Remember the interview with Elizabeth Perrin? You can now see even more of her gorgeous photos at her new blog, Perrin’s Pix.
Dolls, it’s a proverbial rollercoaster ’round these parts.
Maybe you’ve noticed that my personality runs slightly manic. If you have great news I’ll be the loudest cheerleader, share your bad news and I’ll cry with you, tell me about the little twerp who snatched the 80%-reduced Lanvin from your hanger-chapped hands at the Warehouse sale and I’ll rise with a bellow to declare war on all Lanvin-snatching-twerps. It’s the way I roll, mes amis. Why choose lukewarm coffee when you can have it iced or boiling, am I right?
Here’s the thing. Sometimes I get news that is so absolutely wonderful that I want to pull a King Kong, pole vault onto the Empire State Building and declare a state of celebration to anyone lucky enough to be within 1,000 miles of my voice. . . and sometimes the person I am excited for is more sophisticated than I am, subtle, with a certain elan and the desire to keep his or her news from hitting the news circuit as the biggest hoe-down the tri-state has ever done seen.
In other words, sometimes in excitement’s afterglow I feel like I showed up like this (Image courtesy of Pop Magazine’s Spiral blog)
Images by Pamela Reed and Matthew Rader for thepop.com
for lunch with them:
I’m all “Hey what’s up!?!?!?!???!?!”
Images by Pamela Reed and Matthew Rader for thepop.com
And they, being sophisticated and gracious, cover their absolute terror with “Charmed, I’m sure” and then make a subtle gesture to the butler to please have this frippery removed.
Men will let you down. They’ll sell your horse, marry you without loving you, disrupt your work, and choose the priesthood once they’ve slept with you. Left to their own wits men make a muck of things, and only realize it when the woman’s gone. Or so it goes in Walk the Blue Fields, Claire Keegan’s second collection of short stories.
While the women in Keegan’s stories outpace the men in competence and character, her characters are finely drawn and, in most cases, sympathetic. In the title story a priest presides over the wedding day of the woman he loves. The affair is revealed with a gradual grace that implicates the reader in the priest’s discomfort and search for grace. In a deft stroke, the priest finds release (literally) not at the altar of a cathedral but in the small trailer of a Chinese healer.
Keegan explores eternal themes (infidelity, regret, loss, grace) that smoulder and shine against the verdant background. Set in rural Ireland, where change seems to come slowly, her stories share a timeless quality that makes the timeframe difficult to pinpoint – they could happen as easily 100 years ago as they could today.
Keegan is best when she blends folklore and fairytales into her narratives. “The Forester’s Daughter” is a gorgeous tale of compromise and betrayal whose climax is revealed through the matriarch’s masterful storytelling. In “Night of the Quicken Trees” Keegan utilizes an old superstition about feet water (the water used to wash one’s feet in the evening that, if left inside overnight, could invite bad things into the house) and the formidable, mythical protective qualities of the Quicken tree (mountain ash.) It’s a bizarre juxtaposition whose tension between invited danger and unseen protection shouldn’t work, but it does, beautifully.
Against the crystal clarity of stories like “The Forester’s Daughter” and “Night of the Quicken Trees,” Keegan’s portrayal of an unbearable sergeant in “Surrender” and the out-of-place, distinctly modern narrative of a writer at an artist’s retreat in “The Long and Painful Death” are leaden and uncharitable. The characters are petulant and one-dimensional; Keegan’s considerable skill with nuance, which even makes the abusive mother in “The Parting Gift” sympathetic, is absent. These are minor missteps in an otherwise excellent collection.
These are adult stories, poignant and cautiously hopeful. Of Margaret, the heroine of “Night of the Quicken Trees,” Keegan writes:
Every creature seemed on the verge of flight. Once, when Margaret was a child, (she) waited for a windy day, opened the umbrella and jumped off the boiler house wall, believing she would fly, and landed with a broken ankle on the car-road. If only, in her adult life, her unfounded beliefs could be so abruptly disproved. To be an adult was, for the greatest part, to be in darkness.
Adulthood’s darkness and the reconciliation of possibilities believed with realities experienced is beautifully illuminated in these stories. Keegan invokes fairytales, but she begins after the lovers meet in the magical grove – the somber time after the happy ending.
Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan
Black Cat
ISBN: 0802170498
169 pages
Yell Softly Rating: 4 out of 5 Yells
*You can read Keegan’s short story Foster, published in the February 15, 2010 New Yorker, by clicking here. (Link will take you to the story, in its entirety, on the New Yorker website.) I highly recommend it.
Les Parapluies de Cherbourg is one of my touchstone films. Burberry’s fine and good, but no one has done more for the simple trench than Catherine Deneuve as Geneviève. I’ll warn you that the entire script is sung, so if you aren’t a fan of musicals chances are this film will be aural torture. In that case, watch it on mute – it’s that good. Visually stunning, a story so simple you don’t have to understand the dialogue to know the tale (this is a good thing,) and some of the best use of colour film has ever seen. Don’t believe me? Check this video out: (I apologize in advance for the lamentable jazz version of movie’s theme song.)
This next video not only highlights the beauty of the film, it exhibits some great “song as speech.” It’s pretty remarkable how all of the actors in Parapluies sing their lines as though it was the most common thing in the world. This isn’t a musical in the common, Phantom of the Opera sense.
When I was little my sisters and I went through stages where we’d sing all of our conversations. If you can imagine, my mum wasn’t a fan (what we lack in tunefulness we compensated with vigor and crescendos.) This movie is the realization of our dream.
Ok, ok it isn’t anything that lofty, but it’s a fantastically gorgeous film. If you don’t crave a trench coat, pastel cardigans, and hair ribbons after watching this I’ll wear white tennis shoes with little socks over nylons when I go to work.
Finally, I swear this genius art installation was inspired by Les Parapluies de Cherbourg.
Installation by Spain by Ingo Maurer, photograph by Jesús Manuel Nieto Bobadilla.
One of my all-time favourite books is Ernst Haeckel’s Art Forms in Nature. Haeckel was one of Germany’s pre-eminent proponents of Darwinian theory. He was metaphorically de-frocked as a scientist, but his legacy as an artist remains. He reveals the patterns of nature in such gorgeous detail.
This illustration of Radiola reminds me of Alexander McQueen’s Spring 2010 collection. These little creatures, sketched with one hand while Haeckel looked at them under a microscope, look like space age chandeliers (upper corners) or a really fabulous sci-fi weapon (center.)
Acanthophracta: Wunderstrahlinge (Protozoa: Radiolaria)
His colours are extraordinary. This illustration of sea anemone reminds me of the caterpillar in Alice and Wonderland.
Actinae: Seeanemonen (Cnidaria: Anthozoa)
Then there is this illustration of various sea squirts. Jewel-like, they look like the inspiration for Faberge eggs or a really fabulous jewelry box.
Ascidige: Seescheiden (Chordata: Ascidiacea
This illustration of the life cycle of a sea urchin is one of my favourites. It’s so bizarre. The center top figure looks like a little space man in a luminescent transporter and the center bottom looks like his alien co-worker. So much beauty can be found in the bizarre.
