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Workbook- Writing Laboratory
1.
A short reaction to subject matter:
There is no role for the writer (full stop) People merely supplement their ideas into the
words of an author (a comma to consider) the carapace of a western generalized
experience stuffed with the readers‟ interaction with their own material existence (full stop
and a worthy AHA because I used an interesting image) Like a carapace
(Comma) I say (the fullest of stops)
That is why the non-controversial sells (question mark) I would not want to be forever
because if I was (comma pause breath beat) I would have been misinterpreted in
intention (full stop) Because it should be selfish (question mark for a
questioning self-effacing statement) Here the writer is shooting crap (comma)
like she often does (comma) like she does 70 % of the time trying for convictions rather
than considered ideas (full stop)
The writer of 2011. Is there even one? Am I, even, of the, this?
We can‟t write in our time, only speculate on concurrent happenings of the past (let me
google concurrent) from an amalgamated approach of contemporary (like an atom, switched
on and throbbing, gurgling in its subatomic sound-wave way as it draws the other neutrons
and electrons and protons into its nether-space of separation to twitch in heady almost-lust)
(wait, what was my point?)
We are never of the 2011, not until we go back there from a further on „present‟ (the present
is a joke, good one, „a Christmas carol‟) and redefine our experience of that time from the
canny future moment of a today. (Um?) This leaves us with a lag, does it not? What we need
is to lose ourselves a year and have a hole of undeterminable classification, a void, without
the word void attached to it that might
confuse us so radically that it will break us away from this word „contemporary‟, and realize
a true experience of it, that comes before words, and before the past. There will be little
referential space, absence of this phenomenon of colour. It will be a fold that I can‟t possibly
imagine in protest to this continuing, persistent „now‟, that is always on the cusp of breaking
down and becoming the thing before it.
Writers should really have a chat with physicists. SO much for creative non-fiction, think
physical physicist non-fiction. We are but a conduit for someone else‟s ideas, teachings,
knowledge…physics might benefit from out narrative techniques (the writer has lost her plot
again) creative physics, in a poetic form! Huzzah! Now that sounds like something to me…
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2.
The Magic Kingdom
A short creative non-fiction piece:
Gerald‟s rendition: “I was standing at the front of a line for a ride. Luckily I didn‟t get on it.
There were people on the ride. I was with some friends who lived in Tokyo. The ground
started shaking. At first, I didn‟t know what it was. I was smiling, but then I looked around
me and I knew from people‟s faces it wasn‟t good. See, I didn‟t know, but they were from
Tokyo and had been in earthquakes before. I felt like I was in a rocking boat, it didn‟t feel
like what I expected. No one was hurt. The people who worked there were telling everybody
to get onto the ground. Then when it was over, they told us not to leave the park yet.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Position yourself above Disneyland, Tokyo. You are floating in low-hanging clouds, smog
tickles your throat, and from this height you can see the great white castle, its different towers
so very impressive from this distance. It is a Taj Mahal of faux-concrete, less round, more
majestic on a scale of viral popular culture. Welcome to the western hemisphere, two stops
right of east. Here are people, coagulating colours from above, beautiful dark hair assumed;
one breaks off to run to another group, someone dressed as a furry alien dog is surrounded.
The furry-dog, with stars in its over-large eyes, wades through the fans as through drying tar.
Teenage girls in knee-high socks grasp at the baggy costume as furry-dog passes, and become
stuck on synthetic fur for a moment. All the happy bright eyes are immortalized next to this
Disney character-come-animated infection. Disney does its backhanded trade of culture here,
warring with the Japanese‟s own animated culture, and in this way it is a gelatinous
bacterium slapped between skyscrapers, rhizoids (not that bacteria have rhizoids) stretching
down train lines into Shibuya, Harajuku, and other susceptible districts of Tokyo.
But now, let us focus on our hero. His name is Gerald Leung. He is Chinese-Australian and
he is dating a Japanese girl, Kana. They are visiting Japan and Kana‟s family from Australia.
If you lower yourself, you can spy him in line for a ride. He is the next in line standing with
some of their friends in Tokyo. The people on the ride are screaming, in ecstasy. Perhaps it is
the sight of Gerald‟s long black hair as he pulls it out of its usual bun, it is fluid and catches
in the sunlight in a metre long stream behind him. This is his thought, of course. He is
reminiscent of a samurai, but that is really beside the point, because at this moment the
ground begins to move; a great snake whose scales chafe and knock with movement, a giant‟s
neck; muscle chords cracking as it awakes, a metaphor who can‟t explain something it has
really never experienced.
