The Quota Project

This one was sitting in the drafts for a while, apologies! -

My friend and fellow Minneapolitan Adriane is embarking on a summer of consuming film and books by women, which she entitles The Quota Project. You can read about it on her blog. She's invited the rest of us to join in on her project and although I haven't necessarily dedicated my whole summer to consuming works only by women, things seem to be leaning in that direction whether by Adriane's influence or by some unconscious desire. It also helps that I moved all the movies directed by women in my DVD queue to the top.

During the past 3 weeks, 2 of which I'd been in Vietnam, I read two books and watched a documentary written by women:

1. When Heaven and Earth Changed Places (1989) by Le Ly Hayslip and Heaven and Earth, dir. by Oliver Stone. I read this book and watched Oliver Stone's movie Heaven and Earth in order to prepare for meeting Le Ly herself in Vietnam as she would accompany my tour group for part of the journey. In fact, it was because of her that we were able to participate in some activities we would not have otherwise and meet some very powerful Vietnamese women, most of whom were former Viet Cong, or whose parents had been Viet Cong. I've started to read the sequel to When Heaven and Earth...which is entitled Child of War, Woman of Peace and has a very romance novel cover, which is very unbefitting for its content. Although I only met her for a short time, Le Ly seems to be a person for whom romance is secondary - in her books she is frank about her reasons for marrying both her first and second husbands: survival. They are books worth reading for the stories they contain. The Oliver Stone movie, while BEAUTIFULLY SHOT and is worth watching merely for the cinematography, does not really tell Le Ly's story the way that the books do. It's certainly interesting to look at this movie in comparison to the books. Although it is the story of woman who at a very young age was a proud and somewhat infamous in her village, it is Tommy Lee Jones' name that comes across the screen first, although he doesn't show up until halfway through the movie. He plays a composite character of both her first and second husbands, Ed and Dennis (renamed Steve in the movie) and is framed by Stone's direction as a handsome and charming older man even though Le Ly herself wrote in her sequel that she felt that he was too old for her and was not really attracted to him. The point that Le Ly married him as a chance to get out of the country is glossed over in the movie.  It seems that once Jones shows up, the woman's story as we (the reader of her books) know it onscreen feels stifled, overtaken by Jones' character. For those who have not read the book, the story might be confusing and some moments very important details have no understandable explanation for an American audience.


2. Falling Through the Earth  (2006) by Danielle Trussoni - Before I met him, my partner lived in New York and one of his many part-time jobs was to sell books for authors at their readings. He told me about Danielle Trussoni after I started working on my project about Vietnam war veterans and their descendants. He said, "she's really nice." Her book is a memoir, documenting both her childhood and adulthood, focusing on her father, a Vietnam War veteran. When I started reading it, I was in Vietnam with my own father with a group called Tours of Peace, a group that is worth checking out and supporting since they subsist solely on donations. So it was poignant for me to read about Ms. Trussoni's experiences with her own father - although she ended up visiting Vietnam without him - and to compare her experiences with my own. This book was important for me because I'd been trying to understand my place in this project - writing about war when you yourself have never been in one. There's a hole in writing about war: there are war memoirs and war histories, but not many children of veterans writing about war. I think that position matters, that it's got to matter just as much as the position of the veterans themselves. Because it means something to grow up in a country that's constantly in international conflicts, even if you yourself haven't been on the field of battle. That's a bit of a digression, but my point is, I'd like to find more writing from children of veterans.



