Even when your output sucks. Because it’s going to suck. For a long time.
I love this video by artist David Shiyang Liu.
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish somebody had told this to me: all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there’s, like, this gap. For the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good. It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good. It has ambition to be good. But it’s not that good. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. Your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you. You know what I mean? A lot of people never get past that phase. A lot of people, at that point, they quit. The thing I just would like to say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste and they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short. It didn’t have the special thing that we want it to have. And, the thing I’ll say to you, is everybody goes through that. And for you to go through it, if you’re going through it right now, if you’re just getting out of that phase, you gotta know that’s totally normal and the most important possible thing you could do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you’re going to finish one story. Because it’s only by actually going through a volume of work that you’re actually going to catch up and close that gap, and the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions. It takes a while. It’s gonna take you a while. It’s normal to take a while. You just have to fight your way through that.
If you’re getting bogged down but you’re not sure why, former Wall Street Journal editor Shani Raja suggests physically changing the copy.
Then when I look at it, I feel like I’m looking at a new document. Suddenly I’m able to get a perspective on it I didn’t have, and I read through and I can feel some of the problems. … Make a physical change that gives you a fresh view of what’s happening.
As a kid, I loved the way these “old” phones felt cradled to my ear and the way they would “brrring” real fast after you picked up or hung up with any kind of speed. 📞⚡ Getting to use one that was a cool color made me feel like a movie star… a fancy lady with a rotary and, probably, a metal cigarette case and, definitely, a signature scent she wore pumped from a silver and gemstone colored bottle.
And if being a fly on the wall was an option…
I’d rather be a spider.
A little bit off. Watching from the corner. Untouchable.
During the holidays, I love to send Christmas cards to my family. Immediate family only because, like a wedding guest list or an AIM friend list mid-growth spurt, holiday card rosters can fill up quickly if boundaries aren’t put firmly in place.
But I’m always left scrambling to find their addresses. Yes, addresses I’ve sent postcards and photos and newspaper clippings to a million times. Grrr. Why don’t I ever save them? It’s the same routine: Search, sweat, ask, receive, praise be, write, mail, move on to other shiny things, repeat in two months.
It seems rude at this point to keep asking my grandparents and siblings for their A/S/L (address, street, location) when they haven’t moved in years.
I refuse to load the addresses into my phone, which would be the smartest thing to do, but that just feels so cold and impersonal. Instead, I want to be the kind of woman with an address book. Because that feels like it would be lovely.
Oh, now, don’t be so surprised at my motives.
I am, after all, a Pisces.
This one feels almost right:
A thicc-ass address book wearing a sensibly chic green floral print: $39.03 on Etsy.
I like this one, too:
Vintage. Sixties. Brass tacks, and leather bound: $12 on Etsy.
A friend was picking my brain this summer for places that I go to write. Now that I’m living that good good #giglife, I can pretty much work from anywhere, so she assumed I had a hundred and one places squirreled away in my work-from-all-over office catalog.
Rumor had it, she said, that this space was open to the public, and it was beautiful, and you could just go sit in there and read and write! And no one asked any questions about your right to be in the club! Or your preference of golf swing! Or if your Izod shirt was in the wash! Sorry, my club stereotypes are very late-’90s.
Nevertheless, there it sat gathering dust on my radar all fall. Like treasure I knew the route to but didn’t feel worthy enough to hunt down. I was intimidated by the bougey rep of an “athletic club” and “chic hotel” and, just, you know, the whole notion that this was a private place for fancy folks, with a shrimp cocktail concierge and warm towelette dispenser on each elevator.
Per usual, I was wrong. And I took the stairs, so I don’t know about the elevator.
My friend was right: This second floor space inside the CAA is open to the public, and reading and writing in it kinda feels like reading and writing inside a castle!
There are dark, intricately carved wooden beams, ornate leather chairs, a crackling fireplace, and snow globe-style views of Michigan Ave and Millennium Park. There’s no shrimp cocktail concierge, but there was a very friendly waiter who brought me water and coffee and snacks whenever I need it. I mean, you do have to pay for that stuff, but it’s basically a BYOB(ook) library with food and drink service.
These are 68 itty-bitty rooms built on a scale of one inch to one foot, and they’re decorated to look like European and American interiors from the late 13th century all the way to the 1930s. AND, right now some are decorated for the holidays. Eeeeeee!
