Vivan Gornick & Ali Cobby Eckermann (05/08)

In Retrospect 7
This is a streamlined version of [CLASS] #13: Wednesday August 5th Class. The original post was uploaded 11/08/20, but it has been corrected here to 05/08/20.

Another particularly important Wednesday class to add to my Folio. The Vivian Gornick section was important because it was when I had learned about surrogate and unsurrogate voices. However, in the making of an unsurrogate voice, you're still crafting a self, perhaps one that is true to you, to talk FOR you. It's like making a ventriloquist dummy of yourself. It made me realise how important it was that this story needed to come out of my mouth, not from a narrator writing about Subject 3. Of course, I didn't realise this for a few days, given I was busy writing the Subject 3 draft from Tuesday - Thursday, but it was an idea planted in my mind until it could come to fruition.

The Ali Cobby Eckermann interview was especially vital to my piece. I hadn't considered truly writing from the heart, and what kind of power that could convey. I realised how much more emotional my writing became when I did that, and my mind began to steadily overturn to making my essay into a memoir so my writing skills could shine. Her advice is something I kept in mind for the rest of this course, and probably for the rest of my writing life going forward.

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Section 1: Vivian Gornick and the Selves We Make

The first thing we did was check out some extracts from the 'The Situation and the Story' in Vivian Gornick's The Art of Personal Narrative (2001). The most noteworthy quote from it for me was this:

"To fashion a persona out of one’s own undisguised self is no easy thing. A novel or a poem provides invented characters or speaking voices that act as surrogates for the writer. Into those surrogates will be poured all that the writer cannot address directly — inappropriate longings, defensive embarrassments, anti-social desires — but must address to achieve felt reality. The persona in a nonfiction narrative is an unsurrogated one. Here the writer must identify openly with those very same defenses and embarrassments that the novelist or the poet is once removed from. It’s like lying down on the couch in public [with a therapist] — and while a writer may be willing to do just that, it is a strategy that most often simply doesn’t work. ... The unsurrogated narrator has the monumental task of transforming low-level self-interest into the kind of detached empathy required of a piece of writing that is to be of value to the disinterested reader."

In fiction, we create a voice or persona, depending on who is narrating. However in nonfiction, there is an unwritten contract that there is an unsurrogated voice. But we're not JUST a still subject who speaks, we invent our SELF to be the voice in this essay.

So it looks a lot like this:

This was really intriguing to me, the fact that even in writing, we're constructing a voice that isn't purely unsurrogated. We can even conceal the truth if we wish (Club X in my submission versus the one I submitted for workshopping). It all depends on how we want to be seen or heard. It does feel a little misleading or dubious though, that we can still hide behind a persona. 

We then went on to talk about letting the essay take you in an unexpected direction, go for it, then step back and consider, "How does this relate to what I was wanting to talk about?" It's a back and forth process, where the creative right brain goes and the left brain has the critical eye, looking for patterns.

The first point of discussion was thinking, "What's my essay about?" Then, "What's it actually about?" and then, "But what is it really about?". The idea is that you do this for 6 stages. Whatever you say in the earlier stages aren't wrong, but you're making newer stages to see what it could really be about. You zoom out to something really abstract.

This reminds me of a concept I've been learning in Archetypes and Imagery (Mythology for anyone who wants the simpler explanation) called the Ladder of Abstraction. The idea of zooming out to find a bigger theme. For example:

Bessie (a cow) → Cow → Livestock → Farm Asset → Asset → Money → Survival

Fountain pen → Pen → Writing utensil → Writing → Ideas → Potentiality

So I guess, if questioned on the spot, with a ladder of abstraction mixed with the idea of like... umbrellas covering umbrellas and umbrellas, my work would be like:

Quasi-date desperation → Desperation → Depressed home spiral → Touch deprivation → Withdrawal Symptoms → Social withdrawal → Quarantine/Lockdown → Loneliness

or something like that. One thing leads to another. I guess it's more of a chain of events than a babushka doll.

