Roman Payne's Blog, page 2

[image error]Roman Payne (b. 1977) is a novelist and poet currently living in political exile in Africa, in the kingdom of Morocco.  Payne coined the famous word “wanderess” and is the author of five novels including, “The Wanderess”; which, since its publication in 2013,  has influenced art and cultures all over the world.  In the East, the famous Bollywood designer Masaba Gupta used Payne’s novel as the inspiration for her “Wanderess” collection which opened India’s Fashion Week in 2015.  In the West, “The Wanderess” has been the inspiration for everything from art, to European films, to pop music in America.   The pop star Halsey, who sold-out Madison Square Garden with songs like “Hurricane”—a song based on a quote from Payne’s novel—credits “The Wanderess” as one of her greatest inspirations while writing “Badlands,” the debut album that launched her to fame.  Halsey chose this Roman Payne quote for her song:

 

 

“She was free in her wildness. She was a wanderess, a drop of free water. She belonged to no man and to no city.”

 

 

And the following quote by Roman Payne became one of the mantras of billionaire Richard Branson, who named it one of his “top ten favorite quotes about finding happiness”:

 

 

“You must give everything to make your life as beautiful as the dreams that dance in your imagination.”

 

 

Although Payne’s greatest artistic achievements are his novels, he is better known to the world as a poet.  Countless works of art have been based on his poems and quotes.  The author said that one of the things he loves most about being a novelist/poet is the numerous photos sent to him from people around the world who have tattooed his poetry on their bodies.

 

 

Payne is a controversial figure in that he is currently exiled in Muslim Morocco where he is forbidden to leave kingdom until he is tried for treason by the king (Mohammed VI).  Both the US Congress and State Department have failed so far in obtaining the novelist’s release from Morocco.  Payne is spending his days of exile in the souks of the ancient Medina of Marrakech,.

 

 

Roman Payne is known as an adventurer, and the foremost “novelist on wandering.” His novels and poems are the favorites of other wanderers and world travelers.

 

The forty year-old author spent the first half of his life in America (mostly in Seattle where he was born and raised), while he spent his second 20 years wandering Europe and Africa.  He first expatriated to Paris where he lived for fifteen years in the neighborhood of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.  The next three years were spent in Athens, Greece; mainland Spain and the Canary Islands.  Payne moved to Marrakech in February of 2016 and is currently finishing his sixth novel based on his life there.

 

Although Payne writes in English, his 15 years living in Paris where he spoke entirely in French, has greatly influenced his work, giving it a unique Latinate quality and inimitable voice. The themes of his quotes and prose explore love and sexuality, travel and the life of a wanderer (or wanderess), and the struggle to live, what he calls, “the poetic life.” He is heavily influenced by Homeric Epic, as well as 18th and 19th Century French and European literature.

 

Payne is a beloved writer by feminists and women in general because his inspirational words to women remind them that they too, like men, only have one life to live as far as we know, thus they too deserve to experience every single adventure that life can offer them.  He receives a lot of letters from women who write that they found the courage to wander to remote countries after reading quores from him like this one: “Never did the world make a queen of a girl who hides in houses and dreams without travelling” (“Love of Europa”).

 

This is what Halsey wrote about Payne:

 

“I stumbled upon this book when I was a teenager and its words helped to shape my will to be unapologetic, to be unbound by the perimeters of a single place. To write a song like Hurricane. To be like, The Wanderess.” – Halsey, March 2016

Roman Payne (b. 1977) is a novelist and poet currently living in political exile in Africa, in the kingdom of Morocco. Payne coined the famous word “wanderess” and is the author of five novels including, “The Wanderess”; which, since its publication in 2013, has influenced art and cultures all over the world. In the East, the famous Bollywood designer Masaba Gupta used Payne’s novel as the inspiration for her “Wanderess” collection which opened India’s Fashion Week in 2015. In the West, “The Wanderess” has been the inspiration for everything from art, to European films, to pop music in America. The pop star Halsey, who sold-out Madison Square Garden with songs like “Hurricane”—a song based on a quote from Payne’s novel—credits “The Wanderess” as one of her greatest inspirations while writing “Badlands,” the debut album that launched her to fame. Halsey chose this Roman Payne quote for her song:


“She was free in her wildness. She was a wanderess, a drop of free water. She belonged to no man and to no city.”


