This is the quote I was referencing a few posts back, from Anthony Lane:

“Many of the writers on this [Top Ten] list are under the impression that if they do the factual spadework, the fiction will dig itself in and hunker down, solid and secure….The effect…is quite the opposite.  It suggests that the writers are hanging on for grim life to what they know for fear of unleashing what they don’t know; they are frightened, in other words, of their own imagination….When Flaubert studied ancient Carthage for ‘Salammbo,’ or the particulars of medieval falconry for ‘The Legend of St. Julien Hospitalier,’ he was furnishing and feathering a world that had already taken shape within his mind[.]“

This is brilliant: a sober and fantastic recognition of the twin gods of imagination and scent, via Chandler Burr.  (No one writes about the experience of smell like Chandler Burr.)

As we gather ideas and impressions for our Poppy-show-to-be, smell is the ghost component: creating a full-immersion theater experience will include – must include – a scent, what the evening’s patrons will imbibe as they step past the doors. Wet wool? Or violet perfume? Cold leather, the juniper whiff of gin, the warm aroma of pale skin gone pink with rising desire…?  That last is going to be a bit tricky, perhaps, but we love a challenge.

Last night Diane Cheklich and I were out and about in the steam and the cold, investigating a performance space.

I got a little arty for a minute.

[Venue photos by DC.]

…where I had so much research fun: Ivy’s Custom Corsetry, where you can engage the knowledgeable and stylish Robin Richardson to make a demure corset, a va-va-voom corset, pretty much anything you and she can devise, ladies and gents.  Your posture will improve, your appearance will improve, your life, doubtless, will improve; I know mine will when I buy one.  I’m thinking something in a mystic pink, or a saucy twilight mauve….And they’re historically accurate Victorian and Edwardian corsets, too, so yes, this was true research, not just me getting my fash on.

When you read history, you start to ask yourself what history is.  (I’ve been reading a lot of Rimbaud biographies, and so many of the same anecdotes, the same quotes, even, through literal translation and the more subtle translation of sensibility and emphasis, vary from biography to biography, teller to teller, like a circular game of Telephone.)  The truth of the details, insofar as it can be known, stays the same; the thrust and the feelings differ.

Writing of a time not my own, I brushed up against, I guess, the inverse of that situation.  The world of Under the Poppy is mid-to-late Victorian in fashion and in feel, in available technology, in the patient spool of time between events; it owns a different velocity than a piece of more contemporary fiction might.  While I strove to make sure the details I used were correct (feathering the nest, as in the excellent phrase of Anthony Lane speaking of Flaubert “furnishing and feathering a world that had already taken shape within his mind”), what I want most for a reader is to feel not “the Victorian” (mid-to-late, verging on Edwardian, when did gaslights actually come into use and when were they replaced by electricity?) but the authenticity of this created world, that brothel lobby, that opulent townhouse, that bed with its striped silk hangings and china cups of roses all around; not “real” history because it is fiction, but real history in that you itch from the wool, you smell the fug of flesh and old cigars, you find yourself shivering in the rooms where coal is precious and therefore little-used.  I was there when I wrote it; I want you to go there, too….The true history of a world that never happened.  That’s fiction, isn’t it?

After leaving the tea bar last night (where a 3D version of Under the Poppy was discussed; more details later), the window of Bohemian Rhapsody caught my camera’s eye: apropos for both the Poppy‘s crew and life in general.  Happy Valentine’s Day, everybody!

Seeing this deliberate use of actors of various sizes made me think of the size variance possible between constructed actors, such as puppets (who after all can be made from anything, and pretty much have been), and how size connotes power, or its inversion.  As does corporeality.  As does motion . . . . In Under the Poppy, the puppets are life-size, child-size, slightly larger than an open palm; made horse-headed, with a keyhole for a heart, a bag of hunger on a set of strings, a soft-breasted beauty who cries real tears, a fall guy without even a mouth to cry out when he’s cracked in two. Par exemple, look how lively is this pale gentleman . . . .E pur si muove.

…is the title of the Paul P. show at the Daniel Reich Gallery (which closes 2/8, I believe, so if you’re in Chelsea get over there and see it now).  I love the dreamlike – yet entirely unsentimental – allure of these images, the outside-of-time feeling that is the hallmark of desire.  To capture without constraining – without containing – that desirous moment … That’s art, isn’t it.

Writing about sex is easy.  Writing about desire – about the particular blend of longing and heat one particular character feels for another, in all its inarticulate loneliness and terror and joy – writing it so a reader can feel it himself, herself, the ache and the thrill – that’s the task.

Have a look at P.’s images, virtually or non-.

A nice shout-out for the Under the Poppy trailer here, along with a little discussion.  Perhaps we need a Part 2 for our trailer, to echo the book’s expansion?  In the real world, our Decca’s gone off to CalArts….