Beautiful sentences from Elizabeth Bishop's "In the Village," sent to me by new media writer J.R. Carpenter.
"The dressmaker was crawling around and around on her knees eating pins as Nebuchadnezzar had crawled eating grass." Bishop, Elizabeth, "In the Village," The Collected Prose, NY: FSG, 1984, p. 252.
"Her house is littered with scraps of cloth and tissue-paper patterns, yellow, pinked, with holes in the shapes of A, B, C, and D in them, and numbers; and threads everywhere like a fine vegetation. She has a bosom full of needles with threads ready to pull out and make nests with. She sleeps in her thimble." Bishop, Elizabeth, "In the Village," The Collected Prose, NY: FSG, 1984, p. 258.
Reminds me of a talk I heard by the marvelous poet/singer/activist Julie Ezelle Patton in November at Pratt Institute (thanks to Rachel Levitzky and Ira Livingston) in which she spoke of her engagement with poetry rising from her love of paper; her mother, an artist, taught her to sew her own clothes at an early age, and she would indeed be crawling around on the floor surrounded by the thin, filmy paper of patternmaking. "Pinked" in "In the Village" means not the color pink but zigzag-edged, as in "pinking shears."
Need I even mention the "holes in the shapes of A,B,C and D"? Stencils, like lace, or like photography, and art-form of negativity, just as women are considered "negative space." Holes in the shape of letters...to be filled by the spirit of letters. Reminding me that I must post Adeena Karasick's commentary framing her video "Lingual Ladies."
The connection to madness and the animal abjection of crawling around eating grass, pins, etc. is a haunting one related to the madness of Bishop's mother, who was permanently institutionalized when EB was very young. Indeed, as I recall, that is the (muted) theme of "In the Village." I think also of the bestiality of descriptions of the "madwoman" in Jane Eyre, who is compared to an animal in the only scene in which she is fully revealed...
Something about "looking ridiculous" (a phrase that arises in pornography and Harlequin romances: "O knew she must look ridiculous...etc.") in the process of losing oneself in the creative act, be it sewing, writing, dancing, or sex. But cross-stitchers and knitters don't look ridiculous; it's such a contained, serene "habit." Maybe that's why we do it in public.
Thank you, JR, for these haunting, violent images.
Showing posts with label text. Show all posts
Showing posts with label text. Show all posts
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Saturday, March 5, 2011
time balls
Keeping track of ones life thru winding a ball of yarn...a Yakama custom among women. At significant moments (the birth of a child, a move to another home, a marriage, etc, the winder/memoirist would insert a knot, bead or other way of indicating "eventhood" in a thread of life. These "time balls" were called ititamats, and at the end of the yarn-winder's life the ball would be interred with her. When I googled "ititimat" (as I initially thought the word was spelled), almost all sites listed were mangled spellings of "intimate," which was quite amusing.
I came across the word at the website of Canadian writer and textile artist Susan Allen Grace, and specifically here.
The word "yarn" itself hearkens back to one that mean "animal guts," which were used for divination purposes as well as serving as the earliest form of thread to tie animal skins or sheets of bark together for garments or shelter. So from the start of human endeavor, imaginative storytelling, whether an account of the past (memoir) or the future (divination), was inextricably joined to the crafting of clothing and shelter, and acknowledges the human debt to the non-human animal (and eventually vegetable) world. Moreover, the root word is one signifying "enclosure" or binding, bringing us back to the Beit, Tiny Ark-hive in which the second letter of the alphabet, figured as a dwelling-place, is also the holy spirit, Shekinah, breath, word, life, in the beginning:
YARN,
spun thread, the thread of a rope. (E.) M. E. yarn, ȝarn; 'Ȝarne, threde, Filum;' Prompt. Parv., p. 536.—A. S. gearn, yarn, Wright's Voc. i. 59, col. 2; spelt gern, id. 282, l. 2. + Du. garen. + Icel., Dan., and Swed. garn. + G. garn. β. All from the Teut. type GARNA, yarn, string, Fick, iii. 101. Further allied to Gk. χορδή, a string, orig. a string of gut; cf. Icel. görn, or garnir, guts (i.e. strings or cords). From ✔GHAR, to seize, hence to enclose, bind; see Yard (1) and Cord. From the same root are cor-d, chor-d, as well as cour-t, yard, garden, &c.
I came across the word at the website of Canadian writer and textile artist Susan Allen Grace, and specifically here.