3.  New Year Baby (2008) dir. Socheata Poeuv - This documentary, besides being directed by a woman, was more or less accidentally at the top of my Netflix queue. But it was a happy accident because it was the first documentary that I watched when I got back from Vietnam. In this documentary, Socheata Poeuv, who was born in a Thai refugee camp but emigrated to the U.S. with her family at the age of 3, retraces her families history and brings her parents back to Cambodia for that very purpose. As with Trussoni's book, I felt close to this work because of my recent experiences. Although the stories are very different, I feel that Poeuv was attempting a kind of reconciliation or healing between her parents and former Khmer Rouge just as the American veterans of Tours of Peace strive to do with former NVA and Viet Cong. Unlike my experience, those of Poeuv and her family in Cambodia were much more uncomfortably awkward and heartbreaking. Poeuv herself is struggling with facing the realities of modern Cambodia asking why no one demands justice. And in a sense, when I went to Vietnam with Tours of Peace, the group (who's been taken veterans to Vietnam since 1998) was past that kind of question. A lot of times I hear people use the word "justice" and hear "revenge," which is perhaps why the word rarely came up during our trip. I'm not saying that Poeuv or her family wanted revenge but I think that she was perhaps like me before visiting Vietnam: she didn't know what to expect and so had no concrete expectations. And I can't tell you how many people were really worried about my dad - they didn't say it but I think they were worried he would freak out.  I can't speak for Poeuv but I can say that from what I observed there was comfort for the veterans in the trip. As a non-veteran, I can't say that I was exactly looking for personal comfort - but that visiting Vietnam made my feelings and thoughts about it more complex. And I'm grateful for that. I would be interesting to hear about what's happened since that trip for Socheata and her family.

Support a Midwestern Artist

Ok, shameless self-promotion and self-pity. I'm about to be unemployed come June and I started an Etsy site for some black and white photography I did last year. It's my first Etsy store, so let me know what you think! All of the photographs were shot in Minneapolis or Chicago. Represent!

UPDATE: Obviously, you should also support my co-bloggist and Missourian, Jamie, who also sells his comics and artwork on Etsy.

What May Come of Doodles

I'm taking a class this semester called Creative Writing and Cultural Studies. One week's unit was on Micropoetries. Maria Damon gives an incomplete list of what might be considered Micropoetry: "graffitis, prison poetry by non-literary inmates (as distinct from figures such as Oscar Wilde, Osip Mandelstam, et al.), slogans, private (scrap-book or diaristic) or semi-private (correspondence, blogs or social-network) writing, poetry written by children or their strange and charming utterances, “écriture brute” (outsider writing), thieves’ cants and other argots or vernaculars, and so forth, may be considered micropoetries, as might newspaper poetry, greeting card verse, prayers, idiolects."

After being told what I'd brought it as an example wasn't Micropoetry, I'd have to add to that definition to art-that-wasn't-intentionally-art. But anyway, in this business of art, we shouldn't sit around defining art. I suppose. Micropoetry seems like a category created by academics in order to define non-academics. In other words, if you produce Micropoetry, you probably don't consider yourself an artist of any kind.

Why I bring this up is not to start a debate on what is or isn't but to showcase a Chicago friend of mine, Will Larsen, and my delight with his process. Although I do believe Will considers himself and artist and poet, the process of how this particular work began seems to fit in well with Micropoetics.

Notes from Dante a la Will Larsen.

His sometimes updated blog is here. The artwork on this blog essentially started out as doodling in class and at his job. In terms of Micropoetries, I think that his illuminated notes (above) are a good example. Micropoetries, although the study of them is confined to the academic world, their existence creates a thread between all artists, in that, whether you choose to consider yourself an artist or not, these doodles, scraps of paper, ticket stubs glued in a scrapbook, have a kind of artistic merit. And that how we look at them will certainly change over time. Today's pop lit is tomorrow's literature and what have you.

More great textures by Will Larsen

I love the idea of responding to information in a visual way. I myself have gotten into the habit of drawing pictures in reaction to my colleagues' poetry - which for me makes sense, since so much of poetry is visual...even if it is made solely of text.

The result of workshopping one of my poems. Clearly, this responder could see into my inner soul.

Process and Print, pt. 1

One rainy day in early winter '10, I was sitting languidly on our hand-me-down couch from the urban gardeners across the street, and flipped through a collection of Alex Toth's Zorro comics from the late 50's. Trying to digest three Booches' burgers and two pints of pale ale, the cushion's broken spring stabbing my rump, and I couldn't have been happier. The weather was perfect for ruminating, and I had a brand new tome of Toth to savor between naps. Somewhere in that afternoon, I concocted a healthy desire to write a Zorro story, and give myself an excuse to draw him, and a conversation with myself about the character. After reading Toth's foreword, I was reminded of my own childhood fascination with the character. That foreword, and his brilliant landscapes and eye for composition, of course I wanted to challenge myself. and here we are:

The crafty fox had gotten into my brain.