And the following quote by Roman Payne became one of the mantras of billionaire Richard Branson, who named it one of his “top ten favorite quotes about finding happiness”:


“You must give everything to make your life as beautiful as the dreams that dance in your imagination.”


Although Payne’s greatest artistic achievements are his novels, he is better known to the world as a poet. Countless works of art have been based on his poems and quotes. The author said that one of the things he loves most about being a novelist/poet is the numerous photos sent to him from people around the world who have tattooed his poetry on their bodies.


Payne is a controversial figure in that he is currently exiled in Muslim Morocco where he is forbidden to leave kingdom until he is tried for treason by the king (Mohammed VI). Both the US Congress and State Department have failed so far in obtaining the novelist’s release from Morocco. Payne is spending his days of exile in the souks of the ancient Medina of Marrakech,.


Roman Payne is known as an adventurer, and the foremost “novelist on wandering.” His novels and poems are the favorites of other wanderers and world travelers.


The forty year-old author spent the first half of his life in America (mostly in Seattle where he was born and raised), while he spent his second 20 years wandering Europe and Africa. He first expatriated to Paris where he lived for fifteen years in the neighborhood of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The next three years were spent in Athens, Greece; mainland Spain and the Canary Islands. Payne moved to Marrakech in February of 2016 and is currently finishing his sixth novel based on his life there.


Although Payne writes in English, his 15 years living in Paris where he spoke entirely in French, has greatly influenced his work, giving it a unique Latinate quality and inimitable voice. The themes of his quotes and prose explore love and sexuality, travel and the life of a wanderer (or wanderess), and the struggle to live, what he calls, “the poetic life.” He is heavily influenced by Homeric Epic, as well as 18th and 19th Century French and European literature.



Payne is a beloved writer by feminists and women in general because his inspirational words to women remind them that they too, like men, only have one life to live as far as we know, thus they too deserve to experience every single adventure that life can offer them. He receives a lot of letters from women who write that they found the courage to wander to remote countries after reading quores from him like this one: “Never did the world make a queen of a girl who hides in houses and dreams without travelling” (“Love of Europa”).



This is what Halsey wrote about Payne:



“I stumbled upon this book when I was a teenager and its words helped to shape my will to be unapologetic, to be unbound by the perimeters of a single place. To write a song like Hurricane. To be like, The Wanderess.” - Halsey, March 2016

THE WINE OF A WOMAN (by Roman Payne)

 
Ô, s he came to my bed

and begged me with sighs

not to tempt her towards passion

nor actions unwise.

.

I told her I’d spare her

and kissed her closed eyes,

then unbraided her body

of its clothing disguise

.

While our bodies were nude

bathed in candlelight fine

I devoured her mouth,

tender lips divine;

and I drank through her thighs

her feminine wine.

 

Ô, the wine of a woman

from heaven is sent,

more perfect than all

that a man can invent.

.

– Roman Payne (October, 2016, Marrakech)

“I once had a love who folded secrets between her thighs like napkins


and concealed memories in the valley of her breasts..”

[image error]

Roman Payne (b. 1977) coined the famous word “wanderess” and is the author of the world-renowned novel, “The Wanderess.”  He is best known for his poetry, although critics consider his five novels his greatest achievement.  Payne is a controversial novelist in that he is currently living in exile in Africa, in Muslim Morocco, where the government has seized his passports and forbids him to leave the country.

 

Roman Payne’s novels and poems are the favorites of wanderers and vagabonds.  He himself wandered the world for half of his life (the forty year-old Payne spent his first twenty years in America [mostly in Seattle where he was born and raised], and the second twenty years of his life wandering in Europe).  He lived in Paris for fifteen years in the neighborhood of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.  He also lived in Greece, Spain, Turkey, and travelled through all of Western, Central, and Eastern Europe.  He moved to Marrakech, Morocco in February of 2016 and is not yet permitted to leave.  The US State Department is currently fighting with the Moroccan government for his release.

