2010 « Black Clock

Archive for 2010—

Loud and Quiet: An Interview with Anne-Marie Kinney

In “Zizou Président,” author Anne-Marie Kinney flexes literary skills as deft as Zizou’s footwork to capture the palpable energy of the World Cup without the maddening buzz of the vuvuzela. Kinney’s story, published in Black Clock 12 and free to read online, brings us back to the summer of 1998 when Zinedine Zidane led France to its ultimate World Cup victory and became a soccer legend. Though set in a specific moment and place in time, Kinney’s depiction of the raw frenzy of collective emotion that hinges on the superhuman achievements of select individuals is universal; marked by a kind of historical clairvoyance, it offers a glimpse of things to come for the next country and the next “president” to claim the championship title in July. Black Clock recently spoke with Kinney about her writing, Zizou, the World Cup, celebrity, mass culture, and naming her dog Dee Dee Ramone.

BLACK CLOCK: What inspired you to write “Zizou Président”?

ANNE-MARIE KINNEY: I’ve always found Zinedine Zidane to be compelling. Aside from the fact that his fame and influence can’t be overstated, I really see him as a poet. He transcends the game. I wouldn’t call myself a huge fan of any sport only because I’m too scatterbrained to know when games are on and get myself in front of a TV at an appointed time, but I do enjoy soccer because it’s so emotional and violent, and there was something extra with Zidane. You could see the fury inside him, in his face, and the way he channeled it into the most precise, beautiful moves. When I learned that Black Clock was seeking submissions for a sports issue, he immediately leapt to mind.

This story is sublime and so well-crafted. In a few pages, it takes a very specific person, moment in time, and place to create a tableau of humanity. How did you decide on your narrative approach to this piece? In other words, how the hell’d you do it?

I can’t say I ever decide on a narrative approach. It just happens however it happens and then I see what I’ve got. I started with my memories of being in Paris during the ’98 World Cup–which was the World Cup that really made Zidane a superstar–and just being wrapped up in the energy of it all. For the opening ceremonies, they had these four sort of giant robots that were crouched in different parts of the city, and it seemed like they were there, motionless, for the longest time, so it was so startling and also such a release to see them finally come to life on the big day. I watched it on TV and then went out, where it seemed like everyone in the whole city was in the street celebrating, and it got pretty out of hand. It was hot, hard to move, there was glass flying, cops running–it’s kind of a blur. I guess the story built itself from that peripheral blur, and the dangerous, anything-can-happen thickness in the air, and I went from there into Zidane’s head, into the quiet center. I was inspired by things he’s said in interviews, what I knew of his life, the racism he’s faced, both overt and implicit, and also the documentary Zidane: a 21st Century Portrait, which is just a match shown with him in close-up the entire time with this very intense and hypnotic music by Mogwai in the background. I wanted the story to center on loudness and quiet, and the way each feeds the other. That’s probably the most conscious narrative choice I made.

Did you write “Zizou Président” before or after the famous headbutting Materazzi incident?

I just wrote this a few months ago. At first, I thought if I was going to write about Zidane I was sort of obligated to address the 2006 incident, but I ended up being more interested in his rise, rather than what some would deem his fall, though I wouldn’t. I think he was forgiven pretty quickly. He was and is far too beloved for it to taint his legacy too much.

Perhaps because it’s still relatively fresh in my mind even a few years later, the supposed “fall” (which I agree with you in that I don’t think it’s really his fall) was the elephant in the room when I read the story. Not an annoying, crowding, why-aren’t-you-addressing-this elephant; more one that expands the story into a realm beyond the moment, making it both historical and prescient.

I wanted the Materazzi incident to be kind of hanging somewhere outside or beyond this story. When it happened, people started talking about Zidane’s history of violence, and speculating about all the possible reasons he might have done it, or what Materazzi might have said to provoke him, so those elements–his response to taunting, his quick temper–are all here in the story, waiting, suggesting where they’re going to lead. In the end, his head hurts from the two goals he scored with it, but I like to imagine that he’s also feeling the pain of what’s to come.

Have you written other work that considers the perspective of other famous individuals?

My characters tend to pay a lot of attention to pop music. I did write an as yet unpublished story about a character who worships Dee Dee Ramone. Which is only a little autobiographical.

Do you worship Dee Dee Ramone?

I don’t worship anybody, but I did name my dog after him.

What do you think makes an icon, draws us to some and not to others, generates a cult of personality?

That’s a really good question. I’m not sure I know how to answer. I think some of it is about a person having the right appeal at the right time, either socially or politically. That’s definitely a part of it with Zidane, as an Algerian-French player who became the best just as tensions were building for Arabs in France. I don’t know if I could break it down like that for every icon. I guess they wouldn’t be icons without some indefinable spark.

What are you working on these days?

I’m working on a new short story, and I have another novel sort of brewing, slowly. My first novel is currently making the rounds of publishers, so I’m just going to work every day and trying not to think about that.

And watching the World Cup?

I’m following it in the news, but the only match I’ve caught was a re-broadcast of England vs. USA. It’s tough because the matches are in the morning.

Do you have a favorite team or player? Any predictions?

I don’t have any predictions, but I can’t help but root for the home team. I’d love to see the U.S. make a respectable showing.

