Did you ever stop to think?

(via fuckyeahspringfield)

I took a lot of time trying to think about my contribution to this: “Women In Refrigerators, 13 years later”. Initially, my first efforts consisted of pages of lines along the lines of young me + reading Ms Marvel’s initial run = woe. And then I tried to write a thing about a thing. But that sucked. And then, after a pretty damn woeful attempt at drawing a cheesecake heroine (which sucked), I realised something.

There was a common theme in all my responses. Women In Refrigerators, the site, helped me realise something. It’s something I’ve taken with me ever since. I know that I, the silent, stunned girl reader, matter. I know my thoughts and my responses matter.

And I think that, even now, though I do not know the answers, at least I’ve started to understand the questions. 

I love Marciac, the proud little Jazz town of South-West France. I love it in the winter; when the sun sidles through the sky and allows you to sit outside in the middle of December. I love it in the summer; I love it for introducing me to Dianne Reeves, and I love it for the moments of magic it gives me. 

And this piece is stunning. It’s such a shame I don’t know more about it. What I do know is that it’s substantial; occupying a healthy space in one corner of the massive market square in the heart of the bastide. Latin text, laid into the ground for people to walk on, and I still don’t know what it says. There’s something about years, something about the town being constructed (?) but that’s all I get from it. I need to transcribe it some day.

And yet, I don’t know if I want to. I love the feel of it. I love the way I can’t resist, on a hot day, slipping my shoes off and feeling the coolness of it under my feet. I love the way the Ps and the Os are so solidly filled. I love the steel grey and the nonchalance about it. 

This, for me, is a prime example of writing-art. Or, to be more prosaic about it, Performance Writing. This is performative language. I judge these words, not on what they mean, but on an aesthetic, symbolic level. I look at how they relate to each other, how the cursive of the S slips into the rigidity of the I. This is language. This, though it may not shout it from the rooftops, is art. 

part two of two

part one of two

‘Because I don’t love you anymore’

Forgetting you was somewhat complicated 

I query the usefulness of your intervention

“Consonant please Carol.”

Look up