Hope in Strange Places 👻

--a july round-up--

In this missive: 

• Musing on Brian Eno & Peter Schmidt ’s Oblique Strategies
• Reading Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa & Meander, Spiral, Explode by Jane Alison
• Watching Conclave, Virgin Island and Murderbot
• Planning a Lammas-adjacent Outlier Hour!

This photo was taken on a recent walk approaching Ward Hill—this is one of Alison Balfour’s places, a woman executed for witchcraft in 1594. In the dense fog and low wind, the tufted heads of bog cotton looked like a converging fairy congress in the heather. I’ve written extensively about Alison Balfour, executed for witchcraft in 1594, here and here. Bog cotton is a truly magical plant. In Orkney it’s called Luckie Minnie’s Oo. Luckie Minnie was a legendary witch and ‘oo’ is her wool. You can read more about the folklore of bog cotton in this post.

Musing on Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies

I first heard about Brian Eno & Peter Schmidt ’s Oblique Strategies: Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas. on an Adam Buxton podcast (Thanks, man!) They are a bit like oracle cards for artists/writers/musicians. I’m finding them encouraging as I face my first true writers block—a deeply disconcerting dark night of the creative soul. This deck is like a good friend giving you weathered book of matches from an old cocktail bar that’s been closed for forever but the matches are still good and they've written a secret note for you inside the cover. 

Here are two websites that have randomised the deck as web pages: Try it & tell me what you get!

http://stoney.sb.org/eno/oblique.html and https://ob-strat.netlify.app/

Reading A Ghost in the Throat & Meander, Spiral, Explode

A Ghost in the Throat, Doireann Ní Ghríofa.

This book grabbed me and wouldn’t let me go. A hybrid memoir and work of feminist reclamation, poet Dioreann Ní Ghríofa traces her obsession with an 18th century poem Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire / the Keen for Art O’Leary by Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill. As Ní Ghríofa gathers clues and imagines the life of this poetic ancestor, she chronicles the texture of her own life as a mother, a wet nurse to neonatal babies, a list maker and poet, among many other things. 

There are moments where A Ghost in the Throat feels as if it is in correspondence with Ashes & Stones. Beginning her research about Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, Ní Ghríofa has a revelation:

‘…gathering every fact we hold to create a kaleidoscope, a spill of distinct moments, fractured but vivid. Once this thought comes to me, my heart grows quick. I could donate my days to finding hers…I could do that, and I will.’

She compares this resurrection to making a paper doll chain:

‘lifting her female outline from the cuttings, you are birthing her from the page. She is not alone. Observe how they all rise: hand in hand in hand.’

In researching Ashes & Stones, the women I wrote about seemed to multiply in this way. 

‘Remember this lesson: in every page there are undrawn women, each waiting in her own particular silence.’  

 ‘This is a female text’ is a mantra throughout the book—referring to the author’s body and ancestral poetic relics. 

‘This is a female text, which is also a caoineadh: a dirge and drudge-song, an anthem of praise, a chant and a keen, a lament and an echo, a chorus and hymn. Join in.’

Being a queer woman who has chosen not to have children, much of the book’s subject matter—wanting babies, being pregnant, giving birth and seemingly perpetual lactation was exotic and alien to my lived experience. In order to take Ní Ghríofa’s extended hand into this intimate journey—in order to ’join in’—I saw it as a journey into literary ancestry. Ní Ghríofa describes being connected to her mother through her absent umbilical cord, and her mother to hers, and so on. I considered a different sort of kinship, one of chosen family and formative texts. In reading the work of women poets who have come before, Ní Ghríofa is ‘inviting the voice of another woman to haunt my throat for a while.’ I have highlighted so much of this text on my Ereader, knowing I will return to it, inviting Ní Ghríofa’s words a place in my own body.

Meander, Spiral, Explode by Jane Alison. In this exploratory book about narrative structure, Alison presents a ‘wonder cabinet’ of texts that eschew the masculine five act structure (seduce, build conflict, climax, and release.) Many of the texts she examines are favourites of mine: Sebald’s Emigrants and Duras’ The Lover were formative texts. At a time when writers are expected to be increasingly formulaic in order to be published—competing with Generative AI with a mastery of commercial formulae—I believe it’s time to return to the meander, fractal, the scattered, collective mode of storytelling.

Psssst...Check out my bookshop.org Affiliate shelves!
You can find all the books I’ve recommended in my round ups, plus a selection of texts I cite in Ashes & Stones, and much more. Buying books from my affiliate page helps support this blog! 

Watching  Conclave, Virgin Island and Murderbot

I am probably the last person to see Conclave. This camp, Papal thriller took my breath away. It was a hard sell: did I really want to watch two hours of patriarchy voting for itself? And yet, I'll see anything with Isabella Rossellini in it. In my twenties I visited the Vatican and found it a surreal world, a vast insular bureaucracy resembling the Death Star. This claustrophobic atmosphere is captured perfectly in an austere visual feast where colour itself is a character. 

Virgin Island--OK, hear me out. This potentially exploitative, cringy reality TV show has something redemptive going on, something I’ve never seen before on the telly. A group of British twenty somethings who’ve never had sex spend several days on an island with a team of intimacy coaches (almost all of them American). The therapists show the participants where the clitoris is, how to masturbate and, well, have sex. Despite the voyeurism implicit in this set up, there is genuine tenderness here between the participants. I felt as if I were glimpsing a world of sexual initiation overseen by enlightened folk. The coaches modelled not only consent but a refusal of shame. In a 'swipe left' culture dominated by explicit sex without real intimacy, these discussions feel necessary.

Murderbot--I laughed. I cried. I felt seen. I was moved by moments of genuine beauty in this dystopian, deconstructed genre series. Scarsgard’s performance as a sentient, dissenting security unit is incandescent. Thanks to my friend Shel who recommended this as we were talking about non-hierarchical group organisation. She mentioned the terraforming team on Murderbot. What if our communities actually made decisions this way? The team leader, Mensah, is played unforgettably by Noma Dumezweni. Also Tamara Podemski as Bharadwaj gives incredible performance as a soulful scientist with an uncompromising moral compass. I loved her performance in Outer Range, which I wrote about here.

Planning a Lammas Outlier Hour

Near every I Sabbat try to hold a wee online meeting of community, camaraderie and creative practice. Sometimes there are prompts for writing, drawing and discussion and often I bring a reading to share. The Lammas Outlier Hour (or Loaf-Mass if we are being liturgical.) is on the 3rd of August. As always, this isn't a formal ritual but a gathering of minds and hearts, open to all paid subscribers. Come as you are. No need to have your video on if you're not up for it--just show up– with a something to write/draw with, some paper to make marks on.

🗓️ We'll meet Sunday, the 3rd of August at 7pm-8pm BST.
🔗 The Zoom Link for paid subscribers is under the cut.
🕰️ Find out what 7pm BST is in your time zone here.

💌 RSVP to contact.allysonshaw@gmail.com to let me know you are coming!
🔗Zoom Link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83050855354?pwd=A9v2kTNPJqKi0f8lwgVcU2MfdFqGCP.1