Anne-Marie Kinney is a writer and copy editor from Northern California. She completed her MFA in creative writing from CalArts in 2008, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Indiana Review, Keyhole, Satellite Fiction, as well as Black Clock. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband.

by Kyoung Kim
Assistant Managing Editor of Black Clock

Aimee Bender on Tour (6/01-7/13)

when –June 1 – July 13, 2010
where CA, NY, MA, MS, NC, IA, WA, OR, the Moon*

Aimee Bender’s national book tour, which coincides with the release of her new novel, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, is already under way. Bender, who contributed to Black Clock 1 and Black Clock 7, is of that rare breed of human who reads as well as she writes. If you missed her earlier this month in SoCal, fear not; Bender will return at the end of June and in mid-July. Here’s the full schedule to her readings this summer:

June 1st, Tuesday, 7:30 pm
Book Launch!
Skylight Books
Los Angeles, CA

June 8th, Tuesday, 7pm
Pen on Fire
Corona Del Mar, CA

June 9th, Wednesday, 7pm
Book Soup
Hollywood, CA

June 13th, Sunday, 4pm
Sunset Reading Series
Cold Spring, NY

June 14th, Monday, 7:30pm
Symphony Space
with Heidi Julavits
NYC (click for reservations)

June 15th, Tuesday, 7pm
Newtonville Books
Massachuesetts

June 21st, Monday, 5pm
Square Books
Oxford, Mississippi

June 22nd, Tuesday, 7pm
Malaprops
Asheville, North Carolina

June 23rd, Wednesday, 7pm
Prairie Lights Bookstore
Iowa City, Iowa

June 24th, Thursday, 7:30pm
Books Inc
San Francisco (Chestnut)

June 25th, Friday, 7:30 pm
Bookshop
Santa Cruz, CA

June 27th, Sunday, 3pm
Diesel Books
Oakland, CA

June 29th, Tuesday, 7pm
Vroman’s
Pasadena, CA

July 6th, time TBA
Elliott Bay Book Company
Seattle, WA

July 7th, Wednesday, 7:30pm
Powells
Portland, OR

July 10th, Saturday, 4pm
Diesel Books
Los Angeles, CA

July 13th, Tuesday, time TBA
ALOUD series
reading and talk with Glen David Gold
Los Angeles, CA

*Aimee Bender is not really reading on the moon, but when she does, we’ll be there.

Wyatt Mason’s Sentences

www.harpers.org/subjects/Sentences#complete-archive

This is the archive of a now-defunct Harper’s blog once maintained by Wyatt Mason, who is most famous as the authoritative translator of Rimbaud’s complete works. Mason used The Sentence as the starting point to ruminate on everything from the evil thoughts of man and the power of empathy, to disastrous fictions. Though no longer updated, as with all things quality, Mason’s fascinating swarm of literary-related writing is ageless and fun to delve into at any time.

by Doug Matus
a writer from Texas who now lives in Los Angeles

AAUP 2010: Toward a Sustainable Future (6/17-6/20)

when _ June 17 – 20, 2010
where _Association of American University Presses
______ Salt Lake City Marriott Downtown
______ 75 South West Temple, Salt Lake City, UT 84101
______ tel (801) 531 0800

Reflecting on, responding to, and grappling with publishing’s existential identity crisis, this year’s AAUP meeting, Toward a Sustainable Future, includes presentations on “What are Books Good For?”, “The Business Case for XML, or Is PDF Dead?”, “Growing Sales in Tough Times,” and “Hyperabundance: The Future’s So Bright, I’ve Gotta Wear Shades”. Black Clock 12 author, Carolyn Kellogg, will also be in attendance as a panelist discussing “Friend Me: Social Networks as a Marketing Tool” on Friday, June 18th at 10:45am:

Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have become an incredibly powerful source for virtually all of our news and entertainment needs. A recent news story confirmed that Facebook is the second most popular site on the internet—only Google has more daily downloads. If our readers are getting information from social networking sites, it only makes sense that university presses participate in the conversation. How can university presses harness these incredibly popular and influential sites to reach our readers? How can we develop engaged communities of interested readers? This panel will demystify and navigate the social networking phenomenon to help us get the most bang for our tweet.

Panelists: Laura Baich, Electronic Marketing Manager, Indiana University Press; Jennifer Howard, Senior Writer, The Chronicle of Higher Education; Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times
Chair: Colleen Lanick, Publicity Manager, MIT Press

If you can’t make it to Salt Lake City, you can virtually attend the conference by checking out the program, reading the wiki, and trolling the meeting’s Facebook page.

Black Clock 12

Black Clock 12 takes you out to the ball game, where obsessions abound inside and outside the white lines. In these stories, essays and poems, the demarcation between winning and losing, humor and sadness is blurred; coaches may claim, “There is no ‘I’ in team,” but when you look closely enough there is always a “me,” and in sports, whether participating, watching or rejecting, you discover who you are and who you’re not. As the writers in Black Clock know, the game may be played under bright lights but it’s in the crevices of darkness where the true game is found, because sports lie beyond the pleasure principle.

