Eloquent Body

by Dawn Garisch

  The device of the hook presents a tension in the story and thereby in the reader. It entices us by making us want to know what is going to happen next. We want to see how things will turn out. We are asking ourselves: What would I do in that situation?

  Stories that work do so because they speak to who we are, what we desire and what we wish to avoid. Life provides many dilemmas. So we are interested in how other people, fictional or real, track the truth or, at least, how human beings manage the complexities of life.

  When I start reading a good book, I look forward to the delight of immersion in well-crafted language, characters and scenarios. I also anticipate the pleasure of having my disquietude relieved when the difficulty presented in the opening chapters of the novel is resolved by the end.

  Or not. A book might end with the main character, or protagonist, unable to develop what is needed to meet a challenge. The anti-hero might circle round and round within the prison of what is familiar, repeating mistakes and digging himself in deeper. We all know people like that. We all know that feeling ourselves. The value of a stuck character is that she can stimulate our own desire to move.

  It is an interesting exercise to step back and examine the process I enter when I write, to document what other artists have said, and to note where artistic endeavours share similar characteristics. The process I have come to trust when writing a book also instructs the way I live my life.

  I was raised believing that difficulties belonged to other people. Problems, I was told, were problems: unwanted and undesirable situations that needed to be disposed of quickly, like smelly rubbish. I also assumed that they obeyed logic. Someone gave you a rule, you applied it, and the world was restored.

  Both life and writing have shown me that such an approach can be a problem in itself. There are some bothersome things one might be able to excise quickly, then throw out with the one hand while staunching the bleeding with the other. But many dilemmas require patience, and the humility of not knowing the immediate solution, nor what is going to happen next.

  There are two distinct methods of writing. In goal-oriented writing, the author knows where and how the story will develop before they have written much at all. They plot out the entire novel before writing it. Many good writers manage to pull off the goal-oriented approach, but it mystifies me. I relate to what I think of as process-oriented writing – starting with an idea and then tracking where it wants to go as a kind of conversation between what I know about the story and what I don't. This method means that I cannot predict the ending of a story before I get there. Events arrive along the way that keep modifying the script, veering it off in directions I had not intended, taking me and the story with it. Even with this work of non-fiction, I am not yet sure how to end it. As in life, endings can be difficult.

  Yet living and writing in a process way, I can comfort the part of me that gets anxious about not knowing what is going to happen. Beginning a creative project is an act of faith. From experience, I know that something will turn up to finish it off.

  ***

  The rules of colour theory or musical scales are important tools for the artist to acquire. The study of art history with its canons in painting and dance, music, drama and literature is also valuable. These considerations will naturally inform the artist's work. But there are other tools we cannot learn from textbooks. As an artist, I might have many good ideas, but I have learnt that the muse or the unconscious will often have better ones. If I keep elbowing unbidden images, sounds and events aside, I will not do my best work.

  Harold Pinter revealed96 that two of his plays initiated themselves in his imagination as a spoken sentence. One was ‘Where have you put the scissors? ’ and the other was only one word: ‘Dark. ’ – a response to a question. Many a writer would have dismissed these leads, but Pinter trusted them and ran with them. His job as author was to find out who had said these words and why, and what the ensuing story was all about.

  An image arrived in John Fowles' mind of a woman in nineteenth century attire standing on a cliff and looking out to sea. In his collection of essays, Wormholes,97 Fowles notes that he did not know who she was, and what she was doing. He wrote a best-selling book to find that out: The French Lieutenant's Woman.

  Matisse described the movement of his pencil on the paper as ‘the gesture of a man finding his way in the dark’. If the unconscious is able to steer us through areas that our conscious control and intent are blind to in order to shape a coherent and truthful piece, we need to find out how to facilitate this facilitator, rather than obstruct it.

  Intuition, or the guiding feelings of yes or no might go against convention, or even break established rules. Going with the creative flow might well feel as though you are a pioneer in unfamiliar territory. Following a hunch might lead to a mess; at other times it will enhance the project beyond measure. It can, if truly inspired, even lead to a new way of working and of seeing. An exhibition of African masks influenced Picasso in his work ‘Les Demoiselles D'Avignon’, a painting that was initially ridiculed, and is now recognised as a ground-breaking artwork, presenting, in the original way it does, desire and fear, servitude and assertion.

  The writer, Alvarez, proposes that all true art is subversive, and not only of literary clichés and social conventions. He says ‘it also subverts the clichés and conventions you yourself would like to believe in. Like dreams, it talks for parts of yourself you are not fully aware of and may not much like. ’98

  It is important to differentiate whether the inkling of intuition is leading us astray or putting us back on our own track. We all know how that little voice that we take for good advice can completely derail us. If intuition is to be helpful, we need to develop it to make it a reliable tool.

