It is appalling to realize how long it's been since I've posted one thought here. But I am going to rationalize by stating that "this is the nature of the writing life." I have been busy every single day... sometimes reading, writing, plotting, thinking, revising, editing, sharing ideas face-to-face. I have made great progress on Small Perfections and "hit on" a critical idea that helps to structure the novel: namely, that the plot is mirrored in a major painting of the Italian Renaissance.
At the same time, I am pondering the usefulness of a blog liek this, to myself or anyone else.
Perhaps writing is too dynamic to capture the moods and nuances in such a form.
I may let it go completely.
Pondering...
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Finding the Center
Funny... how the more time you spend with an idea turning in the mind, the more malleable it becomes ... more fluid and full of cross-currents. Yes, I'm back to the water imagery, to the notion of writing as deep-sea diving as if half the process consists of searching for the right clue to unlock an idea (a shell, a stone, a clump of seweed). Or maybe the scavenger hunt is about finding a "right form" to pour an idea into.
I tend to begin with a "sense of things" and a situation. I trust there is some meaning to be discovered in what I am drawn to explore. Egotistical? Maybe. Or simply sure-footed after years of reading and writing and living. But then, sooner or later, the write must ask: WHAT IS THIS REALLY ABOUT? Because the meaning can remain vague, even to the writer ... and even after the book is done. The threads of meaning can be quite fragile, I think, and disintegrate easily without form and structure. Even if it is "about nothing and everything" -- as Conrad Aiken said of Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse"-- there must be some centering force in the story. In "To the Lighthouse" there is more than one: Mrs. Ramsey's presence at the center of the family, Lily Briscoe's painting that echoes the human struggle for balance, and the magnetic pull of the lighthouse that is only reached at the end.
As I've thought more about this novel I'm working on, I've come to see Botticelli's painting entitled "Primavera" as a kind of "key" to the story of these three women who love the same man and respond to his death in different ways.This painting, created c. 1482, is set in the Garden of Venus, that is... the Garden of Love. And there we see the Three Graces (nymphs, ever-connected, dancing in a circle) as well as the Goddess of Spring, Flora, wearing a wreath of flowers and carrying flowers in the folds of her dress. She is related to the nymph Chloris blown in on the right side of the painting by the west wind, Zephyr. On the opposite side of the painting, Mercury stirs dark clouds, creating clarity (knowledge), with his back to the garden. A central figure is thought to be Venus, even if she is fully clothed. Above her, a blind cupid aims his arrow in the direction of the Three Graces.
As I think about this painting, which I saw myself in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence earlier this year, my attention is divided between the youthful spirit of Spring---personified here by Chloris and Flora, the Goddess of Spring---and the sharp consequences of mature love. In Chloris, I see Caspar and Jocelyn's child, Chloe. But the novel is not about Chloe so I think I will not develop her as I previously thought. No, she must remain an untainted spirit as a contrast to the three women who plunge in to some kind of physical love for Caspar and are loved by him in return. (His own Three Graces.) I want the Garden of Love to be FULLY realized in this novel against the background of this idealized image. This painting--that Caspar first sees with Hilde during their "Italian Days" and which is so much about spirit and matter--becomes a threshold that must be crossed to reach LOVE in all its complications. In this "phase" of conceptualizing the novel, I feel as if I have found a central force to build the story around. I originally thought it was going to be Caspar's island. But that is too private to decode the lives of all the characters. And the central force should do just that: inform ALL the characters, make meaning of the situation, help to unravel the plot. This remarkable work by Botticelli--at once exquisitely beautiful and eternally tragic--lends an arc of meaning to the ordinary lives I am exploring.
I tend to begin with a "sense of things" and a situation. I trust there is some meaning to be discovered in what I am drawn to explore. Egotistical? Maybe. Or simply sure-footed after years of reading and writing and living. But then, sooner or later, the write must ask: WHAT IS THIS REALLY ABOUT? Because the meaning can remain vague, even to the writer ... and even after the book is done. The threads of meaning can be quite fragile, I think, and disintegrate easily without form and structure. Even if it is "about nothing and everything" -- as Conrad Aiken said of Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse"-- there must be some centering force in the story. In "To the Lighthouse" there is more than one: Mrs. Ramsey's presence at the center of the family, Lily Briscoe's painting that echoes the human struggle for balance, and the magnetic pull of the lighthouse that is only reached at the end.
As I've thought more about this novel I'm working on, I've come to see Botticelli's painting entitled "Primavera" as a kind of "key" to the story of these three women who love the same man and respond to his death in different ways.This painting, created c. 1482, is set in the Garden of Venus, that is... the Garden of Love. And there we see the Three Graces (nymphs, ever-connected, dancing in a circle) as well as the Goddess of Spring, Flora, wearing a wreath of flowers and carrying flowers in the folds of her dress. She is related to the nymph Chloris blown in on the right side of the painting by the west wind, Zephyr. On the opposite side of the painting, Mercury stirs dark clouds, creating clarity (knowledge), with his back to the garden. A central figure is thought to be Venus, even if she is fully clothed. Above her, a blind cupid aims his arrow in the direction of the Three Graces.
