 we are equals in this room
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After the Salon Christmas party at Osha Thai in SF's Embarcadero 4, we saw The King's Speech, in which England's stammering King George VI learns to speak with the humble help of the inventive and spectacularly uncredentialed Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue.
Norma and I rode home through the rain on the L Taraval streetcar. I got to thinking about the similarities in Logue's approach to speech and the Amherst Writers and Artists method for writers, how we regain our powers of speech as we tap inner powers and overcome fears -- of writing badly, of writing incorrectly, of revealing ourselves! -- and how in a lively and supportive environment we find fluidity, and how we find our strength in raw emotion.
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we are all stammering kings
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No infant stutters, says the good Mr. Logue to the king. Something happens to make that happen. Our original fluency gets fucked up somehow: But we reach back to our primal articulation; we conjure up that nearly lost ability to squall. We tap that somehow, in a sophisticated way, and get back the voice we were born with.
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It's hard to do it every day. If you stop for even one day, you risk disappearing for a week or more.
In this regard, my admiration for Mr. Stephen Elliott grows every day.
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incomplete thoughts. that's the key
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You ever do morning pages? This is a bit like that except ... somebody's going to read it!
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more tomorrow, I promise. workshops and getaways and stuff
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