Echinidea: Igelsterne (Echinodermata: Echinoidea)
This series of jellyfish kills me. If I had a ballroom, I’d mimic the central illustration of the giant corona-crowned jellyfish as a chandelier ceiling medallion. The two images in the lower corners would inspire amazing Rodarte-like skirts.
Peromedusae: Taschenquallen (Cnidaria: Scyphozoa)
Haeckel’s illustrations aren’t strictly scientific. I think this is part of what makes his work so appealing to a non-scientist viewer. The joyous composition of these pictures of orchids and hummingbirds features the marriage of classic aesthetics with science.
Orchideae: Venusblumen (Plantae: Orchidales)
Trochildae: Kolibris (Chordata: Aves)
Art Forms in Nature reminds me to pay more attention to nature. There are little miracles all around us that can inspire frenzied imaginings and untold inspirations of beauty. Also, if you’ll allow me a hop on the soapbox, they can inspire us to take care of this planet and it’s creatures.
Cecil Beaton for Vogue, 1944. Image by © Condé Nast Archive/CORBIS
Elle has a pretty terrific new blog, Lit Life. I particularly enjoyed this interview with Joshua Ferris and Amy Bloom reminiscing about her childhood love of Superman comics.
Terry Richardson for Paris Vogue, June/July 2009
Let’s get two things straight: First, field day participation was mandatory. I signed up for the shotput because it didn’t involve running. (I’m still not sure what a shotput is; it’s heavy and you throw it. Like bowling without shared shoes.) Second, I signed up for the 100-yard dash because it was the shortest race possible unless I did a relay. You need a team to do a relay. Teams like to win. See where I’m going with this?
There I was, fourteen, sweaty, and wishing I was inside writing my English paper. I mimicked the other students and crouched down. In retrospect I should have been a better mimick and adjusted my stance from “playing a leisurely game of leapfrog” to, you know, running? A true original, c’est moi.
Mrs. Janssen shot the gun and we were off. My arms held ninety-degree angles and pumped in unison with my legs. Euphoria built; I was flying! I was winning! I kept my eyes on the track and ran. Then, glancing smugly at the finish line, I saw them: my fellow racers, all waiting for me to finish. My fist pump wavered midair, euphoria ebbed and I snuck into the library to look up “shotput” and read Sassy.
Terry Richardson for Paris Vogue, June/July 2009
This morning I submitted the manuscript for my first writing workshop. After months of writing in the comfort of privacy I sent out a story to be read by my peers. It felt good, a mixture of relief and pride. Then I did something stupid: I looked to the finish line. In this case, Claire Keegan, whose story in the latest New Yorker was the best part of the issue. Floating with the weight of the deadline removed, I’d decided to “treat” myself by starting her short story collection Walk the Blue Fields. The opening story was everything a story should be and, it seemed to me, many things my story was not. My treat turned into an indictment.
My field day defeat was embarassing but it didn’t tell me anything new. I hate running. “I want to be a runner” is right under “I want a pair of rainbow Crocs” on the list “Phrases Sariah’s Evil Clone Will Utter.” Standing on the G train platform reading Keegan’s stories wasn’t embarassing but it told me something new: “maybe I’m no good at this.”
I wanted to turn around, run home and recall the email with my manuscript attached. But I didn’t. We have to start somewhere, right? Thankfully, talent isn’t a limited-capacity train where seats are assigned based on who gets to the station earliest (hello, 21 year-old novelist extraordinaire,) who knows the conductor, or who takes advantage of his enormity to push everyone out of his way and then block the entrance so no one else can enter. (This morning was a bad commute, can you tell?) Talent takes work. There’s no 100-yard dash. Thankfully, there’s no shotput either. I couldn’t even lift that sucker to the proper position.
Dudes, my brain is fried. So fried I am talking like Spicoli and then thinking broccoli and then broccoli makes me think of trees and then did you know that the maple leaf is on the Canadian flag and that I am Canadian and oh yeah, pot is legal in Vancouver. Where the Olympics are. I am delirious, deleterious . . oh holy heavens someone come and put me out of my misery because now I am talking to myself in a broad Wisc-ahn-sin accent.
I’m going to do you a favour and skip over all the reasons why I am in this state and just turn the time over to Jude. You’re going to like her answers and, what’s more, she won’t take you on an ill-advised, manic ride of virtual catch-phrase. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some jokes to make in my Wisconsin accent, dontcha know. (Everything is funnier in a Wisconsin accent. Just ask my sisters.)
Take it away, Jude!
What are your necessities? The freedom to dream; a warm sun; the ocean; hope; travel; books that make me cry; romance; films that move me, that make me think; dance; a lover who makes me laugh; the Daily Puppy; penguins; an oversized cashmere sweater; the sauna; the abilities we take for granted: walking, running, talking, thinking; writing, of course writing…but none of these are half as necessary as Ken, the Love of My Life these past 11 years.
Nothing smells better than. . .hyacinth; freshly baking bread; Chinese laundries; chestnuts roasting on a cold day on a cobblestone street on the Left Bank of Paris; the melted gruyere atop the onion soup gratin at Balthazar; logs burning in a fireplace; a forest wet in the morning dew; pure vanilla extract; the drawn butter before I dip my lobster into it; the salt of the ocean waves sifted through palm fronds; leather; Chanel No. 5; the pages of an old, favorite novel; the freshly painted walls before you move your furniture into a new apartment; possibility, anticipation.
Nothing tastes better than. . .pear and gorgonzola; dark chocolate and raspberry; Chinese food and Coca-Cola; mango with sticky rice; champagne with a view of the Seine; squid ink pasta and bellinis on the Grand Canal; Ken’s warm cheek when I first wake; fresh-brewed iced tea on the beach; the macchiato at the café Fontana di Trevi in Rome; lobsterlobsterlobster!; foie gras with rose jelly; satisfaction; rose-mint lip balm.
Nothing feels better than . . . lying on the beach in a baking sun; a massage by Vladimir; sitting by a fire when I’m really cold and even when I’m not; riding on the back of Ken’s motorcycle over the 59th Street bridge on a mid-summer night, preferably beneath a full moon; arriving in a foreign destination; coming home; the crack in your heart when flamenco music reaches inside you; finding the perfect word, crafting the perfect sentence, paragraph, page…you get the idea (perfect until you read it tomorrow and realize your delusion); finishing a book and wanting to start it all over again right now; cooking a gourmet dinner for people I love and rendering them helpless to do anything but grunt with pleasure; putting on a dress that makes me look sexy and feel young; the happy fuzziness that happens three glasses into a bottle Chateauneuf du Pape; the inside of Ken’s embrace and the unconditional love communicated in his hugs.
I’d rather never relent in striving to attain my romantic ideals than settle or compromise those ideals.
If you could live in any other epoch, which would it be? 1920s—specifically, in Paris. I’d have loved to have been one of those reckless American expat artists drinking and cavorting and loving and, occasionally, writing.
