Cassandra Lewis

This weekend I participated in a very inspiring playwriting workshop called, “Writing the Other.” The class was taught by Betty Shamieh at Magic Theatre. She is a world-renowned writer born to Palestinian parents in San Francisco. This three-day workshop was offered for free as part of her residence at Magic Theatre as an NEA/TCG playwriting fellow.

On the first day, she told us, “What we’re going to write about in the next three days are the things that people die for.”

Identity is at the core of each person’s outlook and at the root of beliefs by which people make every decision. Identity is personal and also tied to community or other groups that share a similar concept of self. Betty Shamieh guided us through many writing exercises where we explored our own concepts of identity and our perceptions of how others not in those groups perceive us - and from a complex and sympathetic angle.

I have always been intrigued with the arguments about what a writer has a right to portray. For instance, when Kate Braverman, a writer I very much admire, visited our MFA writing program at New College in 2005, some of my classmates expressed their feelings of outrage at Braverman’s portrayal of Frida Kahlo in her novel The Incantation of Frida K.. It was an imaginary or fictional portrayal, but the outrage was directed at the idea of a white woman writing from the perspective of someone who wasn’t. This remains a controversial issue within literary circles.

Who has the right to write from any perspective? And who makes this decision?

This weekend I gathered from Betty Shamieh’s thought-provoking course that it’s the writer who makes this decision. The point of the writing exercises was to free ourselves from these conventions, to lose the inhibitions that lock us into writing from the same old perspectives.

Today, our third and last day of class, Betty Shamieh said, “We can’t really control how the world perceives us, but we can choose how we identify with ourselves.”

If you haven’t had the honor of seeing her play, Territories at Magic Theatre, I strongly recommend you book tickets immediately. It is one of the best plays I have seen in San Francisco since I moved here four years ago. It’s nothing less than brilliant.

Territories is a historic thriller set during the Crusades. A French knight captures the sister (whose name was never recorded in any historical document) of sultan Saladdin. The experimental form was inspired by Cubist paintings and the story seamlessly explores the collision of two cultures and questions the place of women during war.

I just read an awesome one-act play by Kobo Abe. It’s called The Man Who Turned Into A Stick (death).

Don’t worry, the last line doesn’t give anything away.

The Woman From Hell says: “Yes, that’s right. You’re not alone. You’ve lots of friends…men who turned into sticks.”

I think everyone should read this play. It’s short, but layered with thought provoking metaphors and imagery. Plus, it makes you feel much better about existing as a stick.

Last night, I had the honor of meeting Michael Arndt, the writer of Little Miss Sunshine.

He spoke at Cody’s Books on Stockton Street. Little Miss Sunshine is a brilliant comedy about an eccentric family who goes on a road trip so that Olive, an eight-year-old girl, can enter into a beauty pageant. The Writers Guild of America and The British Film Academy awarded the film, “Best Original Screenplay.” So far, the film has been nominated for four Academy Awards and five Independent Spirit Awards.

The story behind the story is impressive too. Michael Arndt worked as a script reader and as an assistant to Matthew Broderick. Then he made a promise to himself that if he took a year off work he could come up with at least one saleable script. After he saved enough money to scrape by, he quit his job. He had never been published, didn’t have an agent. What he had was confidence and a belief that if he invested the time and energy then he couldn’t go wrong.

He said he never expected to reach this level of success. In the introduction to Little Miss Sunshine: The Shooting Script, he writes: “James Joyce once said we should treat both success and failure as the impostors they are. I would humbly concur-the real substance of life is elsewhere.”

Listening to Michael Arndt was very inspiring. He revealed insightful points about writing and storytelling, and even about writing comedy with an agenda (my favorite subject).
At the end of the evening, he said if you think you can find happiness in things you can’t control then you’ll never be happy. In other words, we should focus on writing because it’s what’s important to us. The desire for success shouldn’t be the only reason.

He signed my copy of his script, “Remember-Fun is better than Winning! Happy Writing!”

