June 30, 1997

Dear Linda:

Thus begins the epic. I have to rush off now, however, because my controlling sister is at it again. Her daughter Suzanne and two kids arrived yesterday, and the only chance I will have to see Suzanne, before they leave for the beach and she leaves for Michigan again this weekend, is if I rush over there now. I have never known any one so possessive of their kids so that the only chance one ever has to see them is by shoving one's self completely out of shape -- a long way. I find it very irritating, obviously!!!! I even spoke to Suzanne last year about it, but "I love mother dearly and that's how it is," said she. I did mention that she could think for herself once in a while, but that cut no ice, so I'm always already "disliking her" before I even get there. And keep thinking, maybe I just won't go. But the fact is I do like Suzanne alot, and her kids are marvelous and will be even better in a few years when

they are no longer kids, so I don't exactly want to sever relations. So, see you later, love,

Jan

July 2, 1997

Dear Linda:

Well, my dear, after the usual frustrations of getting sta rted with a new "easier" say of doing things, I'm ready to start today's three pages. I complained about my arm to one of the angel's today and he was telling me various ways of getting my documents out of html (the Net) into Microsoft Word, so I could w ork on them in the old way I used to work on my computer where I never suffered arm injury in 10 years of computing. So I was trying to do it, but I think I finally did it ass-backwards, which is usually my way. So Anyway, here I am. And I correc ted the above first, so the spelling errors were mostly if not all out of it.

Doing this kind of immediate transmission, you are likely to find some awful errors of spelling and grammar, especially if I write on Thrusday, or even Wednesday and don' t have time to take home a printout to correct -- before you read it. Ah so.

Anyway, today has been one of the most exciting days in the history of the world. I get so excited when I experience really New Ideas, or when whoever -- you or teachers or the woman in the street -- says something that makes me see new connections between old bits of knowledge that have been lying around in my brain for years. And both of today's classes, Ancient Chinese Lit and World (at the moment African) Music, have done t hat for me today to the ultimate!!!!!! Wow.

I just came from Music so I'll deal with some of that first. Ellingson was talking about music as a social force, a glue of society, as a halo around rulers. I'm so excited I can't really think so I guess I have to slow down to remember what he said.

So in the meantime, I'll talk about the thing that ???, I can't find his name, was talking about in the Chinese class. In regard to poems of the Shih ching, he was saying that a line containing the idea of melon seeds as the things from which human beings sprang was referred to in one of the poems. And I, as usual not hearing very well, mumbled "clay" under my breath (referring to, of course, the Christian/Jewish myths) but what he had asked was what other kinds of "fruits" are used as generators, and finally he suggested pomegranets, and it sent my mind, both his fruit and my clay, off reeling with the delight of a poem about all the things in various cultures under various circumstances that human beings are said to have been created out of. Can't you just see that as a Devayani poem? at the moment the only other thing I can draw up from my often recalcitrant brain is the bit from the Oedipus story that says Thebes was founded by the, I think, men created by strewing dragon's teeth about. Anyway, soon I must get off to read some creations myths from almost everywhere to see what they thought the humans were made out of!

Also a second and similar poem could be written about "founders" of cities or wh atever, like Romulus and Remus of Roman -- we were talking about that just yesterday, how one of the persistent myths about founders or heros or the God-appointed are left to die,are then suckled and/or nurtured by wild nature, which of course reveals their "divinity" and their fitness to be heros. In other words they have survived by divine intervention and are thus "brought up as sons of God"s nature". Can't you see that as another Devayani poem.

Then one of the last thing Ellingson was talking about today -- w hich of course has been prefaced by a whole week of lectures and musical examples -- was Turnbull trying to find Pygmie music (the oldest in the world, most likely and the most untainted, but still much tainted by contact with modern civilization) as uni nfluenced as possible -- and going off to the most remote of the Pygmie tribes, at that time (20? years ago), the Twa near the Rwanda/Burundi border. Then thinking the oldest kind of music might be the religious music, then asking the oldest woman in th e tribe what was the most sacred oldest music she knew -- and finally getting her to get her people to play it -- and Turnbull is recording it -- and it turns out to be a perfectly fabulous rendition of Oh My Darling Clementine!

And then after our amusement dies down, Ellingson begins speculating about how it happened to be THAT, is Clementine an Ancient African song taken to America by slaves, the miners, explorers, or is it an old Western song brought to Africa by wandering prospectors, explorers, etc etc etc -- tweaking out as many scenarios as possible about how this cultural exchange could have taken place; or NON-exchange i.e. the spontaneous combustion of similar ideas. Demonstrating the latter, but singing the melody and note by note point ing out how simple a melody it really is, he pointed out how possible it might be for it to be thought of by very different people in very different times and places.

I was so excited, I had to run up afterwards and tell him how I had had experience of that last bit when I used to look at all the Grant Proposals at AFI, and how over the years waves of "new" kinds of proposals would come in and often in that new wave there would be, almost identical proposals, say, from New York, New Mexico an d Missouri -- where you knew that these people couldn't possibly have been influencing each other, but had ideas so similar it was shocking -- of course one could say they were all influenced by our ubiquitious media, but still, sometimes the proposals wer e almost miraculously similar.

