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So You Want to Be a Professional Artist?

posted on January 31st, 2012 by Vanessa Blakeslee

Over the past two weeks, I’ve begun my first season as a member of the Gypsy Sa’har troupe at the Orlando Bellydance Performance Company. Troupe practices take place at night, following the regular classes, and dancers learn choreographies at a much faster pace. Thus far it’s a fun challenge, but I would be lying if I didn’t admit that the jump up from Master-level class to professional isn’t an adjustment. The artist in me is excited and a little bit nervous for the challenges ahead—and likely the dramatic question of this year’s “Shimmying Writer” column will remain, is it possible to dedicate oneself fully to two art forms? What will that look like? And to a lesser extent, will I remain sane?

Regarding the latter, I am only half-joking.

No matter the lurking doubts, I wouldn’t have gone for it if I didn’t love to dance and believe I could dedicate myself to the rigorous practice and artistic growth. I’m happy and proud that I took this next step in my dance journey—and suspect the importance of doing so won’t become evident for months down the road.

But why? one might ask. Wasn’t it enough to perform with the Masters’ classes several times a year? Couldn’t you have “grown” on your own terms, without joining a troupe?

These questions unearthed a discussion pertinent to anyone who believes in excellence and desires to join the ranks of history’s greats. Since my audition two months ago, I’ve pondered what it would be like if artists of other disciplines had to “audition” and be accepted by the masters (dead included) to be deemed worthy, a professional? What might that look like for writers? Scary, perhaps, to think of Flannery O’Connor, Tolstoy, and Alice Munro facing you i.e. some kind of literary Flashdance, but what if that’s how advancing to the next level worked? Now, I’m well aware that there are plenty of ways emerging writers “audition” to join the ranks of the established—defending a creative thesis, publishing in literary journals, winning awards and fellowships, and the like—but I’m talking about a bona fide audition, where one of your mentors says, as my dance instructor, Suspira, asked immediately following my audition piece, “So, why do you want to join the dance company?”

There are no definite answers here—only that your response must be true to you. Mine was to push myself and to gain confidence as a performer, because often it’s not until you venture into uncomfortable, challenging territory that you realize what you’re capable of. And that’s when you may truly astound yourself.

So, why do you want to join the greatest writers in literature?

Several crucial points are embedded in such a question as well as the asking of it—namely, who is doing the asking, and why. The question itself is a test of the artist’s self-awareness about her practice. Recently I attended the Key West Literary Seminar, and after one of the panel discussions, someone in the audience asked the authors on stage, one of whom was Margaret Atwood, a question akin to why writers write, and is it to express themselves? The panelists exchanged looks and I believe it may have been Atwood who answered quite glibly that no, the aim of the literary writer was not to express oneself—if one wanted to do that, he or she could run outside and scream—but rather, the literary writer serves the story as it develops on the page. I couldn’t have agreed more. Expressing oneself is perfectly fine when journaling or putting on music and dancing at home, and it may remain part of what the artist does, albeit in a more sophisticated aspect—but “expression” ceases to be the overarching aim if that artist aspires to the highest standards of the discipline, and serving his or her craft.

But why ask this question in the first place? What’s behind it? Again, place yourself on the stool in front of O’Connor, Tolstoy, and Munro (or feel free to imagine other, scarier great authors you admire). They’re staring down at you from the lofty panel because they’ve climbed there, and climbing requires struggle, pain, and sacrifice of ego if not actual physical sacrifice. Their work didn’t attain greatness without perseverance through hardship, rejection, dedication to craft—and now, what’s that you say? You’d like to join them? Well, are you willing to do the same? Hold on, now. Think about it. Are you really willing to take up what they are asking of you?

For when you play out the scenario this way, you realize what they are asking you to commit to—achieving a professional level of artistry—is as serious as marriage vows. Can you answer yes to in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, for better or for worse? For art may take you there. It’s no coincidence Lady Gaga’s song “Marry the Night” is an analogy of the pivotal point in which she decided to “marry her art” as she would a spouse.

Lastly, but just as important, the question is asked by a person or persons representative of the community the artist wants to join. An artist may create in solitude, but as soon as that piece of writing or dance solo is sent out into the world, he or she becomes a representative of those who practice that same craft. The audition question of why do you want to join the dance company? or why do you want to join the greatest writers in literature? is a vital one for fellow serious artists to ask of you, to hear your intentions and commitment to create at a level of excellence. Amateurs, hobbyists, and dabblers need not apply.

