Winter 2009-10

Back in the States. Bombardirovka hit almost 1500 downloads. I published a new interactive narrative at www.discohillbilly.com.

Fall 2009

Updating Bombardirovka. Wrote a short film based on one of its scenes.

Spring 2009

Life has brought me back to the Caucasus.  I am now living and working in Tbilisi, Georgia. If all goes well, I will be here two years. I will go back to Armenia for the first time since writing Bombardirovka.  I will travel also to Baku for the first time.

I am re-working Bombardirovka into other forms, other languages.

I am listening and learning.

In the Open Air November 2008

After working for five months to get Art Knows No Borders off the ground, not to mention getting Bombardirovka together and ready for some kind of release and print, I finally had time the other day to sit down with a copy a bookmaker friend bound. Nothing like time. Nothing like slowing down to see all that you missed, that everyone else missed pushing to make something go.

So, what did I see? Nothing, really, to change in terms of the main dish, the entree, as it were, of the novel... but lots of need for other garnishes, an adjustment in flavors. You know, a little more salt here, the wrong spice there... and oh, no, I put just a tad too little in here! Or, that clove didn't go there, but here! Okay, here is, then, the luxury of "publishing" online and for free--I can go back and change things. And that's what I did. Thus, the print version is not different in content, in context, or, really, in form, from the online version you'll find here.

Maybe there is even something charming about the print version or even the earlier online versions and their obvious omissions, typos, seams hanging out, torn pockets, flaws. Most of us are never privy to the writer's or filmmaker's process; we only get the heavily-reviewed, the committee-cleaned up, the perfectly-processed, the neatly-combed.

Well, guess what? You get to see some of "it" hanging behind me in the print and earlier online versions. At first, I was a bit embarrassed--how could I miss some of these mistakes when I scanned the final print copy? Then, I decided, what the hey. That's just me--more worried about the good out into the world, about keeping my word to release on 11/18/08. I believe in being cautious, but I also believe in the power of making amends. I also believe in the process of writing, of art, as being as important as the final "products." All right. So, if you get a print version of the book, you get to see some of my process: some hairs out of place, eyeliner smeared. Somehow, in some way, if you know me, that is fitting, to have layers available, to have access to something askew, as well as something set right.

A few thoughts on writing, on writing Bombardirovka, etc. follow...

My ethic is basically this: years ago, a mentor of mine vowed to leave things better than she found them. And, yep, she meant everything.  Whether it be picking someone else’s dropped napkin off the floor in the corner cafe or national debate. I have tried to do that as a nonprofit manager, a public school teacher, and as a writer. And as a person. And I have tried very much for my road to hell not to be paved with good intentions, but we all know how that can’t be controlled.

My aesthetic is basically such: that which is Southern, Appalachian, Diasporan, of the “Other,” Soviet, feminist, Faulknerian, complicated, complex, messy, curious in language and thought, concerned with gender or ethnicity or building a space for oneself or culture, or something just plain hard, probably interests me.

I have been writing steadily since my late teens, and always knew, somehow, I would be the type of writer that incubated a long time before she put her work out into the public. I have also never had the intention of making a living as a writer—that is, writing fiction or poetry to me has been something I imagined doing my whole life on my own terms—and I knew they could not be something I did solely for hire (though if someone wants to hire me write a poem, I’d be willing to give it a stab).

Why did I write Bombardirovka? How did I decide to write this novel?
Somehow, I think some things choose you to write them, choose you to do them. Where and when did this novel start? Maybe when I was an exchange student to West Germany. When there was still a West Germany. And we traveled to East Berlin where a Soviet soldier at the eternal flame winked at me, and I saw his humanity beyond and behind his being my supposed Cold War enemy. Which is how I ended up at Barnard College of Columbia University. That one wink led me to study Russian. Then I spent almost eight months in Moscow, during its last days as the USSR and then during some of its first months as the Russian Federation.

In 1998 while fishing for material for a short story, I recalled the photo album of my long since deceased grandfather, Richard Cook. In his Navy album (1920) he had several photos he took while on duty on the USS Patoka in the Black Sea and in Istanbul. Across two he had scratched, "[sic] Arminians hanged by Turks." The three pictures ranged from a close frontal photo of a man in a traditional costume, a rope rubber-banded around his neck looking much the way a string tied around a finger cinches the flesh beneath. The man's eyes bugged-out from his head like a soft rubber toy I had that would bulge in many directions and from different appendages and orifices if squeezed. The next two photos contained photos of a rack supported by two telephone-poll sized logs from which swayed a number of women in modest, yet obviously Westernized skirts and a number of men in suits of a similar European cut. In 2004, I received a Fulbright to Armenia to attempt to make some sense of these photos as potential literature.

Once on the ground in Armenia, I realized that the subject of a different novel I had started in 2003 really should be something else. I began researching from all perspectives as much as I could the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. A war also between a "Christian" country and a "Muslim" country, or citizens, or affiliations, and also in the part of the world where my own country (a supposed "Christian" one, or a country with mostly Christians, I guess, depending on who you are) was at war with a Muslim country, (or a country of Muslims, I guess, depending on who you are). The former Yugoslavia had also been at war and made headlines with "Christians" and "Muslims", neighbors, fighting. Most folks not Armenian have no idea what I am talking about when I talk about their war. And, you know, I am not uppity. I didn't, really, either, till I went there. And, frankly, I probably still don't really know. I am damn lucky never to have lived in a war zone. Of them I have only been a tourist - I could come and go as I pleased.

But Bombardirovka is only partially, and in a small way, specifically about that war, and maybe somewhat about war in general. In a larger sense, I tried to find questions for myself. How little or much of any region not my own can I understand? How would I behave in certain circumstances? What is our common humanity? In these times of great shifts, what are “Occident” and “Orient?”

And mostly, I wrote this book because writing about the past, even the near past, is impossible. In some way, one is always writing about the here and now.

That’s what I grappled with in Bombardirovka most: the here and now.

Why give away Bombardirovka for free?
The important thing for me is the conversation Bombardirovka enters. I want to provide a literary vehicle for that conversation.

Also, I feel this is not just my story to share or to reap a "benefit" from. Many people helped shape this novel--the people generous enough to let me interview them and the people that helped me out when I was on a Fulbright to the Caucasus in 2004 - 2005.

Why Art Knows No Borders?
While researching Bombardirovka I interviewed someone in Nagorno-Karabakh, leaving his job doing landmine retrieval to pursue his dream of playing in his town's new orchestra. He had this to say:

"After this war, we live in our heads. Nothing seems real any more. After knowing what I know now, I don't wish war on anyone, or on anyone's children. The financial assistance to us has been very helpful, but what has also meant a lot is when the French [Doctors Without Borders], when they have come and helped us deal psychologically. The psychological issues have been hard for us to grapple with."

I knew when I came back, I wanted to support Doctors Without Borders (MSF). Thus, I conceived of the event Art Knows No Borders (ArtKnowsNoBorders.com) to raise awareness of MSF and to raise money for their work.

The event included the work of more than 100 artists and more than 50 products and services—all available for a donation to MSF.  The goal is to raise twenty-thousand dollars—an amount that could provide a health kit to care for nearly 40,000 displaced people for 3 months.

I settled on reaching out to artists to highlight their work and to donate for the silent auction, because the arts often transcend when politics and personalities do not. In a world of perpetual war, the arts offer an appeal to a higher self.

All of the evening's participants and performers were volunteer, so that all proceeds from the door and the art directly benefited MSF.