The word "yarn" itself hearkens back to one that mean "animal guts," which were used for divination purposes as well as serving as the earliest form of thread to tie animal skins or sheets of bark together for garments or shelter. So from the start of human endeavor, imaginative storytelling, whether an account of the past (memoir) or the future (divination), was inextricably joined to the crafting of clothing and shelter, and acknowledges the human debt to the non-human animal (and eventually vegetable) world. Moreover, the root word is one signifying "enclosure" or binding, bringing us back to the Beit, Tiny Ark-hive in which the second letter of the alphabet, figured as a dwelling-place, is also the holy spirit, Shekinah, breath, word, life, in the beginning:
YARN,
spun thread, the thread of a rope. (E.) M. E. yarn, ȝarn; 'Ȝarne, threde, Filum;' Prompt. Parv., p. 536.—A. S. gearn, yarn, Wright's Voc. i. 59, col. 2; spelt gern, id. 282, l. 2. + Du. garen. + Icel., Dan., and Swed. garn. + G. garn. β. All from the Teut. type GARNA, yarn, string, Fick, iii. 101. Further allied to Gk. χορδή, a string, orig. a string of gut; cf. Icel. görn, or garnir, guts (i.e. strings or cords). From ✔GHAR, to seize, hence to enclose, bind; see Yard (1) and Cord. From the same root are cor-d, chor-d, as well as cour-t, yard, garden, &c.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
God is Afoot, Magic is Alive
Yesterday I gave my end-of-residency presentation along with all the other members of the In(ter)ventions: Literary Practice at the Edge program at the Banff Centre for the Arts. I showed a bit of work from the past (eros/ion, with mIEKAL aND), more recent past (Flaxen for Jen Bervin and Raw Power/Kill City for James Williamson); then I showed my blog (this blog) and read a bit of it, as well as the Aleph Mem Shin x-stitch, which is almost finished by now. It was a headlong rush through the material and I was winging it on a very pleasant adrenaline high that was part informality and partly exhilarated nervousness. It was the last of a series of resident presentations, all of which were both brilliant and piquantly in-process and there was a good feeling of artistic community.
Afterwards, at dinner, Paul Seesequasis, a gracious and generous human being, gave me an amazing gift: a first pressing copy of Raw Power in mint condition. I needed to lean on J. R. Carpenter in order to not have my knees completely buckle under me. I was still on the adrenaline rush and that gave me another wave of it.
Stay tuned for further musings on how the Iggy and the Stooges fit into this saga, this yarn of text and textile, this intermeshing of tactile praxis and cerebral spinnings. As I wrote on my FB page, there is no end to Stooge Magic. James Williamson noted that it (the receipt of the Raw Power gift as somehow karmically appropriate to this creative journey) was poetry! and it was indeed poetic justice. It seems to happen when I simply go towards the doors that are opening. Stooge Magic, I'm calling it for now, though it's got lots of names. God is afoot, magic is alive, as Leonard Cohen wrote (in Beautiful Losers) and Buffy St. Marie sang.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Intertextile, Text in Exile: Shmata Mashup...
... is the title of a performance piece/long essay-poem (poessay?) that Adeena Karasick and I have been working on, starting last February. I've been collecting and generating texts and textile pieces for my Text, Textile, Exile project for a few years now, and when I went to New York a year ago (Feb. 2010) I met with Adeena and learned that she too had been working along parallel lines. While reading the entirety of a book we both had essays in (Radical Poetics and Jewish Secular Culture), she had discovered a marvelous pun: shmata (Yiddish, "rag") and shma'atta (Hebrew, "the text at hand") and we were off and running.
We had worked together before, having presented a collaborative closing lecture, "“Simultaneous Jewissance: Performing Critical-Creative Mutual Influence,” for a conference sponsored by the University of Minnesota's Department of Theatre Arts and Dance in 2006, and it had been a gratifying experience, well-received as well as enjoyable, so we had a precedent for working together. We feverishly generated text and then at the end of February debuted our piece as it then was to In(ter)ventions: Literary Practice at the Edge, a conference at Alberta's Banff Centre for the Arts where, a year later, we are both residents in a program by the same name, in which we hope to further our collaboration. We also gave the presentation in slightly altered form at the Post_moot Convocation of Poetry and Performance in April 2010, at Miami University, Ohio.
Now we're back here at Banff; I'm working on this blog and also on our piece (x-stitching the letters Aleph, Mem, and Shin (the three mothers); Adeena is working on a video and also on our collaboration.
The photo represents the MEM under construction; i'm adding a gold metallic luster-crust to it to make it a little more interesting.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Weavings for Ed Cohen
Here are pix of two hangings I made for my friend Ed Cohen, who teaches cultural studies at Rutgers University and whom I've known since our graduate school days in the Program in Modern Thought and Literature at Stanford. The brown/blue one dates from 1989 and the red one from 2008.
