Here in my second week at the lovely Kimmel Harding Nelson Residency in the small brick town of Nebraska City (the “city” was optimism sprung from early trade on the Missouri river) I’ve had a lot of quiet, a lot of space, and spent a lot of time staring at things and pushing the keys of my typewriter around.
I have this feeling that though the writing is not coming easily now, I’m storing up for a big summery storm. There has been nothing so inspiring at a residency, though, as being surrounded by artists who create gorgeous work and whose brains seem to work according to entirely different rules than my own.
For the last week or so, for the collection I’m working on at this residency, I’ve been sorting through photographs taken by Gertrude Bell around the turn of the century. I have very strong mixed feelings about Gertrude Bell’s person, as a woman who clearly believed in European superiority, and was a strident anti-suffragette (these seem so mind-bogglingly counter to everything she did), but who was also independent, passionate, a brilliant linguist and historian, and a lover of all things in the Middle East. (Though while reading her letters I was amused to find out that she was a terrible cook and couldn’t spell her way out of a paper bag.)
There is no denying the haunting quality and relevance of her photographs, though, especially powerful as I stared at her photographs of Aleppo, so similar to photographs taken ten years ago, so completely different from photographs now.
I have a lot of feelings playing counterpoint here, as I delve more deeply into her history and what I can grasp of her mind. I’m not sure how to reconcile them, so for the moment I’ll just write.
Westering 