Activity 1
David asked us to consider in regards to our essay: "What is your situation? What is your story? What is it that you have come to say? And who is speaking?"

Keeping that in mind, our first task was to list the different versions of ourselves that might feature in or is related to our essay, "There is the me that is..."

"The Me...

•  After seeing Milligram closed
• At Flagstaff Gardens (ending of quasi-date)
  
• Burnt out before June 3rd
• Happy after June 3rd
• Hearing about the Stage 4 lockdown
• Writing a letter to K
• Writing this now (Aug 5th)"

(For context, the "letter to K" was to stop her from inviting her boyfriend over for her birthday in the midst of stage 3 lockdowns, but I didn't realise you COULD visit your intimate partner despite visitors to your home being banned...)

Activity 2
Choose one of those selves for whom the story matter the most, and just let that voice speak. Who does this story matter to?

(I really wasn't sure what was being asked here, so I just imagined the me from Flagstaff Gardens at the end of my quasi-date being yoinked from that time and space and be filled with the knowledge of what happened in the future, keeping her positivity intact)

"The stage 4 lockdowns are a spanner in the works.

As much of an understatement the words in that sentence are, there's a vast undercurrent of disappointment running through them. Still, it's important to just smile and appease others. Gotta leave them feeling good, after all. I don't want to leave them in a nasty place!

It feels like a timely slap to the face after K invited her boyfriend over though for her birthday on Aug 1st, right before the new lockdowns were announced. I didn't kick up much of a fight though, that letter was half-hearted. Not as embarrassing as the [REDACTED] Urgh! I'm um, getting a little off-topic here though.

I mean, we've come this far already in the year. Another 6 weeks should be nothing. At least I don't have to feel so lonely, given I've got classes on now, hey? Heh. I'm sure we can do it. Hopefully we can nip this in the bug. Just gotta keep the memory and allure of being able to hug close at heart.

At least I got to have that one outing earlier, right? Granted, the second date and a couple of others got cancelled but just think. Soon the world will be back to normal. I guess a new "Covid-normal" but I'll be able to sit in Flagstaff Gardens and people watch again soon enough, right? It'll all be over soon, just like a bad dream."

Section 2: Ali Cobby Eckermann and Writing From the Heart

Ali Cobby Eckermann is a Yankunytjatjara woman born on Kaurna land in South Australia. She's an RMIT Adjunct Professor and has written Indigenous literature, poetry and nonfiction. Her poetry grew in the desert, through family and culture... it began by scratching down words, writing her presence into the day.

Her advice for nonfiction beginners was to know your audience, which is great, but the most noteworthy part of her interview for me was how she talked about writing from the heart. She said that heart is the first place where a response might come from, and she said she wrote softly and tenderly. When you write from the heart, even in nonfiction, the reader will think about themselves. An empathetic response.

Activity 3
This sentiment was the basis of our next activity, which was to write from the heart, or write more gently, channelling something from Eckermann. Have a play, from where my draft left off.

(At this time, I had written most of the quasi-date in my report style, so I continued from there. G and I are at Flagstaff Gardens, where we hung out on a bench together close to the end of our day out.)

"We sat there, G and I. My arm wrapped around him, looking off into the distance as we spoke from the heart. Our eyes followed the people walking, dogs plodding, people stumbling on this cloudy afternoon and were lost in a different reality. One where this is all normal. Where there is no pandemic or school work looming over us. In that moment, we were two earnest people taking solace in one another's company. Taking refuge in the heart, even just momentarily.

The wind may have been blowing all around us and our phone clocks ticking past the initial 3pm deadline of goodbye, but we didn't want to let go. The sky was steadily darkening and our clothes insufficient to keep us warm, but it was alright. We were taking shelter in each other's heart. On an innocent wooden bench, in the heart of Melbourne, in a safe, quiet part of the storm.

I squeezed his shoulder and he knew what I meant, leaning his head to rest on mine.

Together.

...

 But eventually, this moment had to end. And so we'd leave it behind, forever."