In Black Clock 12, we are pleased to bring you work by the following authors:

RAJ BAHADUR Bambino Calls His Shot
MONICA CARTER The Retirement Plan
PAUL CULLUM Why I Hate Sports
DENNIS DANZIGER Hoop Schemes
KENNETH DEIFIK The Horse Finds His Own Way Home, Even Without Clues
KATHERINE DUNN Listening
SAMANTHA DUNN The Tortilla Construction Handbook
ROBERT EISELE Catch and Release
COLIN FLEMING Dare Me to Breathe
TOD GOLDBERG Welcome to Thousand Palms
JOHN HARLOW Will the People
CAROLYN KELLOGG Stroke
ANNE-MARIE KINNEY Zizou Président
ELOISE KLEIN HEALY The Season
JONATHAN LETHEM + CHRISTOPHER SORRENTINO Poem by Harris Conklin / Reply by Ivan Felt
KARA LINDSTROM My Own Private Ashtanga
CHRIS LOWRY Cricket’s Crashing Continents
LOU MATHEWS Racing in the Streets
RICHARD PEABODY Shirts and Skinjobs
KATY PETTY Fathom
LISA TEASLEY Beach Volleyball is Church
RICHARD TERRILL Found Poems
LYNNE TILLMAN The Unconscious is Also Ridiculous
RICHARD RAYNER Shoot the Ref
NINA REVOYR Charlie and Me
BRAD SCHREIBER George Blanda Ate My Homework
DAVID L. ULIN Member of the Tribe
OSCAR VILLALON The Roar
MATTHEW ZAPRUDER Poem for Jim Zorn
ALAN ZAREMBO Going Fast
DANTE ZÜNIGA-WEST This Is Not a Sport

Excerpts from Black Clock 12 can be read online. The issue can be purchased at these local area bookstores and online in both print and PDF format.

Literally Rankling

A PUBLIC SERVICE?

Perhaps all literary controversies are minor controversies, but, even on the Lilliputian isle of letters, there are scales and differences in degree to consider. An excellent case in point: the recent back-and-forth that erupted around author and Gigantic editor Lincoln Michel’s “A New Literary Magazine Ranking” (headline since revised to “A Guide To Literary Magazines”), published at The Faster Times.

Before its subsequent transformation, “A New Literary Magazine Ranking” took the form of a “tiered” guide of serial markets for fiction, with journals taxonomized based on a formula measuring: Pushcarts and other prizes won; circulation figures; whether or not the market actually pays (and if so, how much); and reputation, which Michel tried valiantly but unsuccessfully to subsume under the heading of “buzz.” Why undertake such an effort? To help writers, particularly aspiring writers, increase their chances of getting published.

This is nothing but laudable, and Michel’s piece initially held much promise. Practical applications aside, a coherent, as opposed to vehement, scrupulous and transparent rendering of the Baroque economies of regard, patronage and potlatch and on which literary publishing depends is desperately needed, if “only” for ethical reasons. (Let’s indulge quickly in a bit of early 21st Century nostalgia, before Mo Rocca can start delivering “Foetry” one-liners on VH1’s I Love The Naughties) Unfortunately, via the alchemy of reader feedback, Michel’s piece instead deteriorated, perhaps inevitably, into a soggy morass of injured pride, hurt feelings, and offended palates. “Ranking elimae as high as The American Scholar is pretty funny, and probably a result of the fact that our trusty list-maker has contributed to the former. I declare this list suspect!” Net result: a largely abandoned project.

This is not to say that Michel’s rankings were not without their conceptual flaws.

THERE IS NO ORDER TO THE UNIVERSE

1) Michel’s list was far too indebted to previously assembled rankings (such as John Fox’s), with all the built-in prejudices (prizes as a measure of quality) and limitations (highly localized sense of what qualifies as “recognized”) of the same .

2) Specific weightings for each factor, if employed, were not provided or adequately explained by Michel. For example, if a journal showing off multiple Pushcarts and respectable circulation figures nevertheless pays very little, did Michel place that title above a less anthologized publication with a larger subscriber base and a reputation for generous compensation?

3) As several comments on Michel’s original piece point out, not all fiction markets are apples. Some are oranges, some lemons, some clusters of grapes, some tomatoes (technically fruits, but commonly classified as vegetables) and some creatures as exotic and hothouse-y as the mangosteen. While from one perspective, it just feels “right” to place The New Yorker at the top of the food chain — for reasons of pay, because the magazine reaches a national audience, and because history has lodged its hefty thumb on the scale — it is not primarily a publisher of literature. Bemoaning the fact that your prose poems based on a critical reading of Whole Foods Market product descriptions weren’t picked up by Esquire is a bit like feeling defeated because your in-depth profile of January Jones wasn’t selected by Ander Monson for the latest issue of Diagram. The whole notion of “market” seems to be compromised by the presence of established, almost pre-fetishized commodities like The New Yorker, Playboy and The Atlantic alongside sweat equity overachievers such as Fence, N+1 and No Colony. Michel tries hard in his introduction to prepare readers to be ready to exercise reservations (“Consider first of all your work and where it will fit.”), but a ranking folding in upon itself with as many exceptions and caveats as are opened up in that advice is only offering excuses for its own collapse. The fact that Michel confined his rankings to markets for fiction — traditionally viewed as a more mainstream and ”conservative” form than poetry — can be offered as one excuse for construing kind as degree, but that leads us to…

4) Poetry, anyone? More to the point, creative nonfiction? Hybrid forms?

