what makes it possible to write is sometimes an extreme contrast/ bhanu kapil

“Knausgaard (up on the stage in aforementioned blue suit, sweating so hard his face turned a shade of bottle-green beneath the stage lights) said: "Though I love Munch, whose trust in the world was broken, and whose painting was an attempt to repair that trust, I myself am an innocent writer, or naive writer, whose trust in the world has not been broken and I write from that place."

(..)
Fast forward.   It is night.   I wake up at 4 a.m. and begin to write.   I have been dreaming.   The dreaming is a kind of knowing.  It is what I knew in the audience, where I was, like a steamed trout ready to be devoured by killers.   I knew that I was the very opposite of this tall man who had written so much about his body, and the body-life.  I thought suddenly of all the writers I know who write -- in extreme ways -- about the body and the body-life.  Their poetry and essays and novels have been downloaded into my soul like the copper pennies that are fed into a slot machine that then emits them, the flattened pennies, with an imprint or word or stamp.  I have been stamped.  I have read a hundred books.  In that moment, in the audience, I understood that I was a writer whose trust in the world had been broken.  Does trust have a gender?  I understood that all the writers I loved were like this too.  And why we write has a different history that perhaps all my life I have been trying to attend to, or recount.

And so I woke up, with a sound in my head.  The voice I have been waiting for.  Sat up.  And wrote twenty pages.

If he can do it, why can't I?

That's what I felt in the audience, the intense contrast.  And the sudden realization that I could do it too.

Why not us?

(..)
Because perhaps.

What makes it possible to write.

Is sometimes an extreme contrast.”

*
Bhanu Kapil, ‘What makes it possible to write is sometimes an extreme contrast’.

Geen opmerkingen:

Een reactie posten

//

quoi?

ada limón adrienne rich ali smith alice notley alice oswald anne boyer anne brontë anne carson anne truitt anne vegter annie dillard antjie krog audre lorde bhanu kapil carry van bruggen catherine lacey cees nooteboom charlotte brontë charlotte salomon chimamanda ngozi adichie chris kraus christa wolf claire messud claire vaye watkins clarice lispector david whyte deborah levy durga chew-bose elif batuman elizabeth strout emily brontë emily dickinson emily ruskovich ester naomi perquin etty hillesum f. scott fitzgerald feminisme fernando pessoa han kang helen macdonald henri bergson henry david thoreau hermione lee herta müller jan zwicky janet malcolm jean rhys jeanette winterson jenny offill jessa crispin joan didion john berryman joke j. hermsen josefine klougart kate zambreno katherine mansfield kathleen jamie katja petrowskaja krista tippett layli long soldier leonard koren leonora carrington leslie jamison louise glück maggie anderson maggie nelson marcel proust margaret atwood maría gainza marie darrieussecq marie howe marja pruis mary oliver mary ruefle neil astley olivia laing patricia de martelaere paul celan paula modersohn-becker poetry poëzie rachel cusk rainer maria rilke raymond carver rebecca solnit robert macfarlane sara ahmed sara maitland seamus heaney siri hustvedt stefan zweig susan sontag svetlana alexijevitsj sylvia plath ta-nehisi coates teju cole terry tempest williams tess gallagher tjitske jansen tomas tranströmer tracy k. smith valeria luiselli virginia woolf vita sackville-west w.g. sebald yiyun li zadie smith

Blogarchief