I want to live inside of Mary Oliver's Dream Work. These poems beg to be read and are the consolation I need today as I am faced with my own tendency towards attachment. This has little to do with Gipson directly, but I feel like Oliver's poetry is speaking to my own more than usual, and my poetry is part of the project. This poem is working on becoming ubiquitous, but I still want to post it in all of its relevance!
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
I need to be submitting to journals.
I am having a horrible time focusing today. I want to read all of Dream Work, work on my own poems, do yoga, bag the clothes I don't wear and take them to Goodwill. Maybe I am wasting my time by sitting here and trying to work when everything else seems so urgent.
From "A Rant Against Creative Writing Classes" by Dan Barden
"...the workshop promotes the idea to young writers that their writing is required reading, that an audience is guaranteed. When really, postworkshop, no one will ever be forced to look at their work again. It's the first thing I tell my students: If you could understand, really understand, that no one needs to read your work, then your writing would improve vastly by the time we meet in this classroom again."
Anne Sexton, referring to W.D. Snodgrass, in a letter to Carolyn Kizer:
"His poems are all truth (so to speak) but not the real truth yet. (that is if you think the greatness of a poem depends on its intrinsic truth to the action)" (108)
In a letter to Anthony Hecht:
"I don't think L.I. Ferry really a good poem of mine...too sentimental. But perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps I ought to allow my female heart more room...it seems to be the way I'm writing lately...my new poem too...but I'm going to harden up soon I promise myself...stop all the emoting around and get down to facts and objects" (127).
In a letter to Mrs. Willard Fuller:
"I feel, sometimes, sorry about my poetry...not as far as "the literary world" is concerned...but as far as the people in Wellesley and surrounding towns are concenred. It shocks them and I can understand why...they say it isn't anything 'like me'...'it is so depressing' or 'cruel'...and I know that it is, in truth like me inside. And, you see, 'inside' is the place where poems come from" (147).
From the Introduction to The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton by Maxine Cumin:
"In a terse eulogy Robert Lowell declared, with considerable ambivalence it would" seem, 'For a book or two, she grew more powerful. Then writing was too easy or too hard for her. She became meager and exaggerated. Many of her most embarrassing poems would have been fascinating if someone had put them in quotes, as the presentation of some character, not the author.'" (Cumin xx)
"...in Sexton's poetry the reader can find the poet again and again identifying herself through her relationship with the male Other, whether in the person of a lover or...in the person of the patriarchal final arbiter" (xxx).
"Women poets in particular owe a debt to Anne Sexton, who broke new ground, shattered taboos, and endured a barrage of attacks along the way because of the flamboyance of her subject matter, which, twenty years later, seems far less daring...Anne delineated the problematic position of women-- the neurotic reality of the time-- though she was not able to cope in her own life with the personal trouble it created" (xxxiv).
Friday, February 22, 2008
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Oh, silly Anne...
The confessional reader's expectations are what are false! They expect the delivery of a snapshot of an authentic self that cannot be delivered because (our)selves are bound by language! If you write and genuinely think you are expressing (your)self, I suppose you are only in that this expression is the only self we really express into existence!
From Paul A. Lacey's "The Sacrament of Confession"
"Which is to say that, whatever the adjective 'confessional' tells us about subject matter, the noun it modifies, 'poetry,' points us once more to the questions of style and form. A poem gives shape to experience so that both the experience itself, in all its density and complexity, with whatever tastes, sights, feelings, and textures are peculiar to it, and the 'meanings'-- the insights, reflections, consequences, emotional and spiritual implications of the shaped experience-- become available to us" (Lacey 94-95).
"The poem, then, looks two ways, toward expression and toward communication. It organizes our responses as we write, but it also organizes responses in the audience we begin to imagine" (95).
"If the reader is being addressed in some special 'confessional' sense, what is his role? Is he hearing confession like a priest, granting or withholding absolution?" (96).
