Power of silence. Gun control advocate.

 Emma González, a survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, delivered the speech to the March For Our Lies rally on Saturday in Washington, USA. 

I cried.  The Power of silence.  Truncated sentences. Caesura.  Emma Gonzalez used the truncated “would never” and the gaps we had to fill in to lay a moving tribute to her friends.


Extending this further into over 4 minutes of silence, she held a powerful testimony.


The grief and anger is too much for words.

Imagine this time.  Place yourself there.

The timing of 6 minutes 20 seconds also the timing of the shooting. 

...in that it reminds me of Carly Churchill in the truncated loss of words (Here We Go, Blue Kettle, and a silence more complex, sad and defiant than what I’ve seen theatre with Pinter or Beckett. ... a crowd of hundreds of thousands would do that.... 

Michael Moore, Twitter

Michael Moore, Twitter


EMMA GONZALEZ: Six minutes and about 20 seconds. In a little over six minutes, 17 of our friends were taken from us. Fifteen were injured. And everyone - absolutely everyone - in the Douglas Community was forever altered. Everyone who was there understands. Everyone who has been touched by the cold grip of gun violence understands.

Six minutes and 20 seconds with an AR-15, and my friend Carmen would never complain to me about piano practice. Aaron Feis would never call Kyra, Miss Sunshine. Alex Schachter would never walk into school with his brother Ryan. Scott Beigel would never joke around with Cameron at camp. Helena Ramsay would never hang out after school with Max. Gina Montalto would never wave to her friend Liam at lunch. Joaquin Oliver would never play basketball with Sam or Dylan. Alaina Petty would never. Cara Loughran would never. Chris Hixon would never. Luke Hoyer would never. Martin Duque Anguiano would never. Peter Wang would never. Alyssa Alhadeff would never. Jamie Guttenberg would never. Meadow Pollack would never.

[Silence.  4 minutes]  

GONZALEZ: Since the time that I came out here, it has been six minutes and 20 seconds. The shooter has ceased shooting and will soon abandon his rifle, blend in with the students as they escape and walk free for an hour before arrest. Fight for your lives before it's someone else's job.

 

Farewell, Ursula K Le Guin.

One of my favourite authors, Ursula K Le Guin passed away this week. Amongst many things, she showed me that you have good books and you have bad books, the “genre” of the book doesn’t really matter. So Le Guin is famous for Science Fiction and Fantasy, but mostly I simply treasure her wonderful books.  I posted on her writing craft book here, and her on literature as a manual for life.

 

In her later life, she kept a blog (recent interviews here) which is still a treasure trove and much better than my blog. If only mine could be so rich over time.  If you are a fan of cats, then you should read through her blog as though she didn’t write books in her last years, she wrote extensively about her cat. The Annals of Pard.

“As I see it, writing and the arts (and the sciences, and all learning) don’t play a role in ensuring our freedom; they are our freedom — the heart of it.” — UKL. 30 September 2017.

David Mitchell (of Reasons I Jump fame and father of an ASD child, and more famously a novelist) writes about his encounter with her and her influence.

I leave you with her reply to George Zebrowski, who asked her to blurb an anthology of science fiction that contained precisely no women:

"I cannot imagine myself blurbing a book, the first of the series, which not only contains no writing by women, but the tone of which is so self-contentedly, exclusively male, like a club, or a locker room. That would not be magnanimity, but foolishness. Gentlemen, I just don’t belong here."

And her “A Few Words to a Young Writer”

Socrates said, "The misuse of language induces evil in the soul." He wasn't talking about grammar. To misuse language is to use it the way politicians and advertisers do, for profit, without taking responsibility for what the words mean. Language used as a means to get power or make money goes wrong: it lies. Language used as an end in itself, to sing a poem or tell a story, goes right, goes towards the truth.

 

A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.

Never a wrong time to do the right thing. Free Speech.

There is never a wrong time to do the right thing.  If you think you’ve made the wrong decision, but you are very much in the public eye then reversing it can be a hard thing to do.  The Royal Court led by Vicky Featherstone have reversed such a decision.  Regardless of one's own opinion, listening and responding is a mark of a considered leadership and should be congratulated.

 

“Written when Andrea Dunbar was just eighteen, Rita, Sue and Bob Too was presented as part of the Young Writers Festival 1982, in a double bill with Bows and Arrows by Lenka Janiurek. The play caused a sensation with its frank look at teenage sexuality and became notorious for its opening scene where two schoolgirl babysitters take it in turns to have sex with their employer in the back of his car. In 1986, the play was adapted into a film of the same name, and attracted a cult following.”

 

The RC at first thought it was too difficult to stage the play at the RC putting more weight on keeping the RC a safe space and the conflictual overtones of having  a director (accused of multiple harassment incidents) previously involved with the production.  

 

Yet the RC puts the writer’s voice at the heart of its work. Not directors not actors.  So, as writers might say, silencing a working class female voice because of who the original director was, would be untrue to the RC mission.

 

A wider ranging examination of the difficulties of separating art from artist is looked at here by  Claire Dederer in The Paris Review.   Can we look at Ezra Pound’s work as separate from his poetry or even harder can we take out what we know of Woody Allen from his masterwork that is Manhattan as discussed in the article.

 

“....They did or said something awful, and made something great. The awful thing disrupts the great work; we can’t watch or listen to or read the great work without remembering the awful thing. Flooded with knowledge of the maker’s monstrousness, we turn away, overcome by disgust. Or … we don’t. We continue watching, separating or trying to separate the artist from the art. Either way: disruption. They are monster geniuses, and I don’t know what to do about them….Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, William Burroughs, Richard Wagner, Sid Vicious, V. S. Naipaul, John Galliano, Norman Mailer, Ezra Pound, Caravaggio, Floyd Mayweather, though if we start listing athletes we’ll never stop….”

 

Those of a libertarian angle or fierce defenders of speech freedom will mostly conclude that primacy of voice and freedom of speech comes first and anything else would be censorship and censorship is mostly or even always unwelcome.

 

If you'd like to feel inspired by commencement addresses and life lessons try:  Neil Gaiman on making wonderful, fabulous, brilliant mistakes; or Nassim Taleb's commencement address; or JK Rowling on the benefits of failure.  Or Charlie Munger on always inverting;  Sheryl Sandberg on grief, resilience and gratitude or investor Ray Dalio on  on Principles.

Cross fertilise. Read about the autistic mind here.