Monica Carroll
Do you ensure a word’s meaning layers break, lance, pierce, Writer?
Chelicerae:
piercing appendages in the face of a scorpion or spider
claw, talon, pincers
cloven hoof of cattle
surgical forceps
hooked needle, crochet needle
notch of an arrow
How do you work with confession, Writer?
Extract from fiction writer G. M. Untervants:
“I had this supervisor who was blind. He called himself blind, not vision-impaired, so he was OK with me saying the word ‘blind’. Frankly, it still makes me feel a little co-opted, like I’m going to get a social frowny no-no every time I say it; anyway, he’s blind.
He used to see. I never asked what happened. In fact, I tried to talk to him as little as possible. I tried hard to not talk to him, especially alone. He gave me the creeps. I know you’re not meant to say stuff like that but the truth is, he did. He was creepy like a fiddling uncle or someone who never washes with soap because they think natural body odours are, you know, ‘natural’.
One afternoon he turned up to the team project meeting. He had the blur of a liquid lunch and stank like a midday beer mat. He turned up but his pants didn’t. His withering legs dangled in faded boxers and if you looked, he was poking through. I saw it but not because I was trying to see. I was just sitting in this meeting and someone said, ‘Craig mate, where are your trousers?’ I turned and it was in my line of view. Craig wasn’t embarrassed or anything. He said, ‘It’s my goal to get through this week without wearing trousers.’
Eleanor, she’s the same level as me but has a different supervisor, she was horrified. I was too, but I already knew how creepy Craig was. So, Eleanor, after the meeting, she complains to HR. Fair enough, right? You shouldn’t have to see penis in a team project meeting. HR hired an ‘independent investigator’. It was a big deal. Everyone got asked questions and recorded on camera. Turns out, Eleanor got charged with harassment for complaining about Craig. I stopped buying guide dog raffle tickets at Christmas and left the public service.”
Untervants, G. M. 2023. Confessions of the Pubic Servants APS2 to APS6. Melbourne: Rough Edge Press
Tell me Writer, how hard do you love a good list?
Up the hill I went, Seeing every blade of grass and every pebble very clearly. Then I was in among the trees where the air seemed made of shadows and the spaces were all twisty. The trees were all somehow crippled-looking, wrong in their shapes. The ground was littered with dead leaves and fallen branches and all kinds of rubbish: rusty tin cans, a rotting car seat, used condoms, crumpled empty cigarette packets, a broken suitcase full of pulpy letters with rain-blurred hand-writing, a lady’s shoe, and soggy newspapers from years ago (Hoban 1996:52).
Hoban, R. 1996. The Trokeville Way. New York: Knopf
Writer, what do you create from accidents?
The tenth poem in Danish writer, Klaus Rifbjerg’s Portrait, portrays the wedding in Rifbjerg’s typical experimental style of words dislocated from logic and expectation. Rifbjerg calls these poems tilfældighedsdigte (accidental/coincidental poems).
slam your legs up on the supper buffet
you have not yet been betrayed
the bridal waltz will be danced
put him down then the liar take him eat him
in the bed of chewed blood oranges
now you are home shit princess
now you can kneel in Abraham’s bosom
of imperishable nylon
dip your vinegar sponge in the midst of the slush
Rifbjerg, K. 1963 Portræt. Copenhagen: Glydendal
Joan Littlewood: “I don’t care who we are. If five of us are gathered at random in this room and we have a subject and it’s exciting, we’d get together on it; you read one bit, I’ll read another, someone can dance, someone knows about music. The objective is just in the team looking for protein; they might not find it, but they might find something quite different” (Littlewood in McCrindle 9:1971).
How do you know when you’ve found protein, Writer?
Joan Littlewood (1914-2002) was both the founder and director of London’s Theatre Workshop.
McCrindle, J. F. (Ed.) 1971. ‘Joan Littlewood interviewed by Margaret Croyden’ in Behind the Scenes: Theater and Film Interviews from the Transatlantic Review. New York: Holt. Pp. 1-12
Monika Pagneux, theatre movement teacher, says in creating that we are not in representation, we are. Pagneux refrains from writing, photographing, recording her work. She insists it exist in the work, in the flesh bodies, of her students in practice.
Writer, how do you flesh-live writing?
“Well, to tell you the truth the dolly wasn’t beautiful at all; she was filthy dirty, she’d lost all her hair, and she was made of old rags. What’s more, this dolly used the most terrible bad swear words and the little girl learned every word and repeated them. ‘Who on earth taught you those dreadful words?’ her Mummy asked her. ‘My dolly’, replied the little girl” (Rame and Fo 1991:55).
Who teaches you new words, Writer?
Rame, Franca and Dario Fo 1991. ‘The Same Old Story’ in A Woman Alone & Other Plays. Trans. Gillian Hanna. London: Methuen Drama pp. 49-60
In Stanislavski’s diary he wrote that his teacher, Arkadi Tortsov, spoke to the class against pernicious enemies of art. He said, “‘You must fight them as hard as possible, and, if that does not work, then they must be driven off the stage. And so,’ he turned to Varya once more, ‘make up your mind once and for all. Did you come here to serve art and make sacrifices for it or to exploit it for your own personal ends?’” (Stanislavski 2008:35).
Serve art. Make your sacrifices, Writer.
Stanislavski, K. 2008. An Actor’s Work. A Student’s Diary. Trans. Jean Benedetti. London: Routledge: From Konstantin Stanislavsky, 1950. Rabota Aktera nad Soboi [The Actor’s Work on Oneself] Moscow: Iskusstvo
Goethe’s life-long Faust project was not written as performable drama. From the early work of Urfaust, incorporated into the Fragment of 1790 and then Faust Part 1, we are offered not a ‘script’ but a cosmological framework that surrounds the story and adventures of the hero.
Dissent in content and form, Writer.
Who do you summon when the words won’t play?
Amable Tatsu (1795-1885) wrote to the lyre, silent and dusty, hooked above the wainscoting.
On silent days listen for the echo. That will be enough.
What is your harp, Writer?
L’Écho de la Harpe
D’un souffle vagabond la brise de la nuit
Sur ta corde muette éveille un léger brait:
Telle dort en mon sein cette harpe cachée,
Et que seule la Muse a quelquefois touchée.
Alors qu’un mot puissant, un songe, un souvenir,
Une pensée errante et douce à retenir,
L’effleurent en passant d’une aile fugitive,
Elle vibre soudain ; et mon âme attentive,
Émue à cet accord qui se perd dans les cieux,
Garde du son divin l’écho mélodieux.
Tastu, Amable 1827. Poésies. Paris: J. Tastu
Reasons to Keep Writing 