What work of art or literature (a book, song, poem etc.) changed your life? Not a single one. Books more than anything, but they range from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Little Women and the Agatha Christies I read as a girl to my introduction to the stream-of-consciousness writing of James Joyce (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) and Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse) to almost anything by Hemingway to Evan S. Connell’s Mrs. Bridge to Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried (why we tell stories!) to Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses and oh, I could go on. Collectively, these books and many others have shown me what infinite possibilities live in language. Also, Rodin’s sculpture The Cathedral and the music of Simon & Garfunkel, but I won’t go into detail! (Suffice it to say, Kathy’s song moves me to tears.)
If you could jump into any painting, à la Mary Poppins, which would you choose? This painting called Le Lit (The Bed) is not typical of Toulouse Lautrec, but I love the intimacy of it. I’d have to not only drop in, but evict the young woman there now.
"Le Lit" c. 1893 by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Image courtesy of Musée d'Orsay
Want to read other fantastic answers to the Yell Softly Questions? Check out the interviews here, a fellow writer’s here, and yours truly’s here. I promise, no accents were abused in the answering of my questions.
Send your answers to me via email. You know you want to. I’ll even assign you a pseudonym if you’re shy.
Editor’s Note: Due to my frenzied (miraculously, non-drug-related) state of mind earlier, I failed to give Jude a proper introduction! Jude is a New York-based writer who has currently at work on her second novel. You can read more about her, as well as excerpts from her work, on her website ( Click here! )
It’s strange business writing about a stranger’s death. I didn’t know Alexander McQueen. I don’t have poignant tales of late night chats over flat champagne or heartbroken rehashes over Saturday brunch. The only clothes I have of his I scored at Century 21 – the perfect black dress stranded in the leisure wear department, the lace blouse I snatched when the girl in the (awful) purple coat wasn’t looking.
Mourning brings the selfish out in all of us. Who knew him the best? Who knew him first? Who loved him more fiercely? Who, finally, misses him most? Not I.
But I mourn his death the way an admirer mourns the death of someone admired, beloved, unknown.
Alexander McQueen created worlds with his clothes. His point of view was his own, always. His clothes could be grotesque but they were always gorgeous. The draping, the embroidery, the fabrics – entire stories contained in a single look.
Here is a sampling from some of my favourite collections. I’ll leave the words to those who knew him best. (All images property of Conde Nast Publications. Click on images to see larger)
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Fall 2006
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Fall 2008
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Spring 2010
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I love fashion magazine editorials. There is something exquisite about gorgeous clothes on gorgeous girls in gorgeous settings. But there is often something lacking. The girls know they’re pretty, the clothes are pristine and pretty, and the settings range from country jaunt, to urban jungle tamer, to leaping in front of a blank wall. They’re nice pictures. But they don’t pull my heart out and offer it as a sacrifice to the God of All That is Gorgeous and Frivolous.
Once upon a time photographs said something. Something like. . . this:
"Thana, the beautiful Sea Siren" ©Elizabeth Perrin. All rights reserved.
It’s a fashion photograph, but also a story. It’s as far from vintage Vogue as you can get but it evokes timeless feelings with it’s timeless beauty. It has my heart on a stake and it’s marching it to the altar. It is with giddy delight that I introduce you to the storyteller behind this photograph.
Elizabeth Perrin was born in New Orleans, a charmed city where magic is believed and enchantments, naughty and nice, entice and where inhabitants become accustomed to seeing the magical in the mundane. Elizabeth has worked in media and film, in front of and behind the camera, for over twenty years. You’d imagine that the woman entering the small Williamsburg bistro would be blasé, beautiful in the way only a retired model can be, and toting an attitude that stretches from sea to shining sea. You’d be wrong (except for the beauty.) Far from jaded, her fascination with the magic of photography remains potent, as does her charm and warmth.
"Amy, the Sea Siren Recreating Herself" ©Elizabeth Perrin. All rights reserved.
I think you can tell a lot about someone by her childhood memories. Elizabeth characterizes her childhood as “just like The Secret Garden.” Her neighbours had a private garden, walled-off and mysterious that, when the neighbours moved, Elizabeth claimed as her own. She held court with overgrown flower bushes and teeming fruit trees from her throne in the magnolia tree. Imagine the new homeowners walking into the deserted garden, approaching the magnolia tree, and being greeted by a young girl staring down at them with a wary “Hello.”
©Elizabeth Perrin. All rights reserved.
Earlier, when Elizabeth described watching her father develop film in his darkroom, the hypnotizing “ca-clink ca-clink” of the film canisters and the gradual appearance of pictures from the wet paper, I was so transported I could smell the developer.
It would be easy to dismiss these stories as nostalgia except they offer a real glimpse at what sets Elizabeth’s work apart. The mediums might have changed, but her perception of the alchemy of photographic art remains and evolves.
“Has digital photography removed the magic?” I asked her.
“No, photoshop is pretty magical,” she responded with a laugh.
“You have to be willing to work with the mistakes. Technology is great, but you have to find a balance. Some of my favourite photographs came from mistakes. First, I make sure that I have the shot that I want. Then I play around with the mistakes. For example, the series of photographs where the number is superimposed at the top came from a mistake. The ink printed on the film leader got tangled in the emulsion and bled through. The photograph of Amy recreating herself also came from a mistake. Working with the mistakes rather than trying to erase them ensures that the technology doesn’t overrun the artistry.”
"Sleepwalker in Time Zone, Spacial Shift Zone" ©Elizabeth Perrin. All rights reserved
Narrative plays a central role in Elizabeth’s photographs. There is a large does of Southern Gothic sensibility in her work. There are beautiful women who look proper but feel dangerous, chivalrous men whose eyes are anything but gentlemanly, and a constant, gorgeous tension between the beautiful image we see and the story we want to hear.
"Hollie with Coffee Prepares for the First Scene" ©Elizabeth Perrin. All rights reserved.
I assumed that it would take a lot of preparation to get the model in the right mood. “How do you ensure that the models and stylists are on the same page as you, narrative-wise? Do you give them mood boards, play specific music, or give them some sort of homework?”
She laughed. “I don’t do a lot of preparation for the models. If they get too into the story and show too much emotion it actually hurts the photo – it’s no longer a fashion photograph. With the stylists and make-up artists, however, I provide mood boards and extensive preparations to make sure we’re on the same page. If the stylist pulls clothes that I don’t like I don’t have the luxury of not using them. I have to make it work. But I also have to make sure that the story doesn’t become the focus. Fashion photography is about the clothes – most editors actually prefer editorials shot in front of a plain background because it allows the clothes to pop the most.”
"Hollie Beauty" ©Elizabeth Perrin. All rights reserved.
Part of what makes Elizabeth’s photographs interesting is this tension. There is not only the tension from the narrative (“I am very intrigued by mythological characters, especially the idea of the good girl vs. the bad girl”) but the tension from allowing the photograph to tell a story without compromising its viability as a fashion photograph. Her work finds this balance – it tells a story beyond another pretty woman in pretty clothes.
"Hollie as Hollie" ©Elizabeth Perrin. All rights reserved
Elizabeth started her career in Los Angeles working in film and advertising. Her background behind the movie camera is apparent in her photographs. She cites Fellini and Krzysztof Kieślowski as inspiration and their influence is apparent in her tongue-in-cheek compositions and use of visual metaphors. But her experience making a reel of work provided her an even more important, albeit less glamorous, lesson: She learned to trust her own instincts.
“I spent thousands of dollars and many years working on a reel of clips that I thought reflected what other people wanted – the kind of work I assumed potential clients would want. And then I realized that I had a reel of work that didn’t really reflect who I was as an artist and wasn’t the type of work I was really interested in doing. I spent $60k on a reel of work I didn’t love. I learned that that wasn’t the way to work.
Florian. ©Elizabeth Perrin. All rights reserved.
“When I started taking photography seriously I decided to focus on what I wanted to create. I didn’t show anyone my work for a year. I just worked and learned as I went along and kept my photographs very private. I gave myself the space to explore what I wanted to do. I only told the stories and took the pictures that I wanted to capture, the pictures that I loved. It was freeing.
“People will hire me based on the work that I’ve done, so it might as well be the work that I am interested in and love doing.”
Florian. ©Elizabeth Perrin. All rights reserved.
As the talk turned to films, I asked Elizabeth about the main differences between film and photography.
“They are both ways to tell a story, but film tells a story over time. Most of my favourite films aren’t story-based so much as they’re composed of images that wash over you to give an impression. Film is about capturing images and building a story or mood with the images over a period of time. In photography you have only one instant to capture a story. In photography I plan out the story, the mood, so that I can capture that single instant. In film I capture images; in photography I capture instants.”
"Jana Classic" ©Elizabeth Perrin. All rights reserved.
"Jana Abstract" ©Elizabeth Perrin. All rights reserved.
"Kate the Evil Witch Lifts the Veil" ©Elizabeth Perrin. All rights reserved.
The Yell Softly Questions
What are your necessities? keys, cell keys, lip gloss, bed & board, nutritious food, friends, family, good health, cash, and a camera.
Nothing smells better than. . . night-blooming jasmine
Nothing tastes better than. . . soup dumplings
Nothing feels better than . . . love
I’d rather live than die.
If you could live in any other epoch, which would it be? The 30s or the time of Atlantis
What work of art or literature (a book, song, poem etc.) changed your life? T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets
If you could jump into any painting, à la Mary Poppins, which would you choose?
Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks.” It’ so mysterious, like the beginning of a story. You could start a whole book with the scene. Start by going in and sitting down next to the single man at the counter. . .
"Nighthawks" (1942) by Edward Hopper. Image courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago. All rights reserved.
Elizabeth’s portfolios and bio can be found at her website, www.ElizabethPerrin.com. I highly recommend setting aside a good half hour where you can sit, breathless. Please contact her before reproducing any of these photographs. Many, many thanks to Elizabeth for her time and photographs.
***UPDATE: Elizabeth has started a blog, Perrin’s Pix, featuring more of her work.***
My head is currently clamped between the couch’s armrest and my left fist. It’s the most comfortable I’ve been all day. I have an epic migraine so I am going to apologize right now for any typos, misspellings, stupid jokes, and any other grievous errors.
Aaryn Belfer’s sentences snap harder than junior high girl’s bra strap. Her writing is funny, irreverent, and poignant. She answered the Yell Softly Questions on her website and it gave me an idea: Once a week I’m going to post someone’s answers to the Yell Softly Questions.
Give it a try; answer the questions and email your answers to me along with a short bio. Requests to remain anonymous will be honored. You can read my answers here.
And now, I am going to hand you over to someone far more entertaining than an invalid pleading an armrest for mercy from a devious being who’s invaded her head. After you read this you’ll want more and I suggest you start with this post. Over to you, Aaryn Darling.
What are your necessities? Love; kisses from my daughter, both landed and blown; sunglasses; CO Bigelow Mentha Tint lip gloss; heels of all kinds (stacked, stiletto, kitten, princess, wedge, what have you); booksbooksbooks; The New Yorker; On The Street with Bill Cunningham; the family bed on weekends; alone time; my Canon 40-D and 50mm lens; Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, any Thelonious, Jimmy Smith, Gene Harris, Chet Baker, Ella Fizgerald…oh hell, all kinds of jazz that I couldn’t possibly live without, especially Cannonball Adderly’s and Bobby Timmons’ swingin’ masterpiece “Dis Here” set on repeat, cruising up the coast as a passenger in my husband’s classic Mini, windows down, volume at 11. Picture it…
Nothing smells better than. . .my daughter’s skin after a bath and her scalp after oiling; the space between my husband’s nose and upper lip after he shaves; early mornings in a canyon.
Nothing tastes better than. . .Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups/Trees/Eggs/Hearts with an ice cold glass of water.
Nothing feels better than . . .Hey, now…
I’d rather be…laughing and toasting with friends on my back patio during a summer evening, my home filled with people I adore, than doing just about anything else, especially faxing.
If you could live in any other epoch, which would it be? As far as fashion goes, the 20s or the 60s (ala Mad Men). Otherwise, this one seems to be working out well for me.
If you could jump into any painting, à la Mary Poppins, which would you choose?
- “The Tree of Life,” c. 1909 by Gustav Klimt
*I added a new question since Aaryn answered these: What work of art or literature (a book, song, poem etc.) changed your life? Maybe she will answer it in the comments, *hint hint*
Katherine Hepburn photographed for Vanity Fair by Cecil Beaton. ©Conde Nast Publications
An actor from one of my favourite movies lives a few blocks away. I see him at the grocery store in ratty sweats and a wool hat, remember that I loved him in Angels in America, and hand him the oranges he dropped. No big deal. O, a tall man, remarks that he thought the guy would be taller. I silently muse how strange it is that I’ve seen the guy naked.
There’s absolutely nothing puzzling about this encounter except for this: Had the actor been an author I would have dropped the entire contents from my basket, stepped on one of the dropped oranges, landed on my back, and stammered, ceaselessly, “Um, um, um, um. . . I like your stuff.” It would be a fierce competition between my actions and my words: which could be the most awkward?
A few weeks ago I went to a reading at the 92nd Street Y. Paul Auster was reading with Javier Marias. Mr. Auster read a section from his new novel, Invisible, that was so steamy I’m surprised the room didn’t explode from the sexual tension. Mr. Marias’s introducer asked if we needed a cigarette break and turned the time to Mr. Marias – cool, collected, his prose offering the palette-cleansing train ride home after the tryst with Mr. Auster. I was in heaven, an eager schoolgirl scribbling the answers they gave in the Q&A then joining the line to have them sign my books.
Ok, I am a dork. You should just understand that right now. Because what I am about to tell you is like the Acme of dorkdom and I think you should be warned in advance.
I had been imagining meeting these men since I bought the tickets three months earlier. (Don’t worry, O knows about this and he is not threatened. You’ll understand why in a minute.) So for three months I had been thinking of the astute questions, the perfectly worded compliments I could give that would tell them “a-ha! The reader I have dreamed of has arrived!” I imagined Javier Marias dropping his pen and asking where I’d been all of his life, Paul Auster standing a little taller and saying “Madame, I am honored.” This was my chance. The first sentence of Marias’s A Heart So White indelibly changed the possibilities of writing for me; The New York Trilogy taught me that a whole story, a whole world, could be built from the dichotomy of the weight and arbitrariness of language. I was going to tell them, with elegance and eloquence, all of this and they were going to be my friends. No, they were going to love me.
Yeah, so it didn’t go as planned. I was star-struck. More star-struck even than when, at McNally Jackson last fall, I was handed the microphone to ask Amy Bloom and her editor a question and I had to pass the microphone back because I forgot what I was going to say. At least then I had the brilliant idea to feign a coughing attack.
I stood, first, in front of Paul Auster. He signed my book, and I was MUTE. I couldn’t even tell him my name. He handed the book back to me and I stood there, staring at him, probably hypnotizing him with the crazy that was swirling in my eyes, and then, literally, breathlessly told him “Ican’ttellyouhowmuchyourworkmeanstomeandhowiloveit.” Oh wait, you couldn’t understand that? Good heavens.
Back in line, A Heart So White clutched to my bosom*, I swore that when I spoke to Mr. Marias (“may I call you Javier?”) I would redeem myself. I didn’t. Oh man, it was even WORSE. I don’t even know how that’s possible so I really don’t expect you to. But it was. I stood there, he asked my name and I didn’t say anything because, you know, my name? what’s that? He cleared his throat, signed his name, closed the book and I blurted out “Oh! Your book changed love and I me it write so much.” He thanked me and I had to run away before I became the girl who forgot her name and then cried all over the table and had to wipe her runny nose with her hand because she was too overcome to find a kleenex.
At the aforementioned reading, Amy Bloom mentioned that when she’s writing she can’t read the work of living authors, that their shadow looms too large. The dead can’t cast shadows. For me, it’s the writers themselves. I don’t get nervous around actors or models because I know that I will never do what they do. They can think that I am a terrible actress or not skinny enough to be a model and they would be right and I wouldn’t care. I can’t do accents and I won’t give up chocolate croissants. But I aspire, I actually toil, to be a writer. I might take style cues from Marion Cotillard, but I didn’t come away from La Vie en Rose wondering how I could accomplish what she had on the screen. When I read a great book, a perfectly formed short story, it is heaven unlike any other. It is a heaven I would refuse chocolate croissants for. But it is also a challenge; how can I write a better sentence? How can I write dialogue that is natural and adds to the narrative? I don’t ask to be an actor’s peer or friend. With authors I am like your best friend’s younger sibling, pacing in front of the bedroom door begging to be invited in.
Next month I am going to spend one week with other writers. We are going to spend our mornings sharing writing and critiques and our afternoons and evenings enjoying the beauty of Positano. I feel like the younger sibling already. But this time I’ve made it through the door. Now if I can just learn to speak in full, punctuated sentences.
*this melodramatic phrase is totally appropriate here.
I was just catching my breath. The group was moving through the rooms so quickly the paintings blurred into streaks like median lines glimpsed from a speeding car.
I’ve heard the jokes, darling. The catty, lacquer-haired boy at the café this morning railed against those “idiots from Indiana” who can’t appreciate art. His suggestion, this boy who arrived two years ago, starry-eyed and twanging away with Mid-West kindness, was to post a photo of the buffoon at all museums as a warning. I do get tired of recent transplants doing their best impression of jaded New Yorker, darling, but I couldn’t very well correct him without blowing my cover.
You imagined I was shorter, fatter, frizzy-haired, dressed in a once-white sweatshirt silk-screened with frolicking cats. You pictured white tennis shoes with white socks, maybe glasses worn on a chain – a woman accustomed to awkwardness and embarrassment. You could pity that woman; maybe even applaud her for trying to better herself through continuing education classes.
I know I shouldn’t have worn those ridiculous heels. That inane “click-click” sound they made while I tried to keep up with the group will taunt me always. “Click-click! Click-click!” Then, finally, the group stopped and I had my chance to rest, take some deep breaths and shift my weight from one aching foot to the other. And then I did something really stupid. I tried to balance on one foot so I could scratch the back of my calf with the other.
Then, with a “whoop!” I ripped a $100 million painting. I am the woman who fell into the Picasso.
Now I am a ghost. For a few days I was one of the most famous women in the world yet no one knew who I was. I smiled at the boy making my coffee and preaching death to cultural wazoos, placed a quiet phone call to the Met to ensure that a photo of me, splayed on the floor in teal patent leather Louboutins isn’t posted in Museums across the city, and dropped hints to friends that I’d skipped my museum class last Friday. The museum has been very kind and quiet. But my classmates know it was me, I know it was me, and by this time Picasso himself must know it was me. I am a joke, a humourous “there but for the grace of God go I” for people to chuckle and exclaim over.
At a cocktail party the next night I smirked at the Picasso jokes. I gave the heels to a very thrilled nanny and told my husband that the bruise on my hip was from the pool table. I compose letters to the fellow who tumbled down the stairs while tying his shoes and broke three irreplaceable vases; Steve Wynn and his errant elbow; or the Sotheby’s employee who shred a Lucien Freud drawing. “Dear Sir,” I begin, “tell me, have you given up shoelaces or museums?” I picture him padding around in canvas slip-ons and oversize hats.
The really terrible thing, darling, is that I’ve never really even liked Picasso.
This is a work of fiction. I am clumsy, but I was not at the Met last Friday.
“When a Grecian Urn Takes a Step Onto the Cosmic Banana Peel” (NYT)
I always do this. My closet’s stuffed with loads of clothes purchased for just this situation: last minute party. But for some reason last minute parties always seem to demand last minute purchases. Hence my 7:30 p.m. Zara rampage followed by a quickie make-over at Sephora. I passed on the leggings but snagged some sparkly eyeshadow and new foundation. Ok, and some lipgloss. It’s an improvement over what I did last time: tried to design and sew a cocktail dress the night before. I wore a little black dress and tried to wear sunglasses to hide my raccoon eyes. Lady Gaga is onto something with those lace mask getups.
I totally want some leather pants. . . just not the ones purchased in 2001 and currently residing at my parents’ house: Red, four sizes too big, bootleg jeans-style, and purchased on a screaming sale. (Imagine that. Red leather bootleg jeans on sale?) I wore them once, in my bedroom, and was so embarassed that I even owned them that I refused walk the two feet from my bedroom to the bathroom for fear someone would see me. Moral of this post: Never talk yourself into buying leather pants because they are on sale.
I do have some ideas of what I’d like to wear, neither involving red leather pants but both inspired by this photo of Dorien Leigh:
Dorian Leigh, evening dress by Piguet, 1949 by Richard Avedon
Ok, so she is not wearing leather pants. But the dress is very structured (like the leather pants) and then is overlayed with classic draping. I absolutely love this photo, love the placement of her arm, her amazing profile, and her gorgeous dress. Mostly, I love her confidence.
I don’t own these outfits but do have pieces that are similar. Of course, I just don’t like them much right now. (Delightful, aren’t I?) Fingers crossed I like them more tomorrow. Otherwise, there’s always the lace in the sewing chest.
Film still from "How to Steal A Million." Audrey Hepburn dressed by Givenchy.
(Read Part 1 of the interview)
Recently, Rania turned her lens to that most personal of spaces: the teenage girl’s bedroom. Like her photographs of the Middle East, these photographs capture metamorphoses. Remarkably individual, defiant yet unsure, each girl shares her space and, as a result, herself. Adolescence is often marked by internal wars and external impenetrability; Rania captures both.
Siena 17, Brookline 2009 ©Rania Matar
The series A Girl in Her Room takes me back about 15 years to my own room. I think I spent more time, between the ages of 12 to 18, in my bedroom than I did anywhere else, collectively. What is it about American girls and their rooms? How did you begin this project and find girls willing to pose for you?
I have watched with awe the passage of my teenage daughter from girlhood into adulthood, with all the complications that it entails. As I observed her and her girlfriends I became fascinated with the transformation taking place, with the adult personalities taking shape and with the insecurity and self-consciousness that are replacing the carefree world the girls had lived in thus far. I originally started photographing them in group situations but quickly realized that they were so aware of each other’s presence that being in a group affected how they portrayed themselves. I also realized that under their air of self-assurance the girls were often very fragile, self-conscious and confused.
From there, the idea of photographing each girl alone emerged. I originally let the girls choose the place of their choice and was slowly welcomed into their own private space: their bedrooms.
Mara 15, Boston 2009 ©Rania Matar
The room invariably reflects the girl’s personality. It is the one place a girl does not have to feel self-conscious, the place she can surround herself with whatever matters to her alone, and the place where she can be fully herself. I spent some time with each girl so she was fully comfortable with me around and was able to let her guard down, free of any preconception of what she would like to portray. I was fascinated to discover a person on the edge between two worlds: she’s on the cusp of becoming an adult but she’s desperately holding on to the child she barely left behind. Posters of rock stars were often displayed above a bed still covered with stuffed animals; mirrors were always an important part of the room, a reflection of the girls’ image to the outside world.
As for finding the subjects, I am at the perfect time of my life to reach this age group. I have a teenage daughter and friends with teenage daughters; from here the circle keeps expanding. I have photographed over 125 girls so far and I don’t feel like this project is near being done yet. I am now looking to expand into more varied cultural, economic and geographic backgrounds.
Anna 17, Winchester 2009 ©Rania Matar
How do you approach your subjects and establish trust? You document intimate moments – a day at the beauty parlor, a mother breastfeeding her baby, teenagers primping before a mirror – is it a long process to establish that comfort level? Does the experience differ from the US in Lebanon?
In the camps, I started working with local NGOs (non governmental organizations) and they introduced me to families. From there I had to earn the trust on my own. In the Middle East people are extremely welcoming and hospitable. I spent time with families, met their children, listened to their stories, had the required cup of coffee (and it is strong!), etc. I was interested in their stories and they sensed that I was not there to abuse the situation. I visit a few families regularly and I always make a point to bring them photos. I found people just want to be treated with respect, and if you treat people decently, they are usually pretty trusting. Once you earn their trust, it is important to respect your boundaries. People often forgot about the camera and I was able to photograph life going on as normally as possible. But I also had to learn when to put the camera away. For instance, if a woman is usually veiled, she could be unveiled around me but I knew I couldn’t take her photo, no matter how much I would have liked to.
I found that in some ways it is easier photographing in the Middle East, especially in a public place. In more intimate situations, in the ME, people just rely on trust. In the US, I always ask for a model release. This is a technical aspect; on the personal level, once I am with people and photographing them things are the same. Then it is a matter of a personal relationship.
Becca 19, Boston 2009©Rania Matar
In the context of both series of photographs, I wonder how much of our space is defined by who we are and how much is defined by who we want to be and how we want to see ourselves. In the war photos, the people seem defiant in the face of external upheaval – they refuse to let the destruction define them – while in the bedroom series the girls seem defiant in the face of internal upheaval. Is this an accurate impression?
I am not sure how to answer this. The environment definitely affects who we are. People in the refugee camps, and in the aftermath of war are very much defined by the conditions they have lived in. Their defiance in the face the world is obvious in their resilience, their holding on to their dignity and their humanity, and their will to carry on and provide a decent life for their kids. It is most definitely defiance to their surrounding, to the politics of the area, and their need to survive and overcome it all.
Lilly 15, Brookline 2009 ©Rania Matar
I never thought about it in those terms but on some levels the teenage girls are somewhat going through that, on a different level. They are learning to come to terms with the transition from being a little girl to an adult woman. They are often defiant as a means of expressing themselves: they are confused, they are lost, they are self-conscious, but they would rarely admit to themselves that they are going through all those feelings. Many need to rebel against all the set rules and prove their independence. As a result, some girls get tattoos, some piercings, some take up smoking, some color their hair, other will wear the veil, and other will create a bedroom that is a bubble and the world they invent for themselves.
Do you have any favourite stories or encounters from your photography?
I have many great stories. My favorite is the story that created the image on the cover of the book. It was in September of 2006, right after the 2006 war and I was in the Haret Hreik suburb of Beirut. Many buildings were very heavily damaged and inaccessible so there was a wrecking ball destroying them. People who lived in the buildings prior to the bombings spent their day waiting for the building to finally collapse so they could look for their belongings in the rubble. (Image below.)
Barbie Girl, Beirut 2006 ©Rania Matar
I was fascinated by the resilience, friendliness and trust of these people. Waiting for the buildings to collapse became a family and neighborhood event to which I was welcomed. People would wait together all day in a relaxed atmosphere. Their home was about to collapse to the ground, but they were ready to start over. I picked the image for the cover because it summarizes everything about Lebanon to me: the little girl wearing the Barbie T-shirt, the fact that she is facing forward as if she is rising from the rubble and embracing life instead of the death and the destruction behind her, and the fact that she brought a smile to her mother’s face despite the fact that this family lost their home.
I have many beautiful stories. I was fortunate to meet beautiful people. I always go back and visit the people I photograph (or as much as possible). I bring them back photographs. One time an older lady looked at the photo and was horrified that it was in black and white and that she wasn’t looking at the camera! I have since learned to take snapshots to bring back to them as snapshot-style shots are the photos they want.
Looking Out, Beddawi Refugee Camp, Tripoli 2007 ©Rania Matar
Who / what are some of your creative inspirations
I learned a lot from books. I collect photography books and love the feel, the smell and the look of them. It was my ultimate goal to have my own book – it was like having another child. I learned a lot from Costa Manos, who was a mentor who taught me to stick around to always take the best possible picture.
I love and was influenced by many photographers who each affected me in different ways: Robert Frank, Josef Koudelka, Henri Cartier Bresson, Sally Mann. I also love painting and did quite a bit of my own in college. I love Picasso and all the Impressionists. They definitely influenced my photography on some level. My training in architecture is second nature in how I see things: light, texture, space, really everything!
The Yell Softly Questions:
What are your necessities?
My family, my camera, my yoga, my friends and humor in my life.
Nothing smells better than . . . my kids when they walk out of a shower.
Nothing tastes better than. . . chocolate.
Nothing feels better than. . . a bear hug.
I’d rather laugh than worry.
If you could jump into any painting, à la Mary Poppins, which would you choose?
A Monet painting.
Water Lilies, Claude Monet. Image courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art
Rania’s work and monograph can be purchased here. Please do not reproduce any of these images without contacting Rania for permission. Again, many thanks to Rania for sharing her work and ideas with us.
If you haven’t already, I highly recommend joining Five Dials’s subscription list. A monthly online magazine produced by Hamish Hamilton, Five Dials chooses a topic and then collects writing, old and new, to elucidate and delight. It is free and it is fantastic. Their latest issue is a tribute to David Foster Wallace. Plan to spend a few hours this weekend with a pot of good coffee and this treasure.
(If you are a francophile as well as a bibliophile [or one or the other] you’ll love their no. 8, the Paris issue.)
Subscribe to Five Dials here.
Rania Matar’s photographs illuminate and surprise us with joy. Exploring themes of feminity, defiance, family and metamorphoses, her photographs capture the cataclysmic moments when insecurity becomes defiance, and destruction becomes rebirth; when past lives recede and futures are grasped. Focusing on women and children, she reminds us of the common, treasured moments that make lives but never headlines. Her first monograph, Ordinary Lives, was published in September 2009 and is available for purchase here. It is with great pleasure that I bring you the following interview, in two parts. (All images used with permission of Rania Matar. Please click on the image to view larger.)
Defiant, Beirut 2006 ©Rania Matar
Could you tell us how you began the series of photos in Lebanon? They convey the reality of the war in a very real, even relatable, way. I wondered, looking at them, if they helped you deal with the reality of Lebanon’s destruction during the wars – the shock of leaving Lebanon as a student in the eighties and returning to more suffering and destruction.
I grew up during the civil war in Lebanon. When I was twenty I moved to the US to continue my architecture and art studies at Cornell. The mind has the power of selective memory, and I made myself forget all I had lived through during the war. I avoided anything political in college and focused on enjoying college life, graduating, working as an architect, getting married and having kids (4 of them!).
Girl and Rocket Hole, Aita El Chaab 2006 ©Rania Matar
While pregnant with my 4th child, I took photography workshops and instantly fell in love with the medium. Eventually, I think as a reaction to the constant, negative news about the Middle East in the West, especially after September 11, I wanted to tell a different story about the Middle East. Things seemed to fall into place for me in 2002 when I went to a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon. I saw beautiful women and children living in terrible conditions and I was humbled by their dignity, their resilience, and the beautiful moments one can find even in less than ideal conditions. I started photographing the beautiful moments of daily life in the Middle East. Telling human stories through photography became my passion and, eventually, my career.
In 2006, I was stuck in another war. This time I was a mother myself and had my children with me. All my forgotten memories of the war came back to me, all the horrors of it. At that point my priority was getting my kids out of the country so we left via Damascus. At the Lebanese/Syrian border we saw trucks loaded with women and children. It was surreal, and a wake-up call: every single person living this war (or any war for that matter) has a story to tell. I instantly decided to return to Lebanon as soon as the war ended to document and photograph the war’s aftermath, the time when the world forgets about the war and moves on to other big news, but a very real time for the people who suffered the war. It is the moment they have to come to terms with all they have lost and rebuild their lives all over again.
War and its effect on people is very real to me and now, in some ways, I am dealing with it. Living in the US, I watch, like everyone else, news and wars from the comfort of my living room – almost like watching a movie. We hear of the destruction of far away places we don’t relate to and of the death (collateral damage) of people we don’t know. It is so abstract. I wanted to show that war (again any war) affects normal people like you and I and is very real.
Open Window, Bourj El Shamali Refugee Camp 2005 ©Rania Matar
‘
Something that really strikes me about your photos of the Middle East is their lack of politics. We are so used to seeing the destruction and suffering of war and of the Palestinian crisis in terms of the politics of the region – there always seems to be an implicit slogan or call to arms. The absence of propaganda makes your photos more effective. Do you take the photographs with the intent to de-politicize the situation or is this a natural product of your method?
I am glad you asked me this and that you get the feeling from my work that it is not political. I very consciously stay away from causes people to dehumanize their opponents, to look at one another as friend or enemy, similar to us or different. I think it is by looking through political lens that we stop looking at people as human beings but as friends or enemies, as similar to us or different.
When we put politics aside we can look at people’s faces and eyes and see the person behind the politics, a person who is just like us. We can see a person’s humanity. What drove me to this work was that I was sick of the politics of this whole area, sick of politicians and their slogans, and sick of the lumping of people into one category or another.
Juggling, Aita El Chaab, 2006 ©Rania Matar
Sisters, Beirut 2007 ©Rania Matar
‘
Some of my favourite photos are of the women in the Middle East, particularly the project named “The Veil: Modesty, Fashion, Devotion or Statement.” What I particularly like is that they never explicitly state the women’s religion. A viewer would have to be familiar with the religious melting pot in Lebanon to appreciate the differences. Could you speak a bit about the interest veiling holds for you?
Located between the West and the Arab World, Lebanon is a melting pot of religions and cultural influences. People from different religious and cultural backgrounds interact on a regular basis. As a result, there are many different concepts of female fashion. Women in Lebanon do not have to wear a veil. When I grew up in Lebanon, very few women wore the hijab. It is a pretty recent phenomenon.
Newspapers, Beirut 2007 ©Rania Matar
In the West people tend to associate the veil with oppression and a lack of education thus giving the veil a rather negative connotation. I became very interested in learning about the veil and the reasons some Muslim women choose to wear it. I found that here is just a different story to be told. I was trying to portray the woman behind the veil. For me the emphasis was not on her religion, even though it is implied, but on the girl, the young woman, the mother.
Hanging Laundry, Aita El Chaab 2006 ©Rania Matar
The project started when I was photographing a girl in a refugee camp. She was 9 years old and spent about an hour finding the perfect veil to match her clothes. She was braiding it, layering it, changing colors, etc. It reminded me of my daughter, who was the same age, who spent about the same amount of time fixing her hair in the morning. I was fascinated to discover that the veil had a fashion aspect to it among young women, and I became interested in understanding the reasons behind its comeback, and the different meanings it carries. Photographing women and the veil became another aspect of chronicling womanhood in Lebanon.
Nun with Blowing Veil, Chekka 2008 ©Rania Matar
Three Nuns, Beirut 2008 ©Rania Matar
Please check back tomorrow afternoon for Part 2 of this interview. It features Rania’s latest work as well as one of the most evocative images of post-war Beirut I’ve ever seen.
