On Essay Writing

I think I’ve lost something. Misplaced it. What is “it”?

Style. I think I’ve lost my style. Style is that particularly apt turn of phrase—surprising, enticing, pleasing. I’ve lost it. Why? I think it has something to do with academic writing. It’s killed my style.

Of course this might be nonsense. It might be alive and well, hiding somewhere between Strunk and White on my bookshelf.

But if I have lost it, how can I get it back?

I’ve written a lot of essays, and good writing isn’t something you can plan for. It requires that reaction of thought with feeling that allows an infusion into the text of the writer’s own personality.

Good writing is almost mystical.

I feel like my best writing has always been about works of literature that I respond to personally, emotionally, spiritually. My best writing has been a response to beauty.

If I’ve lost my style, I’ve also gained. One: I have no patience for academic writing that does not state its thesis CLEARLY and initially. Two, I have no respect for academic writing that does not explicate the ambiguities and contradictions of a text.

Other than that, I’m not sure what to say. I feel like I’m still learning how to write essays—because this is something you have re-learn with every professor.

Oh how I miss the days of confidently seizing a thesis and going for it.

Film Festival Thoughts

Last week, I attended the Kansas City International Film Festival as a volunteer.

Although it wreaked havoc on my already behind-schedule academic life, I’m glad I went. I got to see some interesting stuff and have some interesting thoughts. Well, at least I find them interesting.

First film first, I saw Ilana Sol’s “On Paper Wings,” a documentary about Japanese balloon bombs during WWII.

I don’t usually watch documentaries. I find them less than engaging—good for folding laundry or filing taxes to.

I’m also somewhat sensitive to the gender divide/hierarchy in filmmaking, where women are assumed to be, or assumed to be aspiring to be, documentary filmmakers, whereas men are assumed to be feature narrative filmmakers.

When I tell someone I want to make films, and they respond, “Documentaries?”—it makes me want to throw a large frying pan in their general direction, like the virago I am.

Anyway. We’ll get back to gender later in this post.

“On Paper Wings” took my by surprise. It blindsided me in its subtle, measured, unaffected and unsentimental way.

It made me cry—without even trying—a triumph of content over production values.

The story was there. And it made all the difference.

I saw another film that seemed to me as if it would be written and directed by a woman. Honestly, this film which I shall not name, suffered in dialogue, acting and production—but it was the content that made me assume the gender of the filmmaker.

And then two men showed up the Q&A—the filmmakers in question—and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Why?

Because for some reason if a man made the film then it wasn’t as bad as I had thought. After all, hadn’t he succeeded, as a tourist in an unfamiliar land, at charting unknown territory? Shouldn’t we make allowances for those who seek to tell the story of those other from them (beneath them?)

If a woman had made the film, it would be as if she was expressing the essence of herself–and to do that and fail is shameful.

But for a man to make the same film—well, he doesn’t really know any better, and at least he tried.

Is a woman somehow less able to separate from her art? Will it always be assumed to be about her on a personal level?

Or only if it fails?

Short Film

I want to make a short film. In fact, I have already started to write one. I just need to finish the script, find the actors, location, and equipment, and buy a camera.

Easy right?

Easy

So it’s that time of the year—

The time when everything gets easier. If I could, I would construct an entire analogy for this year (in Cambridge) around my bike:

At first, there were a few kinks in the bike-as-transportation system. For example, at times water soaked into the seat of my pants from the porous seat of my bike. Or the chain lock would take forever to lock/unlock. Or I would forget my bike lights and ride through the streets illegally at night.

Then, over time, I got a shower cap, a D-lock, and brackets for my lights.

In other words, life got easier.

Of course, it’s only at the very end that this happens. Soon, I’ll have to leave. Again. And come up with something else someplace else.

Ethnicity and Language

Recently, in a bid to make a small amount of British currency (£6), I donated myself to two different linguistic experiments.

For the first experiment, the experimenter asked me a series of language background questions—What languages other than English did I speak? Mandarin Chinese. At what level? Intermediate. How did I acquire the language? I lived in China as a kid and went to local schools.

Then he asked, or more like stated: “One of your parents is Chinese.”

Yeah. My dad.

The incongruity of this question/statement struck me at the time: What does my ethnicity have to do with my language?

I imagine myself being born some twenty odd years ago, with one half of my language-genes programmed to “Chinese” and the other half to…uh, “German-American.”

Mark you, I wasn’t offended, only confused. I hoped that he hadn’t written down in his notes some version of, “Speaks Chinese because parent is Chinese.”

