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'Islands': Dragging Our Heads Back
December 14, 2013 by mthunter22 Leave a Comment
Posted on December 14, 2013 by Marian Evans
The latest draft of the Throat of These Hours radio play, now with a rigorous reader, was hard and slow. I had to reduce – drop storylines, drop characters, drop themes, drop dialogue – and distill. Reduce and distill again. Sometimes I lost Muriel Rukeyser. Sometimes I lost the story. Sometimes I lost heart. Often I had to drag my head back to the play, most easily through listening to one of Christine White's draft compositions, for part of The Speed of Darkness and for Then. What a blessing they've been. What a blessing Chris has been. Re-reading her Muriel Rukeyser posts – all listed below – also helped me in this re-working time. And the other day, I read in Chris' blog that she too had to drag her head back to the project, to compose the music for Islands.
And then I went to a workshop where Jane Campion spoke about John Keats and negative capability. And began to understand that Muriel Rukeyser's negative capability inspires my visceral response to her work, that negative capability in Chris' compositions reinforces and extends that viscerality. To complete the radio and stage plays I will have to make friends with negative capability.
This post is an interview with Chris, to go with her first sketch for Islands, here to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Muriel's birth. On the day itself, on our islands and with you, we'll both have Muriel in our hearts – Chris walking her dog Tai, rehearsing for a gig and teaching and I filming a woman about her experience of serial violation: rape; the insertion of vaginal mesh; and within unhelpful institutions. – Marian Evans
Islands composition (mp3, click on link)
Marian Evans: I love the way you've documented your composition process for Throat of These Hours. At the beginning, you responded to the 'confronting nature and honesty' of Muriel's poems. What did you find particularly confronting and honest?
Christine White: I was given a collection of poems and to be honest, the first line 'Whoever despises the clitoris despises the penis' (The Speed of Darkness) grabbed my attention right away. Yes, nowadays people can talk about penises, cunts and fucking on all manner of forums – enough for them to cease to be confronting and to become rather boring instead. However, when written in the medium of the poem, in such a succinct way and as an opening line…well, I'm beginning to understand how brave it is to do something like that in an artwork. Of course one needs honesty to accompany a statement like that or else you won't get away with it….you won't be believed or believable and the statement will lose its power.
The other aspect of Muriel which I found confronting and honest was her commitment to activism. She travelled great distances to protest (as in the lone action of sitting outside the door of prison gates in South Korea in protest of the incarceration of poet Kim Chi-Ha). She visited the miners of the Hawk's Nest Tunnel disaster. These actions were confronting to me because Muriel didn't just make comment from afar. She placed herself in the situations or as close to them as she could.
What effects, if any, have the confrontation and the honesty and the activism had on your work for the project, or generally?
Muriel has struck a chord with me, mainly because of her commitment to go to straight to the sites of activism as part of her work.
The Hawk's Nest miners incident in particular took my interest, possibly because in New Zealand we have recently had a mining disaster (Pike River Mine) where 29 miners were killed. This brought it closer to home – particularly the knowledge that as an artist, if you really want to delve deeper into a work or to make a comprehensive work about something, you need to be there. You need to experience as much of it with all of your senses in order for powerful honesty to come forth.
I can't see directly how the activism has affected my work on the project, other than that I am aware of the lengths Muriel has gone to in deepening herself in a work, and therefore, I am encouraged to do the same.
It's interesting though, as I haven't been a politically active person in my life. I find conflict and opposition confronting enough and, I guess, my world views have developed in such a way that I have tended to place more emphasis on the path of a person's individual life rather than the societal context they are in. Sure, these things are influenced by societal trends, influences, rights and abuses and this is the level where people are active in facilitating change, but this is an area I am still trying to reconcile in my life.
I am also allergic to, and have a complete knee-jerk reaction to some things which I think keep me away from activism. One is group-think (having had to unlearn group-think from childhood), and the other is a certain form of verbal-disagreement, which usually surfaces as sarcasm, cynicism and negative complaint – which to me just adds up to mouthing off.
Have your responses to Muriel's work changed over time? Have other elements of her life and work also become important to you?
The difficulty with the work I have been doing in response to Muriel's work is that I have had times when I have delved deeply into her work and life, and other times where I have felt strangely distant from it. This is due to the fact that I am self-employed as an artist/teacher and so constantly juggling projects and trying to maintain income and sanity – the quintessential artistic life that Muriel herself lived and wrote about! (Though she did it much harder – I'm certain!).
I feel extremely privileged that I was invited by you to be involved in the project. I, who as a farm girl who grew up in the Waikato region of New Zealand in the 1970's, was invited to explore the life and work of a remarkable woman who lived on the other side of the world in the 1940's.
I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian home, and came out as lesbian (with much difficulty) in my 20s and 30s – though I was fortunate enough to live in a time of relative freedom and equality through the ground-breaking efforts of both the women's and gay movements in Aotearoa, New Zealand. However, for much of my life, I have been more interested in male histories, stories and influences. I have been afraid of both the women's and gay movements, and, in terms of my area of interest (music and composition), have tended to adopt male role models. Such a contradiction!
The irony and universal humour of the arrival of this project wasn't lost on me. And yet, Muriel was fascinating to me – following the beat of her own drum. I love that she learnt to fly, that she was interested in the sciences, that she had to evaluate what being a Jew meant to her. While she was an activist, there was something about the tone of her work that drew me in.
I loved that she would integrate her experiences into her work and that she had an assemblage-type approach to her work overall. Nothing was in isolation, but rather, they were all part of a large body, a whole being that was free to be interpreted and reinterpreted. Knowing this has given me great freedom in working with her words – as I know that she fully supported the musicality of word-sound, of breaking and re-constituting across media. This suits the explorations I have made with looping words, breaking them through the use of glitch – all of these methods have only strengthened her words and their impact on me, not weakened them.
These aspects of her world-view have been with me a lot over the year, even at times when I have been distracted from the exact work – it has been so lovely that you and I can remind each other of the spirit of Muriel, and acknowledge the presence of that spirit in our lives and in whatever has been transpiring.
There were also parts of The Life of Poetry that helped you early on. Can you remember what they were?
I think the main thing I took from that book, was the sense that Muriel wasn't constrained by poetry as being merely words on a page for a specific time. She seemed to have a sense of freedom – of not being bound to a specific form, and there was a possibility of the form, sequence and rhythm changing or altering – of words latching onto other words, revisiting, breaking apart, recontextualising – of developing new rhythms and flow…I am certainly not quoting the book here and am only working off an internalised memory or interpretation.
But from the portions of the book I quoted in my blog, and my sense about Muriel now (without that book in front of me), it seemed that she wanted her work (not just one portion), to be alive, to be malleable, to have the qualities of a physical entity which was something akin to a sci-fi being, or a thing of nature that would have chemical, physical reactions and would change form, morph – alter its appearance somehow.
She was interested in relationship, and the connections her work would make with people, the conversations that would be generated, and the complete arc of her life's work – a sense of the organic whole rather than an isolated piece.
All of these aspects are helpful to me when translating Muriel to music form – the rhythm, flow, relationship to others, the part-ness and one-ness.
In relation to the radio play, I have a vision of the old tape recording days where, in the end, the pieces of tape all fall out of the machine, cascading out like a waterfall. The words are jumbled, re-ordered, and sing out in a cacophony – Muriel's lifetime of words spewing out of a jammed up machine and fluttering around the room, flooding it in sound.
When you started work on the poems, do you remember how you first responded? How does your response fit with your reference to two extracts from William Packard's interview with Muriel (The Craft of Poetry Interviews from The New York Quarterly 1974)?
People ask me why I don't rhyme and I find it impossible to answer. Because I rhyme, and go beyond rhyme. The return once is not enough for me. I will carry a phrase through. Or a sound, that may not be at the end of the lines, but I try to carry any sound that is important in the poem so that it comes back many times. I find returns very romantic things. I love the coming back at different times of all things, including sounds, including words.
The phrase in a different position is new, as has been pointed out by many poets. But I think I use this as other poets use rhyme. It's a time-binding thing, a physical binding, a musical binding, like the recurrence of the heartbeat and the breathing and all the involuntary motions as well. But in a poem I care very much about the physical reinforcement, the structure in recurrence.
As much as my work is with sound, my initial readings are often sight first and more from the cerebral trying-to-understand-aspect. Whilst I wouldn't consider myself an academic, I love knowledge, the feeling of acquiring knowledge or learning and, therefore, of trying to understand. So my initial approach to a work is very much from a left brain space, trying to 'make sense of it', find meaning etc etc…
This is my default position so I sometimes need to train myself out of this thinking. When I first read, it is silently. I tend to be more cerebral initially and more introvert, so I tend to take the words inward rather than speak them straight outward. Of course speaking them and hearing them as sounds adds immeasurably to the receiving of a work, but it is still not the first route I take.
In terms of the poems I have worked on initially, it has been an interesting journey for me. Particularly with Then and Islands, on paper the poems look really straightforward – basic even. So, I could have easily moved onward from them without experiencing them at a deeper level.
