Monday, October 5, 2009
a quick thought about writing
One more thing. I was thinking about writing today, and why I find it so productive. I always find out a lot about myself when I write. I think it's because you have to be very honest with yourself. Or at least I do. If I am not I will not be able to write, or I will not be able to write something satisfying anyway. If I am avoiding something, even if I don't know it, I will be able to tell because my writing will be contrived. This is why it takes me so long to write.
love and work
Maybe this blog should be called, "Inspiring Quotes from the CBC." Today I was listening to a podcast of Tapestry and Mary Hynes quoted Freud:
"A healthy human being is one who can love and work."
I think Freud probably got a lot wrong, but I like this one.
"A healthy human being is one who can love and work."
I think Freud probably got a lot wrong, but I like this one.
Friday, September 11, 2009
An Apology and a New Start
Hello lovely people,
It is about time I gave you an apology for abandoning this blog for so long. So a GIANT APOLOGY to you. I had high hopes for blogging; I love writing, have long wanted to do more of it, and was far away and missing you all, so a blog seemed like a good idea. But I found it to be a strange blend of the public and private spheres. I've never had much of a public life; I'm much more comfortable with personal conversations than any kind of mass communication. So as my personal life took over my thoughts in a big way this summer - in a good way I promise - I struggled to decide how much to write, how much to share in this venue. Add that to the fact that I am a slow writer at the best of times and I stopped writing.
Anyway, at the very least, I owe you a conclusion (or maybe a continuation, who knows) to the whole arts-civilization story, if you're still interested. I did eventually manage to synthesize all of your ideas into some sort of personal understanding, which I wrote about in an article for the "Creativity" issue of Blueprint, our very awesome campus magazine at WLU. So I'll share it with you by linking it here. As usual please comment away! And definitely check out all of the other articles and artwork - it's an absolutely beautiful issue with lots of food for thought to give.
So for now I think I'll use this blog for sharing the writing I'm doing in other contexts. I used to use facebook for this, but I have heard some slightly creepy things about facebook owning the rights to all material posted, so I think I'm going to stop that. The day when somebody pays me for my work is a long time away, but I still like the idea of retaining ownership over what I write. So I will post articles here, or links to them if they have an online presence already, and maybe some poetry if I'm feeling brave. I also may post links to other blogs I am reading if I think the general "you" would be interested. And who knows, maybe I will gradually become more comfortable with the blog format, in which case there may be occasional actual blog posts, but I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you. As always, I invite you to comment on anything posted here. Or if you want to write a full-length post, just email it to me at lauren.smee@gmail.com and I will post it. I would be thrilled if this became the fertile forum for discussion that it was for a week or so in May.
All of that being said, I do want to share one short story. Earlier this summer I was reunited with one of my very oldest and closest friends after she spent the better part of a year overseas. I spent a few days at a cottage with her family and one of her family-members was reading The Cellist of Sarajevo. So I mentioned it at dinner and told them about the controversy over whether the author should have asked the cellist's permission, and it sparked a lively debate about the rights and responsibilities of artists. So I would like to formally reopen this topic and invite everyone from that dinner-table-discussion to share their thoughts.
Much love to all of you,
Lauren
It is about time I gave you an apology for abandoning this blog for so long. So a GIANT APOLOGY to you. I had high hopes for blogging; I love writing, have long wanted to do more of it, and was far away and missing you all, so a blog seemed like a good idea. But I found it to be a strange blend of the public and private spheres. I've never had much of a public life; I'm much more comfortable with personal conversations than any kind of mass communication. So as my personal life took over my thoughts in a big way this summer - in a good way I promise - I struggled to decide how much to write, how much to share in this venue. Add that to the fact that I am a slow writer at the best of times and I stopped writing.
Anyway, at the very least, I owe you a conclusion (or maybe a continuation, who knows) to the whole arts-civilization story, if you're still interested. I did eventually manage to synthesize all of your ideas into some sort of personal understanding, which I wrote about in an article for the "Creativity" issue of Blueprint, our very awesome campus magazine at WLU. So I'll share it with you by linking it here. As usual please comment away! And definitely check out all of the other articles and artwork - it's an absolutely beautiful issue with lots of food for thought to give.