“It felt like I was in a rocking boat, it didn‟t feel like anything I expected.”
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Gerald has a wide grin on his face; time becomes less linear, more flat, stretching before our
hero, and he finds his emotions mismatched with those beside him. He has never been in an
earthquake before, but the native Japanese around him have, and they know it is not good.
It isn‟t good.
You are there too, but let me show you some pictures anyway, because the things you are
seeing are not so neat, and they definitely don‟t stand still, and the screaming from the people
on the rides distracts you.
Disney has since confirmed that through a statement from the Oriental Land Company. It
reads:
“Following the earthquake that occurred today, we [OLC] have decided to suspend
operations at Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea on Saturday, March 12 in order to
conduct inspections at all facilities. As for operations from March 13 and beyond, that has
yet to be determined at this point in time. As of now, we have not confirmed any injuries
among our guests or cast members.”
Inside the Magic website reports that 70,000 guests were forced to stay overnight at Tokyo
Disneyland. Pictures show standing water in the resort’s parking area.
- http://blog.cytalk.com/2011/03/tokyo-disneyland-closed-after-earthquake/
The earth shudders and squeezes its own impurities to the surface. Do ancient gods rise
through the space between rock plates? Their passions are made liquid by their coming. They
are super-heated by crusty hemispheres beneath, which ever-clash with the frigidity of ocean.
This love-making, with its roots in hatred, turns supersonic. Everything is rocked, shivered;
limpets on craggy shores become looser. Everything loses its grip, and cultural bacterium is
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shocked out of its arrogance. The ancient gods rise, and influences become less certain. Isn‟t
that what was promised? Homogeneity? Purity?
3.
The idea of experimental composition: a short play: Some things I am
expected to know: Googling Experimental Composition: a
Melodrama in one part
From: ‘Esoteric Theory’ http://www.cutnmix.com/esoteric/theory.html
Ariella: and so Ariella repeats this idea, verbatim, after inevitably resorting to Google to
determine what experimental composition means to her: “fiction that sets up its own rules for
itself […] while subverting the conventions according to which readers have understood what
constitutes a proper work of literature”
Idea 1: These conventions may include what, Ariella?
Ariella: Thank you for asking, they may include design and technical choices in the creation
of a „work‟. I discovered those ideas from institutional learning. The idea of “design” seems
to be pivotal in the creation of an experimental composition, which in the literal sense of the
words seems like a matter of common sense, but as with all university subjects, means so
much more. Welcome to the liminal where what you know stumbles upon what you will
know; the borderland of knowledge and Knowledge.
Contemporary society (in discussion): I feel as if the theme of technical choice is a general
idea within me and pops up everywhere, rather than being specific to one university subject.
The role of technology in progress of creative industries (much as I am loathe to use that
term), medicine, spirituality, and, of course, gaming, amongst other examples.
Idea 1: That is interesting, Society. Isn‟t it amusing how collective information simplifies an
idea.
The short play is over. The sun goes down. Ariella’s pained expression disappears. But only
for a week. It lies beneath the surface, ready to crinkle her brow once more.
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A real life example of experimental composition: Looped recorded feedback-
performance: at Arthur b‟s fringe affair, Hive Bar, Alexandria
An Actress: recorded 3 noises in front of us: a clicking noise she made with her mouth, a
cat‟s meow, and an electronic sounding buzzing noise that she made but was altered by the
technology make her voice more mechanical.
Then she looped these noises: clicking noise turned into the sound of a ticking clock, the
meow a cat, the buzzing the sound of next doors kids ringing the buzzer.
Comedic, she began a monologue: She was pregnant and poor, these noises kept going and
she would interact with them and continue to develop them as if they were natural noises, her
monologue worked within the rhythm of the performance, and was made striking by the
continued looped noise and the use of different technology to assist acting. The noises built
on themselves to create her story. This aided in climax of her performance. It made it
different and fresh. She used the looped feedback to construct her performance, thus allowing
technical choices to shape the monologue.
Her design choices were minimalist; she merely sat down and had her sound loop device. She
allowed her process to be seen by the audience by recording these different noises in front of
us and setting up the rhythm.
Post-script on format: I want my work to be a theatrical piece written in the format of a
book. I have no idea how to approach this or what conventions are already available for me to
use. I assume many, many stage directions and the use of visual representations within the
book. Ideally I would create my own conventions and this work would insert itself as a new
genre. Would my audience press buttons and have recordings become available to them?
Much like a children‟s book which reads the story with sounds and then tell you when to turn
the page? Would they be able to record their own responses into the play-book, like a
birthday card which you record your own message? What stage design features should be
included? What would the effect of combining these two mediums create? Will it fail, most
of all, at being affecting in the way of books and in the way of a play? That is a big challenge.
