Ru Freeman's Blog, page 4

Friday, October 4th, 2016

Reading Series

Fresno State University

Details: TBA

Electric Literature asked a few of us authors to write about the life of David Bowie. Here are a few samples from some of us (below). The full series can be read there.

Sasha Hemon:

“The greatest thing about Heroes was that I didn’t understand it; I couldn’t enter it to appropriate it. It was never going to be about me. Which is why it never got boring and I’ve never stopped listening to it. It became a presence in my life, a radiant influence. Because of its strangeness, I’m now aware, I started formulating to myself what a great work of art is and could be. I began understanding that Heroes is one of the twentieth century’s masterpieces, and that “Heroes” is the greatest song of all time. More importantly, I learned that a great work of art can never be spent, it never stops meaning, retaining a core that outlives the circumstances of its creation, constantly changing while always staying the same.”

Marie-Helen Bertino:

“Unlike rock bands who can hide among their number, when David Bowie took the stage, he did so alone. All eyes on him. That he decided to place assumed personas between the audience and him makes sense to those of us who understand wanting to simultaneously shine and hide. Beautiful buffers. It’s no wonder that practitioners of the solitary art of writing palpably worship artists like him, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan… It’s no wonder that when one dies we feel like part of us dies. I’m writing this for Bowie because when we lose Bob Dylan you won’t be able to find me.”

Mine:

“You know now that he believed singing to people he could not see moved him deeply and that he did not expect to be able to repeat the experience. You shrug and think that doing one brave and beautiful thing should be enough for any artist. You are sitting in a country far from the place where you were born, wrapped in a blanket and looking out on waters from the Pacific, thinking about compassion and literature, when you hear the news. You close your eyes and turn on “Rock ’N Roll Suicide,” all quiet in the inside of your head. You imagine hands reaching all the way across the world. Gimme your hands, you say, gimme your hands ‘cause you’re wonderful.

I’m Buddhist, and grew up that way, but with the lovely influence of other people’s religions pervading my life. A Roman Catholic Convent and a Christian Missionary School, many notations on a prayer book of novenas said at the All Saint’s Church in Borella as well as numerous coconuts split and baskets proffered at Hindu Temples, as well as the invocations to Lord Ganesh when things went missing in life. That is all in addition to the Buddhist temples we visited each Poya day, and the lamps lit at my grandmother’s home each evening, all things that appear and disappear in the books and stories I’ve written as an adult. But my belief in Christmas was something else altogether.

Christmas, was a time to wish the entire galaxy consisting of friends and family nothing less than a “Merry Christmas & A Happy New Year.” Always these words, always the same way. Nobody joined in the mayhem with as much enthusiasm as my mother, who took me to Missaka Poth Saappuwa (Missaka Book Store), to look through the baskets of cards to buy individually selected cards for each person on my list. My list was longer than the entire family’s combined. Meaning, the people my mother made sure the entire family wished, since my brothers did not buy or send cards, and were routinely bemused to find cards sent to each other signed by themselves when they neither recalled the purchase nor wrote the loving words inside!

Yeah, my list was long. It went from Angeline to Zainab and nobody could be left out. Not Marcel or Majella, Kamani/Kama (the cousins we always mentioned together) or Kumu, not Romola or Romaine, not Aruni or Anusha. Not anybody. I loved finding these cards and sending them and receiving cards in return. My mother, who hardly had much discretionary income, somehow always indulged this madness in me – as she indulged much else that was frivolous in me (love of shoes and clothes, parties, writing, all the things that still lighten the harsher aspects of my personality).

I miss her all year long, every day, many times a day. I wish her back here with me, but I also take comfort in how vividly she endures in my life because I know this is how we all endure in the lives of the people we take care of. I think of all the caring she did for me even as I do that same caring in different ways in this faraway country. I think of her voice when I hear a middle daughter squealing with delight when she hears ‘Whispering Hope,’ a song she associates with her mother, but which I associate with mine. Somewhere in the singing of remembered songs I am both listening to my mother and singing for my daughter, an unimaginably beautiful melding of generations passed on and those yet to come.

And at Christmas, I hear all the familiar songs as though she were here. In the first years of her passing I heard this particular hymn with deep sadness. It hit me hard that the words of this hymn consoled a very real pain, and that her yearning for rescue was heartfelt, a rescue that would also be a taking of leave from me, her daughter, and my non-card-sending brothers, and that all those sentiments somehow reflected poorly on the three of us, but most especially me.

You can’t take any of it back, of course, and it is something I sometimes accept. Mostly, it seems, at Christmas when something of the optimism and happiness that swept over her during this season seems to come unfiltered back to me. On those occasions I hear this version my mother loved so much, and a sweet peace descends on earth momentarily for me too.

It’s been seven months. Rats. But then again, Palestine, Paris, London, Sri Lanka, my college room-mate’s wedding, teaching in Colorado, a book launch and more travel, I’ve been a touch busy. Still, this struck me today, so this is a brief ode to a few things.

First, this: the last rose of summer. Which makes me want to sing in my mother’s voice, a song she loved so well.

