I just got back from a short walk outside, to let thoughts bounce around my head after today’s Welty Book Club. The book club meets via Zoom on Monday afternoons to discuss books–we alternate between a book by Welty and a book that’s Welty-adjacent. Today was the first book discussion about E. M. Forster’s A Room with a View. I’m so excited!
Y’all know how much I love A Room with a View. As I’ve noted in a previous post, the 1985 Merchant-Ivory film adaptation of the 1908 novel is one of my very favorite movies; I quote it regularly. I have read the novel several times, but it’s been a while since I last read it. It was difficult to stop reading after just four chapters, which was what today’s discussion was about, but I am glad that we are taking it in such sections. So much happens in the first four chapters! After the first three chapters, titled “The Bertolini,” “In Santa Croce with no Baedeker,” and “Music, Violets, and the Letter S,” the fourth chapter–in which we witness a murder!--is simply titled, “Fourth Chapter.” In today’s discussion, I especially appreciated having my attention drawn to the humor in the narration.
I also appreciated learning about what Welty took from reading Forster’s work–she said that his work strengthened her recognition of “place as a prime source of enlightenment” in fiction. I was thinking about this, and the other resonances I saw when discussing the Forster novel today–I was reminded of other works I love, including Pride and Prejudice and To the Lighthouse. I enjoy when I feel such connections between various things that I enjoy. And this had me thinking on my walk about the idea of confluence.
Confluence is a concept that is strongly associated with Eudora Welty. In her memoir On Writing, she said that confluence:
exists as a reality and a symbol in one. It is the only kind of symbol that for me as a writer had any weight, testifying to the pattern, one of the chief patterns, of human experience. Of course the greatest confluence of all is that which makes up the human memory - the individual human memory. My own is the treasure most dearly regarded by me, in my life and in my work as a writer. Here time, also, is subject to confluence. The memory is a living thing - it too is in transit. But during its moment, all that is remembered joins, and lives - the old and the young, the past and the present, the living and the dead. (On Writing)
And in looking up that quote, I was delighted to see that Neil Gaiman–another favorite author of mine–has also gone on the record about the idea of confluence:
The irritating question they ask us -- us being writers -- is: "Where do you get your ideas?"
And the answer is: Confluence. Things come together. The right ingredients and suddenly: Abracadabra! (Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fiction and Illusions)
Indeed–confluence is at the heart of so much of my most satisfying creative endeavors. As I walked this afternoon through the sound of the cicadas heralding summer, I experienced my own confluence, thinking about Miss Lucy Honeychurch’s experience of art and artistic expression, and how she struggles to find a place for herself in the world of art other than being someone else’s muse. Right now, I’m also reading Old Enough: Southern Women Artists and Writers on Creativity and Aging, a new book out from UGA Press. It’s a wonderful collection of women writing about their own creative expressions, including where they find both inspiration and time to work.
I’m reading this at the end of the academic year and the beginning of summer, when I want to try to build some new writing habits and make headway on not only writing projects but also some other creative projects, such as a couple of quilts I have in progress, and continuing to plug away at learning the guitar. I’ve also just finished reading Jami Attenberg’s book 1000 Words of Summer, which has inspired me to commit to writing at least 1,000 words a day over the course of the summer and see where that takes me. In this practice, I’m not restricting myself to what I write–this Substack post will count for today’s writing, and there are some academic projects I’m working on, as well as some non-academic projects I’m writing, too.
What is it that gets me to write–that gets me to create? I have found that the best way to get myself to practice the guitar is to listen to music that I love. I listen to Belly or R.E.M. or the Byrds on my walk, and I want to come home and try to play “Slow Dog” or “Fall on Me” or “Tambourine Man” on my guitar. Is that what a muse does? Reminds me of how much I love an artform, and reminds me that I can both create as well as appreciate?
Certainly, this is why I like having my wall of books and artwork here while I’m working–juxtaposition is something of a synonym for confluence, I think. Seeing, say, the photograph of my great-grandparents’ house next to the photograph of Brivs Mekis’s house in Athens, Georgia (an artist that inspired R.E.M.--they wrote “Life and How to Live It” about him and his work), has me thinking about the actual objects in houses, and what that sense of “place” means. When we were evacuated from Katrina in 2005, I found that I could feel at home in a place if I had certain of my own things around me. I wore my Siouxsie and the Banshees t-shirt and Aunt Julie’s blue cardigan constantly; I had our wedding photos and embroidery materials with me. I could feel at home then.
Perhaps I shall use my time at home this summer to be inspired by all of these things around me that make me feel at home. I’m reminded of Maude in Harold and Maude (my very favorite movie–one that I quote as much as A Room with a View), when Maude notes that her home is filled with memorabilia–memorability which is “incidental, not integral.” This is an attitude toward things that I aspire to–though I admit that I’m nowhere near it. I really do enjoy the things around me, the things that make me feel like I’m in my own space.
So, here’s a goal for the summer: Spend time regularly observing, appreciating, and being inspired by all of these wonderful things around me. Both things inside and nature outside. This shall be a good practice.
I am so glad to know of the new UGA Press book on Southern Women Artists! Ordering asap. Loved this post. Yes—confluence is what it’s all about, often, for me.
I love Room with a View, the movie and the book. I'm overdue for a re-read and a re-watch. When Julian Sands died I thought, I really need to see that movie again! And I do.