Love Letters by Alejandra
Josephine Scicluna
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Josephine Scicluna is a poet, fiction writer and academic who is inventing and exploring diverse hybrid forms of art. She collaborates with musicians , sound artists, scriptwriters, film makers and artists to create performance works and recordings for radio broadcast. She has won several awards for her short fiction and her poetry. Her writing is published in various journals including Double Dialogues & In/Stead, Verandah literary magazine, and the Age. In 2007 she received her PhD from the Deakin University, Melbourne, and currently is a lecturer there in Professional and Creative Writing. |
photo: courtesy of the artist |
Josephine, based on your everyday work with students: how would you describe young people nowadays, very active, talented and working hard to accomplish their ideas, or creative, but mostly lazy, wasting too much time on the appearance and not on the main message their work should transmit? Do you think they prefer individual or group projects more?
I have met quite a number of students in my 12 years or so of teaching creative writing and literary studies who are very active and talented. They seem to embrace the understanding that producing a good piece of writing involves many stages over time, and that a lot of devotion is needed to see through the less joyous parts of the process. I think there are some others who are overly-focused on grades and perhaps miss this understanding, but that’s part of the dilemma of studying the arts in a university context I guess. It’s bigger than that, though. They come from a secondary school system that puts a lot of pressure on them to compete for university places and they’re ranked and graded to the nth degree. You can understand how it can be hard to let go of that inside a messy creative writing class. It strikes me that those who form their own communities together seem to have a much better time. I’m not sure if they prefer individual or group projects more, but given that class sizes are getting bigger all the time and often students don’t get to know each other, if they can make the group project work it can be really gratifying.
Do you see big differences between generations? You think the future will be brighter?
I do see big differences between generations but it doesn’t mean that we can’t understand each other. Like many other arts practitioners, I have my fears about my time and creative energy being poured into teaching, but I also think how lucky I am to get a sense of how this whole other generation thinks. A shared love of the arts does create common ground and most of the time I don’t even think about the age difference - till I get caught out talking about a writer, a book or a film that I think they must know about, then realize that they probably weren’t even born. They humor me though!
We were discussing a well-known Australian writer (Helen Garner) the other day whose novel Monkey Grip was made into a film in the 1980s. The world she depicted reminded me a lot of my years of study in the early 90s when I lived in a rambling share house with drummers, guitarists and a gold and silversmith. Sometimes I typed away in my room with an eight piece reggae band rehearsing in the lounge room next door. There was a constant stream of people through that place and the communal setup made rent and food very cheap. And in those days the social welfare system was much kinder. One of my students pointed out that their own lives were much more circumscribed by capitalism now. I think my generation had a much better chance of hiding (or pretending we could hide!) from this.
I think the future is bright if keep your mind bright.
What would be your message for young artists who are talented, but intimidated by the commercialized competitiveness?
More than ever I feel that the kind of refuge that making art provides is something to cherish: that space where your sense of time takes on a whole other texture and you’re totally immersed in what you’re doing. We’re making art in a world where it feels like the whole world is clamoring for attention and though we’ve got much better means of getting our work out there, it’s another thing entirely to get noticed. I don’t think being consumed by competitiveness is good for anyone’s artistic practice and so it’s a totally reasonable thing to fear. For my own part I’m happy enough for things to move slowly, which then makes the recognition, if it does come, all that more meaningful. Getting your art out into the world at the very least helps you make it better. The thing is that mostly we’re alone when we’re making art but the reason we’re alone is - in the end - to make something that invites others in. I’m thinking about this at the moment in a paper I’m writing, which is partly about the music of a band close by to you, The National.
I have met quite a number of students in my 12 years or so of teaching creative writing and literary studies who are very active and talented. They seem to embrace the understanding that producing a good piece of writing involves many stages over time, and that a lot of devotion is needed to see through the less joyous parts of the process. I think there are some others who are overly-focused on grades and perhaps miss this understanding, but that’s part of the dilemma of studying the arts in a university context I guess. It’s bigger than that, though. They come from a secondary school system that puts a lot of pressure on them to compete for university places and they’re ranked and graded to the nth degree. You can understand how it can be hard to let go of that inside a messy creative writing class. It strikes me that those who form their own communities together seem to have a much better time. I’m not sure if they prefer individual or group projects more, but given that class sizes are getting bigger all the time and often students don’t get to know each other, if they can make the group project work it can be really gratifying.
Do you see big differences between generations? You think the future will be brighter?