THIS IS THE KIND OF IDEA I'VE BEEN TRYING TO ESPOUSE ALL ALONG!!!!:
"The content, it must be insisted, does not make the poem truthful. Even the most autobiographical poet distorts or suppresses facts for the sake of making a fiction which will tell more of the essential truth. To reach its readers, the poem must persuade us that the truth it tells is worth the price it exacts; it must lead us to appropriate and satisfying reactions" (98).
Anne Sexton's poetry regarding power? Ohhh, I need to keep reading this but I really need to find the quote I went digging for, too. Damn.
Basically, Anne Sexton was looked at as trivial because her personal subjects intersected with femininity.
Confessional poetry differs from confession in that it is literary, but it is also the literary nature of the confession contained in the poetry that subverts confessional politics (but how?)
The Black Art (Anne Sexton)
A woman who writes feels too much,
those trances and portents!
As if cycles and children and islands
weren't enough; as if mourners and gossips
and vegetables were never enough.
She thinks she can warn the stars.
A writer is essentially a spy.
Dear love, I am that girl.
A man who writes knows too much,
such spells and fetiches!
As if erections and congresses and products
weren't enough; as if machines and galleons
and wards were never enough.
With used furniture he makes a tree.
A writer is essentially a crook.
Dear love, you are that man.
Never loving ourselves,
hating even our shoes and our hates,
we love each other, precious, precious.
Our hands are light blue and gentle.
Our eyes are full of terrible confessions.
But when we marry,
the children leave in disgust.
There is too much food and no one left over
to eat up all the weird abundance.
I'm not sure how people read this poem and devalue how it is concerned with gender difference. Here is Paul Lacey's take:
First, he believe that the theme of "[t]he events of life are never enough, either as experience or meaning" is established in this poem (100).
He goes on..."The poem is not concerned primarily with distinguishing women from men or feeling from knowing; instead, it separates these ways of entering and valuing experience-- each conceived of as magical-- from the trivial data of experience itself. A writer is a spy or a crook, one who discovers or steals secrets, in the poem. He is also a perverter of order for the sake of nature" (100-101).
THE SEPARATION IS GENDERED. It doesn't necessarily reflect the way things are, but the way things are supposed to be. Sexton is considered "emotional" as her male confessional counterparts are considered "knowledgeable." She doesn't question these different perceptions, but instead reinforces them (?) Does she really? Sexton's poetry is written from an unwaveringly feminine place...
Anne Sexton wrote about traditionally feminine subjects and had the identity of a woman and her voice was mired with a concern for feminine things! She didn't pretend!
How aware was Sexton of the gendered review of her poetry? I need to read some letters...
I just walked outside to breathe and see the lunar eclipse. It's amazing how the Earth's penumbra makes the moon look like a massive cotton ball. It's a shame that the whole neighborhood smells like pork.
I love the tone of Anne Sexton's letters. I want to be her best friend.
From Letters:
"I do what I do because I don't know how to be someone else. Therefore I dedicate myself to write my best self, and in this minute to thank you for writing your best self so well and giving me a hand out of my foolish 'death bed'" (100).
Off to evening activities...
From Paul A. Lacey's "The Sacrament of Confession"
"Which is to say that, whatever the adjective 'confessional' tells us about subject matter, the noun it modifies, 'poetry,' points us once more to the questions of style and form. A poem gives shape to experience so that both the experience itself, in all its density and complexity, with whatever tastes, sights, feelings, and textures are peculiar to it, and the 'meanings'-- the insights, reflections, consequences, emotional and spiritual implications of the shaped experience-- become available to us" (Lacey 94-95).
"The poem, then, looks two ways, toward expression and toward communication. It organizes our responses as we write, but it also organizes responses in the audience we begin to imagine" (95).
"If the reader is being addressed in some special 'confessional' sense, what is his role? Is he hearing confession like a priest, granting or withholding absolution?" (96).
