In L’imaginaire des langues, a series of interviews between Lise Gauvin and writer Édouard Glissant, Glissant tells how today a writer who does not know any other language does consider when writing, even unconsciously, the existence of other languages around them …
In March 2012, I walked through Blues Before Sunrise, an installation by artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen in Amsterdam’s Vondelpark, together with someone whom I hadn’t seen in a long time and who used to just be a colleague from Brussels. The 275 streetlamps in the park, emitting blue light instead of white, didn’t only transform the night, it turned acquaintance into friendship. McQueen…
I wrote the word “uncaring” on a torn piece of paper the other day, a gesture stirred by the world we currently live in. As I was reading one social media post here, a newspaper opinion piece there; I grabbed one of my many fountain pens which I delicately fill with ink stored in glass bottles (writing needs its own pace) and marked the red paper. “Uncaring”, I read out loud as I placed the paper on one of my library shelves, the one with the non-fiction books. Every day, I look at the black ink on the red paper as rage boils in my heart, mind and soul. I am tempted to join the online cacophony of what makes me angry. But I decide to wait and reflect (writing needs its own pace).