5) Although Michel does make brief mention of duotrope’s digest, I find it disappointing that he did not make a greater effort towards incorporating the vast amount of information duotrope collects about rejection versus acceptance rates, response times, genres and subgenres, etc. into his own rubric. With the proper funding — surely there’s a research grant out there for this — Michel could even have augmented duotrope‘s data with information regarding the educational background of journal editors, editorial turnover (especially a factor for journals associated with MFA Writing Programs, which draw much of their staff from student populations who are only affiliated with the publication for 2 to 3 years at a time), appearances by individual authors in multiple issues of each periodical, and so on. This is the kind of information that could be very useful to writers hoping to use Michel’s list to identify likely outlets for their work. Not to mention that such an aggregation would go a long way towards a presenting a much more comprehensive picture than we’ve ever had of precisely with how much calculated casualness and through such tortured causality literary magazine publishing actually operates.

PUT THAT IN YOUR SPREADSHEET AND SMOKE IT

Ultimately, however, the issue becomes: how much does information like this really inform, and, given the context, how much more valuable is subjective opinion? On the one hand, the inherently subjective nature of Michel’s exercise does damn it as just that. On the other hand, literature, like all the arts, thrives on word-of-mouth, shared passions, and, increasingly, a sense of what is hip and what is not. It is also worth remembering that literature has a contemporary cultural existence not unlike that of endangered species: for its own good, it is restricted to a protected habitat — academia — and is subject to a scrutiny attentive less to the intangible benefits of ensuring its survival and much more interested in recording behaviors… before there are no more behaviors to observe. For good or ill, literary studies are “trending” more and more toward scientific models of scholarship (cf. Franco Moretti; Jonathan Gottschall; Brian Boyd.) Consequently, something like an algebra of submissions feels right, and, if not almost like a corrective, then at least genuinely au courant. Yet there is no comparable calculus of publication. Each journal has its own bent, and each journal, at least in my experience, approaches each issue as a gestalt, an object to be carefully designed, a form with its own expressions. The editor’s challenge is not just to pluck the “good” writing out of the slush pile, but to recalibrate what “good” writing is within the aesthetic parameters of the publication itself, which is bigger than any one individual set of proclivities or choices. If you’ve ever been on the wrong end of a rejection letter, you may scoff, but it is true: “no”s can be labored over much more so than “yes”es, which are often caught in the first sort and do not demand to be read again and again until it is time to begin thinking “between the covers.”

But how can one most effectively quantify something that is as inherently qualitative and experiential as publishing? As Michel notes, the oldest advice in this regard is perhaps still the most applicable:

“As always, it is essential to read the journals you are considering submitting to. Not only to keep abreast of current work, but to understand where your work fits and to support the literary world you want to be a part of. Really, if you are submitting you should be subscribing to at least one or two journals.”

I don’t believe there is any accident accountable for why this knowledge owes its shape and its sound to the anecdotal. For isn’t that what knowledge is: the product of living with information, the actual handling and processing of it. In a similiar fashion, no writing “of publishable quality” can be understood as possessing literary quality based on a word by word analysis. Michel could just have easily have said, “Look, you have to be more than someone who just writes.” To which I would add: you have to have done more than purchase all the accessories required for a “literary lifestyle.” Rather, you must give yourself over to the care and tending of a literary ecology, stooping and shouldering, wasting resources now in order to conserve them later, rotating your crops, learning to recognize the beneficial effects of “pests,” and reconciling yourself to the tragedies associated with the intellectual commons. In other words: always, you just have to keep on toughing it out.

by Joe Milazzo
an Associate Editor of Black Clock and Director of Community Education and Outreach at The Writer’s Garret in Dallas, whose writing has appeared in Electronic Book Review, Chronometry, Tea Party, In Posse Review, Antennae and Black Clock

WHY I HATE THE TERM “CREATIVE WRITING”

This is the second in the column series, “The Real Economics of the Purely Imaginary” that circles some very large, very unwieldy, and–for precisely these reasons–very tantalizing questions about knowledge, creativity, teaching, writing, and the university.

In my last post, I laid out a number of questions surrounding creative writing, the university English department, literary criticism and theory, economics, and knowledge production. In this installment, I want to talk about one of the most readily-assumed, rarely-questioned, and easily-accepted distinctions we make about kinds of writing and kinds of thinking. For me, this is the question. So for starters, riddle me this:

My friend was stuck. He was facing a deadline for a respected periodical. The piece had been hanging over his head for months. Each day that he didn’t work on it was a day he felt he’d failed somehow. But he just couldn’t work on it. He knew what he might want to say, but the words wouldn’t come. The ideas were too big to organize. Sometimes his ideas just seemed so trite. He questioned why anyone would want to read his piece at all, thought maybe he was kidding himself about his abilities or the notion that he had anything to say. What if the piece was crap, what if it ruined his career, what if they rejected it (even though they’d solicited his work)? Two days before the piece was due, he still had not started writing. “What do I do?” he asked me. I dipped into my bag of writerly tricks. “Compartmentalize,” I said. “Take the critic in your mind, put him in a room, and shut the door while you write. Accept that your first draft may be shit: that’s what drafts are for. Accept that this may not be the best piece you ever write–but it’s not the only piece you ever write. Just put your ass in a chair in front of your computer and start writing. If you don’t know what to write, put ‘I don’t know what to write’ until something else comes out. Do what my writing teacher told me: make a mess, and then clean it up. That’s essentially all you need–just get something going, and you can craft a finished piece out of it.”

