The Devouring, My Novel-in-Progress

Knut protecting George.

Tucked in a drawer in my closet was an empty Leuchturm journal I had been saving to write a novella by hand. I yearned to see ink on a page, to write the old-fashioned way and feel the pen nib on the paper. It was supposed to be my reward for finishing the novel I’d been working on for years.

But then the pandemic, George Floyd, the marches... my neighborhood turning into a ghosthood overnight. The novel was a multi-voiced communal story set in Minneapolis, a city I had lived in both as a young adult and after grad school. But now I was living in Chicago, walking the abandoned streets at night with my dog, Zelda, taking photos and videos of our shadows, of the glowing windows we passed. Cicadas. Sirens. Endless ambulances. Cars drag raced down once busy streets. The city was both spooky and beautiful, and I felt locked away and simultaneously adrift like much of America. My misgivings about my project doubled and tripled, but I kept at it, writing about neighbors sharing space in a way that suddenly seemed quaint. Then one morning I pulled out the notebook, filled my pen and started to write. I heard a woman’s voice saying, How far north can you go before you reach the beginning? I went north to find my son... She turned out to be in complete denial, overly strategic—a director of risk and reputation, and she was not to be trusted. I couldn’t stop writing, or feeling like I was cheating on my almost finished novel. Claire Isono had a story to tell, about the time she went to the Arctic to try to save her son, a chef married to an architect of ice hotels.

I’d write a few pages each morning, stow the notebook away and get back to the revision. In the evenings, I’d rewatch episodes of Chef’s Table and then dream of halls of ice and long tables set with feasts. I invented dishes and didn’t worry if they were actually edible. I gave it the working title The Devouring because appetite was everywhere in the manuscript. When I was stuck, I’d let myself journal on the back side of the notepaper, and soon these short journals turned into a secondary Chicago story. Then I finished a draft of the first novel and half-heartedly shared it with my friend E and my partner. But it didn’t matter what they told me, I couldn’t stomach another draft. The book was dead—at least for now.

Sketch of the Hall of Mirrors at Sabina’s ice hotel.

Some months later took out the new handwritten draft and typed it. I kept the working title, The Devouring. Over the past few years that 60,000ish word draft grew to 130,000. In the winter of 2022, I dragged my husband to Lapland for research and to stay in an ice hotel. It was so cold that week that Sweden shut down the trains north of Kiruna. Our train was full of vacationers from all over the world. We had a sleeping car and I took the top bunk and filmed the passing landscape. It was like watching an old European noir, the trees and sky in silver and black, dark smokestacks and shrill train whistles, lights flashing. Once we arrived the sky turned gray-gold and then later pink and blue. The Polar Nights. Different than in my imagination, but no less magical. The night we stayed in The Ice Hotel outside Kiruna it was -25. The frigid weather brought with it the Northern Lights, emerald green, flashing and streaking, changing so quickly we risked frostbite to stay outdoors and watch.

Claire Isono is adrift.

I promised myself that with this novel I would trust whatever came out of my pen. No early revision, I’d write as if I had forever and not censor myself. I finished a weird, wild draft and then put it away. For the next two years I didn’t understand why it had taken the turns it had or what I was going to do with it. And I worried there were too many stories about chefs coming out. Only this one is really about a chef, it’s about a mother. I had wanted to turn the trope of the overly controlling mother/mother-in-law upside down. This past December, I was able to understand what it was that the book was naturally doing. A few weeks ago I finished a third draft and printed it out. The larger questions still unsettle me. Who is Claire Isono in the end? Do I believe her?

Rain, Clown Nose, Cherry: A Postcard Film

Most of my time is spent finishing a novel and teaching a graduate fiction workshop at Northwestern. But I’m also keeping a small film and art practice going—short visual experiments that seem to inject energy into my writing and allow me to play with ideas.

