tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post4178158575264664428..comments2024-03-03T13:55:46.243-08:00Comments on Ambling Along the Aqueduct: Another Brief Conversation with Nisi ShawlTimmi Duchamphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00673465487533328661noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-43202829256552841592007-07-13T19:08:00.000-07:002007-07-13T19:08:00.000-07:00A book that just about every lesbian writer I knew...A book that just about every lesbian writer I knew in the 1970s and early 1980s read (including me!) was May Sarton's <I>Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing.</I> Many of us had already figured out that women writers and artists can have women muses, and it was no small relief to learn that someone from the generation preceding ours not only knew this but had published a novel about it in (I think) 1964. The big question was whether muses can be (requited) lovers. I proved to my own satisfaction [g] that this was unlikely, but in general my best work grows from unanswered questions and restless terrain so YMMV.Susanna J. Sturgishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17782696516790105019noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-21675382858834103412007-07-10T18:03:00.000-07:002007-07-10T18:03:00.000-07:00Hi Timmi, Nisi, and Vandana,I've enjoyed your conv...Hi Timmi, Nisi, and Vandana,<BR/>I've enjoyed your conversation very much, even where I can't relate to parts of it, as in your statement, Nisi: "For women artists, our muses are our mothers, our sisters, our daughters, as well as our lovers. Our babysitters." You go on to say, however, something that I feel to the depths of my soul: "Our deepest and/or highest selves." - even if I would also add: our lowest.<BR/><BR/>As to the "the community of women", there are so many - inspiring, comforting, complacent, destructive - so that "community" doesn't work for me as a muse either, especially since my own observations lead me to the conclusion that the sisters/daughters/mothers ... goodness and supportiveness as default is a wopping myth. Rather, speaking completely seriously, the muse for me isn't those people who are encouraging. A writer should not be encouraged and stroked, I don't think, as much as pricked. A muse then in that case, is the often discomforting truths that one finds in life that bring the best out of us, and that muse can be a fossilised bird's beak, a mite, an ad, article in a newspaper, blog comment, or a splendidly multifaceted declaration by an Egyptian official the other day, speaking against the (pseudo)populist Seven New Wonders: "History was not written by the masses."<BR/>A muse can be a picture that shines with unintended facets, a sound, a singing cicada with a deformed wing. I've always felt more a person than a female, but am very aware that I am lucky to be able to feel this, living in a country and at a time that allows me this freedom. In many places in the world, this freedom is going backwards. (I don't know how to link, so see NPR: Jerusalem's 'Rosa Parks' Fights 'Modesty Patrols') and against that direction, I wish the community of women everywhere (and especially where we have the luxury to muse on muses) were more passionately not amused. <BR/><BR/>But this is a diversion from your conversation and its historical roots. I didn't know huge wads of what you had to say, so you opened my eyes, even to Joseph Conrad's inspiration (No wonder I thought Heart of Darkness an interminable, mixed-up bore. The Lord doesn't go in for logical thought. Jo would have cleaned up his thought patterns no end.)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5360814020056871156.post-91754421246084376572007-07-03T09:02:00.000-07:002007-07-03T09:02:00.000-07:00Hi Timmi and Nisi:Thanks for sharing this fascinat...Hi Timmi and Nisi:<BR/>Thanks for sharing this fascinating conversation. It reminds me of an essay by Ursula K. Le Guin in her collection "The Language of the Night" which I've unfortunately lent out so I can't quote from it directly. But anyway she contrasts the relationship between the writer and the writing process in the case of men and women. Her example for women is Louisa May Alcott through Jo in Little Women. She described how the process of writing is for Jo an immersion, a falling into a vortex. She quotes other female writers who wrote against the background of home and domesticity, and who acknowledge that their writing is in a sense not theirs alone but arises from the community of women, whether it is the mother who brings tea or the sister who takes care of the kid for a while. (I'm probably interpolating some of this since I don't have the text handy). Then she quotes Joseph Conrad describing how for him his creative work is wrested from the Lord, and he speaks of how he needs his isolation and how he is not even aware of what goes on in the house, and even refers to his wife impersonally as the presence who deposits food in front of him while he is abstracted and lost in his creative struggle. There is no sense of the writing process being participatory, or acknowledgement of the role of other people. I don't know to what extent these writers are representative of their gender but certainly for me the creative process is a lot more like the experiences of the women writers described. I don't have a personified Muse although I'm aware of the inner presence of Saraswati, the goddess of wisdom, knowledge and the arts, driving me. <BR/><BR/><BR/>Thanks again,<BR/>VandanaAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com