During the same period in which I asked for and received the beautiful writings from Masha Zavialova http://hyperpoesia.blogspot.com/2011/02/shawl-of-recognition.html and Christopher Funkhouser posted below (http://hyperpoesia.blogspot.com/2011/02/essay-by-chris-funkhouser-on.html), I also asked Ed for a response. Here's his sweet and rather, um, flattering essay:
Tendencies and Tensions: Weaving the Stuff of Creation
by Ed Cohen
Woven threads: textiles, texts, tissues, living stuff. These plays of warp and woof have variously served as images for language, social relations, human flesh, dreamscapes, women’s work, and the negation of the natural world by human labor more generally--all true enough in their ways. However, they also reveal processes actualized, virtual tendencies made palpable through creative choice and deliberation, decisions which divide the what may have been or may yet be from the what is, and simultaneously wind them all together. Woven events incarnate an ontology of time that Henri Bergson named “duration,” a time of change from which the unexpected may tear free of the already known or the presumptively knowable. Thus, they can actually manifest freedom as a creative form. Cunningly detained within the loom’s tightened strings, time may reveal an élan vital—a living spirit.
Bergson (especially as reworked and refigured by Gilles Deleuze) posits duration as a “virtual multiplicity” which entangles “heterogeneity and continuity.” As Deleuze puts it, virtual multiplicity “does not divide up without changing in kind, it changes in kind in the process of dividing up.” Enduring time represents tendencies spun and unspun, wound and unwound, changing and unchanged. Knotting this divisive coalescence together requires tensions and “de-tensions” [détentes], contractions and expansions, restrictions and transgressions: “Duration is only the most contracted degree of matter, matter the most expanded [détendu] degree of duration.” Tractions and tractabilities mold the mortal coil.
Underlying Bergson’s (and Deleuze’s) metaphysical intuition, lie manifold intentions, attentions, extensions, retensions, detensions, protensions, tendencies, and intensities: in short “tensions” that tend simultaneously towards and away from each other and thereby make the universe matter for a time. All these tendentious concepts trope on a hidden etymology: the Latin tendere refers to stretching, as in the stretching of an arm or a bowstring, i.e., to the movement of something beyond itself even while it remains itself, to the elastic spring of being. Essentially taut and loose, the universe weaves itself into being. Shuttling (between) time and matter, it creates the enfolding fabric of existence.
On the loom, strands stretched between cross pieces of a frame create a potent emptiness. They determine a field of indecision which calls forth decisions. They manifest a matrix of fertile vortices which hail color and texture. Each choice rends time, slicing the virtual from the actual. This fiber, this tension, this movement, this instant growing out of, flowing out of, increasing and enhancing by restricting and condensing, the indeterminate potential from which it emerges. The resulting fabric, inexorably tied to its moment of creation, sutures past, present, and future, making time matter.
The gift of fabric, then, is literally, actually a gift that keeps on giving. The tapestries that adorn on my walls and the scarves that caress my neck bless me not only with their beauty and their palpable grace, but also with the temporal traces that weave us all together. In each unique piece, I hear the sun that warms the grass, the sheep that shed their wool, the hands that spin and dye the yarn, the tools that build the loom, the fingers that move the shuttle, silently sing together a chorale of praise to the stuff of creation. And for this blissful texture, I bow in thanks to my friend Maria who has bestowed such stuff upon me time and time again.
Monday, February 21, 2011
i'm in tatters/doesn't matter
Ongoing Etymologies: Adeena Karasick's eternal phrase "haughty taughty tater tot" underlies some of these humble torn and shredded fibers...
tatter (v.)
mid-14c., "clad in slashed garments," from O.N. toturr "rag," cognate with O.E. tættec, tætteca "rag, tatter," Low Ger. tater "tatter." The noun is attested from c.1400.
tatterdemalion
"ragged child, person dressed in old clothes," c.1600, probably from tatter, with fantastic second element, but perhaps also suggested by Tartar, with a contemporary sense of "vagabond, gypsy."
tattersall
fabric with small and even check pattern, 1891, so called because it was similar to the traditional design of horse blankets, in ref. to Tattersall's, a famous London horse market and gambler's rendezvous, founded 1766 by Richard Tattersall (1724-95). The surname is from the place in Lincolnshire.
tatting
"making of knotted lace," 1832, of uncertain origin. In Fr., frivolité.
tattle
late 15c., "to stammer, prattle," in Caxton's translation of "Reynard the Fox," probably from M.Flem. tatelen "to stutter," parallel to M.Du., M.L.G., E.Fris. tateren "to chatter, babble," possibly of imitative origin. The meaning "tell tales or secrets" is first recorded 1580s. Sense influenced by tittle.
tattletale
formed in English 1888 from tattle + tale. Probably patterned on telltale (1540s). A 16c. word for “tattle-tale” was pickthank.
tattoo (1)
"signal," 1680s, "signal calling soldiers or sailors to quarters at night," earlier tap-to (1644, in order of Col. Hutchinson to garrison of Nottingham), from Du. taptoe, from tap "faucet of a cask" (see tap (2)) + toe "shut." So called because police used to visit taverns in the evening to shut off the taps of casks. Transf. sense of "drumbeat" is recorded from 1755. Hence, Devil's tattoo "action of idly drumming fingers in irritation or impatience" (1803).
tattoo (2)
"mark the skin with pigment," 1769 (noun and ver, both first attested in writing of Capt. Cook), from a Polynesian noun (e.g. Tahitian and Samoan tatau, Marquesan tatu "puncture, mark made on skin").
tatty
1510s, "tangled or matted" (of hair), Scottish, probably related to O.E. tættec "a rag" (see tatter). Sense of "tattered, ragged, shabby" first recorded 1933.