I encourage you to write down your fantasy audition and discover what your response is to the question of joining your art form’s top ranks—the answer may take you by as much surprise as the exchange I had several years back, midway through my MFA in Writing at Vermont College. I was studying under Douglas Glover when he stated that a writer should aim to make every piece of writing the best it could be—whether it was an essay, a letter, or an email. That’s the standard to which a master artist aspires. After I swallowed my shock (every piece of writing?) and absorbed his wisdom, I vowed never to take my words for granted again. My craft—blog posts, status updates, and tweets included—has never been the same since.

Better know an author: Tom DeBeauchamp

posted on January 26th, 2012 by Ryan Rivas

It is once again that time to highlight an author who appears in the upcoming Burrow book, 15 Views of Orlando. This time, we’ve got an author who used to live in Orlando, moved to Seattle to resurrect the dream of the 90s, and now lives in an undisclosed liberal elitist haven in the Northeast. Amid all this ping-ponging, we hope he will visit Orlando again soon, and perhaps, grace us with a reading…

Too quick across the face of this earth, Tom DeBeauchamp has never watched a puppy grow up to a dog and die. His stories and reviews have appeared here and there, online and in print. He waits for mail that never comes. He attracts sometimes the inverse of moths and jars them and stores them in cool, damp, dark places where they batter the glass with their bodies, desperate to touch the unity for which inverse moths despair. He reminds you we are all closer always to the molten central fire than we’ll ever be to the distant radiations of space.

Tom’s 15 Views of Orlando story culminates in Lake Keogh, a man-made lake near the Red Lobster in Waterford. Tom also appears in the 15 Views bonus features, where he has this to say, among other things, about Orlando:

It’s been years since I moved away, and most of what I remember is vague and hazy, the feel of driving in the heat with the air off, the sprawl west of Alafaya and the forgotten scrublands between Bithlo and the beach. I remember it being an unformed place, or a place with a sudden form, like everyone there was confused about how they’d ended up there, uncertain about how they’d leave. It had a transitory skin. But there were others, other transients who’d been there longer. I remember it as one of the strangest places I’ve ever lived…

Tom has reviewed books for HTML Giant, The Collagist, and others. His fiction has appeared (mysteriously and sometimes ordinarily) in Hobart, Smalldoggies, in Burrow’s first anthology, and elsewhere. Click, read, enjoy.

15 Views of Orlando Tom DeBeauchamp

Are Danes into Sea-Monkeys? (a book review of The Field by Martin Glaz Serup)

posted on January 24th, 2012 by Rachel Leona Kapitan

THE FIELD
by Martin Glaz Serup
94 pp/ Les Figues Press
$15

I consider myself an experimental writer, but admit: I am cautious of experimental writing. By definition it draws attention to writing rather than the story, form above content, style over substance, the onus on daring instead of endurance. My prejudice, fair or unfortunate. The bigger risk a writer takes with experimental and hybrid works, the harder to buy into the concept, the more skeptical my eye. I have a voice, always, challenging, go ahead, make me want to turn the page. Can you? The answer is often no. But when a writer succeeds with a daring form the reward dazzles; a circus trapeze act so thrilling the trapeze disappears and you simply see the swingers flipping and soaring overhead. The Field made me forget the trapeze.

Described by the author as “everybody’s autobiography” Martin Glaz Serup’s text originally existed as installations in Finish and American art galleries. I sorely wish I’d seen them. This lonely little book was a perfect January read. I respect the themes Serup explores, or more so, avoids.

This is squarely a text of avoidance. The first stylistic constraint is the absence of pronouns, at least those gender specific. Initially this was noticeable, and then less, as the reader is absorbed into the voice. The Field communicates, sentence by sentence, chopped and assembled, the anxiety of times and irrational concerns. Spare paragraphs, many a single sentence on a page, establish a lurching cadence that reinforces the anxiety. The field, for example “suffers from a fear of lifts,” “feels ashamed for taking pictures,” “tries to pretend nothing is happening.” Or this particularly interesting passage:

The field sometimes thinks it’s unhappy in a mild and ordinary way that makes it happy because it thinks things could be much worse, which makes it afraid because it thinks things could still get much worse, so it tries to think of something else.