  Experience – checking in with reality – can lead to more reliable guidance from our emotions. The need to accumulate experience means we are unlikely to be brilliant artists first off, and not only in the area of technical skills. We have to grow our unique style and voice. Alvarez suggests that in order to grow our creative lives, we also have to grow up: ‘By comparing writing and psychoanalysis, I'm implying that finding your own voice as a writer is in some ways like the tricky business of becoming an adult. ’99

  Yet, over and above the learnt, cultivated, mature, independent response that feeds subliminally into what we think of as intuition, there stands the muse, waiting for us to pick up the pen, paintbrush or instrument. The next chapter looks at ways in which we can tune in to her. These tools can help us become better artists, and also become better participants in life as well.

  23. Sharpening the Tools

  Our real illiteracy is our Inability to create.

  Friedensreich Hundertwasser, artist and architect

  Other than my school experience, I have had minimal formal education in literature, poetry or creative writing. I regret the consequent gaps in my knowledge regarding seminal works and critical thought. Friends of mine who have had tertiary education in this field were taught the useful skill of literary criticism to assess the structure and value of a work. Paradoxically, this has often interfered with their ability to write. When they attempt to express themselves creatively, dissection and analysis kick in prematurely, and the project seizes up. This can even be a problem with people who have been strictly schooled in spelling and grammar.

  English Professor, Sondra Perl100 has looked at how creative writing students apply themselves to the page. She has shown that those who constantly check their work while writing produce prose of a poor standard. They are constantly interrupting the flow of material by proofreading and correcting as they go.

  The first recommendation, then, if we are to break through from the rational, ordered, ego-controlled world into that inhabited by the muse, is that we need to abandon all ideas about good syntax and spelling, even our notions of good writing. We must allow ourselves to be carried forward by the writing itself.

  I experience this ‘breaking through’ as moving
from writing outside to inside the piece, similar to what happens when I read a book or see a movie. The ones that work dissolve me into their own substance, and I enter the dream. Afterwards, I can step back and analyse my experience, but at the time I must be engaged to the point of losing myself.

  Another way to loosen the grip of the ego at the creative edge is to be awake to subliminal clues. This assumes that the unconscious is providing information. Jung's analogy of the relationship between the ego and the unconscious – that the ego is like a cork on the ocean – is an apt one, in that it illustrates the small and limited perspective of the ego in the face of the power and scope of the psyche. It is also an image of the ego's resilience which always returns to the surface after a huge storm. What it fails to portray are the ways in which these seemingly disparate entities are able to communicate.

  In workshops, the image I use to illustrate the relationship between the ego and the unconscious is one of a plot of land. We sign the papers, and then set ourselves up, thinking that we own it and it is ours to use as we like. We build a fence which defines the boundary of the plot, and we think of everything inside as belonging to us, and everything outside as foreign, alien, not ours. Yet, try as we might, it is not possible to keep the outside out. Seeds, insects and birds come in on the wind, bringing new life, small animals get in through the slats in the fence, burglars get in over it and help themselves, and underneath what looks like solid, stable ground, is a vast, dark river that bubbles up as a wellspring right where we have laid a concrete path.

  Either we attempt again to batten down the hatches and patch the fence, or else we pay attention to those things that seek entry. Something is trying to get in via our dreams, accidents, illnesses and other habits and difficulties: something that can release us from too small an idea of who we are and what we can create.

  Altering our perceptions about these intrusions and seeing them instead as helpful messengers opens us to what they want to say. We need to notice that they are around, arriving continually.

  I am making an analogy between the difficulties of knowing how to proceed in one's life, as in one's writing. It assumes that the muse in writing, or daimon in life, knows better than we do where we are heading. When the Yoruba ‘remember’ their lives by ‘trying to attune/attain/atone memory and destiny’, they are constantly looking for charged clues in their inner and outer environments that link their recall of the past with that which calls to them from the future. They use these associations to assess how well they are tracking their own unique path.

  Every day we are bombarded by stimuli, but only a few hold enough power to make it through to memory. These stand like cairns, drawing our focus, glowing in an otherwise grey landscape. These memories not only reveal patterns in our past, but also flag a way forward, in that they contain the motif of our lives. We are called to pay attention to and to develop these themes, even when initially there appears no reason to do so.

  In high school I played the part of Prospero in Shakespeare's play The Tempest, which is set on an island. Years later, my son was in The Tempest twice at different schools – the second time as Prospero. I therefore came to know the play very well. Watching it for the umpteenth time as an adult, some of the core preoccupations of the play spoke directly to my life at that time. Soon thereafter, on the ship to Antarctica, I heard strange stories about Tristan da Cunha, the most remote island in the world. These cues precipitated me into my seat, where I wrote the opening chapter of Once, Two Islands. It started as an idiosyncratic reworking of the Tempest – an island story concerning love, betrayal, revenge, forgiveness, and the use and abuse of power – but then developed its own arc.