Hallstatt
1866, Iron Age civilization of Europe, from the name of a village in Upper Austria, where implements from this period were found.
tatter (v.)
mid-14c., "clad in slashed garments," from O.N. toturr "rag," cognate with O.E. tættec, tætteca "rag, tatter," Low Ger. tater "tatter." The noun is attested from c.1400.
tatterdemalion
"ragged child, person dressed in old clothes," c.1600, probably from tatter, with fantastic second element, but perhaps also suggested by Tartar, with a contemporary sense of "vagabond, gypsy."
tattersall
fabric with small and even check pattern, 1891, so called because it was similar to the traditional design of horse blankets, in ref. to Tattersall's, a famous London horse market and gambler's rendezvous, founded 1766 by Richard Tattersall (1724-95). The surname is from the place in Lincolnshire.
tatting
"making of knotted lace," 1832, of uncertain origin. In Fr., frivolité.
tattle
late 15c., "to stammer, prattle," in Caxton's translation of "Reynard the Fox," probably from M.Flem. tatelen "to stutter," parallel to M.Du., M.L.G., E.Fris. tateren "to chatter, babble," possibly of imitative origin. The meaning "tell tales or secrets" is first recorded 1580s. Sense influenced by tittle.
tattletale
formed in English 1888 from tattle + tale. Probably patterned on telltale (1540s). A 16c. word for “tattle-tale” was pickthank.
tattoo (1)
"signal," 1680s, "signal calling soldiers or sailors to quarters at night," earlier tap-to (1644, in order of Col. Hutchinson to garrison of Nottingham), from Du. taptoe, from tap "faucet of a cask" (see tap (2)) + toe "shut." So called because police used to visit taverns in the evening to shut off the taps of casks. Transf. sense of "drumbeat" is recorded from 1755. Hence, Devil's tattoo "action of idly drumming fingers in irritation or impatience" (1803).
tattoo (2)
"mark the skin with pigment," 1769 (noun and ver, both first attested in writing of Capt. Cook), from a Polynesian noun (e.g. Tahitian and Samoan tatau, Marquesan tatu "puncture, mark made on skin").
tatty
1510s, "tangled or matted" (of hair), Scottish, probably related to O.E. tættec "a rag" (see tatter). Sense of "tattered, ragged, shabby" first recorded 1933.
Hallstatt
1866, Iron Age civilization of Europe, from the name of a village in Upper Austria, where implements from this period were found.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Scrappy scraps
I am I because my little google-search engine knows me: this is what came up when I looked for scrap + etymology, several threads relating to writing (blotter), etc. "Chiffonier" is not only a piece of furniture, but is the French word for "ragpicker," a theme I looked at a bit a few days ago. What does it mean when a human being is synonymous with a piece of furniture, a literal commodity (commode is one word for bureau) that is a depository for detritus, gladrags and doodads? The human is reified as his/her labor around the edges of the formal economy. At the same time, "chiffon" in American English has come to signify something airy and lacy, such as the meringue on top of a lemon pie or an elegantly diaphanous fabric.
scrap (1)
"small piece," late 14c., from O.N. skrap "scraps, trifles," from skrapa "to scrape" (see scrape). Meaning "remains of metal produced after rolling or casting" is from 1790. The verb meaning "to make into scrap" is recorded from 1891. Scrap iron first recorded 1823.
scrappy
"consisting of scraps, 1837, from scrap (1). Meaning "inclined to fight" (1895) is from scrap (2).
scrap (2)
"fight," 1846, possibly a variant of scrape (q.v.) on the notion of "an abrasive encounter." But Weekley suggests obsolete colloquial scrap "scheme, villainy, vile intention" (1670s). The verb is recorded from 1874. Related: Scrapped; scrapping.
scrapple
cornmeal boiled in scraps of pork, 1855, probably a dim. form of scrap (1).
scrapbook
1825, from scrap + book. As a verb, by 1889.
escrow
1590s, from Anglo-Fr. escrowe, from O.Fr. escroue "scrap, roll of parchment," from a Germanic source akin to O.H.G. scrot "scrap, shred" (see scroll (n.)). Originally "a deed delivered to a third person until a future condition is satisfied;" sense of "deposit held in trust or security" is from 1888.