Eventually my friend did it. He got his ass in a chair, he typed, he agonized over every word, he got in his own way by trying to edit as he went, he spent most of his time staring at the wall, trying to get words to materialize in his brain… but eventually he found a rhythm, got a draft done, and sent it off to the editors. They took the piece. Writer’s block overcome, drinks for all, aren’t I a good friend for helping him, la dee da dee da.

I’m nosing closer to the question: Can you tell from the story above what kind of piece my friend had to write? A news article? A critical essay? A poem? A short story? A review?

My point is that there’s no way, simply from talking about my friend’s writing process, to draw a clear distinction about what kind of writing he wanted to produce. You may have gathered that he was writing prose, but even that is not self-evident from the story. (Journals do solicit work from writers they like, and who’s to say no one has ever procrastinated on cranking it out?) He was, in fact, writing a critical essay on pedagogy for an academic (but not scholarly) journal.

Look at his process. Look at his roadblocks. They could have been culled from a “Tips for Beginning Writers” fact sheet, or any of the schlocky (and not so schlocky) creative process books out there. Anyone who’s picked up a copy of Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, or Natalie Goldberg’s Long Quiet Highway (two popular creative process books for writers) can recognize that my friend needed to Turn Off the Inner Critic, Build a Writing Practice, Make Peace With Shitty First Drafts, etc.. In fact, the advice I gave him was straight out of meetings with my own creative writing professors when I was working on an MFA. My friend entered into much the same work, engagement, brainstorming, mental judo, and alligator-wrestling with the empty (or crappily written) page that so-called creative writers tackle when they work. In fact, I hardly need to graft my friend’s story in here, because I know from writing in both creative and critical modes that the processes are just not all that different. The products may look radically different, but how we Frankenstien that product into existence is not determined by the product itself.

I just don’t think that the term “Creative Writing” means all that much. Besides provoking mental associations with 4th-grade “Write a story about a time when you were afraid” assignments, what does this term do?

For one thing, it holds layers of assumptions that could really use some unpacking. What are we talking about when we say “writing,” anyway? Are we talking about the act of making a piece of written work–a story, an article, a rant? Or are we talking about the story, article, rant itself? Or are we talking about value, use, purpose, and place of both the writing and the writer?

Lots of people–writers and scholars alike–assume that “creative writing” is some kind of hybrid of thing one and thing two, but my vote is on thing three. Heere’s why I propose we all throw our hats in a new-ish ring, and stop referring to certain kinds of writing as “creative”: the designation implies that the act of writing and the purpose of a piece are known, stable quantities, when they are not. One need only look at the multitude of conflicting ideas about writing instruction operating on college campuses across the country to see that this is so. Furthermore, the term tips certain kinds of writing and writers out of the “this work is valuable” basket and into the “this activity is self-indulgent” basket. This is ridiculous, especially when we can see that the process is often the same regardless of the product. What if my friend had been writing a story and not an article? Why would that work have been automatically less “intellectual” and more “frivolous”? For that matter, why are the many choices he made as a writer, the imagination he used to construct his article, and his flexibility with expression not creative endeavors simply because they went to produce an article? The finished product may have been critical in nature, but the process of writing it was creative all the same.

“So big deal,” you’re thinking. “So non-creative writers get writer’s block. What does this prove, and why should I care? Everyone freaks out about public speaking, too, but this doesn’t mean that public speaking is the same as acting.” Or, as another friend put it: “Why not just eat some soup and call it writing?” (Actually, I think that might be cool, and someone might already have tried it. Takers?)

I take my friend’s point. But I’m not saying that distinctions between kinds of writing should never apply. I’m not claiming that what goes on in the literature classroom and the writing classroom are exactly the same. I’m not saying that all writing is the same or that we should explode the field. If anything, I’m arguing for a more precise understanding of what writing is and how it fits into learning and knowledge production. Consider that, in many creative writing workshops, the discussion of the writing happens in a critical (non-creative) register. Workshoppers do not give feedback with poems, dances, songs, or paintings (although sometimes I wish they would). No–they (we) give feedback in critical, analytical discourse. Even if the workshop is based in a reader-response mindset, reader feedback still is far more like the discussions that take place in literature classes than anything one would think of as meditations on “creative process.” Workshoppers discuss technical elements such as point of view, focalization, temporality, pace, tone, etc.. Workshoppers make arguments about these things, and make evaluations about the success of the piece. These are critical endeavors. So how can we say that the work of creative writing is totally divorced from critical (non-creative) intellectual activity? The writer has to evaluate the feedback, decide what to use, what to discard, and how to make changes. These activities fall under the rubric of creative process–and sometimes it is a gut-level response–but weighing information and ideas, deciding on their credibility, and reevaluating one’s work are also important elements of research and peer review processes.