THIS IS THE KIND OF IDEA I'VE BEEN TRYING TO ESPOUSE ALL ALONG!!!!:
"The content, it must be insisted, does not make the poem truthful. Even the most autobiographical poet distorts or suppresses facts for the sake of making a fiction which will tell more of the essential truth. To reach its readers, the poem must persuade us that the truth it tells is worth the price it exacts; it must lead us to appropriate and satisfying reactions" (98).
Anne Sexton's poetry regarding power? Ohhh, I need to keep reading this but I really need to find the quote I went digging for, too. Damn.
Basically, Anne Sexton was looked at as trivial because her personal subjects intersected with femininity.
Confessional poetry differs from confession in that it is literary, but it is also the literary nature of the confession contained in the poetry that subverts confessional politics (but how?)
The Black Art (Anne Sexton)
A woman who writes feels too much,
those trances and portents!
As if cycles and children and islands
weren't enough; as if mourners and gossips
and vegetables were never enough.
She thinks she can warn the stars.
A writer is essentially a spy.
Dear love, I am that girl.
A man who writes knows too much,
such spells and fetiches!
As if erections and congresses and products
weren't enough; as if machines and galleons
and wards were never enough.
With used furniture he makes a tree.
A writer is essentially a crook.
Dear love, you are that man.
Never loving ourselves,
hating even our shoes and our hates,
we love each other, precious, precious.
Our hands are light blue and gentle.
Our eyes are full of terrible confessions.
But when we marry,
the children leave in disgust.
There is too much food and no one left over
to eat up all the weird abundance.
I'm not sure how people read this poem and devalue how it is concerned with gender difference. Here is Paul Lacey's take:
First, he believe that the theme of "[t]he events of life are never enough, either as experience or meaning" is established in this poem (100).
He goes on..."The poem is not concerned primarily with distinguishing women from men or feeling from knowing; instead, it separates these ways of entering and valuing experience-- each conceived of as magical-- from the trivial data of experience itself. A writer is a spy or a crook, one who discovers or steals secrets, in the poem. He is also a perverter of order for the sake of nature" (100-101).
THE SEPARATION IS GENDERED. It doesn't necessarily reflect the way things are, but the way things are supposed to be. Sexton is considered "emotional" as her male confessional counterparts are considered "knowledgeable." She doesn't question these different perceptions, but instead reinforces them (?) Does she really? Sexton's poetry is written from an unwaveringly feminine place...
Anne Sexton wrote about traditionally feminine subjects and had the identity of a woman and her voice was mired with a concern for feminine things! She didn't pretend!
How aware was Sexton of the gendered review of her poetry? I need to read some letters...
I just walked outside to breathe and see the lunar eclipse. It's amazing how the Earth's penumbra makes the moon look like a massive cotton ball. It's a shame that the whole neighborhood smells like pork.
I love the tone of Anne Sexton's letters. I want to be her best friend.
From Letters:
"I do what I do because I don't know how to be someone else. Therefore I dedicate myself to write my best self, and in this minute to thank you for writing your best self so well and giving me a hand out of my foolish 'death bed'" (100).
Off to evening activities...
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
diversions
ILL:
Carol Mirakove's books, particularly Mediated
I'll see if I can get some kari edwards.
Ugh, I do not find myself connecting with these poets...I have trouble getting into poetry that lacks a certain immediateness, but it makes me happy that my poetics are much more accessible, or so they seem. I can't concentrate; can't work in my room because the overhead light blew and it stopped being sunny enough to read from window light. Downstairs is too bleak for work and I just want Devin to get here because he's supposed to be my distraction for the day, not intellectual/creative roadblocks. And why do I feel the need to write these things in here I'm not going to gain anything by admitting that my work ethic has become wrapped up in that lazy sort of poem, the kind that maybe alludes to the idea of what poetry once was, something not so obvious...
my work ethic has become something not so obvious, but occasionally I get things done, and at least I'm happy& creative?
I think I'll revise until he gets here. This will be finished (or something) at somepoint.
Carol Mirakove's books, particularly Mediated
I'll see if I can get some kari edwards.
Ugh, I do not find myself connecting with these poets...I have trouble getting into poetry that lacks a certain immediateness, but it makes me happy that my poetics are much more accessible, or so they seem. I can't concentrate; can't work in my room because the overhead light blew and it stopped being sunny enough to read from window light. Downstairs is too bleak for work and I just want Devin to get here because he's supposed to be my distraction for the day, not intellectual/creative roadblocks. And why do I feel the need to write these things in here I'm not going to gain anything by admitting that my work ethic has become wrapped up in that lazy sort of poem, the kind that maybe alludes to the idea of what poetry once was, something not so obvious...
my work ethic has become something not so obvious, but occasionally I get things done, and at least I'm happy& creative?
I think I'll revise until he gets here. This will be finished (or something) at somepoint.
Oy.
Are safe spaces for the exploration of queer sexuality, which is, frankly, any and all sexuality, necessary to the proliferation of queer ideas?
I need to better define the confessional power play in order to better understand how Butler's ideas work in this-- destructing the universal power from the inside through some sort of restructuring. I think the best we can do is acknowledge the bind of self-expression and move on writing from our own perspectives knowing it is impure but sincere because every expression of self is limited by the language that determines it.
Can't work too much. Going to look up more intimate-voiced poets. I hate intellectual dead-ends.
I need to better define the confessional power play in order to better understand how Butler's ideas work in this-- destructing the universal power from the inside through some sort of restructuring. I think the best we can do is acknowledge the bind of self-expression and move on writing from our own perspectives knowing it is impure but sincere because every expression of self is limited by the language that determines it.
Can't work too much. Going to look up more intimate-voiced poets. I hate intellectual dead-ends.
From Judith Butler: Live Theory by Vicki Kirby
I have little to no desire to read Gender Trouble again, so this summary is making my life!
"Citing Michel Haar on this point, Butler nots that '[t]he subject, the self, the individual, are just so many false concepts, since they transform into substances fictitious unities having at the start only a linguistic reality' (1990b, 21)" (Kirby 27)
"Butler is clearly committed to a notion that language possesses a constitutive and regulatory force which causally implicates sex/gender and sexuality. And Irigaray's explication of masculinism and Wittig's analysis of heteronormativity illuminate this causal configuration and the repressive regimes within language which naturalize and enforce it. Given this, a question arises about the nature of subversion: how can these prohibitive regimes in linguistic and cultural practice be challenged if there is no escaping them?...If power inhabits the very spatial and temporal metaphorics that its overthrow requires...if power is coextensive with all of the strategies and transgressive tactic that we might use to free ourselves from it, then how are we to proceed?...In the next two chapters Butler will argue that the identity of power itself is inherently ambiguous for its apparent unity of purpose and causal intention are always vulnerable to perverse calculations and energies" (Kirby 27-28).
"Importantly, there is no mother, no self before the child learns to identify, or differentiate itself from (m)otherness. According to Lacan, the origins of life remain blurred and entangled until the acquisition of language, which allows the subject to assume an autonomy and self-possession through linguistic markers, such as the personal pronoun, 'I'. Thus, language comes to 're-present' this originary plenitude (the Real, or 'lack of lack') as a world of social significations within those binary valuations, ordered meanings, prescriptions and prohibitions the child must find its place" (Kirby 30).
I can't imagine that Judith Butler is a very happy person.
"For if the alien status and make-up of 'the other' cannot be contested because its ontological difference is naturally abject, in other words, if 'the other' is beyond or before the very power of cultural practice to makes a difference, then any attempt at subversion will be futile. Given this, Butler asks how those natural energies of the body which purportedly prefigure signification and culture can be comprehended and comparatively evaluated if the semiotic is truly outside signification" (39).
"'What cultural configuration of language, indeed, of discourse, generates the trope of a pre-discursive libidinal multiplicity, and for what purposes?' (1990b, 91)" (39).