blotter
1590s, "thing for drying wet spots," from blot. Meaning "bad writer" is from c.1600. Sense of "day book" is from 1670s, and the word was applied early 19c. to rough drafts, scrap books, notebooks, and draft account books. Hence the police jargon sense "arrest record sheet," recorded from 1887.
retail (v.)
mid-14c. (implied in retailing), from O.Fr. retaillier "to cut off, pare, clip, divide," from re- "back" + taillier "to cut, trim" (see tailor). Sense of "recount, tell over again" is first recorded 1590s. The noun meaning "sale in small quantities" is from early 15c., from M.Fr. retail "piece cut off, shred, scrap, paring."
chiffonier
"piece of furniture with drawers for women to put needlework, cloth, etc.," 1806, from Fr. chiffonnier, a transferred use, lit. "rag gatherer," from chiffon, dim. of chiffe "rag, piece of cloth, scrap, flimsy stuff" (see chiffon).
riffraff
late 15c., from earlier rif and raf "one and all, every scrap" (mid-14c.), from O.Fr. rif et raf, from rifler "to spoil, strip" (see rifle (v.)) and raffler "carry off," related to rafle "plundering" (see raffle).
lean (adj.)
"thin, spare, with little flesh or fat," O.E. hlæne, possibly from hlænan "cause to lean or bend," from P.Gmc. *khlainijan, which would make it related to O.E. hleonian (see lean (v.)). But perhaps rather from a PIE *qloinio- (cf. Lith. klynas "scrap, fragment," Lettish kleins "feeble").
junk (1)
"worthless stuff," mid-14c., junke "old cable or rope" (nautical), of uncertain origin, perhaps from O.Fr. junc "rush," from L. juncus "rush, reed." Nautical use extended to "old refuse from boats and ships" (1842), then to "old or discarded articles of any kind" (1884). The verb meaning "to throw away as trash, to scrap" is from 1916. Junk food is from 1971; junk art is from 1966; junk mail first attested 1954.
lacerate
1590s, from L. laceratus, pp. of lacerare "tear to pieces, mangle," from lacer "torn, mangled," from PIE base *leq- "to rend" (cf. Gk. lakis "tatter, rag," lakizein "to tear to pieces;" Rus. lochma "rag, tatter, scrap;" Albanian lakur "naked"). Related: Lacerated; lacerating.
scroll (n.)
c.1400, "roll of parchment or paper," altered (by association with rolle "roll") from scrowe (early 13c.), from Anglo-Fr. escrowe, O.Fr. escroe "scrap, roll of parchment," from Frank. *skroda "shred" (cf. M.Du. schroode "shred," O.H.G. scrot "piece cut off," Ger. Schrot "log, block, small shot"), from P.Gmc. *skrautha "something cut." The verb meaning "to write down in a scroll" is recorded from c.1600; sense of "show a few lines at a time" (on a computer or TV screen) first recorded 1981. Related: Scrolled; scrolling.
scrap (1)
"small piece," late 14c., from O.N. skrap "scraps, trifles," from skrapa "to scrape" (see scrape). Meaning "remains of metal produced after rolling or casting" is from 1790. The verb meaning "to make into scrap" is recorded from 1891. Scrap iron first recorded 1823.
scrappy
"consisting of scraps, 1837, from scrap (1). Meaning "inclined to fight" (1895) is from scrap (2).
scrap (2)
"fight," 1846, possibly a variant of scrape (q.v.) on the notion of "an abrasive encounter." But Weekley suggests obsolete colloquial scrap "scheme, villainy, vile intention" (1670s). The verb is recorded from 1874. Related: Scrapped; scrapping.
scrapple
cornmeal boiled in scraps of pork, 1855, probably a dim. form of scrap (1).
scrapbook
1825, from scrap + book. As a verb, by 1889.
escrow
1590s, from Anglo-Fr. escrowe, from O.Fr. escroue "scrap, roll of parchment," from a Germanic source akin to O.H.G. scrot "scrap, shred" (see scroll (n.)). Originally "a deed delivered to a third person until a future condition is satisfied;" sense of "deposit held in trust or security" is from 1888.
blotter
1590s, "thing for drying wet spots," from blot. Meaning "bad writer" is from c.1600. Sense of "day book" is from 1670s, and the word was applied early 19c. to rough drafts, scrap books, notebooks, and draft account books. Hence the police jargon sense "arrest record sheet," recorded from 1887.
retail (v.)
mid-14c. (implied in retailing), from O.Fr. retaillier "to cut off, pare, clip, divide," from re- "back" + taillier "to cut, trim" (see tailor). Sense of "recount, tell over again" is first recorded 1590s. The noun meaning "sale in small quantities" is from early 15c., from M.Fr. retail "piece cut off, shred, scrap, paring."
chiffonier
"piece of furniture with drawers for women to put needlework, cloth, etc.," 1806, from Fr. chiffonnier, a transferred use, lit. "rag gatherer," from chiffon, dim. of chiffe "rag, piece of cloth, scrap, flimsy stuff" (see chiffon).
riffraff
late 15c., from earlier rif and raf "one and all, every scrap" (mid-14c.), from O.Fr. rif et raf, from rifler "to spoil, strip" (see rifle (v.)) and raffler "carry off," related to rafle "plundering" (see raffle).
lean (adj.)
