opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/03/writers-as-architects/ . “In architecture, once you remove the skin — the “language” of walls, ceilings and slabs — all that remains is sheer space.” . “how does one design and build using emptiness as a construction material? How do we perceive space? And how does it affect us?” . “spatial relationships, repetition, reflection, sequence, transparency, […]
Tag Archives: writing
bewilderment as a poetics and an ethics
Which I’ve been keeping for myself like a secret: Bewilderment by Fanny Howe.
on transnational writing
When asked about audience and imagination, the writer from Pakistan said he didn’t feel the need to help the West imagine his land, so he didn’t include physical descriptions. He said that he himself works hard as a reader and never asks American authors to explain Americanisms/cultural references, so he didn’t feel compelled to include […]
on language and writing (notes)
“To evoke a sense of what cannot be said” . “As a writer, I continuously attempt to make inroads on the vast terrain of what cannot be said–or said by me, at least. I seem to know by intuition [what] I cannot find words for…That is to say, the unnamed is overwhelmingly present and real […]
lyric documentary
What are you documenting? What do you want to be documenting? Some things on my list: marginal housing communities; illegal architecture; home-building; hybrid cultural identities; immigrant cultures; sleep; water and wateriness; things the body knows without conscious articulation; body and landscape; language and its textural experience; folktales and their iterations.
on multiculturalism
“I don’t believe complete assimilation is possible… Every step, every entry into the flows of existence can be seen as a beginning, a commencement of a brand new way of seeing oneself in the world… Of course those of us who grew up on the threshold of cultures perhaps have a more developed sense of […]
“politics of narrative”
[therumpus.net/2011/12/the-politics-of-narrative/] “…there were two types of stories: coming home, or leaving home. The assertion neatly correlates to the classical definition of comedy and tragedy, as well as a content-first v. structure-first division of the arts. The coming home story (usually comedic or “feel good”): the cowboy accepts and/or is accepted by society. The leaving home […]