There are all sorts of assumptions layered into the idea that you’re either a scholar or a writer, and that if you’re a creative writer you’re not a scholar, and vice versa. Calling some kinds of writing “creative” only helps entrench these assumptions and bury the fact that they are assumptions. The result is often a sublevel of second-class citizenry within departments that already treat grad students as second-class citizens. I have heard a firsthand account of a professor who told a doctoral student who was struggling with a paper “Don’t worry. No one expects you to be able to do this. You have an MFA.” I also know of a Creative Writing program director who will not sit on exam committees for PhD students except as a fifth reader (read “fifth wheel”), even though his program grants PhDs with concentrations in Creative Writing; he says it is because he holds an MFA, not a PhD, and is therefore unqualified to sit on exam committees in a department he directs.

But what if non-creative writers-–the critics, the scholars, many of whom (in my department, at least) complain that they “can’t write,” “don’t write,” or “suck at writing”–had access to the kinds of writing instruction that “creative writers” receive? Might they not produce better work, cope better with paper and article writing, have more success finishing dissertations? (And, for anyone who thinks this isn’t an issue, I’d suggest doing a bit of research on attrition rates at PhD programs in American universities. We are having a harder and harder time educating people into the highest echelons of their fields.) When we assume that certain writers–and certain work–achieve radically different ends and are worth radically different amounts of respect and attention, we overlook the fact that writing, all kinds of writing, makes knowledge go ’round.

by Jenn Hawe
who lives, writes, and cooks in Chicago

UCLA Extension Writers’ Program Publication Party (6/09@7PM)

when _ June 9, 2010 @ 7:00pm
where _Skirball Cultural Center
______ 2701 North Sepulveda Blvd
______ Los Angeles, CA 90049
______ tel (310) 440 4500

Admission is free.

Hear UCLA Extension instructors,including Black Clock contributor Lou Mathews, read aloud from their recently published fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry.

This spirited event includes books signings, refreshments, and the opportunity to meet fellow writers. Admission to the event and to the Skirball’s galleries prior to the readings is free. Free parking too! Instructor’s books will be available for purchase courtesy of Book Soup. Doors open at 7 and readings begin at 7:30. Reception immediately following.

This year’s readers include:

Barbara Abercrombie
Ronald Alexander
Laurel Ann Bogen
Cecilia Manguerra Brainard
Gayle Brandeis
Jessica Barksdale Inclan
Daniel M. Jaffe
Rachel Kann
Stefan Kiesbye
Suzanne Lummis
Marisa Matarazzo
Lou Mathews
Jennie Nash
Diana Raab
Colette Sartor
Nancy Spiller
Stephanie Waxman
Harry Youtt

Tagging Christian Svanes Kolding

Christian Svanes Kolding’s film, The Things We Keep is only one-minute fifty-seven seconds long. It lacks a plot and characters. It’s essentially a pan of a lot of stuff. And yet you end up watching it over and over again until what was supposed to be a short YouTube break has turned into an hour. This is in part because the film, made entirely of still images that Kolding’s digitally animated together and set to the tune of Broadcast’s “Corporeal,” is visually and sonically cool. But more than that, what makes The Things We Keep so compelling and addictive, is that it explodes with stories.

Kolding elegantly achieves this multiplicity of story in his short film–or as he describes it, a window into “augmented reality”—by providing textual tags for a number of objects that appear on the screen. Kolding, who was born in Denmark and is currently based in New York, provides nibbles of history to items such as “Handmade Doll, Venice, CA. Official Name: Edie Chickenpants. Gift from Carly. Received in 2008. Frequent Travel Companion.” and “Matchbook, New York City. La Esquina Restaurant in Nolita. Obtained in 2010. They make excellent breakfast burritos. Their fish tacos are not bad. Nothing like Los Angeles, of course.” These mundane yet offbeat descriptions are incredibly familiar to anyone who owns, well, anything. At the same time, they provide the viewer with enough of a seed to generate his/her own story about each of Kolding’s keepsakes, as well as Kolding himself–all of which elicits a feeling in the viewer akin to reading a Raymond Carver story.

Kolding is a self-proclaimed “director, creative consultant, and visual artist.” But given his deft textual work in The Things We Keep and his ability to evoke none other than the ghost of Carver, he should also be tagged as a “writer”—one we recently had the pleasure of talking with at length about augmented realities, reverse engineering, text and film, and yes, the objects he keeps.

BLACK CLOCK: I understand the opening credits of To Kill a Mockingbird inspired your film, The Things We Keep. Can you elaborate on this?

CHRISTIAN SVANES KOLDING: I’ve always loved the opening sequence of To Kill a Mockingbird because it shows us a world that is made up of fantasy as well as the mindset of a teenage girl from the South. I love the way the camera tracks across a variety of objects that will later have significance in the film, while these objects also provide us with clues for the setting of the film, and clues about the main characters. From a technical point of view, it’s a beautiful shot. The camera does a very slow track along a table top as we start from an omniscient point of view, overhead, and then moves along in a parallel line. It has always been a shot that I’ve remember, something that I’ve always wanted to recreate. I guess, I enjoy reverse engineering shots so that I can better understand them.