Surely a linguist, more than say—a non-linguist—knows the difference between language and ethnicity.

Perhaps we could have a brief moment of remembrance for those who are ethnically Chinese/Korean/Mexican/Filipino/Norwegian and cannot speak Chinese/Korean/Spanish/Tagalog/Norwegian.

I suspect that the question of parentage had more to do with personal curiosity than scientific interest—

That doesn’t bother me. I accept that being mixed-race means foregrounding the issue of race itself—if not for other people, then to my own benefit/detriment.

The second experiment appeared to be about gendered language. I rather enjoyed it.

Things to do before leaving Cambridge

1. Go see a movie at the Arts Picturehouse.

2. Go see a play at the Globe, groundling style.

3. Make a few good videos.

4. Tea.

5. British Museum.

6. Cambridge Botanic Garden.

7. More donating of body to science.

8. Sweatshirts.

9. Wren Library.

10. Attend evensong at King’s College Chapel.

Henry

One of the highlights of last term was my interview with screenwriter/author William Nicholson.

My favorite, favorite part of the interview (and it was a really good interview) was when he talked about Henry James.

Now, I’m something of a James fan. But what got to me about the interview was how Nicholson addressed him as if he were a real person. That sounds weird, I know, but I’ve never felt that kind of temerity when it comes to great writers—

Especially with someone like James.

I’ve pasted that part of the interview below. It didn’t make the final cut in my article for TCS.

A little background: Henry James attempted a career as a playwright and failed quite miserably.

I read somewhere that most writers tend to be good at one genre. For example, Henry James was a horrible playwright. What do you think has enabled you to have success across genre and which genre do you prefer?

I think anybody could work across-genre. Henry James could have done it as well. The thing is—it’s no good to write the intensely, psychologically internalized novels he writes and then to think that they’ll transfer to stage, because they won’t. And that’s fine. So what he should have done is done his first draft, taken it along to some actors and said, “Tell me about this.” And they could then say, “Well, nothing’s happening here, Henry! I’ve got nothing to act! I’m just sitting here reading out a book, please give me something to act, drama means drama, things have to happen.” And he would have said, “Oh, what do you mean?” And if he’d followed that line for a bit, he probably would have written fabulous plays.

But that takes a kind of surrender of the ego, which is hard to do, as you get older. And after all, he was a remarkably good novelist. The sadness I feel is not that his plays failed but that he minded so much. I want to say to him, “Look Henry, just relax, you’ve done well. You’ve done some good books. Enough already.” But that’s how people are, they always don’t respect the things that they get their success in and yearn after something else.

Variations on a theme

I used to believe in change.

Traditionally associated with “mutability” as opposed to “immutability,” change or the possibility of it means imperfection—reaching, becoming.

I used to want to change.

But then I realized that I wasn’t sure if I could. I wasn’t sure if change was really a possibility—the same things kept coming up over and over again, just in different forms.

And then someone suggested to me the idea of “variations on a theme.” And this is what I wrote:

“Variations on a theme—a theme that gets better and better, more and more resonant, aching, beautiful—constantly rewritten into something that is me (not me), expresses me (does not express me). In its entirety, it is powerful beyond belief.”

Now, on an essential level—I have no desire to change.

Milton’s Sexism

The second paper I ever wrote was entitled “Sexism in Paradise Lost.”*

Like it says on the tin, I wrote about all the instances in Paradise Lost when Milton says women are inferior to men. If you haven’t read the book, this happens a lot.

Well, as it so happens, I just wrote another paper on Paradise Lost and I really, really wanted to write about sexism again. But this time, I wanted to write about the reader’s response to said sexism—

To explore how a female reader’s response to Milton reveals something about her own conception of fallen gender relations.

One of Milton’s pervasive themes is that freedom is on the inside—freedom of the soul is true freedom. In other words, you could be politically “free” to write or speak against the War in Gaza but mentally or spiritually enslaved by fear or ignorance.

Which is to say that merely rebelling or reacting to perceived inequality in gender relations does not necessarily a free woman make.

True freedom is on the inside—wow, that sounds like such a cliche.

But as someone who is well aware of the fallen-ness of this world and of the gender relations in it—

I know I’m not free.

*The first was about the idea of guilt in Oedipus Rex. We don’t mess around in Homeschool.

Milton’s Eve

Poor Eve with her “wanton ringlets.” If only she had invested in a hair straightener, maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess.