and maybe thrive. And the feeling of sitting with people who act within and against their systems is magnificent.
Things read
Submissions for Reckoning have officially closed, and I'm digging deep into the last batch of poetry for this year's issue. Thanks much if you sent something in: it's going to be a difficult TOC to pick, in the best way, and it's given me insights into the grade and persistence of hustle that it takes to build a more international TOC that fits a theme.
Kerry Greenwood murder mysteries continue apace (it's lovely to have a series I can read three of in one day), and despite the loaded schedule, I worked my way through The Best American Food Writing 2018 to get a little thoughtful levity into the brain. There are only the two volumes so far, that year and 2019, and they're both so good at getting every angle of food writing: personal, systemic, agricultural, experiential, equity, experience, joy.
Things written
This month, though, the most important thing is that the most overdue project on my desk is finally coming to the end of its (too long) first draft.
This project has not been an easy thing to write in pandemic: so much about it is been remaking the art of catching silences; holding them in absolute focus in my hand in a way that leaves them undamaged, and doesn't crush. The more silence I make inside and out, the better I can hold them: they have trouble withstanding sudden bouts of Life Stuff.
The editing process on this is going to be fierce and probably painful -- it's at least 20,000 words too long right now -- but then some wheels can get in motion, the little perpetual motion bird can tip the coffeepot to fill the cup to counterweight the marble etc. Forward. :)
Things to read
The table of contents for R.B. Lemberg and Lisa M. Bradley's Ursula K. Le Guin tribute anthology Climbing Lightly Through Forests has been posted. I'll have one poem in it, "A Headful of Hair", and it's in gorgeous company; I am really excited to read a shocking amount of these pieces. It'll be available from Aqueduct Press in January 2021.
Things watched
Something about the cooler weather sends me back into the arms of Netflix -- maybe it's the dark coming earlier, and it feeling different to sit up and read. So we watched a heroic amount of movies this month, including a lot of classics catchup.
I dipped into Summertime (1955), because it occurred to me I'd never seen any David Lean movies except Lawrence of Arabia and it had Hepburn and Venice in it, so why not? There's something to be said for a movie which so finely captures the experience of being set loose in a new city, and all the kinds of tourists you run into traveling. There was one shot, just of the narrow street she's walking down on the way to the penisione, with all the sounds of this new place emphasized--singing, laundry, chatter--that was so vividly that novelty of travel, that sharpened-senses feeling. It made me desperately want to go to Italy, but also feel like I'd been there for just a moment.
That same week, Mansfield Park (1999) showed up with Jonny Lee Miller (we're very glad Sick Boy got clean and found a place in an upper-class Regency estate). I don't think I've ever seen an Austen adaptation go hard on the question of where all that genteel country-estate money was coming from, precisely, and while that thread--the slave-powered sugar interests in Antigua--doesn't entirely go resolved, that inclusion made this version feel a little more awake to the world at large, and put the class tensions between the Prices and the rest of Fanny's extended family into a more serious light.
The other major surprise was finally watching You've Got Mail (1998), a movie I have never seen before, and which I therefore had no idea was an absolutely cold-blooded takedown of the entire publishing industry and not just a movie in which Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan have an emotional affair on AOL instead of World of Warcraft, like normal people. (Also a modern loose adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, who knew?)
Notably, in 1998 (!) it encapsulates the entire discourse on indie versus big-box booksellers--curation and personal service versus discounts and larger stock numbers--in a way that...is still the entire argument on indie bookstores versus big-box and Amazon. Both proponents' justifications ("you are a lone reed standing tall, waving boldly in the corrupt sands of commerce!")--are still the same. Indie bookstores with branded tote bags! People walking in anxiously asking if you're still going to be in business in two months! Lots of publicity and impassioned campaigns around saving neighbourhood institutions like indie bookstores, and your sales don't even blip. Whisper about closing, mark everything down to the ground, and abruptly the store is full of people you've never seen before in mourning, and nobody appreciates the skills 'til they're dead. I lived this entire conversation--this universe--once.