I must confess, I read them, and thought, well, they are simple, there's not much to see here. How can I translate them in a way that is satisfying to me? Knowing the larger scale of Muriel's life – her interest in cross-pollinating different areas of thought, her interest in the mechanisms of flight – these somehow kept me hanging in with what seemed like simpleton words. I wish I could say I understood the layering of these poems on the reading of them, but it was actually reading some of the background works and interviews, including the excerpt above, that helped me to feel free to experience her work in a new way.
I haven't worked very often with other people's lyrics, and certainly not on this scale, but there is a sense that a poem's integrity needs to be retained and it needs to be interpreted in a clear way that honours the words, the order of the words, and the perceived meanings of the words. On reading the above passage, I gained a freer sense of what Muriel's work meant to her in a broader context.
I could relate to her sense of the musicality of words – in music a theme can morph, expand, veer off and return. Muriel had an understanding of the fluidity of words and sound. I felt that she had an understanding of sound as distinct from meaning. It also meant for me that she would maybe relish the idea of sound play and recontextualisation – it's hard to explain, but that the words are no longer just words, no longer in one dimension but could take their place as musical beings in flight.
This informed the way I worked with the poems, as I could stretch the words, layer them on top of each other, make them disappear and reappear…and in the act of doing this – of breathing the work through the medium I relate to – I found a life to the words that I otherwise couldn't see on a white page.
When I'm writing my own lyrics I feel I can be less careful with them. It's quite daunting working with someone else's words, especially if you feel they are fixed in their intention. My lyric writing has changed in recent years – I feel less sure of what-I-want-to-say or wanting-to-say-anything-at-all, and so my approach is to compose music and lyric quickly in a collage-type way. The songs have been more like sketches in some instances, or at least the meanings of them have been less clear even to me.
In your latest blog, you wrote about your relationship with writer and musician Hinemoana Baker and how Hinemoana has investigated and written poetry where 'meaning and narrative are secondary to the sounds of words' and how, 'because she understands the world of sound, and the world of words' she can sometimes cross-translate for you. Has that been helpful in making your response to Muriel Rukeyser's poems?
As already mentioned, the poems I have worked with predominantly present as more narrative with emphasis placed on meaning. Although this is in contrast to 'sound poetry', it has helped me to use the medium of sound to reveal another layer to the work.
Through being with Hinemoana I have gained more of an understanding that poetry can be a trinket, a message (like a fortune cookie), a mantra, or a puzzle. It can, aside from the surface layer of the message, evoke a mysterious world created by the combining of consonants and vowels and tones. It is our first instinct, often, to want to know what a poem means and if the meaning appears obvious, sometimes we can forgo the journey of sitting with the poem further and allowing it to seep more into the core of our being.
I was tempted on first reading of these poems, to do just that – take them at face value – which, had I done so, would have resulted in an equally accessible musical translation…a simple folk song or ditty. Whilst these can be powerful, I don't think it would have added to the poem or my investigation of it in this instance…and I would feel that I have merely translated, rather than explored.
Two things helped me to delve deeper – one was the learnings I have had from Hinemoana's approach to poetry, and the other was Muriel's own fascination with sound and with the deconstruction / reconstruction of words and meaning. She was totally up for having her work be malleable and water-like, and to regenerate in different form.
These then freed me up to approach the work of exploring the poems differently and gave me permission to allow, not necessarily new meaning or undiscovered meaning, but an unfolding of layers. You know how when intellectually you get something, and then one day you really GET IT in a different part of your being.
Chris and Hinemoana in New York
In your blog about composing for Islands you record your questions to yourself: 'Am I anticipating my style based on what I've done?' 'Am I anticipating the effects of Muriel's writing on me?' What does this mean?
It is important to me not to anticipate too much – I don't want to assume that I am going to feel the same way about this poem as I did about the last – or that it will have the same affect on me and therefore, that I will produce a similar response. I want my response to be as fresh as possible and to allow for the unknown aspect to enter.
I think, having worked with two poems previously (Then and The Speed of Darkness), I was concerned that I would feel familiar with the work, the process, the outcome. Yes of course, there will be a similarity as the composition comes from the person of Muriel mixed with the person of me – and we are both finite beings with a 'voice' and 'style' that is particular to us, but I didn't want to make an assumption because that may cause me to miss the 'unseen' 'magical' aspect of what could result.
And in the approach to Islands, I really felt that I was going headlong into a preconceived outcome – maybe a result of fatigue, or laziness, or a mass-production-type approach – and that wasn't going to honour Muriel or myself, or what could eventuate.
This concern actually nearly paralysed me, and there was much procrastination (an important creative act sometimes I think if one learns not to panic), dilly-dallying, and beach-walks, combined with intellectually trying to formulate an approach (not a great place to start!).
What actually helped me out of this a great deal, was the added knowledge that I was composing for Throat of These Hours. This was fantastic because based on the themes and settings of the play, I had earlier drafted a palette of materials that would suit the play. From memory the key ones were the voice (expression), water (fluidity and environmental issues), and electricity (radio, static waves, communication). The previous two song interpretations had concentrated on voice mainly and to a smaller extent water and electric guitar.
So there was a further aspect in the palette, I hadn't explored in depth, and that was the use of electronic sound (glitch, static) – and this wonderfully gave me the freshness I needed to elude anticipation.
If I approach a work completely knowing what I am about then I may miss the opportunity to allow something in that will give the poem a different tone or layer. I would prefer to get out of the way even just a little bit and to trust that to feel blind a bit and to explore a bit will unearth something unpredicted and more true to the work.
Can you summarise your musical influences for this project? Where does John Psathas fit?
I have always referred to whatever is currently interesting to me musically when composing something new and I tend to believe wholeheartedly in the collision – that whatever has captured me in the present is a necessary in-road to a new work. It's like THIS style, person or band will be relevant in this new situation and will become a third collaborator.
When I started the Throat of These Hours project, top of mind was the composer Scott Walker. Formerly of The Walker Brothers fame, in recent years he's released three solo albums of songs which are cinematic, visceral and intense! Scott Walker approaches his arrangements from the starting point of the lyric and treats every instrument as a voice that supports the lyric of the piece. His approach to his work gave me a more open sense of how poetry can be interpreted in music. He has a very classical / operatic voice and layers a rich tapestry of sounds over it.
Another composer who I think may be creeping into view for this project is Laurie Anderson which is fantastic! She is also from New York and combines poetic / political / storytelling voice with layers of unique and interesting sound. She is an inventor of instruments and creator of sound art. She uses the spoken voice in her performance and I'm sure Muriel would have loved her play on words, her use of simple ideas, repetitions and the political nature of her work.
The other recent influence was the soundtrack of the Gravity movie composed by Steven Price. The spaciousness, connectedness, bigness, and isolation conveyed by this soundtrack was fantastic and just what I needed when moving into the composition for Islands.
John Psathas is an internationally renowned New Zealand composer whose work I was introduced to in 2004 by Steve Garden (the co-producer of my album Pirouette). I find it very difficult to describe the affect of John's music on me and that may now be because I am very fortunate to know him personally and so I have a certain self-consciousness as a listener, but I will try. Firstly what struck me was the intense energy of John's work – he utilises the orchestra like a rock band and my spirit soars when engulfed in a live performance of his work. His pieces can be grand and engaging, and also intimate and, quite frankly beautiful. He manages to infuse his music with a strong sense of energy – whether it is energy bursting forth, or energy gently held in suspension. I could go on struggling to find descriptors….
John is a professor at Victoria University so I came to know him also in the capacity of lecturer and supervisor. I am so grateful to have met him – his dedication to his craft inspires me to be the best I can be with mine. Though he is a million miles from me in terms of technical expertise, his love of music and his engagement with it makes it so easy and exciting to talk with him about it. He is certainly one of my favourite people to talk about music with. He has a generosity in listening that is difficult to find nowadays – if he is listening to a piece of music, he gives his total being to it. He is then able to articulate what the music is doing, and maybe what it needs to do. Conversations with him are like manna to me.
I don't wish to take advantage of his expertise unnecessarily, but if I have needed guidance, he has generously given it – and this is hugely valuable to me because he is able to decipher where the work is needed in the realisation of a piece of music. This has been invaluable to me in working with Muriel's poems. When I feel I have reached the limits of my understanding about what I am doing, John is able to articulate what he hears is happening with the piece. It gently encourages me to dig deeper than I otherwise may do.
We also talk movies, family, philosophy, and generally shoot the breeze and you can't ask much more than that!
Chris in performance (Annie McMullen photographer)
When you focused on Voice, Water, Radio Signal/Electricity, because they fitted with the themes of the stage play, how did this work?
Voice was an obvious one for me as it was informed by the title of the play (Throat of These Hours) and by some of the content / themes – two women in conversation trying to reconnect, explain themselves and express themselves. I wanted to use a full range of vocal sounds however in order to cover the many nuances of self expression and have touched on these in the demo for The Speed of Darkness. Possibilities for vocal soundings which reflect the story include throat clearing, gargling, sighing, speaking, muttering, and breath.