Many writing programs boast of their ability to teach aspiring writers to “read like writers.” What they mean by this is: you’ll never enjoy anything you read ever again. Good writing programs focus on breaking everything down, deconstructing and analyzing everything to death-and beyond.

This is why I become ecstatic when I read a passage that moves me on an emotional and an intellectual level, levels that refuse to be broken down by that newly installed literary skeptic part of my brain.

My friend, Fabian, introduced me to Paul Auster’s writing when I lived in Brooklyn a few years ago. I read The New York Trilogy then and loved it. Just the other day, I picked it up again and guess what-I love the book even more now.

Here’s a passage from the first part of Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy, City of Glass:
To be inside that music, to be drawn into the circle of its repititions: perhaps that is a place where one could finally disappear.

But beggars and performers make up only a small part of the vagabond population. They are the aristocracy, the elite of the fallen. Far more numerous are those with nothing to do, with nowhere to go. Many are drunks-but that term does not do justice to the devestation they embody. Hulks of despair, clothed in rags, their faces bruised and bleeding, they shuffle through the streets as though in chains. Asleep in doorways, staggering insanely through traffic, collapsing on sidewalks-they seem to be everywhere the moment you look for them. Some will starve to death, others will die of exposure, still others will be beaten or burned or tortured.

For every soul lost in this particular hell, there are several others locked inside madness-unable to exit to the world that stands at the threshold of their bodies. Even though they seem to be there, they cannot be counted as present. The man, for example, who goes everywhere with a set of drumsticks, pounding the pavement with them in a reckless, nonsensical rhythm, stooped over awkwardly as he advances along the street, beating and beating away at the cement. Perhaps he thinks he is doing important work. Perhaps, if he did not do what he did, the city would fall apart. Perhaps the moon would spin out of its orbit and come crashing into the earth…

Now I understand why some writers type the work of their favorite authors.

Would William Butler Yeats be revered as he is today if it weren’t for his muse?

Yeats was infatuated with the activist and writer Maud Gonne. She lectured all over the world to gain support for Ireland’s separatist movement against the English colonizers. But when Maud Gonne is remembered, she’s remembered for being an actress and for being Yeats’s unattainable love interest.

Of course, I’m grateful his poetry exists. (It’s the only poetry I actually enjoy reading). I wonder if he would have found another woman to write about if he hadn’t known Maud. But even if this were the case, he might not have developed his interest in politics either. It’s difficult to imagine William Butler Yeats being remembered only as the son of John Yeats and as a dabbler in occult spirituality.

I recently discovered The Autobiography of Maud Gonne: A Servant of the Queen and I’ve been searching for any possible way to answer or at least a way to live with this question.

Here’s a revealing excerpt, a dialogue between Maud Gonne and William Butler Yeats:

“You don’t take care of yourself as Kathleen does, so she looks younger than you; your face is worn and thin; but you will always be beautiful, more beautiful than anyone I have known. You can’t help that. Oh Maud, why don’t you marry me and give up this tragic struggle and live a peaceful life? I could make such a beautiful life for you among artists and writers who would understand you.”

“Willie, are you not tired of asking that question? How often have I told you to thank the gods that I will not marry you. You would not be happy with me.”

“I am not happy without you.”

“Oh yes, you are, because you make beautiful poetry out of what you call your unhappiness and you are happy in that. Marriage would be such a dull affair. Poets should never marry. The world should thank me for not marrying you” (318-319).

So there it is. If Maud Gonne had given into Yeats, his poetry would have become boring or he would no longer have the need to write it. The end of romanticism would have ended much sooner and we would have been stuck in the bizarre modern era for even longer than absolutely necessary–if it ever was.

I’m not suggesting Yeats’s poetry should be devalued. I’m interested in remembering the influences that created him, especially Maud Gonne. Her writing didn’t make history’s cut the way Yeats’s writing did. She was demoted from being an activist and a writer to the position of a muse, an ornamental temptation, a fantasy.

I will remember her as a writer. She deserves credit for her active role in making Yeats and his poetry. The world should thank her.