"thin, spare, with little flesh or fat," O.E. hlæne, possibly from hlænan "cause to lean or bend," from P.Gmc. *khlainijan, which would make it related to O.E. hleonian (see lean (v.)). But perhaps rather from a PIE *qloinio- (cf. Lith. klynas "scrap, fragment," Lettish kleins "feeble").
junk (1)
"worthless stuff," mid-14c., junke "old cable or rope" (nautical), of uncertain origin, perhaps from O.Fr. junc "rush," from L. juncus "rush, reed." Nautical use extended to "old refuse from boats and ships" (1842), then to "old or discarded articles of any kind" (1884). The verb meaning "to throw away as trash, to scrap" is from 1916. Junk food is from 1971; junk art is from 1966; junk mail first attested 1954.
lacerate
1590s, from L. laceratus, pp. of lacerare "tear to pieces, mangle," from lacer "torn, mangled," from PIE base *leq- "to rend" (cf. Gk. lakis "tatter, rag," lakizein "to tear to pieces;" Rus. lochma "rag, tatter, scrap;" Albanian lakur "naked"). Related: Lacerated; lacerating.
scroll (n.)
c.1400, "roll of parchment or paper," altered (by association with rolle "roll") from scrowe (early 13c.), from Anglo-Fr. escrowe, O.Fr. escroe "scrap, roll of parchment," from Frank. *skroda "shred" (cf. M.Du. schroode "shred," O.H.G. scrot "piece cut off," Ger. Schrot "log, block, small shot"), from P.Gmc. *skrautha "something cut." The verb meaning "to write down in a scroll" is recorded from c.1600; sense of "show a few lines at a time" (on a computer or TV screen) first recorded 1981. Related: Scrolled; scrolling.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
The Shawl of Recognition
In 2007, I gave Maria Zavialova, one of our doctoral students and a brilliant, award-winning translator of American novels (Toni Morrison's Jazz and Alice Walker's The Color Purple) into Russian, a shawl I wove of blue and brown wool and cotton, in recognition of her devoted volunteer labor for the website VG: Voices from the Gaps, a database devoted to the work of women writers and artists of color and housed in the UMN's English Department. When I was in Riga and asked recipients of textile events/items from me to respond in some way (see my earlier entry on Christopher Funkhouser's essay, Masha wrote this short essay, which is rich in meta-commentary on text and textile, memory and narrative. I don't have a photo of the woven piece but hope to add it later:
Texture of the shawl of recognition, by Maria Lvovna Zavialova
The VG shawl of recognition is made of strips of differently colored and textured yarn, probably the left-overs of wool and cotton thread that Maria used for other things she was making at the time, or else made from her old knitted things that she turned back into yarn and re-used (a usual procedure for my Russian female relatives more gifted than me in handicrafts whose hands, as the Russian saying goes, were not growing from their asses as were mine, or so I was lead to believe). For me who have not made the shawl, these various shades of purple, brown, and (what I would call) unbleached linen white are pure colors rather than context-bound excerpts from past LIFE. They do not remind me of a favorite woolen sock -- a grandma’s gift, a sweater made for a sister, or an unexpected call from a long-gone friend that interrupted the weaving of this particular purple pattern. For the producer of the shawl, the memories are probably woven into its texture; and hence she is not a producer but an author. And here we arrive at the definition of an author as someone whose memories as well as bits and pieces of her life, are woven into the texture of the product. I can imagine working at a factory and making shawls a dozen items a minute that would not have any memories of mine woven into them, or probably just a little. Which makes authorship a matter of degrees.
I have received the shawl already all of a piece, a single whole unit that does not have a beginning and an end. It is just here. It emerged one moment from nowhere as do things given or bought. It is here for me, to keep me warm on a cold night and to impart beauty to my environment whatever it is, be it my bedroom in a house recently moved into, or an office chair at workplace, or a back seat of somebody’s car. I see it as a single totality, without roots that go deep into the soil. The shawl is not grounded in my soil, a favorite theme with Dostoevsky and other Slavophiles of the late 19th century Russia. It is like a foreign language, not learnt at a mother’s knee and not hardwired into the heart, brain and muscles whose words come and go and you don’t know whence they come or whither they go.