So for now I think I'll use this blog for sharing the writing I'm doing in other contexts. I used to use facebook for this, but I have heard some slightly creepy things about facebook owning the rights to all material posted, so I think I'm going to stop that. The day when somebody pays me for my work is a long time away, but I still like the idea of retaining ownership over what I write. So I will post articles here, or links to them if they have an online presence already, and maybe some poetry if I'm feeling brave. I also may post links to other blogs I am reading if I think the general "you" would be interested. And who knows, maybe I will gradually become more comfortable with the blog format, in which case there may be occasional actual blog posts, but I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you. As always, I invite you to comment on anything posted here. Or if you want to write a full-length post, just email it to me at lauren.smee@gmail.com and I will post it. I would be thrilled if this became the fertile forum for discussion that it was for a week or so in May.
All of that being said, I do want to share one short story. Earlier this summer I was reunited with one of my very oldest and closest friends after she spent the better part of a year overseas. I spent a few days at a cottage with her family and one of her family-members was reading The Cellist of Sarajevo. So I mentioned it at dinner and told them about the controversy over whether the author should have asked the cellist's permission, and it sparked a lively debate about the rights and responsibilities of artists. So I would like to formally reopen this topic and invite everyone from that dinner-table-discussion to share their thoughts.
Much love to all of you,
Lauren
Thursday, May 21, 2009
A Beautifully Uncivilized Act: Josh weighs in
This discussion is taking off! From an internet cafe somewhere in Casablanca (I think) Josh Smyth has sent his ever-thought-provoking take on this whole arts-civilization thing. I am loving that you are all taking such an active role in this blog! Mostly because it gives me wonderful food for thought and the chance to get to know you all better, even from a distance, but also - I have to confess - because it buys me time. When I first posted about Steven Galloway's book I had no idea what I was unleashing. The function of the arts in this world is a question I have been grappling with increasing intensity for a while now and I still don't really feel ready to articulate my thoughts. I promise I will eventually post something about this, but in the meantime, you can continue sending in your insights, which I'm sure will help me come to some clarity. You are also invited to read Karl Paulnack's welcome address to the parents of the students at the Boston Conservatory of Music. You may have read it - it was circulating widely among musicians this winter (and Paul Pulford posted it on the door of 318) - but I only got around to reading it when Pat, author of the previous post sent it to me the other day. Whatever I end up writing about all this will draw on this article, as well as everything you have all given me to mull over. Gah! I talk to much! I give you: Josh Smyth.
"At the most basic level, I too have often had a problem with the
term "civilization". It comes up within a discourse that labels the
whole concept as colonial, as designed only to allow us to label
things we don't like as "uncivilized". If you want to get a rise out
of normally staid political scientists, try using it. I certainly
cannot dismiss those objections out of hand, though - even without
delving into whatever cultural frameworks are underneath Galloway's
particular understanding of it, I don't think that we can escape the
thought that part of what that cellist is doing - or what any artist
is doing in war, for that matter - is reasserting his or her
membership in civilization, in a group that doesn't kill people
indiscriminately with mortars and the like. For that characterization
to make any sense, there must be a group that does kill, destroy,
hate, etc. Call them uncivilized, call them barbarians, whatever, but
whatever the conscious logic is, I cannot help but think that the
creation and assertion of artistic beauty in such times is at least
partially captured by the need to "other" those who would destroy. To
me, this is all somewhat misleading - the really horrifying thing is
that those who are killing your family are just as "civilized" as you
are, that the same bonds of fellowship that can draw a community
together in belonging are the ones that lead us down some pretty
terrible roads.
In any case, this is but a side point. I'm more interested in thinking
about the contractual nature of "civilized" life. This is certainly a
dominant view of civilization, as a set of agreements between us to
treat each other a certain way, but I'm skeptical of the social
contract. To me it seems to understate the role coercion plays in our
lives, and in the history of our societies' development. I'm not sure
that it is a broad agreement that keeps us all from bopping each other
on the heads with microphones - it may also be the simple threat of
punishment for it, and the more complex internalization of social
norms, the violation of all of which carries at least a social
penalty. This point has been driven home for me recently while on the
road, where a great many of the social norms of Canada - not driving
like a maniac, for example - don't apply. When I fling myself into
traffic to get across a road, I still cringe at the violation of rules
that I've internalized long ago, even though to follow those rules (or
even to cringe at them) would put me in more danger. I suspect the
same is often the case with much of the rest of our lives. We're not
always that conscious of just how much sanction would come our way for
violating the rules of the civilized game. The creepy thing is how
quickly those rules can result in norms that make terrible acts not
only acceptable, but mandatory - witness Bosnia, or Rwanda.