As I think about this painting, which I saw myself in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence earlier this year, my attention is divided between the youthful spirit of Spring---personified here by Chloris and Flora, the Goddess of Spring---and the sharp consequences of mature love. In Chloris, I see Caspar and Jocelyn's child, Chloe. But the novel is not about Chloe so I think I will not develop her as I previously thought. No, she must remain an untainted spirit as a contrast to the three women who plunge in to some kind of physical love for Caspar and are loved by him in return. (His own Three Graces.) I want the Garden of Love to be FULLY realized in this novel against the background of this idealized image. This painting--that Caspar first sees with Hilde during their "Italian Days" and which is so much about spirit and matter--becomes a threshold that must be crossed to reach LOVE in all its complications. In this "phase" of conceptualizing the novel, I feel as if I have found a central force to build the story around. I originally thought it was going to be Caspar's island. But that is too private to decode the lives of all the characters. And the central force should do just that: inform ALL the characters, make meaning of the situation, help to unravel the plot. This remarkable work by Botticelli--at once exquisitely beautiful and eternally tragic--lends an arc of meaning to the ordinary lives I am exploring.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
On Character III - Chloe
I've been working a lot "offline" and thinking about how to use my characters as a painter uses a palette of paint. That is, how to express ideas and realities with these personalities ... or how to shape the personalities to the ideas I want to express. Both sides of the coin call for a lot of ruminating. I doubt anyone talks to themselves as much as writers do.
Chloe is inspired by what must be an entire "sub-culture" of young women who are barely formed and somewhat inert when it comes to moving forward ... into LIFE. I see these girls in Europe and America. They wear uncomfortable spike heels on cobblestone (because they are victims of marketing), they work low-paying jobs, and obsess about appearance and smoke cigarettes and look defiant with their tatoos and body piercing, even though they are fragile creatures who fear and need everything.
Chloe suffers from a similar alienation despite her life of privilege. The question is: Does she want ALL that she has born into, which includes the overbearing mother who employs her in the interior design business. My "source image" or inspiration for Chloe is Chloris, the veiled nymph in Botticelli's painting entitled "Primavera" who is grabbed by the Zephyr, God of Wind, who blows life into her. At his touch, plants sprout from her mouth ... she will become a garden, the Goddess of Spring. In other words, whe will GROW but when we encounter Chloe in "Small Perfections" she is a wounded child, then a frustated adolescent, then a woman whose life is not really her own, so completely has she subjected herself to her mother.
Caspar's death will change all that. And, somehow, Hilde will help. I am trying to work out how Hilde and Chloe can come together in the wake of Caspar's death. I think this is essential since these are the two women who loved him most and whom he loved most. I see Chloe deeply connected to Nature--through her childhood memory of Fog's Breath Island, and through her own emotional character. Perhaps she will draw Jocelyn, Hilde, and Caspar's widow back to Fog's Breath Island for some critical unravelling. Perhaps there is a treasure there, left by early settlers (16th to 18th centuries) that only Chloe knows about. There has been quite a lot of archeology in the Maine Archipelago. Brass buttons and tools and Indian arrows have been found. Perhaps there is a secret Chloe shared with Caspar, or kept from him, that has the power to unlock her fears. I see Chloe and the crows at peace on that little island. I would like her to fell like a bird at the end of the book, able to fly with a map in her soul.
Chloe is inspired by what must be an entire "sub-culture" of young women who are barely formed and somewhat inert when it comes to moving forward ... into LIFE. I see these girls in Europe and America. They wear uncomfortable spike heels on cobblestone (because they are victims of marketing), they work low-paying jobs, and obsess about appearance and smoke cigarettes and look defiant with their tatoos and body piercing, even though they are fragile creatures who fear and need everything.
Chloe suffers from a similar alienation despite her life of privilege. The question is: Does she want ALL that she has born into, which includes the overbearing mother who employs her in the interior design business. My "source image" or inspiration for Chloe is Chloris, the veiled nymph in Botticelli's painting entitled "Primavera" who is grabbed by the Zephyr, God of Wind, who blows life into her. At his touch, plants sprout from her mouth ... she will become a garden, the Goddess of Spring. In other words, whe will GROW but when we encounter Chloe in "Small Perfections" she is a wounded child, then a frustated adolescent, then a woman whose life is not really her own, so completely has she subjected herself to her mother.
Caspar's death will change all that. And, somehow, Hilde will help. I am trying to work out how Hilde and Chloe can come together in the wake of Caspar's death. I think this is essential since these are the two women who loved him most and whom he loved most. I see Chloe deeply connected to Nature--through her childhood memory of Fog's Breath Island, and through her own emotional character. Perhaps she will draw Jocelyn, Hilde, and Caspar's widow back to Fog's Breath Island for some critical unravelling. Perhaps there is a treasure there, left by early settlers (16th to 18th centuries) that only Chloe knows about. There has been quite a lot of archeology in the Maine Archipelago. Brass buttons and tools and Indian arrows have been found. Perhaps there is a secret Chloe shared with Caspar, or kept from him, that has the power to unlock her fears. I see Chloe and the crows at peace on that little island. I would like her to fell like a bird at the end of the book, able to fly with a map in her soul.
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