Great article on the pyramid scheme of creative writing programs, whereby less-than-accomplished writers pass their "knowledge" on to students, who ultimately become creative writing professors themselves. Same could be said for film schools (and professors).

Snowed in today, home from work and writing. Which means, of course, staring out the window at the endless snow blanketing cars, rooftops, trees. I have not found much time to write lately, so I am grateful. I met with my writers' group again last Sunday, submitted a sample chapter from the book that they critiqued. It was like open heart surgery. I'm not sure I was/am ready, should probably have considered the possibility that it was a terrible idea, although I think the input will prove helpful in the long run.

I have considered sharing some novel excerpts on my blog, but I figure the writing is much too young, and I would much rather talk about my writing than share the actual writing itself. Furthermore, it's really important to establish a safe space within which to share. The internet is kind of like a bus station and I would never write in public. (Funny story, I once rented a room from a writer who did an art installation in which he lived/wrote a novel in a gallery for a month before an audience. Interesting.)

A devil of an information session for the Jerome Foundation travel grant tonight. You'd think going to Nigeria to research a novel would be interesting, but I had to be about the fifth person "going to Africa" to "do research" on something "interesting." So I asked the session facilitator whether it was important that the applicant have a connection to the culture in question, and the answer was "yes and no." Interesting. So I might have just as good a shot applying for a grant to go to Iceland to study whales than Akwa Ibom to study my people? That notion gave me a moment of pause, thinking, Maybe I should reconsider?

I also wonder about this phrase "emerging artist," like I am hatching from an egg. I do not know what it means. My brain thinks "artist in the rough who has not found her way yet." I feel very confused and conflicted creatively. Slightly immature or maybe amateur. But I think the phrase is supposed to be empowering. Then the facilitator drops a name, a choreographer who's been at it for at least a decade, but is still "emerging." I am confused again. He tries to explain the delicate tension between having not yet emerged, but having a strong enough body of work to be "competitive" for the grant (their words, not mine). I feel an inherent contradiction there.

I look around at the other emerging artists, the rabid New Yorkers and misunderstood Eastern Europeans, couple of fresh-off-the-boat Chinese video installation heads, the handful of sistahs (mostly from Brooklyn), and the overwhelming majority of white female choreographers. All on the edge of our seats, clamoring for the same money (and what the hell can you really do with $5K?), thinking the same thoughts of our superior/inferiority, having long since become irrelevant to the world-at-large living in this damn fishbowl NYC. Mostly left wanting to be rid of the strange phenomenon of the New York artist all together. (You know, there is a world in which to live out there.) I am having a cynical moment. My apologies.

Oddly enough, today I ran into one of my friends who says she left her job and is now writing full time. I asked if she got a grant and she said that she had some "savings" so she's working full-time on two book projects. I was speechless. Here I am running to work every morning, never finding any time to write, and seeing the days of my "emergence" stretch on in perpetuity. I am extremely frustrated that I do not own my time. My boss does.

Sorry I have been a little MIA on here. Last week was busy at work applying for a Sundance Documentary Fund grant, then off to Stanford for a reunion of my college a cappella group, Talisman. It's difficult to encapsulate how wonderful an experience it was, with over 100 of us flying in from all over the world (Berlin, Korea, and India among others) for the twentieth anniversary of the group's founding by Joe Pigato.

He was just a Stanford junior (I think) when he started the group to sing "culturally substantive" music. South Africa was still under apartheid, and he used a lot of Zulu/Xhosa folk songs in the early repertoire. Since then Talisman has toured the American South and South Africa, sung at the White House, recorded almost twenty albums, and added more folk spirituals and world music to the repertoire.

There was an article about us in the paper, and I wanted to share a couple of clips from the show. (I am the lead solo on Amazing Grace!) I can only say that it is an infinite blessing to be a part of something so creative, positive, and transformative. Wish I could bottle all that good energy up and spray it on like perfume. Enjoy!

I've finally been kicked out of NYU. Not literally, of course, since I'm technically on academic leave. But over the course of the past two weeks I have slowly been losing access to online research databases, academic calendars, and now my e-mail. It feels so sudden! although it has been almost four semesters since I went on leave.

My 9-to-5 brings a certain clarity to these circumstances.