I sense failure on my horizon.
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4.
Blame it on Namazu:
Namazu is a catfish. In Japanese folklore he is responsible for creating earthquakes.
My play would be called, “Blame it on Namazu” and
would include other demonic characters that are
responsible for natural disasters or who prey on people
after the disasters, poverty spirits and the like. He has a
chaotic, destructive nature and is a perfect creature to
deliver an apocalypse. A lot of paintings of Namazu
were created as a response or way to deal with the Edo
earthquake.
I found some of these on the blog “Temple
Illuminatus: Making Sense of Disaster, History and
Myth”
http://www.templeilluminatus.com/profiles/blogs/making-sense-of-disaster
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Namazu expresses regret in the last picture as smaller cat fish accuse him.
http://www.east-asian-history.net/textbooks/172/graphics/ch8/15.htm
5.
Drawing: a response to Cixous
Helene Cixous: “Without end, no, state of drawingness, no, rather: the executioner‟s taking
off”
Honestly, Cixous‟ piece really spoke to me about the process of writing. To me, a lot of her
concepts ring true. In reading it I was especially intrigued by this idea that we are taught to
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draw and do so frequently when we are younger but lose this as we become older. Drawing
seems to be a more organic process than writing in humans, and proceeds formalized
communication. Is drawing thus a step before writing? I would agree with Cixous in that they
are related and most definitely tangled in some intangible space in the brain. So as we age
does writing serve to replace drawing, or wiggles on parallel? It meanders less; it conforms to
an idea of how humans should interact. A young child with a crayon and a blank sheet. There
is something pure about that.
However, in agreeing with Cixous on this state of writing and drawingness she is discussing a
very particular type of writing. A place where inspiration and creation flow without pressure,
where expression is naturalized. That is just an idea. A lot of people might disagree with the
connection between drawing and writing. As a matter of fact in the writing lab tutorial I heard
many rumblings, below the radar, smoke twisting between ankles, resisting this idea that
drawing and writing are the same/similar. So maybe the connection is determined by
subjective experience. I draw all the time and I sometimes draw with my words in the way
that I can feel my brain doing the same thing it does when I just simply draw. That sentence
is tricky but I will not reword it. Basically, you can draw and write from the same space. And
you can write from many different spaces, writing cysts in grey matter, waiting to be
accessed from their different angles.
So, some questions, because the best writing provokes these/asks these:
Should we close our eyes and try to write/access differently how we feel about something?
What do we want to draw? Consider the want, deconstruct the want.
What are we trying to grasp between these different lines?
Does the self‟s complexity sabotage writing? Which could be viewed from the position of a
young innocent drawing most simply, or from a more general idea in which our different
conflicting ideologies sabotage pure expression… or something. I just love the theme of
society influencing people without them even realising. Proscrutes bed.
Idea:
This concept of the stencil, political, artistic, both or otherwise, has spread across Sydney.
One example is the image of the queen that has been glued around the place. It is an
interesting idea, because when I see the stencil as I am walking I think, „imagine, all of the
different reactions and thoughts that have spun off from people as they see this, so that on this
street corner, if electro-magnetic thoughts leave an echo in space (which I choose to believe
happens because it is such a beautiful idea) there would be so many people‟s moments of
interaction/acknowledgment/discovery imprinted and overlapping in this one spot. Like
amorphous bubbles or balloons that knock against each other, or can be seen through to the
layer behind, or etc. Other images. And think about how people may see this stencil many
times in a day or at least more than once and how this mind reaction to it would be informed
by past experiences with the stencil‟s idea until these thought gloops (that represent the
moment of seeing the stencil) thicken and coat older gloops. Imagine recording that. Or
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trying too. How would that affect the space with the stencil and the collective psyche of
interact-ers? I would love to be able to do that because I think with what is happening in
Japan it would be fascinating, especially in such s place as Sydney where our Asian
population is quite high, to have stencils that respond/elicit ideas about Japan‟s natural
disasters stuck around the place and somehow capture responses, positive, negative or
otherwise, would be special. And experimental too, of course (isn‟t that the point?). And
doesn‟t this access that state of drawingness that Cixous was talking about as well? As a
response. This is hard for me to explain because I am seeing it visually as an idea rather than
in words.
So here are some of my ideas for stencils of this nature (this is like Cixous when she says the
moment of „seeing‟ the entire book all at once and then needing the time to write it):
-Blastoise spraying water on Fukishima power plant as it over heats. Blastoise is a water type
pokemon (Japanese) with cannons on its back. The subtitle would be in Kanji and read
“Fukushima meltdown management strategies”. It‟s a bit politically un-polite, but that is the
point.