Water as an environmental issue was a recurring theme in the stage play. There is also an emergency kit which is referred to in the play and as the play is set in a radio studio, there would obviously be glasses of water present so it seemed fitting to include water in the palette of sound possibilities. As a metaphor, water also represents fluidity and is a substance that can appear in a number of forms (liquid, air, ice), so it can also be a character that adapts or changes form – something which the protagonists have chosen to do or have had to do. It is nice to have a natural element in the play too.
The fluidity of water also provides a good companion to Muriel's work and her view of the fluid possibilities of words and ideas. This translates easily with the energy, rhythms and flow of water.
Water is also one of our key sustainers of life, and is intimately connected with the human mouth so, once again, a good fit. We are transformed and transforming in our interactions with the stuff of life.
Electricity is also intertwined with water use and availability, and with the play being set in a radio station a nice loop of interlocking pieces (water, humans, electricity) is created. It makes sense to include the electrical motif in the sound palette. As a sound generator, electricity isn't always as controllable and predictable as playing an instrument. The use of feedback allows for this untamed energy to have a place in the play. To me, electricity is about impulse, energy, sparks and connections, and we have strong electrical components within our bodies (as with water), so once again, these sound components reflect basic elements that are present both in our internal and external worlds.
The story of Meredith and Tina in the stage play Throat of These Hours, is very much a story about finding equilibrium in nature and in oneself and ones relationships. I am very keen for the music to reflect this, and also to reflect Muriel's forward-thinking about the presence of her work in the world.
All of life is affected by interactions and change, and it is only through allowing these interactions that freshness continues in the work. I am sure Muriel would want aliveness in this way and so at times I am wondering how to create conditions in the music that both represent Muriel's words, and also allow the words to be freed in some way to create anew themselves.
I am hopeful that incorporating the looper, or some kind of effects-generating software and electronic instruments of some sort, will allow this recreation to occur in the play. Hopefully I can work more towards that at some point as for now I have been creating fixed pieces for the poems. I think, and am hopeful, that Muriel would love to hear her poems self-generate new word combinations and poems within poems!
You've been experimenting with a style of performance where songs, stories and parts of songs are interweaved. Has it hampered you that although Muriel's poems are fixed I haven't finished either play, so there's no certainty for you to weave with beyond the poems themselves?
This is a nice question to follow on from the previous. The short answer is no I don't feel hampered. I think the main reason for this is that through my time in writing/performing and composing, I have come to a point more and more where I wish to allow a 'gap' for a type of synchronicity or unknown to occur.
This thinking was fostered at the extreme end of the continuum by American avant-garde composer John Cage, who often created pieces using chance operations. He collaborated with choreographer (and life partner) Merce Cunningham and one of their main innovative approaches was the concept that although the music and dance would occur in the same space and time, they would be created independently of each other.
I have taken this approach often when creating music for another medium (theatre, film) as I believe that when combining two such elements, there should be a space where the audience person or perceiver can add their own thought processes to the perception of the work – and it is this which completes the work. If the combined work is tied down so-to-speak, then the creators possibly will have covered off any possible ambiguity i.e. 'we need to be clear here that this piece of music is supporting the dialogue in this way…'
Certainly in the composing process, unless I have a clear direction given, I prefer not to try and mould what I do for the overall play.
Of course – this can create possible challenges, and there have been some instances where I have written from instinct and then found myself asking questions that probably only you could answer. Like the fact that Then and Speed of Darkness are two quite different pieces with different voices – 'would Meredith create them both?' I found myself asking at one point….. 'well Chris, you just did,' was my reply.
I am hopeful that if I follow my instincts and the direction the work seems to take me, then I will generate enough possibility that can be refined if need be as your end of the work takes shape. And we both tend to see our work in a fresh way with each new discussion or draft version which is nice.
I think it must be difficult to write compositions that match a character's own arc within a play. Tina's a rusty composer/singer at the beginning of the stage play (when she sings the Speed of Darkness excerpt) and far more confident and accomplished at the end when she sings Then. What are your thoughts about this?
Yes, as stated in the previous question, this did come up and I dealt with it mainly through knowing that if I was able to write in these different voices, then it was possible for Tina to do the same. I wasn't conscious of the arc when writing the songs, but we did definitely have that discussion afterwards as I started thinking 'hang on, Tina's character seems quite rustic and earthy – would she write something as dense as Then?'
I wouldn't have described Tina as rusty versus accomplished but rather raw versus intricate – or something like that….and maybe with Tina's increasing contemplation of the way her life has gone, she would become more introspective. I think fragile was how John described Then, and I can see that because, as a work still in development and me recording it very early on in its development, it does sound delicate or fragile because I'm reaching in the newness of it. I like that stage of a composition – but maybe it will be more settled and simultaneously have a confidence and delicateness about it. I would love to hear another singer do it – as it is in the higher register of my voice where I may not be as strong.
Again though, I think I need to respond to the poems however they present, and not worry about whether Tina is at the beginning of her character arc or the end. It would suffice for me to know that both of these possibilities exist within the one person and can be called on at any time. Muriel encapsulated over the course of her body of work the use of different form and style, and also traversed a number of themes and emotions from delicacy to rage.
I find my own voice to be in the middle of the two songs I have written, I would love to hear a really raw voice sing Speed of Darkness and a confident classical-type voice sing Then and maybe Islands – I guess that is where the personality of Tina's voice will be interesting to uncover in relation to the songs – in the finding of whoever it is that sings them and how they sing them.
As a composer, your work seems to highlight your own body, as a participant and as an instrument. You played with the 'throat' for the excerpt from The Speed of Darkness, and wrote about it like this:
The throat – the sounds of the throat can be many and varied…and can communicate a variety of emotions – the feeling of constriction, of not being able to speak/communicate – throat clearing, trying to make a way through obstacles.
Even the act of sighing and iterations of the breath can give signals as to the state of mind of the communicator – the body in the act of communicating, or trying to…
You refer in one post, Water, water, water, to your body as a (maybe polluted?) river in relation to one of the Throat of These Hours themes. And in another, (unDer the islaNds are stArs, with some stunning images of Kapiti Island) you write about your body in movement in a particular landscape, on the Kapiti Coast and in relationship with Hinemoana and Tai. Is this how you understand yourself as a composer, that it's a 'whole body' thing, which sometimes highlights one part more than the other?
As the throat is a central theme in the play, and seemed to be a theme in Muriel's own writings, I thought it is an obvious instrument. Its use in the presentation recording isn't as subtle as it could be in the context of the whole play.
Chris White (Annie McMullen photographer)
It is interesting that you have mentioned all those references to the body as I have in general considered myself more cognitive in my approach over the years, but it is quite possible that this has been slowly changing with a growing awareness of my relationship to the physical.
I was quite physically active when I was young – I played a lot of sports – and enjoy a certain amount of co-ordination – let's face it, it can be quite a physical pursuit hauling a guitar around onstage with a band! For all that, it has always been the temptation for me to consider 'composing' as an intellectual pursuit. Fortunately, I have the physical means to thrash ideas around when sitting staring at a computer seems futile.
I can't really imagine performing only and negating the composing experience, which feels more like the essential component for me in bringing me to myself and out of myself. However, I think it is in performing (on a good day) that I express more in my whole body as it requires full attention and presence.
I have been keen to compose more for other performers as my composing tends to get bound together with my own 'voice' and limitations as a performer. I am thinking (and hoping) that it would bring different results and look forward to opportunities to do this and to find ways to do this. Throat of These Hours was obstensibly one of these instances, but as the singer in the play wasn't fixed, I have gone down the route a little bit again of using my voice as the instrument and, therefore, composing in the realms of my voice.
I have found it refreshing writing with someone else's words as it adds a dimension I wouldn't otherwise have. It can be a little nerve-wracking, but also exciting at the same time. Muriel's generosity of spirit as shown in her writings, and the generosity of her son Bill, have enabled me to feel more at ease with translating her work into music.
I know from what you've written that you're familiar with 'mystery'. And I wondered about the role of 'mystery' for you when I read what you wrote about breath and the afterlife–
In terms of sound design (in The Sixth Sense), the breath was used in layers – many many layers…human breath, animal breath – sometimes pitch shifted and slowed down – always running almost as if in the subconscious of the film – creating an undercurrent signal of the afterlife.
What's mystery for you? Are you familiar with its role in negative capability? Does negative capability make sense to you and do you have it in mind as you investigate possibilities?
Mystery allows for an 'other' – and in a collaboration such as with you and with the writings of Muriel it seems to be an even more important component.
It allows me to be part of something greater over which I don't have complete control. This something is a combination of the thoughts and feelings of Muriel which have been captured in a specific time and place, the thoughts and feelings of you and her characters from a particular time and place, and from my thoughts and feelings from my time and place. This something will also include the thoughts and feelings of the actors and the audience from their times and places.
The mystery is that these will all intertwine in similar and different ways in the context of peoples' lives in ways that won't be known completely by any of us.
Negative capability is a new term for me and I only seem to understand it when I'm staring at some writing about it 🙂 but yes I identify with it on a level.
I guess one thing I am mindful of is the fine line between mystery and being laziness…how do I know if I have selected these words or notes because they will work in the realms of mystery, or because I am not taking the time to delve to find a better series of words or notes. This is a conversation I would do well to have with John Psathas – he appears to be at the opposite end of the spectrum from me in that he diligently goes through all possibilities before selecting what he considers is the best one.
One could argue Scott Walker is the same in his work and yet I would like to believe that mystery works for all compositional approaches and in all stages of the work. The key is having the flexibility to recognise when mystery arrives.
Is there a conflict between controlling the message and allowing mystery I sometimes wonder.
I have certainly experienced mystery many times in my composition work – a particular instrument beckons use without clarity as to why, a series of words that seem out of place – and yet when the process is finished, all comes into clear view. One example was when I was composing for an assignment at university – I initially set out to try and record a song with no backing instruments – only the use of found sounds. The sounds I used consisted mainly of a guided tour I had recorded (lots of footsteps in big rooms) plus some street scenes (cross signals etc). In the middle of the process my dear grandmother died at the age of 93. I was very close to her and found one archive recording of me interviewing her about her life. I decided to put elements of this into the piece. The excerpts I ended up using were of her talking about having had polio which had affected one of her legs so she had a limp most of her life. This blended well in the end with the footstep recordings and the song which was called Dancing Slow.
I don't think you can conjure the mystery – the best you can do is be open and to work with anything that is happening rather than trying to fight against it. For example – I feel tired today so my singing is of a certain energy – use that energy, or choose not to record voice that day…I have forgotten a piece of equipment – what will replace it? Each scenario will add to the final composition in a positive way if they are allowed to co-exist with the 'original' idea you thought you had.
The final part of the mystery is the part that is completely out of our hands, and that is when a work is received and interpreted by someone else. One person's perception may be different to another's, and also may be different at a different time or with different surrounding circumstances.
Your output and collaborations are so varied. What attracts you to so many and varied collaborations? How do they feed into your work? (I couldn't do it, don't have enough flexibility and patience, would lose my centre.)
It's quite possible I do lose my centre!! I think what happens is I get inspired by various aspects of sound and music-making and so want to incorporate them into what I do – or at least explore how a particular aspect of work would look/feel/sound like if produced through the funnel that is me.
It helps me to feel fresh and revitalised and gives an element of difference that (I hope) facilitates a slight difference in my approach to the composition. The downside I guess is that my development as a musician or composer could get diluted so my learning curve is a lot slower. For now I relish the variety though.
I remember having a dilemma years ago of wondering whether I considered myself a performer, a composer, or a musician. I felt the need to focus and so decided I needed to know which aspect of my playing / singing was the most important. I concluded that my main interest was in composition – the generating and expressing of musical or philosophical ideas. Ten years ago, I wrote a ten year vision statement and it began with 'I am a composer'…it continued on to say that I would have a variety of projects that I could choose – be it film, albums, musical theatre etc. So I'm happy to look back ten years on and see that I have done that (though not with the income I had in mind!)
When I moved from Auckland to Wellington, I remember telling my friends that the move would give me a chance to make music in a different way. I had no idea how I would do this (nor even really believed on a level that I would), but as it turned out studying Sonic Arts Composition at Victoria University opened up a massive new world of sound and composition to me.
I also became aware a few years ago that I have tended to work individualistically and that collaborating would be good for me. It would take me out of myself and would force / enable me to be open to other ways of working, help me to create in a new way, to learn to work with difference, and to feel more that I was contributing in the world rather than being in an isolated bubble. I have tended to shy away from groups and while this can be ok, I recognise the need to be part of community, or at least something bigger in the world that isn't just revolving around me. So I'm grateful again that I have had opportunities for collaboration come my way – certainly with my students who teach me a massive amount – with fellow sound artists Chris Black and Jason Wright, with Tape Art New Zealand, with Hinemoana, with Tim Bray Productions, and with you and Muriel Rukeyser.
Collaborating with Muriel has a particular specialness for me – I certainly hadn't factored in the possibility of collaborating with someone from the other side of the world, who lived in another time, whose life was so different to my own, and whose words and work remain for me to explore and experience.
So thank you Marian for the introduction, and thank you Muriel for continuing to inhabit the earth, 'still making' in the lives of people everywhere.
Chris' MOLLY PLANET RAW FOOD – RAW SOUND [discoveries and experiments] blog – the Muriel Rukeyser posts
Water, water, water
"I will bE sTiLL maKing" – MuriEL RuKyeSer
ScOtt WaLkEr meet MuRieL RukEyseR
unDer the islaNds are stArs
Chris' compositions for The Speed of Darkness (video embedded in post); & for Then (ditto).
All photographs by Christine White, except where otherwise attributed.
Throat of These Hours on Facebook
Throat of These Hours blog
Filed Under: Ruke Blog, Throat of These Hours (play) Tagged With: Annie McMullen, Bill Rukeyser, Chris Black, Christine White, Hinemoana Baker, Islands, Jane Campion, Jason White, John Cage, John Psathas, Laurie Anderson, Merce Cunningham, Muriel Rukeyser, negative capability, New Zealand, Pirouette, Scott Walker, Speed of Darkness, Steven Price, Tape Art New Zealand, Then, Throat of These Hours, Tim Bray Productions, William Packard
From the Shaky Isles
August 22, 2013 by mthunter22 2 Comments
Posted on August 22, 2013 by Marian Evans
O for God's sake
they are connected
They look at each other
across the glittering sea
some keep a low profile
Some are cliffs
The bathers think
islands are separate like them
I feel so fortunate. I've heard gifted readers read the second draft of the Throat of These Hours radio play. And I know what I'd like to do and what I have to do, to ensure it's ready to submit to Radio New Zealand at the beginning of October. This week, I'll write the third draft. And up the coast composer Christine White will soon start work on her next composition, for Islands.
The readers kindly came to my place, one weekend afternoon. Lorae Parry and Madeline McNamara – both familiar with the stage play – read 'their' parts again and Laura Daly joined them to read the 'grand-daughter' part. Christine listened from one end of the sofa and I listened from the big table, my back to them all, following the text, pencil in hand. Beside me, to check the length, the timer I use on mornings when I feel half-hearted. (When I set it to count down from forty minutes I always manage to go for it, however daunting the task.)
The reading took sixty-three minutes. Even if I allow for our brief discussions during the reading I have to shorten the script, to leave plenty of space for Christine to work in and to stay within the fifty-five minutes that Radio New Zealand assigns for radio dramas.
But there's more than shortening to be done. Thanks to the reading and the discussion afterwards, I have insights I'd never reach on my own. I read lines to myself as I draft, but sometimes that isn't enough and the continuity of Lorae and Madeline's voices and responses now provides me with an invaluable baseline of shared experience. For instance, some lines from the stage play are also in the radio play. When I heard Madeline re-read them in this new context I identified where the lines sound awkward in both plays; I must re-write them. And during the discussion after the reading, Madeline and Lorae re-read one scene with a fresh interpretation – how I love what actors can do! – and one possible problem disappeared, so long as I signpost the tone required.
Laura used to manage the radio station where I learned to make radio programmes and Lorae writes for radio, so they also told me where the play required more or fewer or different sound cues. Exactly what I needed to know. And Laura asked whether there's an archive of Muriel Rukeyser reading her own poems. She felt that the poet's own voice could add a powerful layer of sound. As I wrote in the last post, I've been enriched by listening to the Muriel Rukeyser recordings on her Penn Sound page. But I hadn't considered including her voice in the radio play or the stage play. So that's a possibility I will explore.
Christine's responses were inspiring too, and very useful, as always. She had ideas about the soundscape of course, but she also identified two places where her attention fell away because she had to think through what was happening. I love it when readers or listeners can identify where they lose their engagement.
I hope all these women come to a reading of this next draft, in mid-September. But in the meantime, I'm on my own.
Starting a re-write is always exciting and scary. As Jane Campion said recently, "A lot of time in writing is spent wondering if you're hopeless." And today an additional anxiety joins the writing fears and my ever-present funding anxieties. In the recent New Zealand International Film Festival I saw a magnificent film about backing singers, Twenty Feet From Stardom. Another film about women and voice, Lake Bell's In A World, is screening in the United States. Then, by chance, because I don't have a television, I saw an episode of a New Zealand comedy called Supercity. And there were two women meeting in a recording studio after years apart, and sniping at each other. I love synchronicity, but by the time Throat of These Hours is finished, will feisty women in recording studios be a cliché?
On the plus side, in the last month we've had two severe earthquakes within 100km of Wellington. After the second, last Friday, there have been hundreds of aftershocks a day, now down from over 400 to about 100. We've been told to prepare for another severe earthquake and to remember that The Big One can occur anytime. On advice from Christchurch friends, whose city is still recovering from disastrous earthquakes, I keep my phone charged and take it everywhere, with a windup torch/radio and water. I wear my heavy boots and keep them by my bed, have a bag nearby with hard drives and essentials like passports. A thermette out, and refreshed earthquake food and water.
The physical experience of the earthquakes does something to our nervous systems I think. There's the fear of course. And the joy of being alive after something dangerous has passed. But I've felt that the constant quakes stimulate some instinctive, subliminal and surprising responses within that are more than an adrenalin rush, maybe because the quakes cause subtle disturbances in our spinal fluid, on its journeys to and from our brain stems.
When the last severe quake hit, I'd just finished folding the washing. I was about to mop the kitchen floor. The house torqued more than it ever has. As usual I didn't drop, cover, hold, but I nearly did.
After a burst of Twitter activity I returned to my mop and bucket. And found that I cleaned the floor with an obsessiveness that reminded me of similar cleaning marathons just before I gave birth. Then I gathered my mobile quake equipment to walk around the waterfront to the library. Every road I saw was gridlocked, the waterfront was crowded and the waterfront bars were full. And for the first time in years I wanted to get drunk and fuck a stranger. (I've experimented with euphemisms for this, but they're gutless; I don't dare wimp my language in Muriel Rukesyer's presence.) These urges felt quite different from my parallel joy-to-be-alive delight in the beautiful early evening and the oystercatchers on the beach. And now, my dreams are unlike any dream I've ever had; they tremble on into the late morning.
So why are the quakes and my responses to them a plus? What have they got to do with Muriel Rukeyser and my rewrite? First, they make me treasure poets all over again. And treasure Muriel Rukeyser in particular. Fine poets like Muriel Rukeyser (as you know!) give us language to enhance our experience and help us to understand it. Lots of fine poets here in Wellington; and the very first poem to refer to the quakes – ESTUARY – has already arrived, written by Hinemoana Baker and Christine (click on it for a larger image).
Regardless of those other recording studio works, my quake-inspired re-appreciation of poets affirms my decision to explore and to celebrate Muriel Rukeyser's work as best I can.
Second, it's possible that the subliminal quake effects I'm experiencing will fuel useful new directions for the play, where an earthquake kit's been almost-a-character from the beginning.
The almost-spring-time is also a plus, not only because the days are longer and warmer. It's brought camellias and a photograph. The white camellia (mine is in full flower) is a symbol of women's suffrage in New Zealand, which has its 120th anniversary on 19 September. To celebrate this, there's a National Library exhibition, Tirohia Mai| Look At Us Now. And it includes this photograph from The Women's Gallery Opening Week (1980). It reminds me of small histories embedded in the subtext to Throat of These Hours. That's very useful.
(l.-r.) Marian Evans, Allie Eagle, Nancy Peterson, Juliet Batten, Anna Keir, Heather McPherson, Bridie Lonie, Keri Hulme (in front) Brigid Eyley, Claudia Pond Eyley photographer Fiona Clark
I look at this group and remember collective members who weren't there that evening: the late Joanna Paul, poet/filmmaker/artist , filmmaker Carole Stewart, printmaker Tiffany Thornley. Think again about the difficult futures in store for most of these women artists and writers and activists and how much women's history is forgotten and how quickly that happens. Even the National Library, which holds the negative of the photograph and all relevant details, left one woman's name off the label and described the photographer as only 'probably' Fiona Clark. Back in 1980, these women were searching for cultural grandmothers like Muriel Rukeyser. It helps to acknowledge, with gratitude, that Throat of These Hours is part of a long conversation with them, in person and in spirit.
(They look at each other
Some are cliffs)
And I remember that just before the photograph was taken, J C (Jacquie) Sturm (1927-2009) reached under her bed for her short story collection, left there for many years because she was unable to find a publisher for it. In the gallery, during that Opening Week, alongside other women writers – some of whom also wanted an audience for work that didn't interest their publishers, or any publisher – Jacquie read two stories. Later, as publishers of last resort, a little group of us published her first collection, The House of The Talking Cat and Keri Hulme's the bone people, which won the Booker Prize. This memory reminds me that there are always solutions. Keeping on keeping on works in the end. Reassuring.
Matariki Mural (detail) 1981
And sometimes the 'solution', or resolution, is unexpected. The Matariki Mural down one side of The Women's Gallery is another element of the subtext. I made it – with lots of good help from other women – after state funders refused to contribute to a national tour by women poets, the Matariki Tour. Kohine Ponika, the elder poet in the group, named the tour after the Maori word for the Pleiades. The mural included six women's poems (by Sappho and Eileen Duggan 1894-1972 – who both refer to the Pleiades – and by Heather McPherson, Keri Hulme and Merana Pitman, who were all in the Matariki group). The beginning of the dedication reads 'A gift of love to the mother of Matariki' (Kohine Ponika). The end plays with the word 'tangi' which can mean 'bird song' or 'to weep'. When 'all women poets/all women' flew up against a patriarchal wall and were 'bruised or broken, and sang or wept, we were all part of that. Greetings'.
The Women's Gallery building and the wall down its side are long gone – earthquake risks – but the mural was a satisfying end to that Matariki story. There'll be a satisfying end to the Throat of These Hours story too. For now, to end this post, Christine and Hinemoana's tribute to Jacquie Sturm: Beautiful Thing.
Hinemoana Baker is a writer, musician, occasional broadcaster and teacher of creative writing. She traces her mixed ancestry from several North and South Island Mãori tribes, as well as from England and Bavaria. Her first poetry book, mãtuhi | needle (VUP/Perceval Press, 2004), was co-published in New Zealand and in the US. Her second collection is kõiwi kõiwi | bone bone (VUP 2010). Hinemoana's recent awards and residencies include three months at the University of Iowa's International Writing Programme in 2010. She was one of 60 writers who represented New Zealand at the 2012 Frankfurt Bookfair.
Christine and Hinemoana's Taniwha album is available here.
Filed Under: Ruke Blog, Throat of These Hours (play) Tagged With: Christine White, Hinemoana Baker, J C Sturm, Laura Daly, Lorae Parry, Madeline McNamara, Marian Evans, Throat of These Hours, Women's Gallery
Throat Of These Hours: Muriel Rukeyser, Verifiable & Unverifiable
July 19, 2013 by mthunter22 Leave a Comment
Posted on July 19, 2013 by Marian Evans
When I am dead, even then,
I will still love you, I will wait in these poems,
When I am dead, even then
I am still listening to you.
I will be still making poems for you
out of silence;
silence will be falling into that silence,
it is building music.
'Why aren't you talking with people who knew Muriel Rukeyser?' a poet friend asks me. I explain. As a history graduate, an oral historian, a librarian, a lawyer and documentary maker of course I'm tempted to interview all of you who have stories to tell and to get myself to those Muriel Rukeyser files in the Library of Congress. Essays and poems about and for her, like those collected in How Shall We Tell Each Other of the Poet?, inform and enrich my understanding. But I'm convinced that to place her in Throat of These Hours (for stage and for radio) it is crucial that I focus on Muriel Rukeyser's own words. Fifteen months ago, a nourishing conversation with her generous son Bill Rukeyser encouraged me to risk this approach. Later, I found THEN. Its promises and its reference to building across silence gave me further confidence.
It's always rewarding to go from Muriel Rukeyser's poems to her prose (The Life of Poetry, The Orgy, Savage Coast, some essays). And to go back again, and see something that I hadn't noticed earlier or better understand something I've read before. But it's complicated. And I get nervous. What if I miss something fundamental about Muriel Rukeyser? What if I place her life and work in a context she'd hate? So from time to time I go back to what other people have written about her. And when I do, I find Muriel Rukeyser 'waiting' somewhere unexpected, exactly when I need her, providing some of the surprises and pleasures I mentioned in the last post.
Today, as I reflect on my research, it's a section from her essay The Education of a Poet. Describing two kinds of poems, it reaches me for a second time in Catherine Gander's new book Muriel Rukeyser and Documentary; The Poetics of Connection:
…the poems of unverifiable facts, based in dreams, in sex, in everything that can be given to other people only through the skill and strength by which it is given; and the other kind being the document, the poem that rests on material evidence. ("The Education of a Poet" (1976), in Sternberg, The Writer on Her Work, p. 226)
I laughed with delight when I read this. Yes! This explains how it works. It's obvious really. To build Muriel Rukeyser's presence in Throat of These Hours I use the unverifiable, which I gather from the skill and strength of her writing; and the verifiable that comes from elsewhere. And do the best I can with each of them.
One example of the unverifiable comes from The Speed of Darkness when Muriel Rukeyser speaks across a generation directly to me (yes, me!) and to every reader who is a poet (and from The Life of Poetry we know how inclusive her ideas about 'poet' are):
…thinking of the poet
yet unborn in this dark
who will be the throat of these hours.
No. Of those hours.
Who will speak these days,
if not I,
if not you?
If I trust the unverifiable fact that Muriel Rukeyser is speaking to me, the skill and strength of Muriel Rukeyser's lines compel me to risk entering an intimate yet public conversation, and to risk making errors of interpretation. Throat of These Hours is a tiny participation, a longer version of a tweet or a Facebook post that may or may not reach others. But because Muriel Rukeyser asks me "Who will speak these days/if not I, if not you?" I'm doing everything I can to speak these twenty-first century days as they affect some women artists' lives and work; and the pollution of water and breast milk. And – with Christine White – to transmit her question directly to theatre and radio audiences.
Other unverifiable facts come from THEN, amplified for me by Chris' composition (she performs her work-in-progress in the clip below). When I re-read, or hear sung, the promises in THEN: "I will still love you, I will wait in these poems… I am still listening to you… I will still be making poems for you/out of silence", the unverifiable facts that reach me are (again) that when Muriel Rukeyser wrote 'you' she spoke to every reader; and that she would support what I'm doing, even if my New Zealand eyes and ears and heart sometimes misunderstand hers. Her promises reassure me and strengthen my resolve.
I need this reassurance, as a woman writer and cultural activist who has spent many years searching among fragments and silences for a personal and cultural matrilineage. When I was born, my mother told me, she turned her face to the wall. She didn't want another child. She was an 'absent' mother throughout my early childhood; and we found each other 'difficult' until the last ten days of her life, when I accompanied her to her death. (My own mother-lack meant that I in turn was often an absent mother for my three young sons; remedying this later on has been challenging for us all.) And within the wider culture where I work, default reference to the predominant global literary and artistic patrilineage endures, even though New Zealand women writers now achieve equally with men (thanks in part to consistent advocacy from influential writers who are men, especially poet Bill Manhire, director until recently of the International Institute of Modern Letters). But since I found THEN, about a year ago, its handful of words gives me, at last, exactly what I need – a reliable connection to a matrilineage that is strong and complex and 'normal'. If I falter as I write Throat of These Hours, I re-read THEN or listen to Chris singing it. Renew the connection. And, encouraged, start again.
I've also found that I sometimes need confirmation when a single verifiable fact seems significant for me or for my characters. That's when I most want to investigate among those who knew Muriel Rukeyser, or among her unpublished documents. I've wondered for example about the parameters of Muriel Rukeyser's support for other women writers, because the need for women writers to support one another is a theme in Throat of These Hours. I read (in "On Muriel Rukeyser" in How Shall We tell Each Other of The Poet? p. 293) that Denise Levertov learned of her election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters from her friend Muriel, in their final telephone call. She later realised that Muriel had worked on her behalf for this election and for Grace Paley's election. Aha, I thought, she advocated for other women writers. But did she advocate only for friends? How far did she go?
In her beautiful essay "And Everything a Witness of The Buried Life" (How Shall We Tell Each Other of the Poet? pp. 6-7) Jane Cooper refers to another (rethought?) version of Muriel Rukeyser's statement about the two kinds of poetry, from the Preface to The Collected Poems (1978):
Here are…two kinds of reaching in poetry, one based on the document, the evidence itself; the other kind informed by the unverifiable fact, as in sex, dream, the parts of life in which we dive deep and sometimes–with strength of expression and skill and luck–reach that place where things are shared and we all recognise the secrets.
When I re-read this halfway through writing this post (it's taken a few weeks on and off) I had no memory of having read it before. And again I laughed with delight and recognition. Yes! For sure there's an element of luck involved in research when we dive deep and sometimes… reach that place where things are shared. And sometimes that luck involves documentary evidence. And through luck I learned more about Muriel Rukesyer's support of other women writers.
Wanting to sit with Muriel's voice for a while, in effect to visit her as a friend and witness, I spent a day listening to recordings on her page at Penn University's Penn Sound site. It was a day of pleasure, with an extended Lee Anderson interview and Muriel's readings of her poems, including one mislabelled The Speed of Darkness – another magnificent poem, one I've never read or heard before, about DNA. A joy to hear her speak, laugh, joke a little about 'Tantrum Buddhism'.
In the Lee Anderson interview, Muriel Rukeyser twice insists on having her say about women poets. In the first statement she speaks about the difficulty for women associated with the Beat Group. Muriel Rukeyser was familiar with how the group treated these women and the effect of this on the women. And she was determined to record what she knew.
There's one thing that struck me very much in San Francisco that I haven't heard talked about and that is the difficulty in the Beat Group, the difficulty for women, the difficulty in their attitude toward women too and toward anything that women might mean to them. It seems to me that in what they are doing now there is very little possibility of commitment of any kind including commitment to women, possible commitment for women and that this has been very painful, an agony for the women connected to the group.
So I learned that Muriel Rukeyser was staunch in her support of women writers. She would seize an opportunity within a general conversation to speak out about their (our) experience within a well-known group of predominantly male writers. She would use strong language as she did so.
In another segment, Lee Anderson asks:
…Aside from Rexroth, who has disowned his own followers, the Beat Generation, besides Robert Duncan, Ferlinghetti and Levertov, which of the poets do you think show most promise in the San Francisco area?
Muriel Rukeyser responds:
I think two people you haven't named are Josephine Miles [the interviewer laughs and says "She's not…" and Muriel speaks firmly over his – repeated – objection] and Mary Woods and these are not in that group at all, these are people who were in San Francisco and Berkeley before the Beat Generation came up or came in because a lot of them are of course refugees from New York…
I've often seen the little smiles and heard the little laughs that some influential men give when thoughtful women present their views of what matters in the literary and arts worlds. I've heard the interruptions and interjections that accompany those little smiles and laughs. These behaviours have been a constant in my life over many years. To hear Muriel Rukeyser speak in similar circumstances touched me deeply. Yay. As her assertive voice moves across Lee Anderson's interjection, it further verifies that Muriel Rukeyser extended her personal support for Grace Paley and Denise Levertov to other women writers. And that when she did this she met, at least once, with the same kind of opposition that exists in the twenty-first century. These recorded statements also – somehow – support the unverifiable fact that she speaks to me and to others like me in her poems and would understand and care about my characters' dilemmas. She shared aspects of their (our) experience.
Another example refers to the domestic, so often a complex issue for women artists. And certainly so for my characters. And for me. I don't iron much. But Thursday afternoons I walk up the hill behind my place, to visit a friend born in the same decade as Muriel Rukeyser, a selection of reading in my back pack for any downtime when my friend naps and there are no domestic tasks waiting for me. The other week, as I iron my friend's bed sheets – very soothing after my morning's work on the Throat of These Hours radio script – I wonder, as I do from time to time, about Muriel Rukeyser's domestic life. How did she manage all that she did and was? I imagine that she enjoyed eating. But did she like to cook? Did she like to create an orderly household? Did she iron? Could I ask Bill Rukesyer about this? Do I need to? Then, when I finish the ironing, I open my bag and take out Kate Daniels' "Searching/Not Searching: Writing the Biography of Muriel Rukeyser" (Poetry East 16-17, Spring/Summer 1985, pp. 70-93).
The essay engages me deeply, on a winter afternoon high above Wellington Harbour. So much to think about. And there (on pp. 74-75) waits an immediate partial answer to my questions.
I know I like, in addition to her stoicism, her inconsistency, the way neatness in all things evaded her. I like the corroboration of my intuitive guesses about this when I find an old friend saying that Muriel did not know how to fold her clothes, that the neat and unwrinkled folding of clothes mystified her. I love this: that she did not reject the importance of unwrinkled clothing but approached it as a mystery.
Another wonderful surprise. And I smile at 'intuitive guesses', 'corroboration'. I like these terms that relate to the unverifiable. And then, on the next page, Kate Daniels writes:
[Muriel Rukeyser chose] to protect her ability to work, to protect the circumstances in which it flourished… she would not choose between motherhood and writing poems.
These are choices that Tina my protagonist has to consider, too. I'm relieved to have this confirmation that Muriel Rukeyser would understand how hard it can be for women artists to make these choices and deeply grateful to have this information from Kate Daniels, who's researched the documents.
Through this kind of luck, I continue to build Muriel Rukeyser's presence in Throat of These Hours and hope that in small ways I will reach "that place where things are shared and we all recognise the secrets". And tomorrow Chris White, Lorae Parry and Madeline McNamara come to read the second draft of Throat of These Hours as a radio play.
Throat of These Hours blog and Facebook.
Filed Under: Ruke Blog, Throat of These Hours (play) Tagged With: Catherine Gander, Christine White, Denise Levertov, Grace Paley, Jane Cooper, Kate Daniels, Lee Anderson, Lorae Parry, Madeline McNamara, Marian Evans, Penn Sound, Throat of These Hours
Throat of These Hours
June 6, 2013 by mthunter22 4 Comments
Posted on June 6, 2013 by Marian Evans
from The Speed of Darkness
My night awake
staring at the broad rough jewel
the copper roof across the way
Throat of These Hours is two plays, one for stage and one for radio. Both now in second draft, they have long-ago beginnings, when a lover gave me a photocopy of The Speed of Darkness. I don't remember why she gave me the poem, but it stayed in my file box of precious documents when I moved to France with my youngest son, to Texas on my own, back to New Zealand and between its two main islands. I don't keep stuff; I own only a dozen books and when I accumulate more I give them away. So now and then I took my copy of The Speed of Darkness out of its box and asked Do I Need This? Read it again. Got its thump to my heart again. Put it back in the box.