The director of our documentary project just came back from Haiti with some footage of the UN and other relief organizations. Today I was trying to find the correct application to read a certain type of media file on his hard drive, and I couldn't figure it out. I had no clue. Had never even seen this type of file before. Found myself cursing under my breath, asking why the hell I left film school, wondering what other technologies have passed me by. I find that, when it comes to technical things, you only ever know as much as you learnt or thought yourself capable of learning in school. But I digress.

I wanted to share a clip from the Haiti footage that made me smile. I'm quite sure I'm not breaking any rules posting it here (my boss doesn't know about non disclosure agreements), but I also hope that vous pouvez parler un peu francais. No subtitles here!



I also came across this other Haitian relief documentary online, chronicling the activities of the Red Cross.

The main problem with this Red Cross project, and also what my boss is trying to do, is that the production time is far too short. The relief effort will likely take a decade to bear fruit, and most filmmakers' attention spans--not to mention that of the public and the media at large--are simply not long enough.

But what's really fascinating is that Haiti's only film school, the Cine Institute in Jacmel, was completely destroyed and yet the students continue to make films in the aftermath of the quake. All but one of the sixty students survived, and they found six working cameras buried in the rubble that they are now using to film recovery stories. Folks have been sending donations, and I'm starting to think my next ten relief dollars should go to them.

No this post isn't about love; I don't do the sappy stuff (anymore :).

I have been listening to Sade all day. What a gift, another album to guide me. My favorite song of hers is It's Only Love That Gets You Through. My yoga teacher plays it in class sometimes and, after a particularly rough day, the heat and the sweat and the song always make me cry.

I find it interesting that the reviews I've read, referencing the ten-year lapse since Lover's Rock, call Sade unhurried, mysterious at best and unproductive at worst. I wonder who can say how much an artist should or should not produce?

If she never sang another word, I'd be good for the next thirty years.

Went to a book talk yesterday on Meri Danquah's anthology The Black Body @ The Brooklyn Museum.

The first reading I attended on this book was at Bluestockings Bookstore in the Village last November. At the time the event was slated to begin, the bookstore organizer started asking attendees, some of whom were friends of the author, whether Meri had called to say she was coming. As they confirmed, Meri arrived thirty minutes late in no hurry and a floor-length leopard print jacket.

She didn't apologize, didn't even mention her lateness, instead launching into a reading of her prologue before introducing some contributors seated in the audience, two white men, who read from their essays (one about dating a sexy black actress and the other about loving black music, both slightly fetishized). It was interesting hearing white men sharing very beautiful and personal sentiments about the black body. I suppose I have always been somewhat skeptical.

And Meri's essay, about raising a daughter in the U.S. away from a self-affirming, loving community in her native Ghana, and all the havoc this dissociation wreaked on her daughter's sense of self, resonated very personally with me.

But it was the militant, defensive responses Ms. Danquah offered during the Q & A that turned me off and away. She bristled visibly, irritated or annoyed at most of the questions, as though we should all fully study her and not ask that she cope with and understand the audience in front of her.

Nevertheless, I approached her to sign my copy of the book after several fraught moments at the cash register questioning, am I buying this just as a means of talking with her? do I even like her? am I buying this to support her just because she's a black/African/woman writer?

My pen barely worked and, for several moments, she scribbled circles on the page waiting for the ink to run. I reminded her that we had spoken once over the phone, when my father met her at a conference in DC and then again over email about my book project. I waited for that moment when the recognition came, her glassy eyes warming--and chilling again as she pulled away from the connection, cloaked in her leopard jacket, scribbling some nonsense ("Keep on writing") in my book and handing it back to me, turning to someone else.

All told, it cost me twenty dollars and my self esteem.

I suppose I was deep in the writing and just needed some compassion, some acknowledgement, something more than she was willing to give. I spent the hour afterwards talking with one of my writer friends about how guarded Meri was, rehashing the intricacies of her depression and antisocial behavior--laid out in her memoir, Willow Weep For Me--and trying unsuccessfully to forgive her. I resolved to step back from famous writers until my book was done, and my own fragile esteem had also re-cloaked itself.

At any rate, attending First Saturdays at the museum last night, couldn't help but wander upstairs to the book talk, hoping to lay eyes on Ms. Danquah again and meet some of the black contributors who couldn't make it before. She didn't even show up this time.