This past fall I exchanged postcard paintings with filmmaker and artist Laura Harrison. (I’ll write more on this exchange soon.) If you’re not familiar with Laura’s work, she has an incredible, flexible imagination that allows for all kinds of visual and narrative surprise. She works on multiple projects and collaborations at once. I can’t emphasize enough how wonderful it is to get a random text late at night with a photo of one of her creations. Or the slight anxiety/excitement of staring at her images and making myself respond quickly on a blank 4 x 5 piece of paper. Laura has been helping me to be faster and less precious.

With that aim in mind I am making very quick and short weekly films. I’m a perfectionist and I tend to overwork ideas. This tendency has kept me from learning as quickly as I would like, and from finishing projects.

This week’s challenge? To take one of those postcard painting and use it to create a one-minute film, adding just five more sketches. For what I thought would be my central image I used a self-portrait in a clown nose. What happened to this woman before she sat down at her kitchen counter, put on a clown nose, and dug into a sundae?

I imported my images into Davinci Resolve and tried to turn them into a tiny story. The nose, the cherry. That bright-red circle. I leaned into that shape and color, and used my limited knowledge of film editing to telegraph a transfer of energy.

The resulting film is a little wonky, but also somehow touching. I shared it with my friend Janaki Ranpura, another favorite multidisciplinary artist, and she encouraged me to add an image to signal the disruption that led to this “utterly ridiculous,” vaguely sexual sundae moment. I added a fleeting memory of a betrayal. Then I found myself thinking of the film Brief Encounter. The sundae had transformed from mere consolation into a brief and ill-fated tryst.

Watercolor sketch film: A Brief Romance

Super 8, 1996

Last year I decided to sort through some of the boxes of memorabilia and paperwork I’ve gathered over the years. Every time I do this I come across things I no longer recognize or remember or care about, versions of myself that seem less familiar as time passes. And so much unfinished work. Hundreds upon hundreds of stories, essays, books, paintings and sketches, half-fleshed ideas. What is the meaning of all of this looking and recording? What to do with it all? When I was in my twenties and painting, I had a moment of panic thinking of all the pieces I would make just to learn how to be an artist. Where would I put all the canvases and objects? Where would I store all the materials? Writing seemed so much more manageable—and compact. I had no idea.

I’m old enough to have boxes of negatives, VHS tapes, Zip drives I can no longer open, a small collection of fragile cassette tapes of family interviews recorded by my father in the 70s and 80s that still haven’t been digitized. I threw out piles of paperwork this time around, and then, facing thirty-some years worth of handwritten journals, I closed the remaining boxes and stuck everything back in the closet. But not before removing two unprocessed Super 8 film cartridges from the 90s.

Over the summer I sent the rolls out to two processing centers that specialize in vintage film. One of the films was so rare that they had to outsource it. This took many more months, so long that I was certain the roll was unsalvageable. When that second clip arrived last month I was shocked by the footage. 1996. My cross-country move from Minneapolis to Seattle. I don’t remember shooting it at all. A three-day roadtrip across the country in a rented car with a cat and a writing table in the backseat.

The film is obviously damaged. I love how it’s aged, the graininess and the flickering scratches, the blurred edges of landscapes. I shot both rolls with my friend Christina, who I met in Madison when we were both students at the UW. Christina was a bass player in a grunge band called Power Wagon. We worked at rival Italian restaurants, and we both studied German and wanted to travel. She intimidated me a little—with her wild red hair and her piercing stare. Our first real exchange happened while I was working at Gino’s and Christina came flying into the restaurant to tell me that our delivery truck was rolling down State Street—sans driver. The next time I talked to her was on a sweltering bus ride in the Black Forest for the start of our junior year abroad when I threw up in her open handbag.

Super 8 was already outdated when we took that road trip a few years after college. The camera had passed from me to my youngest brother, and then back to me after my brother died in a tragic accident the summer before. I remember taking the camera out to shows and filming friends at the park, screwing around. I have no idea what happened to those films. These are the only two that remain. I texted Christina to share this second clip. Wow, oh, wow, we said. And I said, “We look so happy. I remember that trip being so sad.” And Christina said, “I remember how sad you were too.” Grief. I see that too, in those long pans of the Badlands, in the image of me waving to Christina as I look back at her. I am trying. I don’t know if I am moving forward or running away. I only know I have to leave.