"Woman Writing Letter" by Henry O'Hara Clive
I’ve been married a year and a half and I still don’t know what my last name is. Technically, according to the State of New York, it is “Choucair-Joseph.” A clumsy compromise, I’m the first to admit. Depending on the day you call I might be going by Sariah Choucair, Sariah Joseph, Sariah Choucair-Joseph or, if I’m having a particularly bad day and don’t feel like correcting the chipper helper on the other end, Sarah Joseph.
This is a modern dilemma. When my mother and grandmothers married they traded Taha for Choucair, Edwards for Anderson, Anderson for Choucair. There’s a nice simplicity to the tradition, I admit. No one knows what to do with a hyphenated last name. They assume you are being difficult or are a mutant feminist who wants to punish the world with a mouthful of syllables hinged on the edges of a spear. Would you like to hear someone roll their eyes? I mean it. If you’d like to be able to hear the sound two eyeballs make as the arc against strained eyelids, make a dentist appointment and tell them your hyphenated last name.
The only people I can completely depend on to use the full hyphenated name are my father and the husband of my blonde alter-ego, A., the friend who I can call when I want to hide under the covers for two weeks because I can’t figure out how to begin a short story and she laughs a magical laugh and we go for a drive and suddenly the blankets look suffocating, not salvational. It figures, then, that her husband would appreciate the finer points of dealing with a woman on the verge of a hyphen. I don’t blame the rest, don’t blame the sweet guys at church who call me Sister Joseph, the friends who circumvent the minefield of envelope addressing by sending everything care of “Sariah and O,” the co-workers who pause after “Sariah” and then choose the last name they know they can pronounce correctly. I don’t blame them because I don’t really know what to name myself, either.
I thought a lot about just staying Sariah Choucair. I was a Choucair, full stop, for 29 years, one month and twenty-three days. That last name was really good to me. When we went to Beirut and I saw our last name on jewelry shops and heard it pronounced correctly I suddenly, for the first time in my life, knew what it felt like to belong somewhere. I was a Choucair, and that meant something. Of course, being half-Canadian and raised in America proved as displacing in Beirut as being half-Lebanese in a town of 20,000 in the middle of Wisconsin, last name notwithstanding.
Do our names define us? I think not. But they do signify who we are. When I say “Choucair” and you, being friendly, ask me where that name originates, I reply “Lebanon” and you understand, however topically, part of who I am. To me, the significance is my father, his wild jumble of fourteen brothers and sisters, my feisty grandmother and my golden-hearted grandfather. But it is also me – it is the person I was before I married, the person I was before I started thinking about having my own family and about the name our family would take. It is the girl who moved to New York without knowing a soul, who toppled over loneliness, stumbled into a career, found comfort in a family of friends, and made a home in the Brooklyn I read about as a child.*
I have my father’s last name and my husband’s last name and somewhere, out of this, I am trying to make my name. Trying to hold onto who I have been and who I want to be, trying to mold it into something that I can give my children, one word, one name, that will tell them the story of who they are. But at this point it gets ridiculous. I mean, what, are we going to give our children hyphenated names? And then, if we have daughters, will they hyphenate their names upon marriage? I can just imagine our family reunions- there will be enough hyphens to give even the most hard-core copyeditor a stroke.
My husband claims he doesn’t mind what last name I use but I know he prefers I use Joseph. It is assumed that our children’s last name will be Joseph and, as I will already be the only white person in our family, it would be nice to at least have the same last name as my children. I offered O. the options of Chouseph or Joscair, thinking he’d be as struck as I was at the good fortune that gave us each two syllable last names – such ease when it came to making a hybrid! He was not impressed. I can’t blame him. Chouseph sounds like a particularly nasty sneeze and Joscair sounds like a minor yet tragic, forgotten figure from the French Revolution.
So here I am. I am admitting my pride. I am admitting that there is a part of me that worries that my unwillingness to become Sariah Joseph, full stop, symbolizes an unwillingness to join my life, fully, with my husband’s. I am admitting that I don’t know if it is even important what my last name is – if it is even important to anyone other than me and the poor souls who mumble “cooChair” or “chow-care.” Mostly I am admitting my inability to decipher what I want from what I think I should want; who I am from who I think I should want to be.
Right now, I am sticking with the hybrid. Really, isn’t that what being married is? It’s a hybrid of who I was and who I am, who O was and who he is, and this new thing we’re still figuring out, five years in, called “us.” At the end of all of this, call me Choucair, call him Joseph, call us the Chosephs, but he is mine and I am, gladly, his.
*The neighbourhood I live in, Williamsburg, is portrayed in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
By this time we’ve all seen the photos of corpses and destruction. We’ve heard the inspiring stories and, unfortunately, the blood-curdling stupidity, that accompany tragedy. Words are an inadequate balm.
These are times that remind us to be grateful and, in the face of that gratitude, to be generous. Generous with our time, our funds, our comfortable blankets and the comfort of an embrace. If you are in the position to donate, I have included a list of reputable, established charities. For those of you who can make it, a good friend of mine is hosting a fantastic event, Hearts for Haiti, on Wednesday night. Details can be found here.
(I posted a pre-earthquake photo. Sometimes seeing what has been hurt is more poignant than the aftermath.)
DONATION SITES
The American Red Cross (you can also donate $10.00 by texting “Haiti” to 90999)
Chorus girls: so scandalous and so fantastic. The costumes, the dancing, the glamour, the flirtation. Chorus girls are naughtier than ballerinas but primmer than strippers. From the Rockettes to Vegas showgirls to Moulin Rouge, “chorus girl” suggests striving for a fleeting “big break” and a future paved with glittering marquees and mink coats. I think – no, I know – it’s the striving that I find so captivating. That, and the feathers and sequins.
So imagine my total excitement when, thanks to flavorpill, I discovered Bookforum’s booklists. Forget boring summer syllabi – these lists are cheeky and unexpected. For instance, they have a reading list devoted to the Chorus Girl. Be still my beating heart. While I am not a fan of all of the books on the list*, I applaud the novelty. Now I want to make my own booklists. One on fashion eccentrics (Simon Doonan, Diana Vreeland, Carmel Snow), one on depressed middle-aged men (Brooklyn Follies, Aloft), one on books that feature flowers, one on books with fabulous fashion, one or two on books influenced by fairy tales. . . .Oh! a whole list on books about artists. But only artists I like (or, in the case of fictional artists, imagine I could like) because gosh, nothing is more tiring than reading adoring prose about an artist whose work makes you roll your eyes or, worse, yawn.
I do love a list! My applause (and apologies) to Bookforum for such a great idea I can’t resist the temptation to be a copy-cat.
*I read Sister Carrie in college and hated it, but I think that might be more due to the professor than the book. She rotated the same 3 pairs of pants the entire semester, and as they were, in turn, blinding shades of orange, mustard, and teal, and rather tight at that, I found her class horribly dull in comparison. Particularly when she read from notecards for an entire 45 minutes. Dreiser never had a chance.)