 I immediately tried to develop further context around the character. I wanted to see what had been said about him already. My first impression of Zorro was the Disney show, starring Guy Williams, that played in the 50's. (The same show much of Toth's scripts were based on, only he based his Zorro on a mix of Tyrone Power, Errol Flynn, and Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.) Delving deeper into the legend, I started to ponder what other characters Zorro had met on his travels, what other heroes he'd faced with a grin.

Bat vs. Fox! En Garde!

It occurred to me that I'd been wanting to write another short story focusing on a major character, and that in many versions of Batman's origin, he's been watching Zorro in the theater with his family the night they were slain. In Batman's world, Zorro was a fictional character, and in realm of fiction (and outside) was in many ways influenced Bruce's vigilantism. So, the mojo was mixin, and I needed a story I actually cared about. I focused on the parallels between both men, and their methods. Wits, training, nerve, eccentricity, and a hidden talent for acting. Weapons. Alignment. I had finding new ways of understanding both characters and quickly started filling sketchbooks with thumbnails and layouts, bits of dialogue and narration. Every page was labored over numerous times.

Final page going once, twice...

Three times!

With many starts and stops (I inked the second page, only to be separated from my studio at that time by the snow) I began to work on the story proper off and on for almost a year. At first, I was so impatient to start. but the intervening months have proved invaluable to my body of work and development. By the time I was halfway through

Early summer

the brush had really loosened up, and I felt a slightly different vibe from the beginning. But, the momentum was back, and I spent my free time between other projects tweaking BatZorro. I wanted to see the resolution of the confrontation I arranged.

Put on the finishing touches today.

If you add it up, my rate was a little more than a page a month. As the pages filled, I grew more aware of the encroaching issue of publishing. I couldn't wait to get this stuff online, get it out to people, a few of whom had even heard about it before now. But, when I finally started lining up the pages, I knew that it was meant to be read. I had written the pages to be flipped, and while this gives me ideas about further digital publishing, I knew the issue of print publishing was at hand...
 
...and shall be explored as I further explore the process of self-publishing.

-Jam

The Giant Cell Phone in the Room

I'm sure enough has been written about black and white photography. I too lusted after it. It wasn't until this year that I really got into the nitty-gritty of it - darkroom chemicals and everything.

Two years ago I watched the entirety of The Wire on weekends and sick days.. Like most police detective shows, there's always an element of voyeurism, portrayed by the large film camera with a zoom lens. I assume it's film because it makes an audible clicking sound that digital cameras don't actually make. Furthermore, if you're on a stakeout, why the hell would you want your camera to make a sound? Later, darkroom footage/1 hour photo at Walgreens removed, the detectives are looking at 8x10 black and white photo prints on a billboard. Remember: this is set in the mid to late 2000s. Again, I must ask, why black and white? Wouldn't a detective want to see his suspect in color? Is the dirty truth that Kodak is sponsoring all this?

We're so nostalgic for it that TV shows know we rarely ask such obvious questions. Even for the digital kids, black and white IS photography. Loud, clicking cameras ARE photography. For those born in the late 90s and 2000s, it is a nostalgia without a palpable source. But they know. They know what a manual camera sounds like, they know what a payphone is even though they've never used one; although most of them can't remember life before cellphones were readily available.

I'm not saying this kind of nostalgia is bad. It's lovely the way old things take hold of young people. Maybe the digital age longs for a slowness that isn't readily available to them. When I started the darkroom photography class, there was a lot of grumbling and frustration. Here we were, taking days to do what could be done in a manner of hours with digital camera and a computer. Darkoom photography teaches us patience in a world that's short on it. It's not just photography - it's a revival of many slow things: knitting, gardening - the list could go on.