I do see big differences between generations but it doesn’t mean that we can’t understand each other. Like many other arts practitioners, I have my fears about my time and creative energy being poured into teaching, but I also think how lucky I am to get a sense of how this whole other generation thinks. A shared love of the arts does create common ground and most of the time I don’t even think about the age difference - till I get caught out talking about a writer, a book or a film that I think they must know about, then realize that they probably weren’t even born. They humor me though!
We were discussing a well-known Australian writer (Helen Garner) the other day whose novel Monkey Grip was made into a film in the 1980s. The world she depicted reminded me a lot of my years of study in the early 90s when I lived in a rambling share house with drummers, guitarists and a gold and silversmith. Sometimes I typed away in my room with an eight piece reggae band rehearsing in the lounge room next door. There was a constant stream of people through that place and the communal setup made rent and food very cheap. And in those days the social welfare system was much kinder. One of my students pointed out that their own lives were much more circumscribed by capitalism now. I think my generation had a much better chance of hiding (or pretending we could hide!) from this.
I think the future is bright if keep your mind bright.
What would be your message for young artists who are talented, but intimidated by the commercialized competitiveness?
More than ever I feel that the kind of refuge that making art provides is something to cherish: that space where your sense of time takes on a whole other texture and you’re totally immersed in what you’re doing. We’re making art in a world where it feels like the whole world is clamoring for attention and though we’ve got much better means of getting our work out there, it’s another thing entirely to get noticed. I don’t think being consumed by competitiveness is good for anyone’s artistic practice and so it’s a totally reasonable thing to fear. For my own part I’m happy enough for things to move slowly, which then makes the recognition, if it does come, all that more meaningful. Getting your art out into the world at the very least helps you make it better. The thing is that mostly we’re alone when we’re making art but the reason we’re alone is - in the end - to make something that invites others in. I’m thinking about this at the moment in a paper I’m writing, which is partly about the music of a band close by to you, The National.
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11th May
My love,
My time without you has no pattern, except for the endless cups of tea I pour here by my window in the pension. It is long dark and there are only a few lights down at the water. Some boys hang about at the cigarette stand and their voices float up to me as they joke and push each other about. I bought a single cigarette earlier and smoked it. I know you don’t like me to smoke and so I had it before I sat down to write this letter.
A man came to my table today wanting me to write a letter to his son to try to entice him away from a futile love. As I wrote he sat nearby and waited and I was about to ask him if he could leave me alone for I was having difficulty concentrating. But when I looked up, I caught him watching me. The utter kindness in his eyes caught me off-guard and I could not recapture my train of thought. Lest he think his money was badly spent, I feigned writing, repeating the same word over and over on the page until finally I felt his gaze turn away. The way that he looked at me was familiar and sometimes I have even seen it in the eyes of a complete stranger. It was as if this man already knew all that was important to know about me in order to make the choice to love.
Darling, it was your name I repeated on the page. Now as I sit here with my tea gone cold, I feel frightened that our separation, which I can hardly bear, is already driving me to seek you in the eyes of another. Let it not be in their arms. Please do not see this as a weakness or as a deterioration of my love, for you, of all people, cannot blame me for being disarmed by the space of writing. In this space who we are loses all origin. You have told me this many times yourself.
I crave something from you – anything – more than just your memory.
Yours. Always.
Alejandra
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As artist, you collaborate with musicians, film makers, playwrights. Writing Fix is your website which you share with another colleague. How challenging is it to work with personalities from different concentrations or even different cultures/nationalities? Or do you think that there are no boundaries in the art world?
I think it's easier working with artists from different disciplines. I'm grateful to be able to surrender to their expertise and learn from them and that they have the same trust in me. My Writing Fix colleague did a short film screenplay adaptation of a chapter from my novel ‘Thin House’ and he managed to distil something in it I felt I was never was able to achieve in the prose form. He made it much more chilling for a start. One of my musical collaborators and I have started a conversation (that might never end) about what happens in the space of creation together, and how we might not be listening to each other as much as we think we are, which in turn might make those moments when we do connect all that more intense for the listener.
In what way Australia inspires you and and how welcoming is Melbourne to artists?
I’ve been to our Central Australian desert and to be able to gaze out across such a vast space and hear such thick silence is incredibly inspiring. An architect called Robin Boyd writing about Australia in the 1950s described the majority of Australians as a cheerful bunch of agoraphobes who were content to hug the coast in their little weather-sealed boxes. These two very different images of this country hopefully go a little way to describe my inspiration. Melbourne has a vibrant arts scene both mainstream and fringe, not to mention being the home of some fantastic independent public radio. I think it’s a very welcoming place for artists.