More broadly speaking, thinking about civilization as a contract
seems to me to understate the role that coercion played in creating
modern society. We didn't just come together as a group of individuals
and agree to create civilization. It evolved slowly, and it has always
been characterized by increasingly sophisticated methods of control;
indeed, the things that characterize civilized life in the broadest
sense - writing, for example - probably emerged as a way for the newly
rich elite to keep track of their stuff.
How does this all tie into the arts? In a way I find quite
inspiring. I've been reading "Dancing in the Streets" by Barbara
Ehrenreich, recently - you gave it to me! - and she spends a good deal
of time pointing at how the ecstatic rituals, drumming, and dancing of
our precivilized past were viewed as a threat by the nascent elites of
slightly later times. They were equalizers, social spaces in which
one's wealth or power ceased mattering. To me, this is how the arts
fits in in the face of despair - not as an act of maintaining
civilization, but as exactly the opposite, as a rejection of the
"civilization" that bands us together into heirarchies that destroy
each other and the earth. The production of art is a beautifully
uncivilized act, one that does not depend on the social structures
around us but instead connects us through to the 4 basic things that
human beings do : eat, sleep, have babies, and create art. The
assertion of the cellist, to me, is not to proclaim the survival of
civilization, but to deny forever the possibility that civilization
could ever destroy our innate relationship with beauty. When we sing,
or play, or write, or paint, or dance, we can assert that even if
civilization has me killing my neighbours, all is not lost. That's
pretty neat.
--- End ramble ----"
"At the most basic level, I too have often had a problem with the
term "civilization". It comes up within a discourse that labels the
whole concept as colonial, as designed only to allow us to label
things we don't like as "uncivilized". If you want to get a rise out
of normally staid political scientists, try using it. I certainly
cannot dismiss those objections out of hand, though - even without
delving into whatever cultural frameworks are underneath Galloway's
particular understanding of it, I don't think that we can escape the
thought that part of what that cellist is doing - or what any artist
is doing in war, for that matter - is reasserting his or her
membership in civilization, in a group that doesn't kill people
indiscriminately with mortars and the like. For that characterization
to make any sense, there must be a group that does kill, destroy,
hate, etc. Call them uncivilized, call them barbarians, whatever, but
whatever the conscious logic is, I cannot help but think that the
creation and assertion of artistic beauty in such times is at least
partially captured by the need to "other" those who would destroy. To
me, this is all somewhat misleading - the really horrifying thing is
that those who are killing your family are just as "civilized" as you
are, that the same bonds of fellowship that can draw a community
together in belonging are the ones that lead us down some pretty
terrible roads.
In any case, this is but a side point. I'm more interested in thinking
about the contractual nature of "civilized" life. This is certainly a
dominant view of civilization, as a set of agreements between us to
treat each other a certain way, but I'm skeptical of the social
contract. To me it seems to understate the role coercion plays in our
lives, and in the history of our societies' development. I'm not sure
that it is a broad agreement that keeps us all from bopping each other
on the heads with microphones - it may also be the simple threat of
punishment for it, and the more complex internalization of social
norms, the violation of all of which carries at least a social
penalty. This point has been driven home for me recently while on the
road, where a great many of the social norms of Canada - not driving
like a maniac, for example - don't apply. When I fling myself into
traffic to get across a road, I still cringe at the violation of rules
that I've internalized long ago, even though to follow those rules (or
even to cringe at them) would put me in more danger. I suspect the
same is often the case with much of the rest of our lives. We're not
always that conscious of just how much sanction would come our way for
violating the rules of the civilized game. The creepy thing is how
quickly those rules can result in norms that make terrible acts not
only acceptable, but mandatory - witness Bosnia, or Rwanda.
More broadly speaking, thinking about civilization as a contract
seems to me to understate the role that coercion played in creating
modern society. We didn't just come together as a group of individuals
and agree to create civilization. It evolved slowly, and it has always
been characterized by increasingly sophisticated methods of control;
indeed, the things that characterize civilized life in the broadest
sense - writing, for example - probably emerged as a way for the newly
rich elite to keep track of their stuff.
