Haunted Days in a Poäng Rocking Chair
or, a March round up
- Wondering at the disabled Body in pain
- Re-reading The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter
- Listening to The Incredible String Band
- Musing on the the story of Julia Pastrana
- Planning the Equinox Writing Hour & a Place Writing Masterclass
Wonder at the Disabled Body
This month I have endured some of the worst pain of my life. I have barely recovered from it, having had to sleep in an Ikea Poäng rocking chair for a week because it was the only thing that felt comfortable. I could not even lay down to sleep. The Sick Girl, a painting by Norwegian realist Christian Krohg, haunted me. I’d seen her in the National Museum of Art in Oslo, years ago when I could still amble endlessly around cities and stand for hours in art museums. She is larger than life, staring down at the viewer from her liminal whites— fearless, angry, awkward. I returned to Virginia Woolf’s On Being Ill—which offers a tempered solace—she did, in the end, kill herself. This pain f*cked with my universe and turned me upside down and inside out. In many ways it became a speculative worldbuilding lens for this thing I’m writing. Weeks in limbo with no more high functioning, no faking it—I was broken and yet the small mercy was that I could still write. It was the one thing I could do. Slowly, I healed while in the cave of this shadow work. I’m just coming out now as the crocus bloom in the verges here in Kirkwall. The random scraps of Cadbury purple petals startled me into the living.
Rereading The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter
Carter’s wildly camp meditation on the illusion of gender is as troubling and exhilarating as it was when I first read it thirty years ago. A feminist, surreal take on a burning 1960s America by way Bataille and Baudelaire in a Russ Meyer apocalypse. If Carter would have lived to see this historical moment, I wonder what would she have made of the welcome dis-assemblage of gender. Would she have changed the pronouns in the novel to reflect the characters chosen genders? I wonder what younger trans readers make of this book. Maybe it’s been embraced by a generation of trans allies and activists. This merits further research on my part.
What I’m Listening To 5,000 Spirits or The Layers of the Onion by The Incredible String Band
I’ve returned to the Glaswegian psych folk trio The Incredible String Band. I listened to them endlessly in the 90s living in SoCal, watching florid sunsets over the defunct sea, counting down the days to the monthly goth club at the gay bar down the way and figuring out what I might wear—a lifetime away. One of the characters in this thing I’m writing tells me she wants The Incredible String Band to play at her funeral, and this album in particular has become the theme song to my current writing.
Musing on: The disturbing story of Julia Pastrana and the repatriation of her remains in 2013. There are tenuous parallels to the display of Lillias Adie’s skull, discussed in Ashes & Stones.
I’m Planning The Equinox Writing Hour & Writing Yourself Home Masterclass
Join me for a writing hour to celebrate the Spring Equinox. I’ll have prompts to inspire you, and will hold space for your writing. It will be on the 17th of March at 7pm GMT for paid subscribers .
The Zoom link for the Equinox Writing Hour is beneath the cut at the very end of this post. If you’re not a paid subscriber, why not upgrade and join us?
If my health continues to improve, the Writing Yourself Home Masterclass will be a go in April! This workshop sold out quickly in the past. Subscribers will be the first to know when I post the details. Writing Yourself Home is a master class exploring a sense of place in writing. Exercises will centre on facets of setting informed by notions of the Scottish diaspora and an anti-colonial re-enchantment of land, place, and home. Date and Time TBA. Paid subscribers receive 20% off online workshops!