Although Payne writes in English, his 15 years living in Paris where he spoke entirely in French, has greatly influenced his work, giving it a unique Latinate quality and inimitable voice. Payne’s literary quotes have inspired the lives and works of many artists and famous people, from pop-singers to world leaders. The themes of his quotes and prose explore travel, devoting one’s life to wandering, love and sexuality, femininity and self-empowerment for both women and men (the rise of the individual to live the “heroic life”). He is heavily influenced by Homeric Epic, as well as 18th and 19th Century French and European literature.

Payne achieved literary success in 2013 with the publication of his famous novel, “The Wanderess.” In 2015, “The Wanderess” served as the inspiration for India’s Fashion Week when Payne’s fan, the Bollywood designer, Masaba Gupta, was inspired by the book to create her collection which opened Fashion Week.  One year later, the pop star, Halsey (who was still an unknown artist at that point) used poetry from “The Wanderess” to compose her song, “Hurricane” (a song that helped propel her to overnight fame).  Halsey wrote this to her fans:

 

“I stumbled upon this book when I was a teenager and its words helped to shape my will to be unapologetic, to be unbound by the perimeters of a single place. To write a song like Hurricane. To be like, ‘The Wanderess’” – Halsey (Feb, 2016)

“Poem to Soukaïna”

To tell of my new Moroccan Love,

Ô, I court her everyday.

But just as a pearl in the mud is a pearl,

So is my Love just an Arab girl…

in that I offer her constant, loving woos,

but she’ll ask me in return that I give her flooze*.

That’s when I kiss her and shrug, and I say, “Someday.”

And she gives me her love free anyway.

 

Ô, my Love is a child of the souks.

In Casablanca born.

A gypsy thief, “Soukaïna” named.

We met in the souks of Marrakech,

It was here my heart she tamed.

Ô, she came at nineteen to Marrakech,

In search of wild fun.

And she lived in Marrakech seven years,

Before my heart she won.

 

*Flooze: (Arabic slang word for “money.”)

 

[image error]
Not to waste the spring
I threw down everything,

And ran into the open world

To sing what I could sing…

To dance what I could dance!

And join with everyone!

I wandered with a reckless heart

beneath the newborn sun.
First stepping through the blushing dawn,

I crossed beneath a garden bower,

counting every hermit thrush,

counting every hour.
When morning’s light was ripe at last,

I stumbled on with reckless feet;

and found two nymphs engaged in play,

approaching them stirred no retreat.

With naked skin, their weaving hands,

in form akin to Calliope’s maids,

shook winter currents from their hair

to weave within them vernal braids.
I grabbed the first, who seemed the stronger

by her soft and dewy leg,

and swore blind eyes,

Lest I find I,

before Diana, a hunted stag.
But the nymphs they laughed,

and shook their heads.

and begged I drop beseeching hands.

For one was no goddess, the other no huntress,

merely two girls at play in the early day.
“Please come to us, with unblinded eyes,

and raise your ready lips.

We will wash your mouth with watery sighs,

weave you springtime with our fingertips.”
So the nymphs they spoke,

we kissed and laid,

by noontime’s hour,

our love was made,

Like braided chains of crocus stems,

We lay entwined, I laid with them,

Our breath, one glassy, tideless sea,

Our bodies draping wearily.

We slept, I slept so lucidly,

with hopes to stay this memory.
I woke in dusty afternoon,

Alone, the nymphs had left too soon,

I searched where perched upon my knees

Heard only larks’ songs in the trees.
“Be you, the larks, my far-flung maids?

With lilac feet and branchlike braids…

Who sing sweet odes to my elation,

in your larking exaltation!”
With these, my clumsy, carefree words,

The birds they stirred and flew away,

“Be I, poor Actaeon,” I cried, “Be dead…

Before they, like Hippodamia, be gone astray!”