Still 2: Heading into Washington

These clips are rough and amateur and damaged by time. But I love the blurry shots of the roadtrip west. My favorite might be of Christina looking into the camera, braiding just one side of her hair. She is unselfconscious, fully in her body. I wish I had shot a complete film with her at the center. Then there’s the grainy image of the Stardust Hotel. We dreamed up an entire film we would make there. And my skinny arms flailing as I dance in my first Seattle apartment, The Laredo, with the Space Needle in the background. It will be months before I can afford a bed. Looking at those images I see how out of my own body I was then. I kept dancing to keep myself from floating away.

Still 3: Badlands at Dusk

West to Seattle, 1996

Seattle, 1996.

5 Minute Postcard Plays for The Gift Theatre

On Friday, The Gift Theatre held its 25th Anniversary Gala at the gorgeous Copernicus Center on N. Milwaukee here in Chicago. I joined two other writers, playwright Jennifer Ramberger and multi-genre author Maggie Andersen to write impromptu 5 Minute Postcard Plays to raise funds for the coming season.

We had a blast, and the people who ordered postcards got to witness the messiness and playfulness of making art on demand. I’m not sure they got their $25 dollars worth, but hey, it went to a great cause.

SOME OBSERVATIONS

1) If you’re feeling too precious about your work, give yourself five to 10 minutes, and a 4 X 5 piece of paper. Ask a friend to give you a setting, a name, and an object. Then without overthinking it, sketch a micro-play, a story, or a poem. Add a doodle or a drawing to really loosen things up.

2) Small spaces force you to compress.

3) Small spaces back you into corners you have to resolve quickly.

4) Making art for a happy occasion + keeping it short and quick can lead to funny, absurd scenarios.

5) People love to use animals as objects. Some of the prompts: 1) A ski lodge, Axel Stoner, and a panda. 2) Magic show, Frank, rabbit. Animals invite play.

6) I have a new appreciation for comedians. Jokes are hard. One, two, turn is a natural rhythm, but it’s incredibly difficult to stick a landing.

7) These tiny plays exposed a problem I’ve been working on in my screenwriting. I lean too heavily on dialogue, asking language to do work that belongs to action—or silence. (Thank you, playwrights.)

8) Collaboration invites new energy and ideas. I have spent long years and hours working alone, protecting myself from distraction. While this is often necessary, some of the most meaningful growth I’ve made has been alongside other artists.

On Friday I watched Jennifer and Maggie approach their plays in different ways. Jennifer Ramberger wrote like a happy machine, unworried about how her pieces turned out. She told me this was because of endless table reads as a playwright and constant iteration. And Maggie Andersen managed to sit down after a full week of teaching and knock out several plays… even channeling her thoughts on the state of higher education for one. (Check out Maggie’s new memoir, No Stars in Jefferson Park, inspired in part by her experiences with the founding of The Gift Theatre.)

When the commissions suddenly multiplied and we were all working together in a frenzy, I was forced to write faster—and more freely—than I do alone.

I snapped a photo of the postcard I commissioned from J.R. and two very cheesy ones I wrote (see below). My pen was moving too fast to get an image of one of Maggie’s or any of the many others we wrote.

8) Note to self: Imperfect and fast making + sharing helps to keep the work flowing. Perfection and the fear of looking ridiculous is a killer.

This experience left me wanting to find more opportunities to make art on the fly in the company of other artists—though it may be a while before I try stand-up.