I recently went to look at the Thorne Rooms on my lunch break (giggity #giglife… I was posted up in the Starbucks across the street). While there, I broke a record for “Longest Time Spent Squeal-Clapping and Saying Oh This Is Just Delightful Over and Over Again.”
Yes, Virginia, that is a Christmas marzipan hedgehog the size of a thimble.
Every year, around this time, more than two decades ago, the first-graders of St. Mary’s Elementary School would gather into the first floor lobby of their brick school building, which was dwarfed, like a first-grader to a sixth-grader, by the soaring, heaven-scraping church in front, and sit their bony little bottoms on carpet worn down from more than four decades of Mary Janes, saddle shoes, Reeboks, and now Nikes.
They were, around this time, used to gathering in such a way, as there was an Advent something or another happening in these makeshift assemblies once a week every December, when the whole school of bony little bottoms would swim out from their individual classrooms and sit together on that same worn carpet and sing and read and light a candle in anticipation of Santa Jesus coming to town. Purple. Purple. Pink. Purple.
But this first-grader thing was just for the first-graders, which seemed very special. Both classes would sit down to listen to Mrs. Sinnot tell a story, whether she was your first-grade teacher or not, which also seemed very special; any shift in the natural school day order created a little baby-sized buzz of excitement.
Now, this Mrs. Sinnot (pronounced sin-ut, but it’s, indeed, very ironic to think of a Catholic school teacher named SIN-NOT… maybe I’m remembering the spelling incorrectly or maybe this is just another little universe miracle we can all thank baby Santa-Jesus for later), this Mrs. Sinnot was just wonderful, as so many first-grade teachers are. Her salt and pepper hair was cropped to the exact dimensions popular with fairies around that time, and she was about the size of the half-pint chocolate milk cartons I’d cup like gold coins in my palm each day in the cafeteria lunch line.
We were gathered here, like the first-graders before us and the first-graders yet to come, to listen to Mrs. Sinnot read aloud her favorite book: “Strega Nona” by Tomie dePaola.
Published in 1975, “Strega Nona” is about an old woman in Southern Italy who is a witch doctor (!) (which is rad but, mind you, she’s never called as much in this Catholic school setting) and she travels the countryside helping cure villagers’ maladies, like warts, because this is a kid’s book and the bubonic plague is some heavy shit.
She also makes pasta. A lot, lot, lot of pasta. Because… her pot is magic! And this magic pot can make as much pasta as Strega Nona ever wants, as long as she blows three kisses <kiss, kiss, kiss> into the pot after singing her magic, pasta-producing spell. (Today this spell is called Grubhub.)
All is well in Strega Nona’s softly lit world, where the colors are creamy and the edges are not sharp, until one day, a man named Big Anthony, her helper, overhears her spell but doesn’t see her do the three-kiss closer <kiss, kiss, kiss>. So, with good intentions but not enough information, Big Anthony makes a magic pot of pasta… but doesn’t know how to turn it off. So pasta grows and goes and grows and goes until it threatens to drown out the whole village in its doughy doom!
When Strega Nona returns, feet sore from a hard day traipsing the hills to bring kindness and, I presume, lavender oils to the warty townspeople, she stops the spell and makes Big Anthony clean up the mess by handing him a fork. Mangia!
… I love this Strega Nona story so much, especially because it’s tied to such a happy memory—someone lovely reading aloud, in a mysteriously exciting school-day kind of way. But even so, I completely forgot about Strega Nona and her magic and that there was ever a time when I was innocent enough to delight in nothing but the imagining of pasta taking over a whole town.
Then I saw a random headline somewhere about Tomie dePaola’s new book “Quiet,” and it wasn’t his name that alit me from within, but that unmistakable illustrative style. I saw the gentle outline of his characters, the thoughtful pastel colors from his worlds, and like the snap-pop of a lighter, my mind shot out “STREGA NONA” from the murky depths, and off I went chasing the clickbait. Finding meaningful stuff in such as way is modern day magic, yes?
“Quiet,” like Strega Nona, is also magical, with illustrations like a hug, but the magic is found in something we all have. No secret recipe here. No fated headline coming your way. Instead, the magic can be found in quiet. In stillness. In the <kiss, kiss, kiss> of shhhhh-ing that can stop, not pasta, but a brain from overflowing.
“Your mind is so busy. You have to train it to quiet down.”
Tomie depaola
Read the book here or the Kirkus review here. Related: This wonderful meditation on stillness, gifted to me recently from a new friend.
It’s ten past nine in the morning and my ass boasts the gridiron stripes of a beach chair.