In seriousness: I was a little stunned to realize that the discourse on indie bookselling hasn't actually changed in 22 entire years. People born when that argument was advanced who are now old enough to legally drink and fight unpardonably unethical foreign wars. That combination of romanticism and appeals to sanctity, hand in hand with no actual business, was apparently older than my whole bookselling career. When the industry discussion on a primary business model hasn't actually evolved in a generation, from the stores' end or the customers', that is...perhaps a problem.
Back to the art bit though: there is a lot more going on in that movie than anyone ever represented to me--about the gap between the roles you fit yourself into for family and work (those are both family businesses) and who you are; about what you do with the parts of yourself and others you don't entirely like, about the scarily powerful way you can be bent by your own bullshit or seduced into flattening others out into papercraft. About the mechanics of forgiveness: Birdie and her crush on Franco, the columnist boyfriend's declaration that he could never date someone who doesn't care about politics and then, not five minutes later, throwing that out the window for someone he's really truly fascinated by.
Peel it back and it's extremely thoughtful, and before diving into a certain wish fulfillment, rather smart. You are daring to imagine that you could have a different life is a rather bold thesis; so is Whatever else anything is, it ought to begin by being personal. I was pleasantly surprised.
Hands work
Last week marked the first of my research for the 2021 novel project, which just got its funding (yay!) this month (more on that later). It's set in and around the prison system, so I signed up to watch a panel on decarcerating mental health care from the Institute of the Development of Human Arts.
This week's built upon that, but for a different project (the trouble is, Jake, I need to finish more projects so I can have fewer projects), at a weeklong symposium organized by the Dallaire Institute on peacebuilding through centering children. This is absolutely the kind of fishing expedition that's most worthwhile, because there's a terrific amount of expertise in the room and where it doesn't apply to the book I'm writing, someone's going to say something that sends me spinning in a productive direction. And probably generate more projects.
It's been interesting finding where those discussions interface with each other. It's been a wonderful window into what people are doing with this moment. Some of it is just surviving, and the imperatives of surviving aren't less than right now. But some of it is taking advantage of the pause and suspension in business-as-usual to try out new systems that would help people better survive, and maybe thrive. And the feeling of sitting with people who act within and against their systems is magnificent.
Things read
Submissions for Reckoning have officially closed, and I'm digging deep into the last batch of poetry for this year's issue. Thanks much if you sent something in: it's going to be a difficult TOC to pick, in the best way, and it's given me insights into the grade and persistence of hustle that it takes to build a more international TOC that fits a theme.
Kerry Greenwood murder mysteries continue apace (it's lovely to have a series I can read three of in one day), and despite the loaded schedule, I worked my way through The Best American Food Writing 2018 to get a little thoughtful levity into the brain. There are only the two volumes so far, that year and 2019, and they're both so good at getting every angle of food writing: personal, systemic, agricultural, experiential, equity, experience, joy.
Things written
This month, though, the most important thing is that the most overdue project on my desk is finally coming to the end of its (too long) first draft.
This project has not been an easy thing to write in pandemic: so much about it is been remaking the art of catching silences; holding them in absolute focus in my hand in a way that leaves them undamaged, and doesn't crush. The more silence I make inside and out, the better I can hold them: they have trouble withstanding sudden bouts of Life Stuff.
The editing process on this is going to be fierce and probably painful -- it's at least 20,000 words too long right now -- but then some wheels can get in motion, the little perpetual motion bird can tip the coffeepot to fill the cup to counterweight the marble etc. Forward. :)
Things to read
The table of contents for R.B. Lemberg and Lisa M. Bradley's Ursula K. Le Guin tribute anthology Climbing Lightly Through Forests has been posted. I'll have one poem in it, "A Headful of Hair", and it's in gorgeous company; I am really excited to read a shocking amount of these pieces. It'll be available from Aqueduct Press in January 2021.
*
I'm probably going to leave four weeks until the next issue again: this coming month is shaping up to be inappropriately busy for time I'm going to spend largely at home in my pajamas hunched over the laptop. By then I might have a decent collection of things to be more interesting about?
Stay safe, everyone.
Don't miss what's next. Subscribe to a letter from the northern provinces: