An Introduction to The Folkish Facts
The facts of memory, childhood lore, and whim: the facts of a character composite.
The fact of the matter is a folkish fact. The folkish fact of the matter wanders by old knowledge acquired when young: woodland stories. These are memories, fairy tales, told-histories. What wood, exactly – the tilt of trunks towards the sun, the mushrooms at the base – depends on the wanderer. I found a snippet of a story, a folkish fact, while making a collage for my characters. But, these whimsical stories are often met by the watchful and silencing eye of my Aunty voice, the voice in my head when I write: the overbearing consciousness that holds the writer back – for fear, from play.
Dramatis Personae:
The players of the novella, my writing voices.
AUNTY VOICE: She is strict, tapping a metre stick in the palm of her hand, waiting to hit the desk; she asserts that whim is a folly, child’s play – a silly toy. Right now, she says “Sabrina, ‘wood’ is much too twee a word–don’t be so romantic!” To which I say, “hush now Aunty, have a cup of tea” (“tea is too twee!”)...
LILI MADEN: a young woman who's just moved to the island from the mainland (of Vancouver, Canada). She’s a painter and performer, pragmatic and pin-straight-forward; her parents made a larger leap, with bigger sails, to North America from opposite sides of the world decades ago. Now, with few pennies and few stakes, she sails to the island just a channel away, in search of a mythologized collective of artists. But, she finds nothing and no-one of the sort: wild forest and an occasional cottage. About to return to the city, she encounters Birdie…
BIRDIE SAVOIE: Birdie is the daughter of the established and cosmopolitan business man, Mr. Savoie. He runs the lavish Twofold Bay Hotel on the island: a popular retreat destination among a fair few Hollywood actors and distant royals before the world wars – but is now making sense of a newfound bohemian island culture. Birdie wants to run the hotel one day, with an artist’s spirit. She has dreams, but few ideas: in Lili she finds inspiration – a person whose ideas she can realize.
Collages of Character Composites:
Figure 1: Bird’s eye view, the whole page(s): character collage, formed with many flaps of clippings from “The Financial Times,” I found sitting around in my apartment. On the left of this spread is a collage for Lili Maden, and on the right Birdie Savoie. Two girls, two women; young friends, old friends.
Figure 2: Lili Maden’s collage side (left), slightly unraveled.
The fickle Spring sunlight sifts between buds and leaves, onto Lili’s pages. One bud peaks above the Singer machine and scissor handles, like sewing pins sticking out of a cushion: pins waiting or pins used. What has Lili Maden sewed? Who taught her to use the machine?
AUNTY: Don’t be daft, it’s just a shadow. Carry on, just cut and paste.
The scissors, hovering above the printed painting: “Feather women of the forest,” oil pastel and acrylic on canvas by Velma Rosai-Makhandia. I don’t know much of the painting beyond that, but a whole story lies within that painting still: feathered women, women of the woods, with aerial views, previewing the world from the perspective of clouds.
AUNTY: you know nothing of the painting – the artist will sue you for misrepresentation!
But the scissors: they are a universal tool! They are even higher, higher than the clouds, above the painting, as if cutting through its scene, or waiting to enter with its two sharp talons. I consider the page to extend beyond its scope: it exists in an ecosystem of my apartment space, the street outside, the birds and their shadows that come and go across the window. And I wonder, What power does Lili Maden hold in her scissors – to design shapes, to change the appearance of a person’s body with a garment? Who would she harm? What causes her to desire using the scissors to mis-shape, instead of tailor?
AUNTY: Too many questions. And for what? It’s a sensible pair of scissors, and a good painting. A shadow, because the flowers sit in front of the window, and it’s a sunny day.
Oftentimes, the Aunty voice gets the final words. My page empties, the questions left tepid. It’s a bad habit.
Figure 3: Birdie Savoie’s collage side (right), slightly unraveled.
BIRDIE: Oh, Edwardian – yes, that is the word: for my leather loafers and shoulder-brushing attitude.
Birdie speaks right away, she’s escaped my quickly typing fingers – good for her, the Aunty couldn’t catch her. Birdie is a loud woman, for someone who doesn’t really speak much to her friends and family. She has many thoughts – opinions on how things should look, a keen eye for aesthetics. And for the sake of aesthetic choices, she will speak beyond her comfort.
AUNTY: Leather loafers? Whoever said you could get a pair of leather loafers, Miss Savoie? Are you sure those are the right shoes – what about lace-ups or Oxford? What would those represent on your two feet? Don’t make the wrong choice.
BIRDIE: I bought them with my own hard earned wages. The leather’s from Portugal, and they fit like a glove. I look fantastically tomboyish.
Hats off to Birdie. A rarity, but sometimes the characters deal with the Aunty. And then, the Aunty becomes the prompt – she pushes and tests the limits of what my characters can do, how tall their opinions will stand. What if, like the light of buds becoming pin cushions, I let the characters travel off the page – to deal with the Aunty as she appears in other areas of my life? Aunty doesn’t like when my characters come to class with me, wander among the streets; she thinks it’s not right, because they need to stay in the story. But, everyone needs to stretch their legs. Characters are like imaginary friends – they must follow the writer. And it's for Aunty’s fear, I think that she desires them kept at bay, so they don’t speak against her. The more that fiction, folk stories and fairytales, can venture into the world of fact: the more the characters wander, turn from puppets to people, the greater the story grows.