I’m trying to read my book—a jaunty little beach read about AIDS in the 1980s—but I keep getting distracted.
I’m getting distracted by the beautiful Dominican women who are getting distracted by the Speedo-clad European men who are getting distracted by the unmistakable sounds of Pitbull drifting ashore from the island about a mile out.
Maybe I’m misremembering, but isn’t there a G-20 rule that Pitbull is only allowed to be played strictly between the hours of 11pm and 4am? You know, the timeframe when you can shamelessly acknowledge that you somehow know every word to every Pitbull lyric. Of which there are three.
I guess that rule doesn’t stand in the Dominican Republic, which is where I’m staying for the week with my husband and mother-in-law. It’s day three of our much-needed vacation, and we’ve each taken the morning to do our own thing. This was an unspoken arrangement necessitated by the former evening’s discontent slash disembowelment courtesy a dinner at the resort’s French restaurant. There should be a G-20 rule that Caribbean island hotel chefs don’t attempt French cuisine. Yes, the food here is total shit. I’m hungry and have been sustaining the past two days mostly on room service pineapple slices and the rogue mints strewn about the resort’s makeshift lounge areas. Their clear candy dishes double as ashtrays in the evening. Everything here is damp.
No matter. I still give this Caribbean island resort 10 out of 10 stars. Because it is, after all, a Caribbean island resort. But to be honest, trying to decide what to do with myself this lazy, self-directed morning has been a bit of a task for me. Three reasons:
Like a forlorn beached whale, I feel uncomfortable and exposed, flown in here from the gaping wounds of the Midwest cornfields. This means I am a white lady that’s as white as the putty-colored sand I’m now trying to happily dig my toes into, and I have to apply SPF-100+ sunscreen every hour to avoid sun poisoning.
Having fun, enjoying myself, playing, are not things that come easily to the bumper crop of workaholics from which fate has planted me like a rotten apple tree. In some twisted way of coping with the undercurrent of guilt I’m experiencing for enjoying myself on this vacation, I feel a bit relieved that the faux-French restaurant’s attempt at a lobster thermidor the night before tasted… like the putty-colored sand I’m now trying to happily dig my toes into.
As stated, the book I brought to read on my super-duper-fun-time-vacation is making me fall in love with characters who will ultimately die terribly, tragically from AIDS.
Equally disheartening is my sudden awareness that the last time I was supposed to be lounging sublimely on a foreign beach, for my honeymoon, the book I had brought along to read was about a man with an addictive overeating habit searching for his lost, troubled son with an addictive heroin habit. It’s as if my subconscious tries to armor me with subtle reminders that where there is pleasure found, there is almost always potential-pain afoot. My subconscious is like an annoying shoulder-angel dressed completely inappropriately for this vacation in a turtleneck. I assume my shoulder-devil looks like Pitbull.
fie-urrr-bawl
This spiraling train of thought is interrupted by a neon orange flying saucer careening toward my head. It plops a foot away from me, but not before I can pretend to give a socially-acceptable level of effort to stop its descent. Like a Dominican Republic Daria.
“Ay mate,” says the strapping hunk of meat strapped in Speedo now inches from my face. He bends down to retrieve his frisbee. “Beautiful day, no?!”
“Yes,” I say.
“I’m having such a wonderful time,” I lie.
American to Aussie (in a land we’re pretending is ours when it’s convenient) we nod good day. I watch him walk away, thankful for the opaque sunglasses that let me surreptitiously stare at his Speedo bum while I appear, to anyone watching us, to read.
How do I become someone like that? A person who has a healthy enough respect for pleasure and the spiritual fortitude to enjoy it that I remember to pack a toy while I dally in the breeze that threatens to carry that same toy to <<<shudder>>> the beach next door where children are allowed. Instead, all I find remarkable right now is the way the palm tree waving above my head looked like a bodacious, billowing burlesque feather from my balcony an hour ago. But now, upon closer inspection, looks and sounds like sun-beaten, hairspray-crusted, dusty, rattling window blinds.
I apply sunscreen for the fourth time. I mostly associate palm leaves with Catholic Sunday school and Lent. I feel like, when I trace my lifelife, that there are always people, scared adults mostly, along the road reminding me like soothsayers that there was some man somewhere, sometime who died for me to live this way—so modern and unencumbered. Jesus. Soldiers. AIDS victims. Starving monks. iPhone makers. Pineapple pickers. Mermen.
