A fiction workshop sponsored by Conscious Writers Collective.
11 am to 1 pm Central Standard Time on Sunday, January the 11th
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“When I listen to music, gardens open out around me, and the melody becomes a flower I hear with my eyes.”
— Mahmoud Darwish, as translated by Catherine Cobham
There is a 1911 photo of composer Erik Satie talking to Claude Debussy. The two are smoking, leaning against what appears to be a mantle, although there is a painting or a mirror that duplicates the space behind Stravinsky. Debussy is looking at Satie, who is looking at Igor Stravinsky, the invisible guest in this photo. Stravinsky holds the camera: he takes the photograph.
My obsession with Satie has led to me writing poems in dialogue with his music as well as his person and theory. It has also been the seed of fictions that begin with photos taken in rooms that I cannot access. In such rooms, Satie becomes a character, an invention, a Proustian Albertine of sorts. Our obsessions create dialogues between images and texts. In this generative workshop, we will engage our obsessions to explore seven different ways to fictionalize a photograph.