How does this all tie into the arts? In a way I find quite
inspiring. I've been reading "Dancing in the Streets" by Barbara
Ehrenreich, recently - you gave it to me! - and she spends a good deal
of time pointing at how the ecstatic rituals, drumming, and dancing of
our precivilized past were viewed as a threat by the nascent elites of
slightly later times. They were equalizers, social spaces in which
one's wealth or power ceased mattering. To me, this is how the arts
fits in in the face of despair - not as an act of maintaining
civilization, but as exactly the opposite, as a rejection of the
"civilization" that bands us together into heirarchies that destroy
each other and the earth. The production of art is a beautifully
uncivilized act, one that does not depend on the social structures
around us but instead connects us through to the 4 basic things that
human beings do : eat, sleep, have babies, and create art. The
assertion of the cellist, to me, is not to proclaim the survival of
civilization, but to deny forever the possibility that civilization
could ever destroy our innate relationship with beauty. When we sing,
or play, or write, or paint, or dance, we can assert that even if
civilization has me killing my neighbours, all is not lost. That's
pretty neat.
--- End ramble ----"
Monday, May 18, 2009
A World of One: Another perspective
Hello again! I have another response on the topic of the arts and the civilization contract and belonging. My first cousin once removed, Pat, (who is a much closer family member than she sounds according to that description!) sent me her thoughts on why she makes art, bringing an interesting perspective to the topic. If you'd like to take a look at Pat's paintings (which you should, they are beautiful), here is a link to her website. She also sent me a link to a London Times article about the cellist, Vedran Smailovic, and why he is not at all pleased about the publishing of the book, which adds yet another dimension to this discussion. I will share my own thoughts on all of this once I have had a chance to gather them. In the meantime, enjoy Part III of our series on the arts, written by Pat Stanley.
"Unlike your dad, I have no sense of “belonging”, and no desire to belong to any groups. I know that I appear to “belong”, to certain families, groups, societies, etc. But I am, in fact, a world of one. Everything that I am exists inside my head. No matter where I go, I am taking my world with me. I project outwards what is expected of me, what is expected of a civilized being, but it is a charade. I operate on the assumption that everyone feels the same (even if they don’t). I try to behave towards others in the way that I would like them to behave towards me. That’s all I can do. So, here I am all alone inside my head.
For a lot of the time that’s enough. I read a lot – that’s someone else describing a whole fictional world inside someone else’s head, and the parallels with parts of my own world make me feel a connection to others. But sometimes I want to describe part of my world to others. If I talk to people about how I feel, for example about the beauty of our environment and what “groups” or “civilization” has done to the natural world, I’m going to sound like I’m a bit obsessed, and I expect people will turn away. Plus I’m not a good talker. But through my art, I can express those feelings. If someone outside my world of one “gets it”, I’m very happy, because it means I managed to send a message out of my head, and someone received it. If people get different messages (not the intended one), that’s OK, at least they got a message, but it’s not nearly as rewarding to me as when they get the intended one as well.
So I paint things that are, to me, simultaneously beautiful and tragic, and I put them out for others to respond to emotionally (or not). Maybe the cellist was doing the same thing, showing beauty in tragedy, and hoping that people would receive his message, and respond emotionally. The goal is to have someone outside your head experience the same rush of emotion as you had when you did the painting, played the music, etc. So it is a connection, just not (for me) anything like “belonging”, more like causing another being to vibrate on your frequency, if only for a moment."
"Unlike your dad, I have no sense of “belonging”, and no desire to belong to any groups. I know that I appear to “belong”, to certain families, groups, societies, etc. But I am, in fact, a world of one. Everything that I am exists inside my head. No matter where I go, I am taking my world with me. I project outwards what is expected of me, what is expected of a civilized being, but it is a charade. I operate on the assumption that everyone feels the same (even if they don’t). I try to behave towards others in the way that I would like them to behave towards me. That’s all I can do. So, here I am all alone inside my head.
For a lot of the time that’s enough. I read a lot – that’s someone else describing a whole fictional world inside someone else’s head, and the parallels with parts of my own world make me feel a connection to others. But sometimes I want to describe part of my world to others. If I talk to people about how I feel, for example about the beauty of our environment and what “groups” or “civilization” has done to the natural world, I’m going to sound like I’m a bit obsessed, and I expect people will turn away. Plus I’m not a good talker. But through my art, I can express those feelings. If someone outside my world of one “gets it”, I’m very happy, because it means I managed to send a message out of my head, and someone received it. If people get different messages (not the intended one), that’s OK, at least they got a message, but it’s not nearly as rewarding to me as when they get the intended one as well.