Me too! I do the same exact same thing. And that is the heart of this brief tract, that Serup has created a blank field (not a pun) the reader inserts him or herself into seamlessly. As open as the content is to self-imposition, Serup’s work is pointed, too, and that is through poetic diligence and a command of craft.

Serup lures readers along with details, on first read mundane, but with consideration, salient. That “the field enjoys looking at snow-covered fields” or that “the field likes caves and mussel shells; the field likes secretive things in general.” There are so many small details peppered through the spare text that each one takes on importance, and makes the reader pause to consider it. And reconsider.

I liked the book so much I read it a second time. I wondered if The Field was a breakup book. It reads perfectly like an impersonal memoir of despair and breakdown. At the beginning of the book, “On a trip to Paris without the kids the field asks, do you think we’re having a crisis. Yes, comes the immediate reply.” A few pages later, “According to the field’s nearest and dearest the field spends far too much time on the toilet in the mornings. The field just sits there, waking up. The field is a slow waker.” It sounds like the ringing criticism of domestic partners, god, just wake up. Later in the book, “Stepfamiles, what to think of them, the field doesn’t have any particular opinion… it doesn’t feel like… developing the thought further.” There is another romantic trip without this kids where, in nocturnal loneliness, the field listens to combines in a nearby field. It nails loneliness, as does a passage where the field speaks of enjoying talking on the phone until “its ear gets warm and dark red and throbbing.” That is very much the enjoyment of a person without another person nearby to physically relate to, and it is moving. The field’s desolation builds, and then later still it “speculates about whether it perhaps should seek professional help.” The sense of confusion, anxiety, and loss imbued in the text reminds me of my own past breakups. It’s possible that is a slight of hand, and me inserting my own experience into the text. Which Serup has so deftly allowed. He has positioned himself as a writer at the forefront of his field, (again, not a pun!) relational aesthetics. The art done across disciplines in this movement fascinates.

It takes less than an hour to read, and is worth the time. Buy the book and enjoy it, enjoy your personal response to the blankness, and the balls of a storyteller who meanders and is indirect and amorphous and knows the voice is strong enough that even with the lack of clear direction, the reader is going to follow. Kudos to Les Figues Press for having the vision to publish a translation of a writer at the beginning of an important career.

I like books that read as meditations, and The Field does. Close your eyes and repeat, what in the hell is all this living, anyway? And to combat winter’s loneliness, I recommend Sea-Monkeys, Mr. Serup. I don’t know if they have them in Copenhagen. But if they do…

Better know an author: John King

posted on January 19th, 2012 by Ryan Rivas

With the upcoming release of 15 Views of Orlando, Burrow Press is highlighting a handful of the book’s contributors. Here’s one now!

John King, an aficionado of college degrees, recently acquired his fourth, an MFA in creative writing from NYU. While his doppelganger proudly teaches composition and creative writing at the University of Central Florida, John currently resides at an undisclosed location and toils on his epic novel, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame. He also reviews books for The Literary Review and theater for Shakespeare Bulletin. His work has appeared in Turnrow, Gargoyle, and Pearl, and is forthcoming from Palooka.

John’s 15 Views of Orlando story is set in Crocodile World, which, for non-locals, is a caricature of a real place called Gatorland. He also wrote a Florida literature manifesto, which appears in the book’s bonus features. Here’s a brief excerpt:

Florida—this peninsula stretching from the American south to the subtropics, fragmenting into the archipelago of the Keys—is intrinsically dramatic, an epic provocation to the imagination. The state is wild, from ancient kudzu-choked forests of the north to the expanse of the Everglades where prehistoric reptiles still roam in their almost unimaginable realness. And the sky: almost unbearably blue and infinite over flat horizons, with cathedrals of wispy clouds hovering like heavenly thoughts, so meticulously idyllic that they look painted on by Renaissance masters.

And of course John’s work has appeared elsewhere. Here’s a poem called “Spinning” and a short story called “Guy Psycho: The Savior of Pop?” for you to enjoy until the book release party on Jan. 31st at Urban ReThink, 6-9pm, where John is a featured reader

15 Views of Orlando John King

Doorway of Dreams

posted on January 17th, 2012 by Vanessa Blakeslee

As a young reader I had a bookmark which read, Dare to dream the impossible against a glittery backdrop of Pegasus in flight. When the bookmark wasn’t wedged between the pages of a worn Judy Blume paperback or illustrated classic like A Little Princess, it was jammed among the rest of my bookmarks, a bouquet which sprouted from the small jar in my room. The bookmarks shared similar dreamy backdrops, unicorns, fairies, and sayings. I’d never paid much attention to the peripheral instruments of my reading, or so I thought, until this afternoon. Dare to dream the impossible. I couldn’t shake the phrase from my mind. Why?

