Locationality: The Ezra Pound Break Down

OK, so location CAN be important. It can be especially important if, say, you were arrested (probably rightly so) and put in an outdoor holding pen in which you had a few books, the view of a mountain, and a bunch of free time.

As Ezra Pound wrote the Pisan Cantos, these were his conditions. On top of being locked up, he lived every moment with the fear that, at any moment, he could be dead. I would imagine location would become very important.

But this still leads to my previous argument: Pound did not CHOOSE this location. This location was thrust upon him. Sure, he was in Italy, but to be locked up outside was not by choice. Obviously his choices led to the situation, but there was no direct agency.

The discussion can, in a way, come down to luxury: Pound did not have the luxury of bringing with him terribly specific items. He didn't have his desk or his chair or his fuzzy slippers. What he had in there was minimal, and he made it through more due to luck than anything else. He simply did not have the luxury of choosing to write. He wrote because it might have been the last thing he ever did.

Locationality

Last week, I was sitting in our department lounge with a classmate and a professor. The classmate mentioned she was heading to her "second home" in a sort of vacationy spot. She writes better there, she says.

I have never felt that way, and said so. I have never felt beholden to any location or space for the sake of writing. Not even the desk I purchased for writing has of any kind of special sensory relationship for me. I could write there, but I can also write on a board on the couch or put a series of notes into my cellphone while waiting in line. No place has special meaning for me in that way.

This kind of gets back to these posts (Setting I and II) where I was inspired by photos on the International Writing Programs webpage where they showed the spaces some writers worked in. I felt completely detached from that photo piece.

I'm not sure the cause, really. "It's like the opposite of nostalgia," I said: I long to long for a place, it seems. I want to feel attached to a spot, but perhaps it's a good thing to feel nomadic and unattached. Perhaps it's lending something to my writing that I don't see. Or maybe it doesn't. I have no idea.

I say in Setting II that

setting isn't an issue of choice. I don't believe it is possible to create the proper environment for writing or any other artistic activity. This is what I suppose I mean by the fetishization of locale.

Don't get me wrong: I don't fault my colleague for her attachment to a space. I wish I had that, in a way. Perhaps it's an avoidance of the hyperstability that marked my life prior to moving to college. My parents still live in the same house I was born in and I should say, I hardly feel attached to my hometown anymore, besides the Atlanta Braves and people.

Location can be important though, and I acknowledge that. It's just not important to me.

Setting Part II

Natasa, who ran the translation workshop I was allowed to sit in on, sent me an email with a link regarding setting. I hope she doesn't mind my posting the email and link here (she wanted to post it herself, but didn't want to sign up for anything else new- for her, I'm removing the login issues, BUT I'm going to begin moderating so as to cut the ads out).

"Also, I'm here attaching the link I wanted to post as a comment to your funny "the writers-who- fetishize- their mise-en-scene where- the-good-stuff-will- happen" blogpost on The T-vedi Chronicles..."

http://iwp.uiowa.edu/91st/vol5_n2/postcard/index.html
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The argument I'm trying to make is that setting isn't an issue of choice. I don't believe it is possible to create the proper environment for writing or any other artistic activity. This is what I suppose I mean by the fetishization of locale. There's a desire to set a desk in a proper place or sit in a certain type of chair, I suppose, but I think the desire to have THAT be somehow be necessary towards writing is ridiculous.

There's a desire for the mountains around you or the beach to serve as "inspiration." While I don't believe talent is something you're born with, I do believe that the desire to act is something you ought to have and not something you should expect to come out of the environment. I say this, of course, knowing full well that many rely on this. Joseph Ceravolo's introduction to Transmigration Solo is an example of how the location can be inspiring, but I suppose what interests me is that Ceravolo wasn't suddenly wanting to write as a result of being in Mexico: he was already writing and happened to be in Mexico where he was taken by the setting. Now, I argue partially in my Recovery Project piece on him in the Octopus #9, that Mexico is an influence on Ceravolo, but there's something to be said for feeling that the poems aren't about Mexico. I suppose my point to is that of expectation and anticipation: I don't believe Ceravolo expected to be inspired to write by where he was going. I think it just happened.

Writing, I believe, lacks a certain agency: there ought to be inner desire and external design on the work, rather than the whims of the setting.

Setting

I'm kind of weirded out of late by people talking about "where" they write: what kind of lighting they use. What music they listen to. Do they use candles? Is there a mountain outside or a lake? Maybe it's snowing and there's something inspirational about the snow.

Maybe music sounds interesting. Johannes always suggested throwing on Godard's "Pierrot le fou" in the back ground. I recall him getting in some hot water over his regular exercise at the time: showing Un Chien Andalou and having the class write while it was going on in the background. I'm quite certain I got some cool poems from that exercise, but my "hot water" comment clearly shows that I'm one of the few who thought the practice was great. Apparently for others, it was a reason to complain that they weren't "being taught to write."

I'm bothered that someone writing is a Romantic or ritualistic practice, like somehow you'll just have pages of words flowing as soon as you get the perfect mise en scene down. It reminds me of people that go and by special notebooks and pens and expect that these are the things that create good poems or stories or whatever.

I guess I'm just over it. I don't know if I can write anywhere or whatever, and I'm not saying that a location isn't important. I'm just saying a location isn't going to make you better or worse or make you more or less creative. If you're inspired by the snow or mountains, perhaps you ought examine what you're really doing.

For another thing: can anyone teach you to write? I don't think that's the goal of the workshop or the MFA, for that matter. I think the best anyone can do for you is give you the space to write and time to do it. The workshop, at its best, is a place for feedback and learning to think critically about yourself and others.

Anyways, spaces and places, lights and sights. What good are these things if your poems suck anyways?

Speaking of Neil Young

There had been some discussion about Neil Young over on Johannes' blog in the last few days.

Out of nowhere, I found this today:

http://wildmercury.blogspot.com/2008/12/transformer-man.html

Just had to share.