Deconstruction-reconstruction?

Yes, it is a deconstruction-reconstruction of sorts. It’s me trying to figure out how a shot is made. Plus there’s always the fantasy that in reverse engineering and recreating, I somehow [can] get into the mindset of the original director and can perhaps unlock some additional creative energy.

Do you feel like you’re able to realize that fantasy in reality?

Well, the fantasy is a bit of wishful thinking and not realistic. I could never get into another director’s mindset, and, I suppose, I wouldn’t want to try to borrow too much from another director, even those I admire a lot. It would become theft if I spent too much time trying to get into other directors’ mindsets, I suspect.

So, in terms of the reality, I would say whenever I try to deconstruct someone else’s composition, there are a few things that happen. First, there is an “Aha!” moment; I realize how something was done. Then there is a moment of disappointment.

Why disappointment?

As I realize that my first effort at reconstruction lives up neither to the expectation of emulating the original, nor does it stand on its own. Which is okay, because at some point you make the work something else. You transform it a bit, either by tweaking it in some places or just starting a different riff altogether, thus transforming the work. That becomes gratifying.

So, yeah, I tried to recreate pieces of the opening sequence, but knew all along that I wanted [the film] to be about objects that I keep–keepsakes. I didn’t know right away that I wanted to tag the objects. That came later.

How did you decide which objects were worthy enough to be considered things you keep?

There was little emotion involved. Primarily, it was a few practical considerations. 1) I limited the selection to objects that were already on display in the apartment and 2) the objects had to fit on top of the hutch/buffet–which acted as the stage. Don’t like the word buffet or hutch… The large Danish teak cabinet… That’s a mouthful…

That’s okay. Better than “hutch”?

So yeah, the object had to fit on top of the teak cabinet, and I had a limitation on the length of the shot. There were far more objects than space available, and [in the future,] I’d like to do more work using the “unused” objects, but not in the same way.

I started thinking about augmented reality, which I think about a lot. Not so much as ponderings on the theoretical aspects of augmented reality or the ethical issues, but more the practical issues. Such as, as I am walking down a street, what do I want to see? What information do I want to access? What’s interesting to me is not the retail aspect of augmented reality, but the submerged storytelling aspect of it. I walk past a mailbox, and I wish I could get some information from that mailbox on the street corner that tells me who has been there–that maybe even singles-out people I’d be interested in knowing about. Did they pause for a moment before dropping the letter into the mailbox? How much information should the mailbox give me in an augmented reality context? These are the kind of inane things that I might think about, and I started to think about them with these keepsakes.

These keepsakes in our home have meaning to Adriana[, my wife,] and me, but do they mean something to somebody else? No, not really. So, I can convey that in an augmented reality world, but even then, it’s not really effective because it’s not important. Important to me but not to you, except that you might be able to relate to the sentiments expressed in identifying the objects, which give them new meaning. You can relate to that because you might have objects that you keep yourself. That’s how I started to think about it. And so I started to think about what story was behind each object, and if that story was interesting to someone besides me. That was a central question.

How did you determine if a story was interesting to someone besides you?

I don’t know exactly.

Did you set out a criteria or was it a gut feeling?

It was more a hunch. I knew a bit of the audience in advance. In the sense that when I make things, I often make things for a specific audience. In this case, it was for the set of friends who had provided me with the objects. Not a limited set or a closed set, but a set that was created purely by the selection of the objects. So, I wrote the tags with them in mind, as if we were sitting around a dining table and I was explaining each object to each friend at the table while introducing other objects, most of which would be unfamiliar objects to most of the guests. That was the roundabout way of approaching it. Carly Eiseman gave me an object, so I wrote about it with her in mind, knowing that she would see the film, for example.

But the film certainly connects with a wider audience, selected for the Brooklyn Rooftop Films Summer Series and all.

Yes, but I didn’t know that right away. I wasn’t even sure it would connect with a wider audience.

Were you surprised?

I’m still a bit a bit surprised. I think it’s because I believe that the strength of the film is not its technical achievement, which is a bit gimmicky (truth be told), and even though I think the objects are interesting, they are ultimately not compelling enough to get people to respond to the story. So the strength of the story lies elsewhere. I think that people respond to the story because they reflect on their own keepsakes and what those particular objects mean to them, and each keepsake is not about the object itself, it’s about the memory, and the memory is more important than the object. The object is a proxy for a relationship, a person or persons that we hold dear, and their memory is embedded in the object. And so people relate to that, reflect on that, apply that to their own experience. Also, because ours is very mobile society (this one that you and I live in), these objects take on added meaning because they can travel with us while our friends can’t.

The film’s ability to affect this response from its audience also shows the strength in what you did with the text and the tagging. You talk about how in tagging the objects you offer meaning, which makes me wonder what you think about the importance of naming/tagging as it relates to the film, in communicating to the audience (both your intended or otherwise), and in general.