Sometimes I look at its various patterns that never repeat themselves, and see it as a chain of words in a sentence or a kind of speech that has its unique start in the here and now that is gone, inviting a reply that will mark its end and will be a completely different here and now that has not started yet. The shawl unfolds its patterns as I do my casual conversation: I say something that can never ever be repeated in exactly the same way and the words I say cause other words to appear and connect with the previous ones into a pattern that will be impossible to break. This pattern is sealed by Time.
But then again, I turn the shawl upside down and now its beginning is its end and vice versa. It is wonderfully reversible and dyslexic like me – I often type letters in words in a reverse order.
The shawl’s pattern is flowing from one end to the other without that maddening repetitive rhythm that sometimes pops up in nightmares or on Gilman’s yellow wallpaper. Its ends are open-ended and un-culminated, that is, unfinalized. As this short essay will be.
Texture of the shawl of recognition, by Maria Lvovna Zavialova
The VG shawl of recognition is made of strips of differently colored and textured yarn, probably the left-overs of wool and cotton thread that Maria used for other things she was making at the time, or else made from her old knitted things that she turned back into yarn and re-used (a usual procedure for my Russian female relatives more gifted than me in handicrafts whose hands, as the Russian saying goes, were not growing from their asses as were mine, or so I was lead to believe). For me who have not made the shawl, these various shades of purple, brown, and (what I would call) unbleached linen white are pure colors rather than context-bound excerpts from past LIFE. They do not remind me of a favorite woolen sock -- a grandma’s gift, a sweater made for a sister, or an unexpected call from a long-gone friend that interrupted the weaving of this particular purple pattern. For the producer of the shawl, the memories are probably woven into its texture; and hence she is not a producer but an author. And here we arrive at the definition of an author as someone whose memories as well as bits and pieces of her life, are woven into the texture of the product. I can imagine working at a factory and making shawls a dozen items a minute that would not have any memories of mine woven into them, or probably just a little. Which makes authorship a matter of degrees.
I have received the shawl already all of a piece, a single whole unit that does not have a beginning and an end. It is just here. It emerged one moment from nowhere as do things given or bought. It is here for me, to keep me warm on a cold night and to impart beauty to my environment whatever it is, be it my bedroom in a house recently moved into, or an office chair at workplace, or a back seat of somebody’s car. I see it as a single totality, without roots that go deep into the soil. The shawl is not grounded in my soil, a favorite theme with Dostoevsky and other Slavophiles of the late 19th century Russia. It is like a foreign language, not learnt at a mother’s knee and not hardwired into the heart, brain and muscles whose words come and go and you don’t know whence they come or whither they go.
Sometimes I look at its various patterns that never repeat themselves, and see it as a chain of words in a sentence or a kind of speech that has its unique start in the here and now that is gone, inviting a reply that will mark its end and will be a completely different here and now that has not started yet. The shawl unfolds its patterns as I do my casual conversation: I say something that can never ever be repeated in exactly the same way and the words I say cause other words to appear and connect with the previous ones into a pattern that will be impossible to break. This pattern is sealed by Time.
But then again, I turn the shawl upside down and now its beginning is its end and vice versa. It is wonderfully reversible and dyslexic like me – I often type letters in words in a reverse order.
The shawl’s pattern is flowing from one end to the other without that maddening repetitive rhythm that sometimes pops up in nightmares or on Gilman’s yellow wallpaper. Its ends are open-ended and un-culminated, that is, unfinalized. As this short essay will be.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
textile vocabularies
I've been struck often that the Northern European (English? Anglo-Saxon etc?) words for textile instruments are childish in nature:
needle, bobbin, spindle, treadle, heddle, shuttle, raddle, teasel, niddy-noddy, etc.
Can you think of others? Please post suggestions to this lexical roster.
Because "loom," etymologically, works its way back to meaning "that familiar old tool," the "le" suffixes at the end of these words suggest intimacy, the way German or Yiddish diminutives work to confer affection on the named one: "Hansel" and "Gretel" rather than the formal "Johannes" and "Margrethe."
Sounds that create intimacy and proximateness (closeness) and that are also fun for kids (or adults) to say suggest that these were instruments and tools of quotidien familiarity. Does it also suggest a slight infantilization or diminution of status, as in "women's work," or am I trying to introduce conflict into this edenic scene of cozy domesticity?
needle, bobbin, spindle, treadle, heddle, shuttle, raddle, teasel, niddy-noddy, etc.
Can you think of others? Please post suggestions to this lexical roster.
Because "loom," etymologically, works its way back to meaning "that familiar old tool," the "le" suffixes at the end of these words suggest intimacy, the way German or Yiddish diminutives work to confer affection on the named one: "Hansel" and "Gretel" rather than the formal "Johannes" and "Margrethe."
Sounds that create intimacy and proximateness (closeness) and that are also fun for kids (or adults) to say suggest that these were instruments and tools of quotidien familiarity. Does it also suggest a slight infantilization or diminution of status, as in "women's work," or am I trying to introduce conflict into this edenic scene of cozy domesticity?