Yet these words, too late, remained unheard,

By lark, that parting, morning bird.

I looked upon its parting flight,

and smelled the coming of the night;

desirous, I gazed upon its jaunt,

as Leander gazes Hellespont.
Now the hour was ripe and dark,

sensuous memories of sunlight past,

I stood alone in garden bowers

and asked the value of my hours.

Time was spent or time was tossed,

Life was loved and life was lost.

I kissed the flesh of tender girls,

I heard the songs of vernal birds.

I gazed upon the blushing light,

aware of day before the night.
So let me ask and hear a thought:

Did I live the spring I’d sought?

It’s true in joy, I walked along,

took part in dance,

and sang the song.

and never tried to bind an hour

to my borrowed garden bower;

nor did I once entreat

a day to slumber at my feet.

Yet days aren’t lulled by lyric song,

like morning birds they pass along,

o’er crests of trees, to none belong;

o’er crests of trees of drying dew,

their larking flight, my hands, eschew

Thus I’ll say it once and true…
From all that I saw,

and everywhere I wandered,

I learned that time cannot be spent,

It only can be squandered.”
― Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy

The US Consulate has put the burden of helping American novelist captive in Muslim, Morocco on the Catholic Church

A perfect example of how “life imitates art”:  The writer Roman Payne first became known internationally with the publication of “The Wanderess” in 2013.  The hero of the book, a traveler and adventurer named Saul, has a price on his head in Libya.  Incidentally, the author of “The Wanderess” has also just become a “wanted man” in North Africa.

Roman Payne—an American by birth—is being detained indefinitely by the government in Morocco where his US passport has been confiscated by their authorities.  One would expect the US to immediately intervene on behalf of their citizen held captive abroad, but instead, the US Consulate is refusing support, stating that such intervention should be handled by the Catholic Church.

The Catholic Church responded to this insistence with outrage and denied any responsibility whatsoever with helping Payne with his political situation in North Africa.  The Colombian-born official of the Catholic Church stationed in Morocco told Payne that “Affairs regarding American-citizens held captive in Muslim countries are politics that concern the American government only, and not the Catholic Church.”

The US did not respond to this statement but proposed that the Moroccan government and Payne should work together to resolve his forced-exile in their country.  The single gesture they made to help Payne was to supply him with a list of “Suggested Attorneys in Morocco to assist Americans with foreign affairs.”  Payne interviewed all of the Marrakech-based attorneys recommended to him by his consulate and was disappointed by the United States’ apparently haphazard methods of selecting council for Americans abroad, especially in Muslim countries where international relations with the US range from tedious to utterly chaotic.  “These lawyers were inept and confused,” he said.  One attorney did not even know why he was on their list.  “They put me on that list a long time ago.  I am not sure why,” he told Payne.

While the US government had washed their hands of the affair, the writer continued his struggle with the Moroccan government.  This week he met with Samir Merzouki, a Moroccan official working in foreign relations, who received him cordially and was sympathetic to his situation.  Merzouki invited the writer to discuss the matter personally over coffee.  He was shocked by the United States’ lack of involvement in a matter such as this. He said that he had great respect for America and was impressed by their tremendous global power, wealth, and influence.  “Why they do not use their influence to help their citizens in peril abroad is dumbfounding,” he said.

 

As the matter stands today, Payne is still without representation or council, and his government is making no further attempts to remedy this.  His passport is still in the possession of the Moroccan authorities and he is forbidden to leave the kingdom.  He is now living in asylum on the outskirts of Marrakech.

 

For all press inquiries, please email:  [email protected] or call:  (212) 6.90.29.83.80

[image error]

 

 

A message to all Wanderers and Wanderesses from Roman Payne:

I am very excited to say the this summer’s Wanderess Tour is on!  Our luxury sailboat will be leaving from the city of Split, Croatia, at the end of August; and we will  be at sea for seven days.