“The things we do before the age of five are built into the package,” author Margaret Atwood said last week, at the 2012 Key West Literary Seminar. She was leading a lively panel discussion with Michael Cunningham, Gary Shteyngart, and Dexter Palmer. She added, “All kids do it, but writers don’t stop.” Substitute any type of artist for writer and who she’s referring to remains the same—those of us who refuse to believe we must grow up to be accountants, bankers, and lawyers, or at least we refuse to only be those things, to deny ourselves the multi-faceted nature of what it means to be human. ( Read more )

the shimmying writer

Future Abandoned: The Untimely Loss of a Rare Mentorship

posted on December 20th, 2011 by Vanessa Blakeslee

Jeanne Leiby was one of my greatest mentors, yet I never had a single class with her. While I studied writing and later taught at the University of Florida for nearly six years, I was never a member of her staff at The Florida Review, nor a student in her fiction workshop. But I got to know Jeanne through classmates who worked at the journal, and she always seemed to be around, eager to talk about teaching and literature. I remember she stopped me in the hallway to congratulate me on my MA thesis defense, and I mentioned I still wanted to pursue an MFA somewhere but wasn’t sure about moving. “You should check out the top low-res programs, Warren Wilson, Vermont College, and a few others,” she answered. I was barely even aware of such programs and not even close to considering them. But I took her advice. Six months later, I arrived at my Vermont College residency and began one of the greatest adventures in my literary career. ( Read more )

jeanne leiby

Ten Lessons of Fictional Writers in Film

posted on December 12th, 2011 by Guest

Guest Post by Cynthia Hawkins

Funny Farm

In Funny Farm, Chevy Chase plays a writer who moves to the middle of nowhere in order to jumpstart work on his manuscript in solitude. When he’s finally done, he rents a hotel room, chills champagne, hands his wife his manuscript, and sits with his hands folded together in anticipation—watching intently, reading her facial expressions as the pages turn, leaning to check whether or not her laughter erupts in just the right places. Lesson? Don’t do that.

( Read more )

film lessons movies about writers writers

Choreography as Poem

posted on December 6th, 2011 by Vanessa Blakeslee

Today I wrote a new poem. Only not with words, but with my body.

This poem is set to music, a slow, snake-like song called “The Sensual Chifti” which I fell in love with a few weeks ago upon stumbling across it on iTunes. My complete rendition comprises two minutes, thirty-eight seconds—not an epic by any means, but an average length, with enough rhythm, repetition, and surprise to sink your teeth into. The “writing” has taken place over several days in the clear but cramped space between my dining and living areas, close to where I’ve written the bulk of my novel, plenty of stories, and this column, to mention a few. Like any poem worth writing, the initial phrases flowed rather easily until I eventually hit a sticky spot or two where I wasn’t sure how to move forward. So I stepped away for a few days and when I returned, was able to push through and figure out the rest. There’s plenty of revising and polishing left to do, but all works of art, if they’re going to amount to anything, have to at least get off the ground. Or so said Billy Collins a few years back, at one of the Rollins College Winter with the Writers’ sessions. ( Read more )

bellydance choreography poetry the shimmying writer

Recalling My Barber

posted on November 28th, 2011 by J. Christopher Silvia

At first, I wasn’t sure that I liked seeing billboards for the local funeral parlor’s cremation services. They are near some of my favorite restaurants, and feature creepily tasteful urns. They have advertising slogans on them like “contact us for more information.” Cremation never seemed like the sort of thing you might need to see a billboard for. It seemed like the sort of thing you would research on an “as-needed” basis. Like “oh, my loved one has died, and also they specified that they would like to be cremated. Let me get the phone book out and find out how one goes about doing that.” A billboard suggests that cremation is something you might have had at the back of your mind, or worse, something you might not have considered at all. “Oh, you know what? I have that loved one just laying around, all dead and whatnot, and seeing that billboard about cremation was a huge help! I had no idea what to do up until I saw that helpful, informative, colorful billboard.” It just so happens that this is precisely the situation I was in recently. ( Read more )

applejack barber billboard cremation pennysaver wolf brand chili