The perils of naming any object is that by naming it, you might already limit the potential of how other people experience it or name it themselves. Name it, tag it, define it. But, in terms of my story, I tagged the objects because I wanted the audience to understand a few things. First, what would life look like if you could look through the lens of an augmented reality world at someone else’s keepsakes resting on a cabinet top? What would that look like? In tagging them, I wanted the audience to understand what these objects meant to me. I tried to tag them using a language that was a bit more taxonomy-based. This faux-taxonomy voice was a bit of a put on–that was me trying to be funny. Not sure if that came off as funny but it worked in its own way. It wasn’t insincere, it was just meant to be a bit lighthearted.

It certainly works and provides a continuous voice to the piece.

Thank you.

The text is also small and moves quickly—

Yes. Adriana complained to me about that. It frustrated her.

The film asks to be viewed a few times to really be read.

Yes. One could say that. There were two opposing demands that I had to meet, or so I felt. A story like this needs to be short, or so I was convinced. Thus, in order to convey the breadth of meaningful objects that are comprised in The Things We Keep, the camera had to move rather quickly; therefore, the text moved quickly with it. That was one demand. The other was that when the text appears on the screen, it demand to be read. It is annoying when you can’t read it. In most of the films that I’ve created, there is always a lot of stuff going on in the background, which often demands more than one viewing, so it didn’t bother me too much if someone in the audience couldn’t absorb all of the details. In this case, I chose brevity and then tried to find the right song for the piece that might help people go back and view the piece again.

I love the music choice for the piece. But I think what compelled me to view it again was the text and knowing the film was short enough that I could view it in its entirety a second, third, fourth time around.

Good. I like mystery. I don’t know if there is too much mystery in The Things We Keep, but I like [people] not getting everything the first time around. That was also a bit of the rationale for the actual format of the tagging.

I wasn’t directly inspired by Nicholas Felton, the graphic designer, though there are some who suggest that I was. I love his work, and it probably influenced me in choosing the layout for the tagging, but the layout–that is, the format of the tagging–was created with the awareness that most people would have to go back and read it again. So, each tag had a headline and then supporting details with a bit of taxonomy thrown in. It’s funny, because in choosing the headlines, one becomes aware of the perils of such editorial power, which is relevant to me as a storyteller. [For example, I ask myself,] “Am I choosing the right headlines?”

Someone else also told me that I stole from Fight Club. That’s okay. I must have been influenced, but I didn’t have Fight Club in mind when I made this. But I do love that scene in Fight Club–the tagging of Ikea furniture in the apartment.

It’s always funny when people try to guess your inspiration or say “you got this from…”.

Yes, it is amusing, but I’m definitely guilty of the same thing.

In the watching and re-watching, reading and re-reading—through the repetition of engagement—the film becomes a “thing” precious to the viewer.

Ah, I like that. I haven’t heard that before. I wonder, then, how it will be received at the film screening on Saturday. Not sure that a film festival screening is the best place for a film like this. We’ll see.

I was wondering the same thing. I mean, I think it will be received well, but offer a different experience. Has working on this film changed how you work with text and image?

I think so. I’m creating more work based on this notion of tagging [to create] augmented reality. And right now, I’ve limited the scope of the tagging to a format and style that is similar to what we see in The Things We Keep. The next story will take place on a subway, with people. I want to create a series of video portraits on a subway. Each person is wearing a headset. An iPod. The augmented reality component uses the iPod experience as its launching point, but I want to explore things beyond the music that each passenger is listening to. The portraits are videos, not stills. But I digress…. So I’m continuing this style of tagging, but at some point I think I need to ask some deeper questions about tagging. It feels very surface level right now.

In addressing what to do with all of this material and informational “stuff”–how to organize it, ingest it–you have your finger on a pulse point that’s really relevant right now. People are hitting crises of informational overload, and your piece offers an alternative approach to these crises.

I want tagging to bring us closer–closer to unfamiliar objects and closer to unfamiliar people. I want tagging to unlock some mysteries, give us essential information. Of course, we are trying to figure out what is essential. For me, essential is about emotion, I suppose. We relate to objects and people through empathy, common experience. But I also want tagging to ask new questions that give rise to new mysteries, that which is uncommon, unfamiliar. I’m trying to have it both ways.

With regard to your comment about the informational crisis point and how The Things We Keep offers an alternative, the irony is that my piece centers around “stuff.” Stuff that is just lying around, a bit like information clutter or data clutter. Yes, we need to sort it, but I’m still wondering why we keep it around, even as I’ve already answered that question. Because the stuff is a proxy for relationships, is data clutter a similar kind of proxy? [If so,] what kind of relationship is that?

These questions come out beautifully in your film, which in turn raise the questions: What is more important, the object or the words? The thing or the memory/story? Not in a distracting way, but more philosophically. It sets up this duality, but also allows you to step away and mull it over and wonder why and if there even is a duality.

Ultimately, the memory is more important. We are reliant upon the object, but it is the story that is more important. I mean, I love good design and nicely design objects (in all manifestations), but, it is the memory, the relationship, that is more meaningful, and we must get back to that. We must keep the relationships vital and meaningful.

The Things We Keep screen debuts at the Rooftop Films Summer Series this Saturday, 5/29 at 8pm; it can also be viewed online here.

by Kyoung Kim
Assistant Managing Editor of Black Clock

photography by Birgit Richter

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indie100mfitten.wordpress.com

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