"If power is constitutive and ubiquitous such that even the resistance to power is actually the (re)articulation of power, then the conventional identity of 'power' is significantly reconfigured. For what can it be measured against? And how do we think about justice, agency, and responsibility if individuals and their behaviours are animated by forces which they haven't authored?" (Kirby 41)
"For Butler, sexism and heterosexism operate as regulatory norms to organize the pluralities of bodies/desires into fictional coherence, a coherence which assumes factual status" (43-44).
Any iteration of the self is a construction of the self.
Need to find these passages in Gender Trouble itself(!):
"...to understand identity as a practice, and as a signifying practice,is to understand culturally intelligible subjects as the resulting effect of a rule-bound discourse that inserts itself in the pervasive and mundane signifying acts of linguistic life. Abstractly considered, language refers to an open system of signs by which intelligibility is insistently created and contested" (Butler ?)
"Butler's insistence that the subject doesn't pre-exist these cultural regimes of identity formation is not meant to deny the subject's existence as the embodied expression of these converging and competing demands. Butler's understanding of the subject, identity and agency is therefore and implicated one which locates the possibility of contestation and change in the very structures through which subject formation and it corollaries are generated" (Kirby 45).
Oy. Devin will be here in a few hours, unexpectedly. Judith Butler makes me feel simultaneously depressed and artistically charged. Therefore, I am going to go read in the bath, shower, and then work on the physical body of my project (and hope that I do not get to the point where I need to visit my friend Judith.)
"Citing Michel Haar on this point, Butler nots that '[t]he subject, the self, the individual, are just so many false concepts, since they transform into substances fictitious unities having at the start only a linguistic reality' (1990b, 21)" (Kirby 27)
"Butler is clearly committed to a notion that language possesses a constitutive and regulatory force which causally implicates sex/gender and sexuality. And Irigaray's explication of masculinism and Wittig's analysis of heteronormativity illuminate this causal configuration and the repressive regimes within language which naturalize and enforce it. Given this, a question arises about the nature of subversion: how can these prohibitive regimes in linguistic and cultural practice be challenged if there is no escaping them?...If power inhabits the very spatial and temporal metaphorics that its overthrow requires...if power is coextensive with all of the strategies and transgressive tactic that we might use to free ourselves from it, then how are we to proceed?...In the next two chapters Butler will argue that the identity of power itself is inherently ambiguous for its apparent unity of purpose and causal intention are always vulnerable to perverse calculations and energies" (Kirby 27-28).
"Importantly, there is no mother, no self before the child learns to identify, or differentiate itself from (m)otherness. According to Lacan, the origins of life remain blurred and entangled until the acquisition of language, which allows the subject to assume an autonomy and self-possession through linguistic markers, such as the personal pronoun, 'I'. Thus, language comes to 're-present' this originary plenitude (the Real, or 'lack of lack') as a world of social significations within those binary valuations, ordered meanings, prescriptions and prohibitions the child must find its place" (Kirby 30).
I can't imagine that Judith Butler is a very happy person.
"For if the alien status and make-up of 'the other' cannot be contested because its ontological difference is naturally abject, in other words, if 'the other' is beyond or before the very power of cultural practice to makes a difference, then any attempt at subversion will be futile. Given this, Butler asks how those natural energies of the body which purportedly prefigure signification and culture can be comprehended and comparatively evaluated if the semiotic is truly outside signification" (39).
"'What cultural configuration of language, indeed, of discourse, generates the trope of a pre-discursive libidinal multiplicity, and for what purposes?' (1990b, 91)" (39).
"If power is constitutive and ubiquitous such that even the resistance to power is actually the (re)articulation of power, then the conventional identity of 'power' is significantly reconfigured. For what can it be measured against? And how do we think about justice, agency, and responsibility if individuals and their behaviours are animated by forces which they haven't authored?" (Kirby 41)
"For Butler, sexism and heterosexism operate as regulatory norms to organize the pluralities of bodies/desires into fictional coherence, a coherence which assumes factual status" (43-44).