Meanwhile, a seagull suicide bombs into the ocean.
Pitbull croons undisturbed.
***
Four days later, my husband and I are back in Chicago. We’ve deposited my mother-in-law at her car to drive herself back to Indiana. She’s glowing like golden corn silk with her new tan. I’m glowing like gooey glue paste with no sunburn. This is considered a win by all involved.
And despite notions I’ve give you to the contrary, I’ve decided I had a ton of fun on my vacation actually! After all, on our last day the islanders let us sail a catamaran on the ocean unattended. No training or anything. Just a life jacket and a wave. They told us where to sit as we hoisted our privileged American asses on the totally-unmotorized plastic ship and pushed us off with giant, totally-unsarcastic grins.
COFFEE IS HOT warning label-era child that I am, I’m used to having to sign a waiver of liability to do anything except cut my own toenails. Our next of kin could have sued the resort had we gotten eaten by sharks at sea, corpses on a catamaran. But instead they just let us figure it out ourselves. It was fun… refreshing, even if the food wasn’t.
It’s snowing in Chicago, but we’re both still on this oh-catamaran-my-catamaran high. So much so that we put off unpacking our bags and checking our emails and decide to play a game instead. And not just any game. We’re going to play the Ten to Ten, a game devised by my husband, Justin. Justin is our two-person family’s self-appointed Minster of Fun, because clearly I’m no good at things like having a good time, unless you count when I am drunk, but I can’t do that anymore because I did drunk as dangerously and as extremely as I do sadness.
We started playing the Ten to Ten this summer. Here’s how it works.
From a miniature velvet drawstring bag, one of us draws a dice. There are three sets of dice in this pouch, and each set is a different color of a CTA line near our apartment. Depending on which color we draw—red, brown, or blue—we will take a CTA train from that colored line to a destination. Our destination is determined by the number we roll next using the drawn dice. Once we have our color and our number, we refer to a map. On this map, we have numbered stops on the red, brown, and blue lines that we don’t visit that often but would like to see more of.
The rules of the game are that we have to now travel to that destination on the CTA and spend 12 hours exploring around the area—from ten am to ten pm.
This game is the most fun thing I’ve done since I quit drinking. I think that’s why Justin created it. He knew that, without unchecked alcoholism to help quiet my brain’s chaotic queries of crucifixes and syphilis, civilians droned and babies caged, I didn’t know how to have fun in a healthy way. He knew that, in fact, I probably never knew how to have fun in a healthy way. Fun to me used to look like a blackout.
But today I am almost two and a half years dry. And today, destiny has handed us a good mood and selected us a Brown dice and rolled for us a 6. Off we cruise by bus, then traincar to the Wellington stop.
First, we stop by a place that calls itself a bread café and eat dinner over a tiny table for two. I take a picture of the lace curtains that have happy chickens sew onto them. We stop by a free art gallery we stumble across as we traverse the neighborhood’s sidewalks. We get ice cream. The beauty of the Ten to Ten is that if forces us (me) to get out of our heads (my head). Without having a specific destination or two to hit up before heading back home, we find things we never would have otherwise.
For example, by 8 p.m. this evening we’ve ventured South enough to be on DePaul’s campus. Passing a gymnasium, we see volleyball players warming up through the crack of the heavy gym door. A game is starting. Do we wanna watch? Why not. They have volleyballs to kill and we have to hours to do the same. We fork over five dollars and climb the staticky bleachers to a seat.
As we cheer for the Lady Blue Demons, of which for the next hour we are diehard fans, we remark that we never would have done this together had it not been for the Ten to Ten. We finish out our evening strolling the campus, poking fun at the college’s marketing slogans by night that I very well could have written in my job by day. When we finally get back home, I smile behind Justin’s back as he unlocks our apartment door. It’s a real smile, as if I’m pushing clueless foreigners out to adventure and sunset on a catamaran. In this moment I feel so genuinely happy and I’m thankful for this person. A person who manages to always show me happiness despite his own lifeline landlocked by distress and anxiety, fear and sleep apnea.
We uninstalled Gone, Country a few weekends ago, and I want to say THANK YOU from the bottom of my blueberry heart to everyone who came out to shows, performed at shows (you all were incredible!), bought an embroidery, bought a book, and/or simply said a kind word or thoughtful insight about the work/concept in all its parts.