Anyway, the expansion of the brain that goes on in Ellingson's class is awesome, for he never attempts to say this is more likely than that, he just keeps pouring oil on the fire by suggesting more and more possibilites . I've never had a teacher so Open Minded -- so anti dogmatic. And me other Prof., the one who is nameless for today, is also like that, though tremendously different in style, but here he is dealing with Ancient Chinese stuff starting about 1200 BC wh ich no one can say nothing about anyway, because nothing is known, and he two speculates and gets the class to speculate until one's mind is a complete ferment of Devayani poems, and I practially cream my pants -- wanting to jump to the comptur and write and write and write.

So why am I not writing a poem instead of writing to you? Well when you have ten ideas for poems just jumping around in your head, it is hard to pick what to write first, so half of this is for a record for me so I'll remember these Epoch Making Ideas at least until tomorrow. Not only because of my lack of memory capacity, but because these classes are every day, and I am, as I said above, being positively inundated by mind-expanding ideas.

Just as I was when I hammered out that 27 pages on non-music. The ideas just tumble out, and I want them someplace so I can at my leisure, for the next 27 years, actually write all the poems that are accumulating to be written.

Ellingson was also going on and on about why musicans are usually bottom class in any society, in the monarchies they almost always belong to the king, ruler, maharaja, etc. who uses them as a halo to enhance his/her specialness. Then he went on and on about all the music used in the Hong Kong handover, es pecially on Chinese TV from the Mainland -- probably the greatest and hugest display of Power enhancing music/dance manifested by the biggest and one of the oldest nations in the world -- who have been using military and secular and religious music for thousands and thousands of years. So now, of course, since I didn't see it, I am dying to see your tapes of the event. So save them for sure, until I've had a glimpse of them.

On another subject, I am not tongue-tied at all in the Chinese class. I mean, I have spent over a year now in classes and barely said a word, not wanting to, and also being to shy to speak up, and suddenly the barrier lifts. Maybe I have just been quiet long enough, maybe I am at last comfortable enough to feel I have someth ing to say, maybe it is because I had been reading years and years about China before I took this class and did know a thing or two where as I have felt such a novice in music that I felt if I opened my mouth I would put my foot in -- when that obviously wasn't true, for already at Ali Akbar College of Music, I knew, intellectually, as much about the music, in fact vis a via vocabulary, people often used to turn to me to get the definitions of terms because they knew I knew them since I was writing this l exicon, and yet I felt I knew nothing, and therefore never said anything of my own volition.

But whatever whatever, the dam seems to have burst. And I do know I go through very extended periods of not wanting to talk. Just not wanting to say anyth ing at all. For in addition to speaking up in discussion, I find I am also talking more with my fellow students. Making Friends! -- when I had no desire whatsoever to do so for the whole last year.

Also I ran across an announcement in the Seattle Times about a new Computer project about to be offered at the Seattle Art Museum (downtown, unfortunately, where it is hell to park and hell ot bus to, but I might just do it if I can become part of the project) -- which consists of artists learning to d o a Website, being given the Website you create free for a year, and having the obligation to teach others. All of which I found I'd fit in perfectly with the idea that I could learn alot more about Website creation -- then I have learned all pragmatical ly on my own (with the awesome help of the angels) -- and then pass it on to OLDER ARTISTS!!! who tend to suffer even more than younger artists from computer fear, hesitation, I-could-never-learn-that-ism, that-technology -is -too-new-for-me-ism, etc.

In other words I feel I have created a really splendid Website, extensive, free and full of wisdom, and I think any number of artists, especially women, and especially those people who never got or sought the attention of the commerical world would hav e a new kind of gallery/musuem in which to connect with the world!!!! i.e. when I was a young artist they were just starting things like the Festivals of the Arts as alternative places (to museums and galleries) for new people to show at/in. But now all the art festivals are just as difficult to get into and expensive and maddening to deal with as are the galleries and museums, and everyone has been looking for the next step to open new venues for the budding or non-commerical (by either choice or defau lt) artists, and I do think CYBERSPACE is IT.

And I would love to see thousands of artist using it as I use it as NOT A COMMERICAL MEDIUM but the show case of all time for all kinds of art. You can still do your shows in galleries, museums and ar tist open houses, etc etc for to see the needlepoints on The Net is not like being with them and being able to see and/or feel the texture, etc., but at least you have a place outside the control of the too often snotty/prejudiced/favoritism-ridden art in stitutions that long ago forgot that they couldn't exist without the artists, and have harrassed more than one artist to death by their lack of attention or even "over attention." In otherwords it is the opportunity of all time for the artist to take their fate into their own hands, and not depend on any intermediator between them and those in the world they wish to speak to.

Etc.

I'm now going to attempt to append here the draft of the letter I wrote to the project person at the SAM this morning , already so excited this morning, that I could barely decide between writing a poem and writing a letter.

Robin Reidy Oppenheimer

Seattle Art Museum

P.O. Box 22000

Seattle WA 98122-9700

206-654-3148

Dear Robin:

Here's my proposa l/application for a place in your Open Studio Project. I would love to receive one of the positions under your grant to create a Web page. Even though I have mostly already done one on my own, I am sure I have much to learn of a practical and theoretical nature.

But, in particular, since I am an older artist (63 at this moment), I would like to receive the training, the knowledge and the Website to help me help other older artists of fine talent who may suffer from the same "computer fear" that I did befo re I actually started on the Website. For I believe that there are enormous amounts of fine art, writing, poetry, textile art, autobiographical stories, etc etc etc which exist among this particular population that has never made it to the museum or to the gallery. And what better Gallery/Museum in the whole world than Cyberspace?

If they (older artists) (in addition to the young!!) are encouraged to use this new technology, how much richer our world may be come with a free online museum! of the work of countless artists, often of enormous talent,

who simply spent their lives creating, but never got around to showing.

How much richer and diverse our perception of the world can become if we have a free "publishing house" in which to prese nt all the writings of every group and person -- and right now, especially those who have been around for half a dozen decades or more and may have untold wisdom to share with us.

So my proposal is, grant me a space in your program, and I will, with your help pass on my knowledge to the older artist among us and help open Cyberspace to our elders, so that they, too, can help open it to their colleagues and acquaintances and preserve, if I may be so bold, a wisdom of the ages, never available before beca use there never was before an open, accessible, inexpensive medium for all artists.

Older artists, once they understand and feel capable of using the medium also, are probably going to be less interested in making money in Cyberspace than having, at last, access to an earth-wided gallery/musuem in which to say what they have to say without the censorship (inadvertant or deliberate) on their individual perceptions of the world by galleries/publishers/museums/ any second party between the artist and the view. Who knows, it might help artists to return to their primary function of being interperters of the world instead of entrepenuers.

For my "sample" submission, please have a look at my Website which I have created as an Access Student through the University of Washingon:

-- where, as I work in many arts, you will find samples of poetry, fiction, textile art,as well as articles on music, travel stories, and a background, credo, photo. Since there is a great deal the re, my primary recommendations would be to read the Intro, the first page to Textile Art and #13 Kalachakra and #22 Mukhra/Tukra/Chackradar, in poetry: I Am Innuit, George Coluzzi and A Father's Death, in Travel Vijayanagar, Terror, in Music, The Golden Drumming of Swapan Chaudhuri, in fiction there is only one: the first chapter of No Palms. In addition I am enclosing copies off the net of my Introductory statement, my background and copies of I Am Innuit and (SEE WHAT LOOKS BEST IN BLACK AND WHITE) ___________ (needlepoint)

If you need a recommendation, please contact Bill Rathbun, Curator of Asian Art at SAAM, and or Sheba Burney Jones, his assistant, as they arranged for and helped me mount my show of Needlepoints in the Kado TeaGarden last s ummer -- a show, by the way, that was unique as the first one woman exhibition of Needlepoints in a major museum.

I very much look forward to the opportunity to meet with you, talk with you and and to be a part of your truly wonderful project.

S incerely,

Jan Haag

So, as you can see this is just the first draft. I talked with Sheba yesterday, and I'll call this Robin today or tomorrow, and preface this letter with as much as I can get across on the phone. If you have any comments about this give me a buzz or send me an e-mail via our brain-tumor friend whose name I can't remember at the moment. Ah!! is it Richard?

I already know the letter needs much revising.

The deadline is July 15th. And if I should get to be part of the project I would be SO DELIGHTED I wouldn't pay any attention to another winter in Seattle.

And who knows if all this manic excitement is due to the 1/4 cup of coffee I drank this morning, or if its just that time of month! or year! or alternating period of speechlessness and got-to-say-a mill ion things. I do know one thing for sure, just that 1/4 cup of coffee really did effect my left eye again. One of the reasons I have been terribly good at not drinking coffee for several months, is that my left eye almost immediately goes grey in one spot. So I think I have the kind of glaucoma that coffee can affect. I must actually go and check this with some eye doctor sometime soon, for there are things you can do for it like, taking thyroid, etc. etc. Encourage me to do so.

Oh my God, give me access to the Web and I will never stop. So I will stop right here, because I want to Fetch this over the the Website, then Print it out, then hopefully have time to correct some of the worse mistakes before you read it tomorrow at 10 am.

I love you, especially for reading all this (if you do)

Jan

July 3, 1997 Dear Linda:

0 And wait 'til you hear what happened next!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But right now I'm going to correct the above just a little. The new stuff is about Brakthapur in the Kathmandu Valley. I may go there for a while -- in six months or a year. I'm meeting with this fellow Gert whose lecture I went to yesterday, who just opened a music school there, and talked about some of the most delightfully esoteric things I have ever heard of -- to the point where I LEPT from my seat at intermission, and requested to meet with him, and so at 3:30 today.... More later, Love Jan