Any iteration of the self is a construction of the self.
Need to find these passages in Gender Trouble itself(!):
"...to understand identity as a practice, and as a signifying practice,is to understand culturally intelligible subjects as the resulting effect of a rule-bound discourse that inserts itself in the pervasive and mundane signifying acts of linguistic life. Abstractly considered, language refers to an open system of signs by which intelligibility is insistently created and contested" (Butler ?)
"Butler's insistence that the subject doesn't pre-exist these cultural regimes of identity formation is not meant to deny the subject's existence as the embodied expression of these converging and competing demands. Butler's understanding of the subject, identity and agency is therefore and implicated one which locates the possibility of contestation and change in the very structures through which subject formation and it corollaries are generated" (Kirby 45).
Oy. Devin will be here in a few hours, unexpectedly. Judith Butler makes me feel simultaneously depressed and artistically charged. Therefore, I am going to go read in the bath, shower, and then work on the physical body of my project (and hope that I do not get to the point where I need to visit my friend Judith.)
A new place to visit, perhaps?
What does the confessional mode reveal about the construction of the "I"? A whole damn lot.
Confessional poetry often seems to be looked at as a big "oops" in a literary history, but the personal voice-- the idea that our subjective experience informs our perspective and is therefore inescapable-- informs a significant amount of poetry today. The poetry may not be considered "confessional," per se, but it is certainly personal. Poets seem to realize that the personal experience of the poet is the place from which a poem starts, or as Philly Sound poet CA Conrad says, "Every SINGLE thing that went into making you as you are at this moment is in some way responsible for what kind of poetry comes out of you." This is apparent in his poetry, as well as the work of many other poets coming into prominence right now.
Maybe what is inherently problematic about the way people look at the confessional mode of writing is that they look at it in terms of Foucault, which assumes some degree of truth/authenticity.
What I'm looking at right now is not confession alone, per se, it is more at those poets who use an intimate voice to reveal an aspect of their subjective reality that may spark a debate regarding social change or the nature of the world.
By writing from a lesbian standpoint, Adrienne Rich helps to construct what the term "lesbian" means by selecting certain aspects of herself to write about-- her experiences loving Michelle Cliff as opposed to her rather wrecked husband, her experiences amongst communities of women. The term "lesbian" is made dynamic by Rich's changing experience as a lesbian, as well as through the voices of other lesbian-identified writers who share experiences that may stand direct opposition to Rich's. This is why "lesbian" is an insufficient descriptor of experience and should not be taken alone. Poetry that provides a window into experience that either claims to be lesbian (say, about a person who identifies as a lesbian but is having sex with a man) or an experience that may be codified as lesbian (a poem about a woman having sex with another woman) has the ability to reveal the unstable nature of identity categories and the the constructed nature of identity and the self as a whole.
In his Creating Another Self, Samuel Maio argues from a position that assumes an authentic, historical self exists. I would agree that a "historical self" exists as a perspective informed by past experiences, but that self is hardly "authentic" in any kind of autobiographical writing, not just poetry. The memory is fallible, and there are bound to be details that we choose to withhold. Just as Maio puts Sexton's poetry up to her letters to reveal how she constructs what he calls her "persona," we can easily look at these same documents to reveal how "the self" itself is constructed.
Confessional poetry often seems to be looked at as a big "oops" in a literary history, but the personal voice-- the idea that our subjective experience informs our perspective and is therefore inescapable-- informs a significant amount of poetry today. The poetry may not be considered "confessional," per se, but it is certainly personal. Poets seem to realize that the personal experience of the poet is the place from which a poem starts, or as Philly Sound poet CA Conrad says, "Every SINGLE thing that went into making you as you are at this moment is in some way responsible for what kind of poetry comes out of you." This is apparent in his poetry, as well as the work of many other poets coming into prominence right now.