I can’t believe I did this, and I am pinching myself a little still… I couldn’t have survived it in one piece without all the encouragement, so thank you. Especially to Justin, and the Slate Arts Gallery team. Can’t wait to do another one following, like, a six-month nap…
I hope you think of me whenever you see gaudy lawn flamingos doin’ it for themselves. Just trashy pink collar girls trying to stand strong in a white collar world. We gonna make it, Pip.
Slate Arts gallery in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood is hosting an exhibition of my embroidery work throughout the month of September! Each Saturday at 8 p.m., join us for a **free** performance of storytelling and live lit by me and some of my favorite writers in the city. The show Gone, Country includes 20 pieces of embroidered artwork framed in repurposed barn wood, two banner collages, and a creative nonfiction book I wrote as a companion piece to the exhibit ($20). See you there!
The objects we use on a daily basis play a big role in our cultural story and memory. As writers, we know the importance of objects in terms of symbolism—and ensuring we are, when writing fiction at least, placing historically accurate objects into settings, character descriptions, and dialogue.
Your Civil War heroine with an iPhone is no bueno, bud.
That’s why tomes like “The Middle Ages In 50 Objects” (Cambridge University Press, 2018) are so helpful to writers doing research for a novel or screenplay in this time period. “50 Objects” features beautiful images of objects from the Cleveland Museum of Art paired with an essay that digs into its visual and cultural significance within the wider context of how the object was made or used.
The book is divided into four topic areas (The Holy and the Faithful; The Sinful and the Spectral; Daily Life and its Fictions; and Death and Its Aftermath) and loaded with fresh historical insights provided by the scholars Elina Gertsman (professor of Medieval Art at Case Western Reserve University) and Barbara H. Rosenwein (a medievalist who specializes in the history of emotions).
Elina Gertsman (Photo: Keli Schimelpfenig, Case Western Reserve University)
Barbara Rosenwein
And though it was written in part to progress academic conversations about the Middle Ages—and recently made the High Brow/Brilliant end of New York Magazine’s approval matrix—this book is a visual and intellectual goldmine for arm chair art history lovers. <raises hand> Reading this book was like getting an answer key to some incredible works of art; like sitting in on a university lecture from the comfort of my aforementioned arm chair.
Example: Object 22’s painting of the Madonna and Eve on wood panel features inverted letters signifying the way Mary supposedly reversed Eve’s original sin; Eve’s sexuality is underscored by the Tree of Knowledge growing between her legs. (Which, if ever there was an ideal place for a tree of knowledge to grow, I’d say it’s there… She wouldn’t even have to stand up to pick out a new book to read from its branches! #teameve)
I had the pleasure of asking Elina and Barbara a few questions about the process of writing their new book, why they made the curatorial decisions they did, what objects in the book were most interesting to study, and more. Read their thoughtful answers below, then get your own copy of “The Middle Ages In 50 Objects” here!
The hard cover is coffee table chic.
***
Why are objects worth studying in order to understand the past?
Objects are not just things “out there” but agents of history in every way. They are created for reasons ranging from utterly practical to outrageously frivolous—but always in ways that are particular to certain people and places at particular times. As they come into being and use, they carve out their own meanings and interact with other objects—and people. Consider the scene of the Crucifixion (Object 43): the bottom of the Cross depicted there has been touched by pious fingers and lips so many times that the paint and ink are smudged.
The Middle Ages was a culture of the senses. Think of the incense perfuming the air in places of worship (churches and mosques alike), the music of liturgy and entertainment, the visions of color and light afforded by manuscript illuminations, the taste of the Eucharist melting in the mouth, and the invitation to touch offered by ivory and alabaster. Considering objects in all their materiality opens a royal path to this rich and little-known culture of the past.
How did you narrow it down to just 50 objects?
We wanted to produce a book that would be both comprehensive and yet not overwhelming. We knew that each object we chose would be worthy of many pages of explanation, but we decided to limit ourselves there as well. The number 50 seemed a good solution: enough to cover several entangled cultures that had to be considered together in order to illuminate each one.
How would you describe working on this book? Was it a joyful experience?
Joy is the right word. The book almost wrote itself once we had decided on the themes and the objects that belonged to them. We generally worked in relay. Elina lit the torch, as it were, by focusing on the objects, teasing out the network of associations they triggered, visual discourses they tapped into, and the ways in which they were viewed in the past. Then it was Barbara’s turn to consider the larger context, wrapping each object in the intricate web of events, patrons, social needs, and religious uses that explained its creation and importance.