Then, last year, a friend suggested that I write a play. I'd written only one, ever, a short exercise during my scriptwriting MA studies, at Victoria University's International Institute of Modern Letters. My apprenticeship was in screenplays and my Creative Writing PhD (for which I wrote three feature-length screenplays) was about screenplay development for women writers and gender inequities in the state funding system. But I decided to try a full-length play, partly because I'm interested in media convergence. What elements are necessary in and unique to a literary form and what aren't? Why write a play rather than a film or a game or a book of essays or a comic or a collection of poems? And I thought of my tattered photocopy of The Speed of Darkness with its rusty staple. I'll investigate why it means so much to me, I decided. I couldn't have made a better choice. The Speed of Darkness, other writing by and about Muriel Rukeyser and the writing itself challenge, nurture and transform me.
Throat of These Hours is set in a present-day radio station in Wellington New Zealand. Tina-the-techie, in her late fifties, used to be a backing singer and – when she could – a composer. A single mother, a lesbian, whose grand-daughter Kate has recently come to live with her. One of those women artists whose interrupted creativity is the subject of Tillie Olsen's Silences (1978). Looking for cultural mothers to learn from, she rediscovers Muriel Rukeyser's poetry and sets some of it to music. Early in the play she says:
I sat down with Muriel, 'beautiful Muriel, mother of everyone' as fellow poet Anne Sexton called her. Here I am Muriel, I said. Another single mother. A single grandmother now. And I want to become a throat of these hours– I want to learn from you. From your poems. From your fiction. From your other prose. From what people write about you. I want to latch onto your breast. Absorb courage from you. Here I am. Help me.
The stage play is influenced by a New Zealand classic, actor and writer Cathy Downes' solo show The Case of Katherine Mansfield (1978) a portrayal of Katherine Mansfield that draws on her journal, letters and stories. In Throat of These Hours, Tina struggles to understand Muriel Rukeyser's life and work and to develop a show about them, while she makes a living, cares for her grand-daughter and deals with anxiety about her health. The reappearance of her former nemesis, radio host Meredith, after twenty-five years' absence, adds more complications. Once an activist and a well-regarded poet, childless Meredith stopped writing and focused on a broadcasting career and is recovering from breast cancer.
Muriel Rukeyser is not a character in the play, but she is ever-present, in the poems and in excerpts from prose – The Life of Poetry and various essays. Tina shares these with Meredith, with her grand-daughter Kate and with Grace, the much younger entrepreneurial host of the Mother's Milk programme, who makes and sells breast milk yoghurt and has a concern for toxicity in breast milk that matches Meredith's concern with abuse of water.
Composer Christine White and I presented a session on the stage play as a work-in-progress at the Rukeyser Symposium. It included a filmed reading of three scenes from the first half of the play to show the arc of the relationship between Tina and Meredith, and film of Chris performing two of her compositions-in-progress. The first of these was for the stanza from The Speed of Darkness placed at the top of this post. Responding to the viscerality of Muriel Rukeyser's poems from Tina's own musical starting point – singers like Janis Joplin, Marianne Faithfull, Patti Smith – it begins the play. Clips of the scene where Tina and Meredith meet again and Chris' performance of The Speed of Darkness are below.
Chris has written about her work on the poems here (re influences) and here, where she says:
The play explores two women who, for various reasons have struggled with their art-making…Meredith has long since given up on writing poetry, and Tina is trying to discover her own voice through following the writings of Muriel and setting them to music.
As this is a central theme in the play, and seemed to be a theme in Muriel's own writings, I thought it is an obvious instrument. Its use in the presentation recording isn't as subtle as it could be in the context of the whole play.
I think now of the film The Sixth Sense, and a documentary about the film. In terms of sound design, the breath was used in layers – many many layers…human breath, animal breath – sometimes pitch shifted and slowed down – always running almost as if in the subconscious of the film – creating an undercurrent signal of the afterlife.
Chris' second composition so far, for Then, is musically very different and will appear in a later post, with the other two scenes from the filmed reading. Then ends the play and shows how Muriel Rukeyser's influence and the events of the play have transformed Tina's life and work. On days when I fear that This Project Is Beyond Me, I listen to Chris' version of Then and it helps renew my resolve.
Although the discussion with Rukeyser Symposium participants was brief, it was very helpful to me as I moved (I thought) into the third draft of the stage play. But throughout the research and writing processes so far, there have been surprises. And after that brief discussion and conversations with others, including those involved in the filming process, I decided to write Throat of These Hours as a radio play before I engaged with the stage play's next draft. To make something very sound-oriented, simple and spacious, fifty-five minutes long, before moving back to the longer multi-sensory and complex stage play. My next post in a month's time will be about this and other Muriel Rukeyser surprises. And some of the deep pleasures.
Selected Symposium clips
Reading from the stage play-in-progress: Tina and Meredith meet again
From The Speed of Darkness, composition/performance by Christine White
The Actors
Lorae Parry MNZM is one of New Zealand's best-known playwrights, with five full-length published plays. One of them, Eugenia, has been performed in New Zealand, London, Sydney, and at the State University of New York (2012). She has co-written several other plays, including Sex Drive with Pinky Agnew. An award-winning actress and director, she has worked in theatre, television and radio and is legendary for her comedy performances as Prime Minister Helen Clark. Lorae recently returned from five years in London where she worked as a director and filmmaker and wrote and directed her most recent plays, Kate and Mrs Jones and Bloomsbury Women and the Wild Colonial Girl. She has an MA in Scriptwriting from the International Institute of Modern Letters.
Madeline McNamara has a Masters in Theatre Arts (Directing) from Toi Whakaari/ The New Zealand Drama School and Victoria University and is a performer, director, teacher and producer of original theatre work by women. She co-founded Magdalena Aotearoa, a network of women in contemporary theatre with Sally Rodwell in 1997 and was co-artistic director of the Magdalena Aotearoa International Festival of Women's Performance (1999). Recent directing credits include At Circle's End – A Drama about Death and Diversity (2011). She is co-artistic director of Acting Up Charitable Trust, an organisation that provides training and performance opportunities in the fields of theatre, film and music for people with learning disabilities. Currently, Madeline is an actor with Jo Randerson's Barbarian Productions, developing Jo's latest work White Elephant.
Throat of These Hours blog and brand new Facebook page.
Filed Under: Ruke Blog Tagged With: Christine White, Lorae Parry, Madeline McNamara, Marian Evans, motherhood, Muriel Rukeyser, Throat of These Hours
Copyright © 2020 · Elisabeth Däumer and Bill Rukeyser · site by Organic Bytes


Payroll deductions to the following organisations are available. To authorise the Payroll Section to commence a deduction you can either send an e-mail to payroll@csu.edu.au or forward a signed memorandum to the Payroll Section, Division of Finance, Wagga Wagga.
Please include your name, staff number and any relevant reference on your authorisation. For further information and brochures, please phone the Payroll Section on 32267 or 32308.
Employees may have up to four fixed amount disbursements to banks, building societies or credit unions, and must have one disbursement record to deposit the balance of their pay. Disbursement to MasterCard, Bankcard, Visa or any other credit card is NOT possible as account numbers can have a maximum of nine numeric digits.


text:
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

namespace FlowSimulation.Helpers.MVVM
{
    public class MVVMHelper
    {
        public static System.Windows.Window GetActiveWindow()
        {
            foreach (System.Windows.Window win in System.Windows.Application.Current.Windows)
            {
                if (win.IsActive)
                {
                    return win;
                }
            }
            return null;
        }
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Home » Business » Consensys blames COVID-19 for layoff of 90 employees
Consensys blames COVID-19 for layoff of 90 employees
Business 21 April 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic is making for a convenient excuse for some businesses who were struggling before, but now have the perfect excuse to downsize. ConsenSys, the struggling Ethereum incubator, has just announced 90 people would be losing their jobs, reducing their total headcount by 14%.
If you were to believe the spin put out by the incubator, this massive layoff is entirely due to the economic uncertainty created by the virus. "The global COVID-19 pandemic has deeply impacted the world's health and livelihood," a spokesperson told CoinDesk. "ConsenSys has carefully analyzed its business in relation to what is occurring globally. Like most of its peers, the company is seeing extraordinary uncertainty in the market, with businesses rebalancing priorities and reevaluating timelines."
Despite the layoffs, the company insists that none of its key operational functions will suffer. That will help the company on its current focus, "crisis-related opportunities such as Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), emergency loans disbursement solutions, supply chains for personal protective equipment (PPE), and related identity solutions."
The employees layed off will receive two months' severance pay, and ConsenSys will help them with career transition services, although that may be a tall order as millions are now out of work due to COVID-19, and competition will be fierce.
While this round of cuts is being blamed on the unique situation the world now finds itself in, Consensys was been cutting employees before there was a world crisis to blame. In February, the company cut another 14% of its total headcount. Where the company began the year with almost 850 employees, it now has just 550.