So I paint things that are, to me, simultaneously beautiful and tragic, and I put them out for others to respond to emotionally (or not). Maybe the cellist was doing the same thing, showing beauty in tragedy, and hoping that people would receive his message, and respond emotionally. The goal is to have someone outside your head experience the same rush of emotion as you had when you did the painting, played the music, etc. So it is a connection, just not (for me) anything like “belonging”, more like causing another being to vibrate on your frequency, if only for a moment."
Basking in Our Sense of Belonging: A response from my dad
After my last post, The Arts and the Civilization Contract, my dad sent me a really interesting response in the form of an email. I wanted to share his thoughts with all of you so I asked his permission to post it here. I would like to invite any of you who would like to share your thoughts to comment on the blog (congratulations to Michael Bramble for being the first!) or to send me an email; I would love for this to be a forum for discussion rather than just my ramblings! Anyway, without further ado, here is Tom Smee's take on the arts and the civilization contract:
"It is interesting to think about what makes a civilization. I think it revolves around our need for a sense of belonging and the intrinsic psychological and material rewards we get from being a member of this or that group. And we can be parts of many civilizations all at the same time. I am a member of our family, a neighbour to those most nearby, a Beacher, a Torontonian, an employee of my company and I have various associations and connections to a number of groups in my company, I have a kinship with musicians and lawyers, I am a Canadian, a North American, a member of Western Civilization, a human coexisting on a planet with many other species.
Membership in each of these involves explicit or implied promises that I make to others, and others to me, a pact. Some of these promises are so key to defining the group that they are made explicit and mandatory, but the mandatory things written down somewhere (laws, codes of conduct, constitutions) are not the defining characteristics of the group, they are just one kind of evidence of it.
Think about what it means to be Canadian. If you were from another part of the world and wanted to learn about what it means to be Canadian, you could read all of our laws, but really wouldn't be all that much closer to understanding what it means to be Canadian. It is a much more deeply layered amalgam of big and little promises we make to each other and observe in others, which defies expression in directly descriptive language. Many of these are purely behavioural and are tendencies rather than universal. If you said Canadians are tolerant, caring people, etc. (all the usual things), you quickly realize that these descriptors are true of Spaniards, Germans or other countries too, but also that there are many Canadians who do not fit the descriptor as well.
So, for the outsider to learn about what it really means to be Canadian, they would read our history for context, but that wouldn't do the job either. Outside of moving here and living here for 10 years, the outsider would learn more about what it means to be Canadian by listening to our music, reading our fiction and biographies of Canadians of all kinds (from Bobbie Orr to Louis Riel). By doing this they wouldn't learn much about being Canadian that they could write down in a 'report' that would tell anyone much, but they would get to absorb it in their bones. The same is true of other groupings, as I'm sure you are discovering in the early days of your visit to Newfoundland.
So I think the arts are a way of expressing or basking in our sense of belonging, which to me seems a deeply primal need for humans. Its interesting to think about this particularly in the case of instrumental music, which is not representative in any way (compared to literature). It is entirely abstract yet for that reason can reach us most deeply. I listen to a lot of instrumental music (you may have noticed!), and it triggers all kinds of wonderful experiences - brain chemistry at its best! - which I think ultimately come down to connecting with me in all kinds of ways with feelings of belong some how. But its far more than about national identity - its a connection to what it means to be human. This is why what the cellist of Sarajevo was doing affected people so profoundly: it gave voice to belonging in the face of so much negation of belonging, when the people of Sarajevo felt abandoned by the world. This is why the arts are important, but also why (paradoxically) they survive almost any amount of government neglect (don't tell the Prime Minister!). They fulfill a primal need we have for connection and belonging."
"It is interesting to think about what makes a civilization. I think it revolves around our need for a sense of belonging and the intrinsic psychological and material rewards we get from being a member of this or that group. And we can be parts of many civilizations all at the same time. I am a member of our family, a neighbour to those most nearby, a Beacher, a Torontonian, an employee of my company and I have various associations and connections to a number of groups in my company, I have a kinship with musicians and lawyers, I am a Canadian, a North American, a member of Western Civilization, a human coexisting on a planet with many other species.