Maybe what is inherently problematic about the way people look at the confessional mode of writing is that they look at it in terms of Foucault, which assumes some degree of truth/authenticity.
What I'm looking at right now is not confession alone, per se, it is more at those poets who use an intimate voice to reveal an aspect of their subjective reality that may spark a debate regarding social change or the nature of the world.
By writing from a lesbian standpoint, Adrienne Rich helps to construct what the term "lesbian" means by selecting certain aspects of herself to write about-- her experiences loving Michelle Cliff as opposed to her rather wrecked husband, her experiences amongst communities of women. The term "lesbian" is made dynamic by Rich's changing experience as a lesbian, as well as through the voices of other lesbian-identified writers who share experiences that may stand direct opposition to Rich's. This is why "lesbian" is an insufficient descriptor of experience and should not be taken alone. Poetry that provides a window into experience that either claims to be lesbian (say, about a person who identifies as a lesbian but is having sex with a man) or an experience that may be codified as lesbian (a poem about a woman having sex with another woman) has the ability to reveal the unstable nature of identity categories and the the constructed nature of identity and the self as a whole.
In his Creating Another Self, Samuel Maio argues from a position that assumes an authentic, historical self exists. I would agree that a "historical self" exists as a perspective informed by past experiences, but that self is hardly "authentic" in any kind of autobiographical writing, not just poetry. The memory is fallible, and there are bound to be details that we choose to withhold. Just as Maio puts Sexton's poetry up to her letters to reveal how she constructs what he calls her "persona," we can easily look at these same documents to reveal how "the self" itself is constructed.
Monday, February 18, 2008
The Red Alert's Interview with Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart
"All of the songs are about things that are going on in my life, or my family's life, or in politics. None of it is exaggerated or theatrical. It's just narratives."-- Jamie Stewart
Interview with Jamie Steward in Hybrid Magazine
"HM: Along similar lines, a lot of people that I've talked to about Xiu Xiu or have made listen to your music have said, "Is it real? Or is it a joke? Are they serious about this stuff?" because a lot of it is so dark and graphic. And I've even read other interviews with you where you've said the same thing, that people think it's funny, or that you're being insincere. And to me, it makes sense that people react like that because I think the whole purpose of humor is to alleviate pain; so some of the funniest things to us are the subjects that are the most painful. But that doesn't make it any less real or sincere. So…I mean, do you agree with that? Is that part of the goal of your music? Or am I missing the point entirely?
JS: Yeah, absolutely. I think that the only real goal that we have is to just write truthfully about the things that are happening to us-"us" meaning the people in the band and our families and the people who are close to us. I mean exactly what you just said: life is just really terrible sometimes. So terrible that it's kind of hilarious. [laughs] So, yeah, I agree entirely with what you're saying."
Yeah, I can't concentrate anymore. Sleep time.
"All of the songs are about things that are going on in my life, or my family's life, or in politics. None of it is exaggerated or theatrical. It's just narratives."-- Jamie Stewart
Interview with Jamie Steward in Hybrid Magazine
"HM: Along similar lines, a lot of people that I've talked to about Xiu Xiu or have made listen to your music have said, "Is it real? Or is it a joke? Are they serious about this stuff?" because a lot of it is so dark and graphic. And I've even read other interviews with you where you've said the same thing, that people think it's funny, or that you're being insincere. And to me, it makes sense that people react like that because I think the whole purpose of humor is to alleviate pain; so some of the funniest things to us are the subjects that are the most painful. But that doesn't make it any less real or sincere. So…I mean, do you agree with that? Is that part of the goal of your music? Or am I missing the point entirely?
JS: Yeah, absolutely. I think that the only real goal that we have is to just write truthfully about the things that are happening to us-"us" meaning the people in the band and our families and the people who are close to us. I mean exactly what you just said: life is just really terrible sometimes. So terrible that it's kind of hilarious. [laughs] So, yeah, I agree entirely with what you're saying."
Yeah, I can't concentrate anymore. Sleep time.
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