The other day, I had one foot in a cooking pot full of ice because I think I broke my toe, and was reading A Streetcar Named Desire. I had sad personal associations with the play as an ex was supposed to go with me to see a live version and but we ended up going separately, with other dates and sore hearts a few weeks after we broke up, and the story itself is so tragic, so I wobbled out to the library on my sore foot and returned it, promising myself I would read it at a happier point in my future if one ever arrives. A friend texted me on my way home from the library, they were at a gallery nearby, so I hobbled over there. The paintings were faint and dainty, little dogs and cats, tables with condiments on them, a little boy looking at a model of a ship. After, we went to see M John Harrison speaking at the book festival. One of my friends had a copy of one of his books from the 70s, it originally cost 39 p and has an alien and a burning nun on the cover. The talk was fantastic. Harrison talked about being against the tricks and revelations of most contemporary hollywoodish literature, causality and the simplicity of everything behind on the page with nothing unsaid beyond it. Someone asked a question about writing about people in your life, Harrison said it should only be done if worth it, if it has no emotional intent. I often write messily with emotional intent especially in my notebooks. Are women writers more prone to it? I guess I sort of believe in expulsion, transformation and catharsis. Is that vile, or only vile when it reaches publication?
Last minute, on the way to the Harrison talk, someone gave me a ticket to go see Brecht’s Threepenny Opera which I was sore about missing as it was sold out and I am broke. We had fifteen minutes to run from the book festival to the festival theatre, which I did, the adrenaline numbing my horrid left foot. (do you ever feel like one part of your body is cursed? My left leg and foot is. Last November I burnt them badly with hot water when I had a pair of stockings on which got all stuck to the wound. ) In the theatre, a silver moon face popped out of a glittery curtain and sang Mack the Knife. I felt that moon face had miraculously saved my life that day, gave me some sort of odd and silly strength to live and write a little longer. The run from one theatre to another was its own kind of joy, despite the pain in my foot later.
A few days before, I had seen Rites of Spring, and the dancing was magnificent though sadly there was no live orchestra which was half the reason I went as I am trying to write a novel called Stravinsky! Rites of Spring is about a girl who must dance herself to death as a sacrifice. I guess my novel is about female sacrifice. The production was Pina Bausch’s choreography instead of Nijinsky’s, but had lots of glorious Nijinskyesque jumps in it anyway. I recently read Lucy Moore’s biography of Nijinsky. While in Switzerland, getting mental health treatment, he had the same servant as Nietzsche when he was going mad. On walks Nijinsky ran into both Robert Walser and a writer named Maurice Sandoz I hadn’t heard of. Googling Maurice Sandoz, he wrote a novel based off the monster at Glamis legend- an aristocratic family has a secret heir who lives locked away somewhere in the castle. I couldn’t find the book, but found a film based off of it called The Maze, made in 1953. An American man is the last heir to a Scottish estate but discovers he is not the true owner, but a giant tomato eating toad who is 300 years old is, who he must take out for nightly swims. It is suggested that aristocratic inbreeding caused a toad to be born into the family. It was a fun journey, from Nijinsky in Switzerland back to Scotland.
I saw the Grayson Perry show at the Royal Academy in Edinburgh and loved it, especially his giant tapestries which had the same aesthetic/colours as Rug Rats.
I think a lot of people don’t like him because he is a person of working class background who talks frankly, colourfully and expressively of class and his own class mobility.
A novella I read this week was In the Act by Rachel Ingalls, who wrote Mrs Caliban. In the Act is included in the collection of her work No Love Lost. In In the Act, a woman’s husband makes her take various classes so she is out of the house while he works on a secret project. He tells her to try a new language. “Who would I talk to in a new language?” she asks.
She discovers her husbands secret project is a realistic sex doll that says things like “ohh, you’re so nice”. She hides the doll and blackmails her husband, asking him to make her a male equivalent. She is disappointed because it doesn’t have “subtlety, charm, surprise” nor can it discuss Proust with her. She asks him to make it speak Italian so she can practice with it. Her needs are different from her husband, who wants a childlike doll in a ballet outfit who says “ohh, you’re so nice” and not much else.Another man steals the f female pdoll and the two men fight over it. While they are fighting, the wife makes the two dolls copulate. Ingalls is so perfect at writing domestic sadness with a surreal edge. I didn’t know she moved to the UK and lived out her life there, like Russell Hoban.