Membership in each of these involves explicit or implied promises that I make to others, and others to me, a pact. Some of these promises are so key to defining the group that they are made explicit and mandatory, but the mandatory things written down somewhere (laws, codes of conduct, constitutions) are not the defining characteristics of the group, they are just one kind of evidence of it.
Think about what it means to be Canadian. If you were from another part of the world and wanted to learn about what it means to be Canadian, you could read all of our laws, but really wouldn't be all that much closer to understanding what it means to be Canadian. It is a much more deeply layered amalgam of big and little promises we make to each other and observe in others, which defies expression in directly descriptive language. Many of these are purely behavioural and are tendencies rather than universal. If you said Canadians are tolerant, caring people, etc. (all the usual things), you quickly realize that these descriptors are true of Spaniards, Germans or other countries too, but also that there are many Canadians who do not fit the descriptor as well.
So, for the outsider to learn about what it really means to be Canadian, they would read our history for context, but that wouldn't do the job either. Outside of moving here and living here for 10 years, the outsider would learn more about what it means to be Canadian by listening to our music, reading our fiction and biographies of Canadians of all kinds (from Bobbie Orr to Louis Riel). By doing this they wouldn't learn much about being Canadian that they could write down in a 'report' that would tell anyone much, but they would get to absorb it in their bones. The same is true of other groupings, as I'm sure you are discovering in the early days of your visit to Newfoundland.
So I think the arts are a way of expressing or basking in our sense of belonging, which to me seems a deeply primal need for humans. Its interesting to think about this particularly in the case of instrumental music, which is not representative in any way (compared to literature). It is entirely abstract yet for that reason can reach us most deeply. I listen to a lot of instrumental music (you may have noticed!), and it triggers all kinds of wonderful experiences - brain chemistry at its best! - which I think ultimately come down to connecting with me in all kinds of ways with feelings of belong some how. But its far more than about national identity - its a connection to what it means to be human. This is why what the cellist of Sarajevo was doing affected people so profoundly: it gave voice to belonging in the face of so much negation of belonging, when the people of Sarajevo felt abandoned by the world. This is why the arts are important, but also why (paradoxically) they survive almost any amount of government neglect (don't tell the Prime Minister!). They fulfill a primal need we have for connection and belonging."
Saturday, May 16, 2009
The Arts and the Civilization Contract
Yesterday I was listening to a CBC podcast of Shelagh Rogers' new show, "The Next Chapter." She was interviewing Steven Galloway, author of the novel The Cellist of Sarajevo. The novel is set during the 1992-1996 Siege of Sarajevo and is based on a real-life event. During the siege a cellist who played in the Sarajevo Opera witnessed a shell fall in the street and kill twenty-two people. So he sat with his cello in the crater left by the shell and played a piece of music every day for twenty-two days. One piece of music for each person who had been killed. The novel takes place over the course of those twenty-two days and explores how three fictional characters are affected by what's going on around them.
Shelagh asked, "what is it about the music that restores something to them?" In response, Steven Galloway began to talk about the way the arts tend to be perceived in North America, referencing the recent election. He juxtaposed the view of the arts as a luxury that we can enjoy when our bellies and wallets are full against his view that the arts are essential to humanity. He then said a number of things I found poignant enough to take the trouble of writing down:
"Civilization is not roads and buildings and bridges and stock markets. That is what civilization allows you to have. Civilization is an agreement people have to behave toward each other a certain way; the agreement that I'm not going to smash you in the face with my microphone right now and you're not going to do the same to me. There are two fundamental ways we discuss this agreement: one is the law and the other is the arts. The law fails us way before the arts do. The worse things get for human beings the more you find art. That's what the cellist was doing in the book was reminding each of these people, 'You have a responsibility to yourself to keep thinking about this deal that was civilization and to examine your role in it. What you choose to believe, the results of that examination are entirely your own, but you can't, because things are bad, stop thinking about it,'"
He said that the streets in Sarajevo are covered in what people call Sarajevo roses. "The mark a mortar shell makes when it hits the pavement and explodes looks surprisingly like the petals on a rose." Humans can find art even in the scars left by violence.