In writing, the choice to use digital or non-digital items can tell you a lot about a character...and the narrator: is it done self-reflexively or merely inserted into the text? The objects date the author, setting and the text itself. I'm always telling students "make this more concrete." What I mean, mostly is, to riff on Milan Kundera, put some weight on that emotional hot air balloon. Throw some stuff in there, make it yours. The pockets are deep, buy whatever you want, or inherit it, if that's your thing, hold onto it, and then, when you're ready to really obsess about it - put it in your poem or story.

(c) Kristin Fitzsimmons

A wee bit of my darkroom handiwork. "Avant Gauze Tea Party."

Favorite Midwestern Topics: Weather and Nostalgia

I'm sure by now, you've seen a video of the Metrodome's roof collapsing. Oh, Minneapolis. What kind of drugs were you on when you decided an inflatable roof was a good idea in a place that gets this much snow?




Snowfall is just one of a few Midwestern photographic highlights I have to share with you. There was also Thanksgiving in Missouri: Ruth, Max and little Niko actually came out to visit. I took this lovely picture of Niko with my 35mm camera.

Then it was off to Portageville, Missouri to visit my great aunt. Portageville barely qualifies as the Midwest because it's in Missouri, but really it's the south. It was hovering around 45-50 degrees the whole time we were there. It's stuck in time - I literally heard the word "colored" twice in two days - once from my great aunt and once from this lady who was running a rummage sale out of her storage unit. My mom bought an immersion blender for $3.

She also laid a penny on the train tracks for old times' sake.
My grandpa used to live in one of the houses behind her.

I also interviewed my great aunt and she let me scan a handful of her pictures. Actually, she said I could take them, but I couldn't really bring myself to do that. She has some ancient ones, but my obvious favorites are the ones with my mom.

Mom before she was Mom, with marigolds.

I recommend that everyone arm yourself with a digital voice recorder and scanner - and go interview your older relatives before it's too late. The southern Missouri of old is alive in my great aunt who still gets her hair done every week. She told me about picking cotton in the summers - 250 pounds was the most she ever picked. When I asked her where she went to high school, she answered, I didn't.

Aunt Vee in front of the house she still lives in.

Chances are, most of us don't have relatives who will be remembered by history. With digital cameras, recorders, and the almighty Internet, our generation has become a documentary generation to the extreme. We document our own histories as they happen. But this is where we come from: a time without digital-ness, cell phones and Facebook. Yes, even you can remember that time. When you talk to your relatives, you can go back even further - a time without television, a time when people only had two pairs of shoes: regular and church. Part of me comes from a land of ladies with southern accents and pecan trees. It's hard to believe there's such a hot place in my history when I'm living in a Minnesotan tundra. My entire maternal family went to the same Catholic school and church.

That's the one. St. Eustachius, founded 1905. My grandparents and parents were married here.
My mom and all her sisters went to school here.

The greatest thing about this kind of documenting, which is why I recommend everyone do it, is that it takes far less work than making a full-length motion picture documentary, although if you have the bucks and the know-how, you should probably do that kind. Society says (and I won't argue) that if you were born after 1979, chances are that technology has made you a complete narcissist. They're even removing Narcissistic Disorder from the fifth edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders because really, who doesn't have it nowadays? Well, here's what I discovered. Even people as old as my grandfather and great aunt love to talk about themselves. Ask one question and you'll get a story. Now go out and buy a digital voice recorder.

A DIY kind of Wildness

For me, Fairchild's "wildness" suggests something instinctual, not learned, and evokes the conceit of Berryman's Dream Song 14, in which I see a comment on the loss of wildness to a growing disinterest in prolonged debate; what is the debate? Life.  The serene and the contentious alike hold no charm for Berryman's narrator, who suggests the loss of instinct.

In something of a response to question posed in KF's pervious post, a piece by Han Cheung, whose constant mobility is fueled by something akin to Berryman's "inner resources" which I will liken here to the wildness of children, that constant motion that was the means and the end.

-"The Valentine's Bear," Han Cheung