Although it's undeniable that COVID-19 has devastated the world economy, Consensys' troubles could be seen as much as a year ago. When it announced in April, 2019 that it was seeking as much as $200 million in outside investment, the company only had $21 million in revenue, with the only profitable piece of the firm being its consultancy service. Perhaps realizing that the company couldn't achieve any of its ambitious goals with the struggling Ethereum blockchain, the company only publically received $10 million from the SK Group.
Business 1 hour ago
Business 17 January 2022
Judge orders SEC to turn over Hinman's email on Ether in Ripple case
Judge Sarah Netburn ruled that the email isn't protected by deliberative process privilege as it was a personal view, but denied Ripple access to other docs.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


You probably naturally fall into one of two international business development categories - at least roughly. You may either "seed" or "solo." And depending on which basic approach is comfortable, you probably embrace the idea of an international business consultant - or reject it. Either way, you've probably got an opinion on it.
A capable international business consultant (they really need to have an executive management perspective, not just years of mid-level experience) will help you make more money. Enterprise valuation enhancement, tax reduction, channel optimization and target market selection are areas in which an insightful export consultant will boost revenue, profit and wealth.
At the same time an expert international business consultant will intuitively help to husband your resources. International sales growth is a marathon. Folks that really know the process understand which investments are critical (e.g. travel) and which aren't. Spending a bunch of money on L/Cs that drive you nuts and frustrate your customers? Perhaps an appropriate foreign receivables insurance policy would save a bundle. And of course, picking the right markets and channel model are fundamental skills which, if done correctly, prevent huge wastes of precious resources.
Risk mitigation is a third are in which an international business consultant will bring value. There's no substitute for experience and savvy in this area. (Read a recent piece by Consilium's Ed Marsh from InternationalMan.com on FCPA considerations.) From proper application of Incoterms 2010 to global medical evacuation insurance and export compliance, they should bring a breadth of expertise to mitigate the many risks inherent in international business.
Are you open to assistance?
The question is always if you are willing to be helped. If you "have all the answers" then it's not worth the investment. On the other hand if you know your product and your company particularly well, but recognize that others bring comparable expertise in their areas of specialization and seek that expertise to help you succeed, then an international business consultant is probably a dynamite investment.
Want to learn how Consilium Global Business Advisors helps companies make money, save money and manage risks? Contact us to talk about your situation. And download our free whitepaper "Six Keys to Selecting the Right Export Advisor."


With its connected-car platform, KT will work with Kakao Mobility to develop smart-mobility services, KT announced in a statement Monday.
Based on the partnership, the two companies plan to cooperate on developing smarter mobility experiences from navigation to chauffeur services and a service that helps drivers find a parking spot through GiGA Drive, KT's connected-car platform service, and Kakao Mobility's Kakao T, a taxi-hailing app that also offers other mobility-related services.
The cooperation will allow the connecting Kakao T to link directly GiGA Drive, which is similar to Google Android Auto. This, for example, will allow a driver to call a chauffeur after drinking heavily or help a driver find a parking spot without picking up a phone.
KT and Kakao Mobility are also reviewing methods of connecting Kakao T services to KT's 5G-based autonomous vehicle and vehicle technical management systems.
KT offers connected-car platform services to 14 companies and controls 46 percent of the connected-car market in Korea, according to a January report from the Ministry of Science and ICT. Approximately 1.86 million connected vehicles are operating in the country.
Kakao T offers its services to 22 million users.


If you love the exotic and unique style, then you will adore the exclusive Svelte collection. Crosswater proves its glamorous repertoire by introducing a wide range of bathroom brassware through its Svelte collection. Its smart and discreet design elements make any piece from this collection a marvellous addition to any modern styled bathroom. This diverse range includes everything you could need from basin mixer taps to thermostatic shower valves and bath filler. Designed to incorporate thermostatic technology for safe showering, valves from Svelte can be purchased with or without a two-way diverter in landscape or portrait options. Thermostatic valves, from the brand, has been constructed using quality solid brass, are suitable for either a fixed head and shower rail or shower head and bath filler tap. Glamorous style and quiet luxury come together in the Svelte collection. The ultra-modern slim spout of these taps offers a waterfall style flow of water making for a truly calm and stress relieving bathroom experience. Pieces such as bath filler can be used for a unique design element. Any of these below-listed brassware's with their sleek style, and polished chrome finish will add a designer touch to any bathroom.


text:
Transformations in economic security during old age in Korea: The implications for public-pension reform
Young Jun Choi
The South Korean National Pension scheme was instituted in 1988 and now covers all private-sector employees and the self-employed. Since the financial crisis of 1997, however, it has become controversial and is under considerable pressure, not least because of the perceived financial implications of the country's rapidly ageing population. Predictions of financial shortfalls or 'unsustainability' have prompted calls for severe 'downsizing' of the scheme. The debate on the reform of the scheme has been dominated by the need to respond to demographic change in ways that assist the national economy, invariably by reducing social expenditure. The debate, however, has given little attention to the social or welfare functions of the pension scheme, though the material insecurity of older people has been exacerbated by major changes in the labour market and the family. This paper details recent socio-demographic changes in Korea and discusses their implications for old-age security and pension reform. It argues that public-pension schemes should be developed to strengthen social protection against the insecurities of old-age, that intra-generational redistribution should be at the core of the reformed arrangements, and that the introduction of a comprehensive non-contributory pension scheme should be seriously considered.
Ageing and Society
Published - 2006 Jul 1
Old Age Assistance
population development
social expenditures
national economy
Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
Choi, Y. J. (2006). Transformations in economic security during old age in Korea: The implications for public-pension reform. Ageing and Society, 26(4), 549-565. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0144686X06004879
Choi, Young Jun. / Transformations in economic security during old age in Korea : The implications for public-pension reform. In: Ageing and Society. 2006 ; Vol. 26, No. 4. pp. 549-565.
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Man is killing the planet at speeds millions of time faster than the Great Dying of 250 millions years ago thanks to environmental degradation, resource depletion and fossil fuel production. With this not withstanding, BRT has often stated earth will recover but for us, the question of survival is questionable at best.
BRT has "waxed" poetic about climate change for years as it is the existential threat we face, a catastrophe of our own making.
destruction of the natural environment, especially when willfully done.
"their crime is nothing less than attempted ecocide"


JCD Dental college provides conveyance facilities for its students residing in nearby areas. Well maintained and air conditioned buses have been kept for providing the services. The buses cover the range of approximately 100 kms from the college.


Another exciting project is underway downtown with the East Grand Avenue Complete Streets Conversion project. This pilot, taking place between Second and East Pennsylvania avenues, provides central Iowa residents with a great early look at what Des Moines could provide with better and safer access for everyone. The pilot includes protected bike lanes with more street parking in a unique, safer location. I encourage you to visit the area on foot or on bike to experience in person how we will make Des Moines more pedestrian and bike friendly.
As downtown continues to become more vibrant, walkability and connectivity will continue to play a vital role in our success. We know that promoting walking provides a wide variety of benefits to our community, including better health, more street life, community growth and business growth. Walkability is critical to all ages in our community — from our children as we work to make them more active, to our millennials who embrace a future without so much auto travel, as well as our seniors who want to be active and independent.
April 15, 2019, 1:43 p.m.


PS Vita – Optional Update Coming !
I wonder if it's just bug fixes ?
Silent Hill: Book of Memories (PSV) Comic-Con screenshots !
Just in time for Father's Day and Graduation, Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc. today unveiled the launch month for METAL GEAR SOLID HD Collection, coming to the Playstation®Vita system this June. From the critically acclaimed director, Hideo Kojima, METAL GEAR SOLID HD Collection includes two beloved classics, METAL GEAR SOLID 2: Sons of Liberty and METAL GEAR SOLID 3: Snake Eater. Featuring stunning, upgraded graphics from the original releases on the PlayStation®2, both titles include Transfarring, where players can transfer save data from their PlayStation®3 METAL GEAR SOLID HD Collection to their PlayStation®Vita system and start the action from where they left off.
Metal Gear Solid HD Collection for the PlayStation®Vita allows fans to experience the series like never before with optimized controls that take full advantage of the Vita's unique touch-screen and rear touchpad. Using just their fingers, gamers can zoom in on captivating cut-scenes, peek around corners, interrogate enemies, cycle through weapons/items, as well as perform quick attacks with their knife.
METAL GEAR SOLID HD Collection will be available for the Playstation®Vita system this June.
PERSONA 4 GOLDEN (PSV) Some remastered screenshots & Box art !
A remastered version of the 'classic' original is coming this 'fall' in North America.
Big List of Game Releases – North America – VGChartz.
Select "System Update" under the "Settings" menu and download the firmware directly to your PS Vita over Wi-Fi.
Connect your PS Vita to a PS3 or a PC/Mac and update via Content Manager.
PS Vita System Software Update (v1.65) – PlayStation Blog.