This will be an intimate tour limited to six participants only!  (In addition to the six participants, there will be myself, as well as a skipper aboard.)

The Wanderess Tour will be a great adventure.  It includes daily intensive writing workshops where I will help you start a new novel or finish the one you are working on.  We will see some wonderful places that figure in my novel, The Wanderess, (such as Malta and Italy).

On of our participants will be celebrating her birthday during the tour, so we will through a great party for her.

The cuisine will be of the highest quality at the lowest possible price.  Each day we will dock in the harbor of a different city or village where we can buy the freshest local ingredients: fish, vegetables, spices like saffron, truffles, and all kinds of delicious wines, red, rosé, white and sparkling.  As you know, these farmers’ markets are very inexpensive and the food sold is as authentic to the locale and as fresh as can be.  After shopping, our group will set sail again and all participants will be invited to cook their purchases to their hearts’ delight in the boats gourmet kitchen.

My goal with this tour is four-fold:

Share with you the world of The Wanderess and the secrets of how and why I wrote the book.
Give you an amazing Mediterranean sailing experience (including kite surfing and swimming), a vacation you will never forget.
Introduce you to new cultures as we explore the port cities of different countries.
MOST IMPORTANTLY:  I vow in these seven days to make you a better writer.  Not just a better writer, but an accomplished writer, with goals to work towards and the courage, discipline, and skill to do it.

Total cost for the tour is between 1,000 and 1,300 euros for seven nights, seven days.

TO PRE-REGISTER, PLEASE ENTER YOUR NAME, EMAIL, PHONE NUMBER, AND THE DATES YOU ARE AVAILABLE TO TAKE THE TOUR/WORKSHOP:  [contact-form]

Dear Writers and/or Fans of The Wanderess,

I am excited to discover that so many people are interested in both “Wanderess Tours” and writing workshops at sea.  The original idea was to offer readers of my book a chance to sail the Mediterranean with me while discovering the locales that influenced the novel.  When I learned that many of my readers are also writers to one degree or another (the majority of these call themselves “aspiring writers” or “experimental poets,” however, some are actually very accomplished authors themselves, with a half-dozen or more books in print!); and so I decided that what would be the most fun, as well as the most beneficial to my readers, would be to combine my “Wanderess Tours” with a “writing workshop at sea” to give the maximum benefit and the maximum reward. Still, although these tours/workshops are in high-demand, our sailboat, The Gold One, only has room to sleep six passengers in addition to myself and the skipper; and so, the workshop-tours will be nice and intimate.

The goal of my Mediterranean Workshop at Tour is three-fold: 

Adventure & excitement
Inspiration & pleasure
Artistic ambition & accomplishement .


Adventure and Excitement:  Sailing the Mediterranean Sea during the high season is a glorious experience: the warm sunshine, a bottle of wine on ice, the company of friends, and the wind on your face.  This in itself makes the Wanderess Tours worth the ride.  While some of the trip is predictable (the skipper knows where to sail, and the readers know the novel and a bit about me), so they know what kind of voyage and literary discussions they will have.  Still, there is unpredictability in the fact that each tour will be the first time these six readers and myself will be together for an entire week.  Who knows what kind of relationships might begin, what kind of adventures might be had.  Life is full of surprises!
Inspiration and Pleasure:  In addition to the pleasure of sailing “Mare Nostrum” is the literary pleasure of living the life of a novel’s characters, and reliving the book’s events with the added effect of having the story retold by the author himself.  Boating afficianados will have their thrill, yet the Wanderess Tours offer enormous pleasure to lovers of literature as well. And for all of the writers aboard, hopefully a full week with the author of The Wanderess will inspire you to create your own books.  It is my aim aboard the boat to guide his company through the novel creation process – and I know just how to succeed in getting you inspired to write and write well!
Artistic Ambition & Accomplishment:  Although I am a bon vivant who loves relaxing on a sailboat with the sun on my face and a glass of rosé in my hand, I never go anywhere without either my laptop, or leather-bound journal to write notes in.  And if you are a writer, you are probably the same way.  So while