  ***

  Marion Milner, in her book An Experiment in Leisure,101 observes that there are two different kinds of paying attention: the hard, bright, searing focus of the spotlight, and the soft, broad, encompassing beam of the searchlight. She equates spotlight attention with an intellectual or masculine way, and searchlight attention with a physical or feminine way. Men and women need both ways to live life fully but our culture promotes the intellectual way.

  Trying it out, I sense a distinct difference between spotlight and searchlight – attending with my mind or my body seeing through my central or peripheral vision, hearing with my ears or my centre. When I shift my attention from the usual mode of spotlight to that of searchlight, I feel an expansion, not only in my mind, but in my body. It is a more inclusive, less hurried and less judgemental way of attending to my life, and it expands the attention I bring to my writing.

  Paying attention also means that any occasion becomes an opportunity for the artist. The word opportunity comes from the Latin porta meaning entrance or passage through. The portals into the creative space are all around, but I will not notice them if I am focused on the ossified and surface world. Engaging the inner artist makes me more observant, more curious about the situations I unexpectedly get into. Difficulty can be a door into another place that can show me something. It is good training.

  I am being one-sided here; difficulty and tragedy are also exactly what they are. It would be wrong to jolly up disaster. But I do remember a shift in my perception that helped me come to terms with the possibility of losing my vision. I realised that I would then discover things about myself and the world that I will not if I remain sighted for the rest of my life.

  A while back, I found myself in a long queue at Home Affairs. The non-artist in me objected – I have better things to do with my time! – but the writer I am had an opportunity to observe a slice of life and eavesdrop on conversations. There was a story in each face, there was the drama of the queue. How would one describe the young woman who snapped at her small daughter, or the old man who looked as though he was in pain? How did they get to be who they are? Where are they going?

  Or I might find myself trapped at a dinner table next to someone I cannot stand. It can either ruin my evening, or I can switch into writer mode and take mental notes. Next to me is someone who might fuel the beginnings of a memorable character.

  I was in a hurry one day when I went into a shop. The man behind the counter was on the telephone, chatting. He indicated that he would be with me in a moment. As the moment dragged into many minutes, I found myself feeling annoyed by his rudeness, and wanting to leave and go elsewhere, but there was something about his tone of voice that kept me there. When he finally put the receiver down, he raised his hands in exasperation. ‘I can't believe people! ’ he exclaimed. ‘That was my best friend, who is beside herself because she has just discovered that her fiancé has a child from another relationship and he never told her. I had to point out to her that she is R200 000 in debt, and she hasn't told him! ’

  That's a loose thread, a fabulous situation with characters that can be followed all the way to a satisfying conclusion. As a writer, I am forever learning about human beings, settings and dialogue. As I pay attention, the hard breathing and rushed pulse of annoyance slows down, and helps to prevent stomach ulcers and high blood pressure.

  Being observant requires me to slow down, and to use my senses; I begin to notice images that excite me. Yet if I search for a specific image with spotlight attention, my peripheral vision shuts down. I cannot see properly because I am only looking for the thing I think I need. Many creative moments arise when I am not looking for anything in particular; I am merely being vigilant in a general searchlight way. Unexpectedly, life throws something in my path, and I instantly recognise its charge. I take it home, and begin.

  The ego thinks it always knows what's best, but a mechanistic, reductionist view of how the world works is too limited. Now happenstance is again firmly part of the agenda. During the past one and a half centuries, artists and scientists have been entertaining the possibilities and consequences of chance. Darwin in biology, Bohr in quantum mechanics, Freud and Jung in psychology, Tzara in Dadaism and Breton in Surrealism all point to chance as an essential ingredient of life.

  Over the millennia
, people have ascribed powers of prediction or guidance to specific people, rituals, ancestors or sacred sites. They would travel far to consult an oracle about how to proceed, asking: Should I do this, or that? Should I do it now, or next year? What are the omens and signs?

  Today we are split into those who say oracles are superstitious nonsense, and those who claim that approaches such as astrology, psychic readings, God, dreams, the muse, or synchronicity hold the power of the oracle.

  The more I pay attention to something beyond my rational understanding, the more assistance I receive in my writing and in life. This is not the frantic seeking of the gold rush. It is a steady focus, a patient gardening. The questions that interest me are rarely answered immediately. A response usually requires waiting for a slow unfolding. It is not a once-off reply, but an ongoing conversation. As a writer I am familiar with minimal cues, small shifts which seem to direct my focus.

  ***

  My script editor used to say that all stories have essentially the same structure: There is a person who has a problem. If the difficulty speaks to our own lives, we want to know what happens next. Writing, I have argued, involves solving not only the tensions on the page, but also the conflicts in myself. The tension can become unbearable. To aid relief, I am sometimes tempted to slip back into control mode, and force a solution. But this cheats both myself and the reader.

  The poet Rilke gives this advice to a novice poet: ‘Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then someday far into the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. ’102