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Opening Salvo
Here it is, this Banff-mandated experiment. My new blog will, I hope, be a way to generate writing and ideas for my larger Text, Textile, Exile project, which is more of a floating matrix (constellation, in Benjamin's terminology) than a form into which content will be poured.
Please send useful links, other blog suggestions and so forth so i can make this as interactive as possible.
The image is Open Up and Bleed: for James Osterberg, Jr. (Iggy Pop). There's a short piece of writing that goes with it that I'll share anon, but right now I'm using it as an example of the fancy lettering I like to use. And here's a bit of writing I did in response to a query I got from a colleague on the subject:
Why Do I Use Elaborate “Fonts”?
This is a question I was asked by my colleague Qadri Ismail, who can be counted on to ask engaging questions and who has become interested in the modernist and contemporary visual arts of his native Sri Lanka, especially those paintings that concern the political conflicts that have consumed much of his country’s energies in the past half-century or so.
No one had ever asked me that, and I took the question to mean a couple of related things. Whether or not this is what Qadri had in mind, I found it useful to proceed to answer what I thought he was asking as a way to clarify what I do and why.
I took his question to mean, first, that elaborate lettering is a sign of elitism and elegance; and second, relatedly, that elaborate lettering indicates old-fashioned, or at least pre-modernist, aesthetic values.
I use elaborate “fonts” in order to foreground the materiality of the letters and by extension, the materiality of language. Like contemporary graffiti, these hyper-rococo, distended, or otherwise distorted letters underscore the “defamiliarization,” or ostranenie, in Viktor Shklovsky’s terminology, that forms the basis of the literary. We are in the realm of the imagination, of people trying to create something. The same old same old can’t be taken for granted but must be challenged. Letters’ and words’ use as instruments of domination without substance of their own must be destabilized, and this challenge is mind-opening. The illumination of letters illuminates the mind by posing a puzzlement: how to read the letter? It’s not a transparent window onto meaning; it must be confronted as an (art) object itself. Traditionally, letters have been illuminated in manuscripts to indicate their status as sacred, and to mark the beginning of a page or passage, an entryway into the world of the text, where different things become possible. It’s a sort of threshold, or border. The words “border” and “embroider” may have etymological kinship; hems and edges are often areas that attract the embellishment of the needle arts, and borders, in eco-systems, are where the most diversity, the most abundant, varied and proliferant animal and plant life flourishes. So the ornamentation of the letters, their being turned into ornaments, marks them as unnatural, as cultural “constructions,” as the old phrase has it, and as cultural creations. At the same time, they are a connective tissue of communication, and this element of their being is materialized by their being rendered in tissue; in cloth and in the elements of cloth: thread, yarn. I initially wrote “threat” and “yearn” here, by error, because words and letters do, after all, signify affectively and cognitively. In the Kabbalistic tradition, letters are spiritual emanations of divine energy, and each has its special divine properties, they are “vessels of fiery potential,” just as in astrology or numerology each configuration or number has characteristics. That they are somewhat abstract–shapes and signs rather than images, which are forbidden–makes them more appropriate representations of the Divine. Paleolinguist and textile scholar E. J. W. Barber postulates that sewing for necessity (joining pieces of animal hide together with needles for shelter or clothing) is contemporaneous in origin with, not precedent to, ornamentation. She observes that the oldest needle archaeologists have found dates from about 23,000 BC, the Paleolithic era; remains of two humans, an adult woman and a male child, each wearing a hat ornamented with three stones sewn into them through central piercings, date from about the same period. The row of three small stones is an ornamentation that supercedes (supplements but is not of a secondary order) the garment’s creatural utility, suggesting that their presence has ritual purpose, though ornamentation in a secular society has come to suggest a second-order, decorative, self-regarding impulse. Thus the ornate is inseparable from the origins of culture, of made-ness and reflection on it: “ornate” anagrams “orante,” the woman who prays.
The other reason–or an other reason–I use ornate fonts is precisely this idea of “old-fashioned”ness. In most, but not all, cases, the cleanliness of modernist style is what I want to avoid; modernist precision is, in its way, more “elitist” –whatever that means, really–than the earnest, petit-bourgeois desire for fanciness whose pathos is at the heart of the “bad poetry” I find so valuable. In the same way that outsider poetry is often marked by indices of passé poetic values–flowery diction, rhyme, contrived or clumsy metaphor–the overly fancy letter suggests a “wannabe” status, the outsider looking in and imitating, in exaggerated and slightly awkward gestures, what s/he perceives as elegance. S/he is not even a parvenue, but a wannabe parvenue. Nancy Spungen dyeing her hair blonde and crying to her mother that even her friends don’t want to spend time with her. John Keats overusing words like “sweet” in order to be poetic, much to the condescending amusement of the literati of his day.
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