-An image of Godzilla versing the tsunami: Godzilla stands helplessly in front of Tokyo as a
giant wave rushes towards them both.
-this would probably better as an animated clip on the internet: hello kitty with a more
womanly body bestraddling a building that is shaking from the earthquake. You have to think
about these images on more than the one level of crudeness as a challenge to sexuality in
Japan, of the way the woman may be represented in seemingly harmless ways such as hello
kitty. Cute being subjected to violence.
-the logo of domo that has become a bit of a sensation: cracked to pieces like the earth in an
earthquake. This could also be done as an animation: shaking would begin and cracks form.
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-A very simple image of the Tokyo skyline becoming a violent Richter scale. One continues
black line that does all that. As an art installation it would take up an entire white room,
beginning with skyline, moving across the 4 walls and accurately depicting the 8.9 scale
earthquake that hit Japan.
- Studio Ghibli‟s Totoro holding an umbrella as the tsunami is about to crashe down on top of
him.
-Namazu the catfish causing the earthquake and resulting tsunami, but contemporized with
the use of modern skyscrapers.
-Japanese societal archetypes which are specifically known to the west, the school girl, the
businessman, the yakuza, the geisha, combined with demonic traits. The school girl with the
two Heian period dots on her forehead, with a long tail, to combine the traditional demons of
chaos with the now of Japan.
-a photo of the Japanese coast or perhaps Tokyo as it is better known, with the English words
“pee here, tsunami comes”
- Yaoi (Gay) Manga comic panels with the speech bubbles whited out and replaced with
conversations that the Fukushima power plant workers may have had. These men left with
each other in the dangerous radiation. This would be seen as quite offensive, as if
undermining the jobs of the workers. Or even to draw the Fukushima power plant workers in
the manga style to include uniforms and protective gear and then construct a story of what
they might be talking about, and how they might feel.
But how to capture reactions to these ideas? How to show their interactions, interrelations,
their depth? Photograph them?
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6.
The following are extracts from the book:
Culture Shock! A guide to customs and etiquette: Japan
pp. 182-193
Rex Shelley 1993
Culture shock happens to everyone who is transplanted to another country. Few are
completely immune to it. It is a real malady to some and a mild feeling of indisposition to
others. Part of it is subconscious. I could be masked by the physical shock of climate change.
What is Culture Shock?
Culture shock is the stress and anxiety that occurs when you physical surroundings and the
people around you change. You have to expend a certain amount of nervous energy to cope
with change, and this causes stress.
Culture shock will hit you at two levels. First, at the physical level. Familiar signs and
familiar shapes will not be there. You may accept the change in surroundings, but your
psyche has to adjust. Second, at the obvious different behaviour of the people of Japan. Both
cause a certain measure of stress.
Symptoms of Culture Shock:
Fatigue, irritability and homesickness are some symptoms. Others may include a desire to
talk to people „who make sense‟, drinking heavily, suspicions that THEY are talking about
you. They are looking at you, watching you and every move you make. Or eating at
McDonald‟s more often than you did at home.
Who is more susceptible?
Teenagers, women, and those who have never left home. The woman is usually harder hit
than her man by culture shock. She stays at home while he goes off to the office or the
factory. He has an objective, the same objective he has lived with in the home country. He
has the expertise, the same expertise that brought him to Japan. He has the confidence of his
expertise. There are problems but he can get on with it.
She kisses him goodbye, shuts the door, and faces Japan.
Culture Shock Japan
Culture shock Japan is one of the worst varieties of culture shock. If you are whisked away
from home and planted in some part of darkest Africa or Asia you know you will have to
make many adjustments. But you will expect Japan, with all its technology, its centuries of
development of the arts, its cleanliness, and its smooth organisation, to present no major
problems that you cannot cope with. The shock is greater because you see structures and
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systems parallel to what you are used to at home at first. The sober business men‟s suits. The
expressways. Western restaurants with the most attentive service And then you meet the
hurdles which are so very different from those you have experienced. You hit walls that you
never imagined could exist.
The apologising, the bowing and muttering of words which even with no knowledge of
Japanese you will sense are apologies, will baffle or annoy you. You just can‟t understand
why they think they should apologise. Shitsurei shimasu, Shitsurei shimasu, Shitsurei
shimasu, Shitsurei shimasu. All the time!
Japlish, or Japanese-English, is a similar irritation. Yamamoto-san speaks English, but trying
to get past his Japlish to what he means could drive you up a wall.