I often wonder how we learn to be-love each other, to be-love ourselves. I wonder why I sought to connect with Meri again though the first go around taught me better. Maybe it is human to seek connection/love from those who would deny us. And maybe the most well-intentioned of us can sometimes be the most unloving.

Even I, last night, found myself eager to end a too-long conversation with a long-time-no-see friend simply to walk alone, staring absently at the paintings on the wall.

Sci-fi, futuristic, and set in Kenya. Wow.

Great panel discussion happening next week, Creating Progress: How Women Of Color Call The Shots, presented by New York Women in Film & Television. The panel seeks to answer: What are the unique challenges faced by black female directors as they pursue their careers? Are the stories they craft unique?

I was having this exact discussion on Sunday at a writers' brunch with some Hedgebrook and Pan African Literary Forum sisters (I didn't attend the latter, but heard from them it was amazing). I offered, in our discussion, that there are certain female patterns of communication--consensus-building, for one--that have to be suppressed in order to be a respected director. And, of course, you have to be ego-driven to a fault. But when you're talking about holistic creative thinking, the art direction/sound/lighting taken altogether, women might have an edge up.

Among other things, as a director, I need to work on my ego. I was raised to be humble and obedient and respectful; all the qualities that would make me a good African woman make for a terrible director. As for my race, I've never considered it a drawback in filmmaking. I think if any one is given access to the tools and principles of filmmaking, and studies the craft, they can make world class films with the best of them. And the old boys network, in my book, only exists to be vanquished, and I've got my sword ready.

At any rate, Tanya Hamilton--who's being billed as the only black female director at Sundance, though Kenyan Wanuri Kahiu's sci-fi short Pumzi took folks by storm--will be in attendance at the panel, talking about her feature film Night Catches Us.

my boss is a fan of naming people in the office to lead a diversity initiative promoting artists of color. i've heard from several colleagues that I am not the first to be approached with this challenge--the first was also the first non-white hire, of Indian descent.

in my subtle way, i have received his request with unintelligible mumbling, a nod of agreement, some inner eyeball-rolling. surely this is a noble initiative? only my boss cares little for representation, only that he looks to others as though he really cares.

i wonder, to myself, whether I should champion this cause? whether i should be outspoken and boisterous and invite all my friends to a garish gala in which i announce that we are breaking down doors and taking over?

i could do that, but i would be acting.

Not that I don't believe in the need for greater representation of people of color, of women, of Africans in the mainstream art world; rather, i don't believe my boss. in the same breath as asking me to diversify our talent, he often questions the inclusion of these artists as compromising the "artistic integrity" of his productions.

so i dismiss his request, find it to be the politically correct posturing of a privileged Caucasian male, secure in his lavish home with his wine collection and ascots and african carvings.

even i am his token, as shiny and black as a chess piece.

I've been reading a lot of plays for work. Halfway to applauding the remarkable flexibility of the form, it occurred to me that it probably wasn't so much a product of the playwright's imagination as much as ignorance. Most seemed to have no idea how to write a play--where the margins are, what is italicized or not, how to indicate stage directions. Many also weren't spell checked.

One of my film school teachers always said we shouldn't call ourselves screenwriters if we haven't spent time reading screenplays. The same can be said of playwrights, novelists. You must read. And then you must re-read.

Not those "how-to" books that explain, that tell as opposed to showing, but the actual novels/plays/screenplays that demonstrate how skillful writers negotiated various creative challenges--dialogue, staging, flashback. Because those who read your work are using the same eyes that have read these great works, and subtly measuring yours by them.

Not to say that form is everything, but there is a problem when lack of attention to form becomes an obstacle for the reader to get over. I find myself, at times, unwilling to do that work--ready to reject something simply because I find the writer careless. And that's a problem.

I think it's true that you can ultimately reject "conventional" form, at a certain point, that you must find your own form in the process, but I think you must know what it is in order to do away with it. Or to use it in such a way that it transforms and revolutionizes the form itself.

I think there are limitations on that end too, of course, as I was unable to finish prodigy Helen Oyeyemi's The Opposite House. (Most reviewers called it a "challenging" read. It did not work for me!)

All of this to say. If you don't read, you don't write; you experiment. Nothing wrong with that, but if you want to be a good or great writer, some attention to form is necessary. You must read. And you must be able to apply what you read to your own work. (A little spell checking goes a long way, too!)