Later in the interview Shelagh said, "A number of the characters feel certain the world will come and rescue them. And the world doesn't come and rescue them." And Steven responded:
"No. One of the things I noticed when I interviewed a lot of Sarajevan ex-pats and Sarajevans - you start to notice patterns in what they say to you - was that almost to a person what I was told was, 'You know, the worst day of the war for me wasn't when my house was blown up, it wasn't the day my aunt was shot by a sniper. The worst day was when I realized no one was coming, that the way the world was now was not an anomaly. This is how it was now until thing change, if they every do. This is not a dream that I'm going to wake up from, this is the world.' That's a terrible thing to contemplate."
Shelagh told him he reminded her of Timothy Findley answering her question, "Why do you write?" He answered, "Against despair."
I haven't read any of Steven Galloway's books, but this interview was so beautiful that I'm definitely going to. Despite his penchant for describing the world in terms of dichotomies, I find him really insightful. I have always been wary of the word, 'civilization.' It seemed too colonial, always hinting at its opposite, 'savage.' It seemed to create an us-and-them dichotomy and a dichotomy is something I don't trust. But his definition of civilization and the way it can speak through the arts rings true for me. The people who realized the world wasn't coming for them were realizing how many people in the world weren't holding up their end of the agreement. And yet it's so easy to feel overwhelmed when I think of how many breaches of this contract are taking place right now, and how I don't know what to do to stop them. But the example of the cellist (whose identity I would love to know) gives me hope. If the arts are so intrinsically linked to the civilization contract then this is one way, however small it may be, for me to uphold the agreement.
Shelagh asked, "what is it about the music that restores something to them?" In response, Steven Galloway began to talk about the way the arts tend to be perceived in North America, referencing the recent election. He juxtaposed the view of the arts as a luxury that we can enjoy when our bellies and wallets are full against his view that the arts are essential to humanity. He then said a number of things I found poignant enough to take the trouble of writing down:
"Civilization is not roads and buildings and bridges and stock markets. That is what civilization allows you to have. Civilization is an agreement people have to behave toward each other a certain way; the agreement that I'm not going to smash you in the face with my microphone right now and you're not going to do the same to me. There are two fundamental ways we discuss this agreement: one is the law and the other is the arts. The law fails us way before the arts do. The worse things get for human beings the more you find art. That's what the cellist was doing in the book was reminding each of these people, 'You have a responsibility to yourself to keep thinking about this deal that was civilization and to examine your role in it. What you choose to believe, the results of that examination are entirely your own, but you can't, because things are bad, stop thinking about it,'"
He said that the streets in Sarajevo are covered in what people call Sarajevo roses. "The mark a mortar shell makes when it hits the pavement and explodes looks surprisingly like the petals on a rose." Humans can find art even in the scars left by violence.
Later in the interview Shelagh said, "A number of the characters feel certain the world will come and rescue them. And the world doesn't come and rescue them." And Steven responded:
"No. One of the things I noticed when I interviewed a lot of Sarajevan ex-pats and Sarajevans - you start to notice patterns in what they say to you - was that almost to a person what I was told was, 'You know, the worst day of the war for me wasn't when my house was blown up, it wasn't the day my aunt was shot by a sniper. The worst day was when I realized no one was coming, that the way the world was now was not an anomaly. This is how it was now until thing change, if they every do. This is not a dream that I'm going to wake up from, this is the world.' That's a terrible thing to contemplate."
Shelagh told him he reminded her of Timothy Findley answering her question, "Why do you write?" He answered, "Against despair."
I haven't read any of Steven Galloway's books, but this interview was so beautiful that I'm definitely going to. Despite his penchant for describing the world in terms of dichotomies, I find him really insightful. I have always been wary of the word, 'civilization.' It seemed too colonial, always hinting at its opposite, 'savage.' It seemed to create an us-and-them dichotomy and a dichotomy is something I don't trust. But his definition of civilization and the way it can speak through the arts rings true for me. The people who realized the world wasn't coming for them were realizing how many people in the world weren't holding up their end of the agreement. And yet it's so easy to feel overwhelmed when I think of how many breaches of this contract are taking place right now, and how I don't know what to do to stop them. But the example of the cellist (whose identity I would love to know) gives me hope. If the arts are so intrinsically linked to the civilization contract then this is one way, however small it may be, for me to uphold the agreement.
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