Culture shock can be like your first earthquake experience, if you aren‟t prepared for the
surprise of the ground under your feet moving and changing.
If I posted this online, and (presumably) received many angry responses, I am re-
contextualizing the writing. Culture shock in this is an idea to be compared with that of first
experiencing an earthquake. I would consider this a dated piece of writing. I find it simply
hilarious in subject matter and writing style; „you will feel this, you will experience that…‟ I
imagine one of those educational videos in black and white, read by an authoritative man
with a '50s timbre in his voice. Be afraid, small white children; be afraid of the „other‟.
In my theatrical play I would have moments where images of the devastation of Japan by
recent natural disasters would be projected onto a large screen and an old-fashioned male
voice would be reading bits of this text to create contrast. The idea of culture shock as an
earthquake would be established, mush to the nausea of educated viewers. In between the
images of people lying amongst the wreckage of civilization there would be small animated
clips as I have described previously (such as hello kitty being vibration raped by a skyscraper
shaken by the earthquake).
We may not discuss the 2011 writer enough, but let me do it now. This is me as a
contemporary writer. I face a difficulty in writing about this different culture from my
ingrained western perspective and making sure I do the traditions and myths I will explore
justice. To do that, I must firstly acknowledge that I can never quite overcome this from
where I am positioned in the world.
I would also be writing about things I have not experienced and thus cannot rightly
understand. I believe that the writer of 2011 must be controversial to address controversial
ideas and provoke thoughts. That was a pretty bland statement, but I guess I am basically
allowing myself the use of my own ignorance in writing about the horror Japan has recently
been through and the construction of an apocalyptic narrative based on the demons from
Japanese myths and history.
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7.
Issues facing a CONTEMPORARY 2011 writer: In my research of this issue of
writing about Japanese culture as a non-Japanese I came across a thesis in UTS
library;
„English language representations of Japanese culture with Tokyo Indigested: a creative
response‟ by Bronwyn Streader 2006
Allow me to quote from this in lieu of expressing my own, less articulate, ideas of the issue.
From chapter 2.a. Postmodernism and Japan. Pp.58-63
„A major concern in this exegesis is to realise some of the problems with employing Western
theories as a means of interpreting Japanese societies. I suggest that we come no closer to any
realities of Japanese cultures and identities by interpreting them through ourselves. Naturally
we might understand our shifting identities through such methodologies, yet our paradigms
prove exploitative. We witness a useful example of this in the Japan field, where Western
writers interpret Japanese culture through Western Postmodernism. While aspects of this
discourse may seem present in Japanese society, the temporal and social locatedness of
postmodernism as it appears in Western culture, holds very little meaning for Japan
historically.‟ P.58
„…Miyoshi‟s analysis here is necessary after years of racism and the repetition of
homogenising narratives in Western cultural criticism. It reveals the self-obsessiveness of us
writers who employ Western theoretical models when we come to interpret Japan‟s cultural
histories.‟ P.59
I aim to express this doubt at my own ability to address Japanese culture and the pseudo-
offensiveness of such a venture. Such is the work of the contemporary writer, I believe, to
constantly deconstruct one‟s own certainties and ideas behind you, to approach ideas from all
different angles. Aim: To accept the complexity of self as a flaw and use an experimental,
self-deprecating format to address this. Or try to. Or selfishly use Japanese culture to
understand myself more. Or at the very least try to make people think beyond their own space
in the world. This is how I wish to employ my role as a 2011 writer.
The concept of Mitate:
From “See/Saw: Connections between Japanese art, then and now” by. Ivan Vartanian and
Kyoko Wada 2011
“Contemporary art is the future‟s classic art: A common practice of ukiyo-e woodblock
printing was to make analogies to (or parodies of) classical paintings and literature to
illustrate contemporary events, figures, and other worldly phenomena. This is known as
mitate. Examples of such allusion occurred in various realms of creative expression-theatre,
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literature, song, poetry…In the process, the new work is enriched by layers of cultural and
historical duality.” P. 21
Websites/ articles that inspired me and/or are worth looking at
http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/environment/earthquake-
tsunami-slam-japan-20110311-1br0u.html?selectedImage=1
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/15/fukushima-50-
workers-nuclear-plant
http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/g/j/gjs4/Shaking_Up_Japan.pdf
http://www.east-asian-history.net/textbooks/172/graphics/ch8/15.htm
http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/g/j/gjs4/Shaking_Up_Japan.pdf
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fukushima-
workers
http://www.templeilluminatus.com/profiles/blogs/making-sense-of-
disaster
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