hello, faithful readers (all ten of you). i’m back from a wonderful visit with video artist and fellow George MacDonald devotee, carolyn shadid lewis and her electronica husband.
carolyn and i met years ago at our alma mater, where janette oke and thomas kinkade pass for high art. we’ve grappled with (and kept) faith through time in grad school, and that’s deepened our bond. entering each other’s disciplines — if only to encourage and sharpen the friend’s work — has helped both of us reconsider and move forward in our own projects.
thanks to the rise in gas prices (or something?!), amtrak charges $20 more and 8 hours less than greyhound to get you from DC to Boston. so last thursday, i bid the oakies farewell and took the train up the eastern seaboard. my traveling companions included denise levertov, Pope Benedict XVI, ingmar bergman, and george macdonald, so the 9+ hours of travel felt more like a hermitage than a draining trek. i even had time to polish my most recent post to Image Journal’s Good Letters blog (yay!) and think over the essay and story i would be presenting to carolyn.
i’ve often felt that, as a literary writer, i’m behind the creative times. friends have boldly proclaimed to me: “the book is dead!” — largely because they would easily choose to see a movie rather than read a novel. and my teaching experiences at johns hopkins and seattle pacific university have offered fairly dire indicators as to the word’s strength and sway over children of the film age.
still, i love the written word, and i love the meditative demands that literature makes on its readers. carolyn’s film work is highly conceptual, and i think that’s part of why i feel a sense of kinship, rather than alienation, when considering her films. in her work, images and words serve each other’s meditative powers, and the interplay is complex. in many ways, it feels as if i’m observing an incarnated poem.
carolyn also introduced me to laurie anderson, whose recent boston tour was a once-in-a-lifetime highlight. she’s the woman behind “O Superman,” which i found totally mesmerizing.
oh, and carolyn also gave me a nutty case of the flu. THX, as the LOLCATS would say. at least this gives me an excuse to spend a grey day inside, hanging out with nanook and finishing phantastes.
4 Comments
April 7, 2008 at 6:16 pm
sounds like a great trip! I’m proud to be among the 10! Or, if I’m not being counted among the 10, then you really have 11!
April 7, 2008 at 9:25 pm
Laurie Anderson! Yes! A rather amusing gathering of souls wandered up to NYC a few years ago for one of her concerts & it was fantastic. Glad to hear you had a good wknd away with an old friend. We missed you @ church last night – a lovely Acts2charist.
April 8, 2008 at 11:54 pm
“i love the meditative demands that literature makes on its readers” – well said. The book better not be dead. Thanks for all the good links here.
April 16, 2008 at 2:04 pm
[...] up to NYC’s Whitney Biennial. luckily, my favorite conceptual video artist & yours, c.s. lewis, will be my tour guide. and, thanks to her husband’s hilton hotel “frequent stay” [...]