I love the concept of re-visioning. That is, not to revise but rather to vision again, vision anew. Adrienne Rich discusses this concept in her famous feminist essay, "When We Dead Awaken: Writing As Re-Vision," in which she defines re-vision as "the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction." Her essay speaks specifically to the importance of re-vision for women, but I think it's valuable to all of us - women, male composers, and otherwise.
At Reed College way back in 1994, my senior thesis (inspired largely by Anne Sexton's Transformations poems) was a series of poems re-visioning fairy tales, folklore, and myths that have animal transformation motifs as their center. Some of the poems were actual re-tellings of the transformation tales, and some were re-tellings of other tales, using the animal transformation motif to transform the stories into something else. It was an amazing year of writing for me, for in looking anew at these old stories, I was in turn finding my true poetic voice. Here are three poems from my thesis for you (the poems were written in sets of three, but these have been excerpted from their triads). I think you'll recognize the three princesses.
Rapunzel
Wait Mister. Which way is home?
They turned the light out
and the dark is moving in the corner.
-Anne Sexton, "Music Swims Back to Me"
Let down your hair they say to me, those two who crawl about below me. Let down your hair. They mean out the window, but what is a window up here but a suicide door, a black hole, an unmended pocket? It is a kind of mystery how I got here to begin with: I am the chicken, the egg, the single cell. No one will ever say to me Pussy cat, where have you been? I visit the queen of this small round space. I frighten the mouse of myself, chasing my own split ends. I am the crooked cat. I am the last of the Furies, the Banshee of the Attic. They call to me, Let down your hair. And so I do. But not to them. Oh no, not out that window. They howl at me like dogs, hissing in their own poor skins for love of me. But I do not need a mother now the darkness rocks me to sleep. I do not need a lover now the stones wrap me in their arms. Let down your hair. So I do, and I run about shrieking in my own cylindrical space. My hair knows every possibility. It is a noose, a rope, a blanket, a ladder, a nest. I let it choose. It crawls about the space like a school of fish; it is as soft as the wind. I do not need a mother now my body has taken me in. I do not need a lover now my fingers make windows of my self. My hair is like a key, a hand, an infinite expanding space. I do not need a mother now I look through the keyholes of my own eyes. I do not need a lover now my hands expand into universes of skin. Today they call Let down your hair, and I do. It chooses the pocket with the bottomless hole, and today I choose to follow it through the door. Hush. I am not mad. Listen. I am a cat. I bathe myself with my own tongue. I always land on my feet.
Brittney Corrigan, copyright 1994. All rights reserved.
Beauty and the Beast
It really is not so bad, living in the castle.
The ceilings drip a little and the halls are dark
and at night when I am lying in bed
the walls breathe with the wind...
but there is a comfort in the stone
and in the courtyard which is its heart.
Once, the only thing belonging to me was a heart.
And now - somehow - I have always lived in the castle.
I have always been surrounded by stone...
(The hearts of my sisters were always dark
and my father's face was like the wind -
fluttering the petals of an empty flowerbed.)
I came here: to a hidden one's bed.
He would show me only his heart,
only at dinnertime, and its strings would wind
about my fears. All other times, it seemed the castle
was filled with something I could not see. The sun was dark
in the courtyard, dark on the flagstones.
For a long time, my kind eyes were flecked by stone.
Though he never approached my bed
in the nakedness of the unbiased dark,
I believed in the ugliness surrounding his heart
as much as I believed in the magic of the castle
or in the power of a snow-backed wind.
I did not realize at first that his coat was made of wind.
His sharp nails and pointed teeth were carved from stone,
and a curse made a prison of his castle.
He lay in the cell of his bed
and believed in the beating of his heart
as I stumbled about in the dark -
ness. To shift a shape, one must travel though a pillar of dark.
What I learned was to wind
it around me like spun yarn, to cup the heart
of it in my hands like a soup stone,
to lie in it as if breathing miraculously from a riverbed,
to emerge in the courtyard of the castle.
The ceremony of my heart unstatued stone.
I ate up the dark of his skin and his coat of wind.
My heart is an oysterbed: an infinite pearling of castles.
Britney Corrigan, copyright 1994. All rights reserved.
Silkworm Dream
I don't remember how I found it: what room it was in, who led me there, what time it was, or what I was wearing. But I remember the spinning wheel: how it was bent and gray like an old woman, how the old thread hung from it like hair, and how it one eye turned - circling and circling - pedaling itself to me. And how sharp it was... it was like a wasp, a brooch, a shattered cup. I touched its hair, and it laughed and crumbled. I fastened to it, I sipped, and it spun me into dream, into such rooms of sleep. I am eating mulberry like cream. I am spinning like a dreidle, I am twisting like a spindle in my larva house. I am trapped in a circle of thorns, where twelve small women fuss about me like little magdalens - their eyes pasted shut, their palms empty of gifts. But I am a worm. I squirm in my legless skin, I spin from end to end. I coffin myself in silk. I am wiggling about the mulberry bush from morning until dusk until silk drops from me like rain. I am an unwinding spool. I am making myself a shell like a bean, a little white grenade. I am crawling inside, I am dancing at the head of the pin. How I grow wings in here! Soft powdered wings like mouse fur. Do not wake me. I am spinning myself a silk house, I am growing a moth heart. Do not wake me. Do not kiss me with your lips like red cocoons. Oh, do not wake me. I am dreaming. I am spinning straw into gold.
Brittney Corrigan, copyright 1994. All rights reserved.
I haven't visited those princesses in years. It's kind of nice to hang out with them again!
And on a completely different note, I cannot leave you without some pictures. So first up, here is the promised photo of the three American Idols taken by Thomas with his phone in downtown Portland.
And here is Elliot falling asleep while getting his hair cut by Destinie at Clackamas Town Center, where Elliot and Papa go often to ride elevators, eat snacks, and get prettified.
Now maybe I should head off to nap with my own little princess, who's been passed out in the backpack for this entire post. Happy weekend!
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