The Last Rose of Summer was written by the Irish poet Thomas Moore in 1805 in Kilkenny, Ireland. It is set to a traditional tune called “Aislean an Oigfear” or “The Young Man’s Dream.” My mother didn’t sing it this high, but she sang it sweetly.

Second, if I am forced to, I can bake. And yes, it may have come out of a box — but honestly, if I’m not ploughing, sowing, and reaping, it’s all out of a box, right? — but it was good. And I used the handy tip, and they came out alright and the house smelled warm and lovely when the door bell rang. And the incredulous laughter at my effort and the result was genuine and I was perfect for an afternoon.

Finally, this came to an end. It was bought when I was still in college, and a wise landlady had told us that we should not be in a hurry to buy “stuff,” because it would all accumulate to no purpose soon enough. She approved of this purchase, for $5 at a flea market. It has traveled many distances, from apartments to owned homes (though if you’re killing yourself to claim “ownership,” it is good to consider who owns whom, right?) and campsites. It has fed all our friends, everyone in the immediate and extended family more than once, and its delights were appreciated by people in opposite parts of the world. It has been host to fish-based disasters, bacon galore, and thousands of pancakes. It was used by both an older and a younger generation. And now it is done. Goodbye old friend, and goodbye to a time when getting-by was good enough.

And so, a poem.

Home

— Edgar Albert Guest

It takes a heap o’ livin’ in a house t’ make it home,

A heap o’ sun an’ shadder, an’ ye sometimes have t’ roam

Afore ye really ’preciate the things ye lef’ behind,

An’ hunger fer ’em somehow, with ’em allus on yer mind.

It don’t make any differunce how rich ye get t’ be,

How much yer chairs an’ tables cost, how great yer luxury;

It ain’t home t’ ye, though it be the palace of a king,

Until somehow yer soul is sort o’ wrapped round everything.

Home ain’t a place that gold can buy or get up in a minute;

Afore it’s home there’s got t’ be a heap o’ livin’ in it;

Within the walls there’s got t’ be some babies born, and then

Right there ye’ve got t’ bring ‘em up t’ women good, an’ men;

And gradjerly, as time goes on, ye find ye wouldn’t part

With anything they ever used—they’ve grown into yer heart:

The old high chairs, the playthings, too, the little shoes they wore

Ye hoard; an’ if ye could ye’d keep the thumbmarks on the door.

Ye’ve got t’ weep t’ make it home, ye’ve got t’ sit an’ sigh

An’ watch beside a loved one’s bed, an’ know that Death is nigh;

An’ in the stillness o’ the night t’ see Death’s angel come,

An’ close the eyes o’ her that smiled, an’ leave her sweet voice dumb.

Fer these are scenes that grip the heart, an’ when yer tears are dried,

Ye find the home is dearer than it was, an’ sanctified;

An’ tuggin’ at ye always are the pleasant memories

O’ her that was an’ is no more—ye can’t escape from these.

Ye’ve got t’ sing an’ dance fer years, ye’ve got t’ romp an’ play,

An’ learn t’ love the things ye have by usin’ ’em each day;

Even the roses ’round the porch must blossom year by year

Afore they ’come a part o’ ye, suggestin’ someone dear

Who used t’ love ’em long ago, an’ trained ’em jes’ t’ run

The way they do, so’s they would get the early mornin’ sun;

Ye’ve got t’ love each brick an’ stone from cellar up t’ dome:

It takes a heap o’ livin’ in a house t’ make it home.

Philip Weiss, who attended the launch of Extraordinary Rendition: (American) Writers on Palestine, at the Center for Fiction, covered the event for Mondoweiss. Here is an excerpt.

“In yet another sign that solidarity with Palestinians is now a central political value of liberal/left American culture, about 150 people jammed a room in the Center for Fiction in Manhattan a week ago to hear authors read from a new book, a literary collection called Extraordinary Rendition: (American) Writers on Palestine. Below you will see several videos I made of the writers.”

The Center for Fiction released the videos of the event. You can view them at these links:

Part 1 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMTIw...

Part 2 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8vWv...

The Middle East Monitor did a write-up of the anthology I edited, Extraordinary Rendition: (American) Writers on Palestine, which is up on their site. Here’s an excerpt:

“I didn’t want it to be for and against because frankly I don’t think it is against human beings anywhere even in Israel,” explains Freeman. “It is actually as human beings here saying this is inhumane treatment and we are going to write about what we see… it isn’t taking a side, it is speaking for humanity and I think there is a distinction there.”

Freeman does believe that it is a duty to write about those who have been deliberately silenced: “My goal is not to have a fight with every person who disagrees, but to gather the people who might feel differently and have them speak. I think that writers should speak because we expect this world to pay attention to the things we say so it might improve us to pay attention to the world also and to do for it what we can. I don’t by any means think this book is going to stop the demolishing of the Bedouin villages or the arrest of the children, but it is a way of changing a corner of the world where we have some power to change something and I believe it is the responsibility of every person to do that in whatever place they find themselves.”

Thursday, June 18

7:00pm in UTC+02

Librairie L’Humeur Vagabonde

Paris, France