5 Min. Postcard Play, Side 1: “Four’s a Crowd” (R. Swearingen)

5 Min. Postcard Play, Side 2: “Four’s a Crowd” (R. Swearingen)

5 Min. Postcard Play, Side 1: “Massage Parlor” ( J. Rumberger)

5 Min. PostCard Play, Side 2: “Massage Parlor” (J. Rumberger)

5 Min. Postcard Play, Side 1: “Frank from Texas” (R. Swearingen)

5 Min. Postcard Play, Side 2: “Frank from Texas” (R. Swearingen)

On Cultivating a Jafar Panahi State of Mind

Several years ago I watched Kiarostami’s Where Is the Friend’s House (1987) and became fascinated with Iranian cinema. That film led me to Jafar Panahi’s The White Balloon (1995), a movie so alive and quietly devastating that I watched it again the next day. The White Balloon follows a young girl as she navigates the city in her quest for a goldfish for her family’s New Year’s celebration. Such a simple premise, and yet the movie is filled with adventure, menace, and grace, all filtered through the lens of childhood.

For a writer like me who tends to overcomplicate and over-refine things, Panahi’s films are paradoxically liberating. Somehow, despite multiple arrests, imprisonments, and bans on filmmaking, he has continued to work. And not just work, he uses these constraints and prohibitions to fuel and reinvent the form.

Recently, I re-watched This Is Not a Film (2011) and Taxi (2015), two genre-bending “films” that, out of necessity, feature Panahi as himself—or as a version of himself. In This is Not a Film, the filmmaker is under house arrest and prohibited from making a film. Ever the artist and trickster, he tries to find a loophole wide enough for him to slip through to create something of value. With the help of a friend (co-director Mojtaba Mirtahmasb), he sets about staging and reading a screenplay aloud before a camera. He’s animated, sticking spike tape to his living room floor to mark out the boundaries of a room. (The screenplay was rejected by censors and never produced.) We see the director at work. He’s found a way.

Still from This Is Not a Film, via Harvard Film Archives.

And then no. He breaks down at the impossibility of his experiment. “If I could tell a film, then what is the point of making it?” he tells his friend. He leaves the room, and I pause the movie. I’m crying… because isn’t this the question so many of us circle around in our work? What is it that we are trying to achieve? What is the point of a film, or a painting, or a play? For an Iranian filmmaker like Panahi that question is much larger, sharper, and more urgent. It’s more existential, and must be filled with grief and fury and danger.

For me, it’s these moments where the dream of Panahi’s films shatter and turn into something new that arrest me, and excite me as an artist. In The Mirror (1997), a young girl gets lost trying to find her way home from school. Partway into the filming, the young actor Panahi has hired to play the girl rips off her fake cast and the costume she feels makes her look like a baby. She refuses to continue her role. She’s done. She quits, she flies off the bus, leaving Panahi and his crew behind with a half-finished work.

Still from Jafar Panahi’s The Mirror.

All of this is caught on film, footage a lesser director might have trimmed away in a desperate attempt to salvage the movie. Instead we watch Panahi panic for a moment as the girl runs into a busy Tehran street. She’s still wearing her microphone. Problems galore for the director. Then, inspiration.

He sends someone after her, but tells his crew to leave on the sound. He’s thinking on his feet, using what the moment offers him, messy as it is. He also admires the girl’s spirit—and sees how he can use her defiance to remake his story. The movie steers recklessly and wonderfully into a documentary about making a film, and so much more. The crew follows the girl with a handheld camera from a moving vehicle as she runs down the street and tries to find her way home. It’s a delicious reversal: Real life suddenly imitates fiction.

It’s the visible seams in these later works that delight me, the way genre splits open and blends into real life. I’ve always been drawn to art that does this, and to my own twin compulsions to both hide and strip off the covers.

Taxi, though, is something else entirely: one of the most delightful and satisfying of films. Panahi, blocked from making a conventional film, poses as a taxi driver. Using dashboard cameras and footage from his passengers, he constructs a playful, incisive, often hilarious “day in the life” road film. It feels astonishingly free—full of mischief, warmth, and formal invention—precisely because of its constraints. (He even manages to work in homages to his past works—a delight for his fans.)

These films (and the work of Kiarostami and other directors working under repressive regimes) remind me that freedom and limitless resources are not necessary to create great art. More often, it’s the courage to press against limitations, to allow something raw and vital to emerge, that is required.