Why did you decide to balance the representation of objects used or cherished by the elites and those used or cherished by the non-elites?
There is no denying that medievalists have on-hand more material objects from the elites than from the non-elites. Patrons of the arts—both individuals and institutions—were normally wealthy, and we today prize the results of their largesse and taste—the astonishing delicacy of Books of Hours, emotionally evocative images of Saint John softly resting his head on Christ’s shoulder, or elegant tombstones made to mark the burial of pious Muslims. But it is also important to see and understand the material lives of others less well-to-do, for they represent the majority of people in every period. When we view an iron barbute (Object 37), we are brought into the world of the soldier.
Barbute, 1350-1420, Northern Italy, iron
Its pits and dents remind us of the everyday dangers and hardships suffered by men in the Venetian army garrison at Negroponte. Negroponte? What was Venice doing there, 1,200 miles from home? The barbute thrusts us into the thick of historical events, as Venice takes over an island that had long belonged to Byzantium. Surely, we must cherish it almost as much as the man whose life it protected.
I really enjoyed the way you divided the contents into four topic sections. Was it difficult to organize? What was your thinking behind dividing them in this way?
We didn’t want to do the West first, then the Islamic world, then Byzantium, or anything of that sort because those cultures were too intertwined to be conceptualized in that way. Nor did we want to divide the book by chronology, as if it were a textbook. We chose, rather, to work with themes that cut across the whole period and united all of the cultures.
Did any of the 50 objects surprise you or is there an object in the book you particularly liked learning about?
All of the objects turned out to have surprising twists and turns. But we especially enjoyed working on objects that opened up many different paths to explore. An example is the miniature from a Mariegola (Object 21), which required us to research Venetian guilds, anti-Jewish stereotypes, ideals of poverty, and the realities of untold wealth.
Can learning about objects from the Middle Ages help us better understand the objects of contemporary visual culture?
There is no question that sensitizing ourselves to the objects that mattered in the Middle Ages helps us understand our own. But beyond that, some of the same themes and uses have distant echoes today. This goes beyond obvious similarities, as for example the persisting image of the Crucifix. Consider depictions of Death as a skeleton (see Object 50) or contemporary gestures of prayer, which derive from the medieval practice (see the hands of the Virgin in Object 43).
If you could pick one or two objects from contemporary culture that you think future historians would find important, what would they be?
Barbara: I’d choose the Apple Watch, which is a fashion accessory, a practical conveyer of time and information, and a good symbol of our desire to be constantly in touch without touching.
Elina: I’d choose a pair of boots: shoes are always a powerful symbol of presence and loss, and the last century or so has been deeply fraught. Shoes are intimately tied to memory, often terribly so: the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum displays thousands of shoes, taken from the prisoners at the Majdanek concentration camp. Just two months ago, countless pairs of shoes were placed in front of the Capitolio in Puerto Rico, to mark the absence of men and women lost in Hurricane Mari and unaccounted for in the official death toll.
What has been inspiring you lately? Any books, music, podcasts, movies to recommend?
Barbara: In a small 12th-century church in Saint-Dyé, France, I heard an incredible concert that combined ancient instruments and songs with compositions by a living composer. The music worked together seamlessly, making the past present and the present past ways I could not have imagined. It was truly inspiring.
Elina: I am reading Paul Auster’s splendid “4321”—complex, sensitive, always stirring, dark at times, but somehow always jubilant. I’d recommend it without reservations.
If you could invite three people, living or dead, to a dinner party, who would they be and why?
Barbara: This is tough. I’d love to have a good dinner conversation with many people. But I guess I can narrow it down to one party in which the guests might compare notes and (let’s hope) learn from one another. I’d invite Xanthippe, Socrates’ wife, who was billed as a nasty shrew by Xenophon; Christine de Pizan, a late medieval feminist who supported herself and her family by writing witty books for wealthy patrons; and lastly Catherine Dickens, best known as the unhappy wife of Charles Dickens. My first question to them would be: What place should women have in society, and what attitudes, institutions, etc. would be required to get them there? And my second question: If you could choose a different time and place to live in, what would it be? If I dared I might pose a third: What do you think of the LGBTQIA movement, and what do you think it portends for gender relations in the future?
Elina: I’d invite Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th-century German visionary; Voltaire, an 18th-century French Enlightenment philosopher; and Andrei Voznesensky, an extraordinary Soviet/Russian poet, who died just a few years ago. I’d love to hear them talk about poetry, politics, and everything in between.
