Get Inspired by Architecture #6, Writing for Change

Writing for Change

By Mary Rakow, Ph.D.

My grandson and I sat in the lobby of the East Building of the National Gallery of Art watching Calder Mobiles move in the great atrium. It was gorgeous. Later at Burger King I read architect Zaha Hadid had suddenly died. I didn’t know her work. And all the architects I knew were men. We googled her and saw this:

Galaxy Soho, Beijing

Toggle back and forth between these two images. Organic, fluid, no straight lines, no corners.  Look at her other work.  See how radically Hadid changed what a building could look like. Why she’s called a trailblazer, a pioneer,  “Queen of the Curve.”

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/mar/31/zaha-hadid-10-best-buildings-in-pictures

 “For Muslims, minorities and women, Zaha is a shining torch,” wrote Yasmin Shariff, director of Dennis Sharp Architects.  Despite being an outsider and upfront about the unfair treatment she experienced as a woman, a foreigner and a designer of  “expensive, weird-looking buildings” Shariff lists Zaha Hadid’s prestigious awards:  AA Diploma prize in 1977; the Pritzker prize in 2004; the Royal Institute of British Architects’ Stirling prize in 2010 and 2011. She even the Riba gold medal.

The first woman, as an individual, to be so honored.  “…almost 100 years after the suffragette Ruth Lowy forced the AA to accept female students.”

Shariff quotes Hadid,  “30 years ago people thought women couldn’t make a building.” At the time of her fatal heart attack Saha Hadid’s company employed more than 400 persons on projects around the world.

                                    What can we learn from this ?

1. We need to know what we want to change. One client, through fantasy as a form, wants to revoke 3,000 years of Jewish scholarly commentary on the Genesis creation story. He wants gender equality between Adam and Eve. Wants to recover a competitive interpretation.  Wants to  overturn the centuries old tradition that demonizes Eve. No small feat!

In THE MEMORY ROOM I wanted a mirror outside myself, in the world, that would be congruent with the terror I carried inside and my recovery from it. Because it  was nowhere.  In  THIS IS WHY I CAME I wanted to re-read the Bible stories that saved my life as a child and enter them with my critical, angry, disillusioned adult self.  So I entered them and made them make sense to me in the state I was at that time.

We do this with all great art.  We enter the emptiness we find there because we can.  Because the emptiness is benevolent.  In fact, the emptiness needs us. Because as we enter, we complete the work, whether it’s a novel, a Calder Mobile or an atrium in Beijing designed by Zaha Hadid.

2. We have to recognize our handicap. In conversation with David Francis I shared for the first time my handicap as a writer. That I don’t read books much. “Never admit this if you want to be a writer,” I was advised earlier in my career.  But David is irresistible.  It ended up being really fun.  A kind of “coming out.” It’s in the top video on my website, “Jesus and John” at 39 mins  and lasts maybe 4. Sorry for the slow upload. https://www.maryrakow.com/videos/ 

3. We must write with the perception we alone possess. Easier said than done. Our distinct way of receiving information from the world and organizing it is so unconscious, that it’s a real effort to find it.  It’s more than our “voice. ” It’s deeper.

We have to believe this is true of human beings. Other writers sometimes help us. But we struggle until we land on that place. From there we stop making just stuff, and begin making art.

In another piece on Hadid, I bristle at the author’s phrase, “a particularly female imagination” and that her buildings “embody a unique female personality.” But I do love this:  “…architecture is also about selling your way of seeing…”

The same with writing. We have to “sell” the reader on the reality of the world we’ve built on the page. And we do this persuasion not by argument but by experience. We experience an atrium.  We experience a mobile.  We experience a story.

4. We have to BE the person behind our writing. We don’t have to be a dynamo like Zaha Hadid. But we have to be true to our nature, to the way we each are designed. This is true of all creatives: scientists, mathematicians, architects, musicians. We go from project to project and we might want might change, but our nature does not change. And our happiness lies in being faithful to that.

The change I want now is for the Catholic Church to ordain women to priesthood.  This particular institution is the largest on the planet and has the longest continuous history in the story of our species. Am I writing? Yes. A novel? No. My form is the private letter. Is this form true to my nature and current lifestyle? Yes. Do I think this change will occur? Absolutely.  In my lifetime? Likely, not.  Which brings up the fifth thing we can learn from Hadid….

5. We have to remember that hope isn’t a feeling. It’s a decision. These words are Dr. Paul Farmer’s (d.2022), Co-founder of Partners in Health, dedicated to correcting global injustice in healthcare.  “Injustice has a cure.” Let us be earless in our hope.  And fearless in our joy.

Here’s another cool atrium to help us remember that the hopeful decision is not a waste. It’s a necessity. A close friend asked if I knew The American Museum of Natural History’s new Gilder Center in NYC. It is the work of Studio Gang headed by Jeanne Gang, Professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Below is a photo by Iwan Bann of its Kenneth C. Griffin Exploration Atrium.

Jeanne Gang was named the world’s most influential architect of 2019 by Time magazine. “For Jeanne,” observed Anna Smith, “architecture is not just a wondrous object.  It’s a catalyst for change.”

 “It’s not just about doing a building,” Gang told Robathan for CLAD, “it’s figuring out what power it has to make a positive difference.”

Let’s look at these 3 atriums and see change.  Let’s learn from others.  Let’s be the change we hope for.

Exercises

Reflection:  Which of the 5 tips above am I already doing in a wonderful way?  Which could I improve on?

Writing:  Write the scene when you first felt real exclusion. Describe the surroundings.  Go into the mix of feelings. Notice how I this moment resides in your memory.  Consider the impact of this event on your personal life and your writing life.  Write for 20 minutes.  Without stopping to correct.  Just 20 minutes then stop.  See what you come up with.

                                                            In Closing

            I’d love to work with a few new clients between now and Advent.  My 5 options are detailed here: https://www.maryrakow.com/options. And a shout-out to clients Sandy Schnakenburg, Housekeeper’s Secret whose release date with hybrid publisher She Writes Press is set for 9-10-24 and to Eme McAnam, now on tour with Freefalling, a Novel of Senior Romance.

            100 thank you’s for your private and posted comments. And for sending clients my way.

            Until next time,

            Mary

Mary Rakow, Ph.D. novelist and freelance editor in the Bay Area, works with local and global clients who seek to publish traditionally, self- or hybrid .  She blogs monthly for SFWC about inspiration in the writing process and works in the Free 8-Minute Editing room at the Conference in February.

A Mentor for PEN USA/West’s Emerging Voices program, Instructor for UCLA Extension Writers Program, and presenter in workshops for Harvard Club of San Francisco, Rakow is rigorous and encouraging, insightful and kind.

A theologian with graduate degrees from Harvard Divinity School and Boston College, Rakow’s debut novel, THE MEMORY ROOM was shortlisted for the Stanford University International Saroyan Prize in Literature, a PEN USA/West Finalist in Fiction and was listed among the Best Books of the West by The Los Angeles Times. She was awarded a $75,000 Lannan Fellowship and given two month long Lannan Residencies in Marfa, TX.

Mary writes with deep feeling and a questioning faith. Her second novel, THIS IS WHY I CAME earned excellent reviews in The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Commonweal, Christian Century, O Magazine, Ploughshares. It appeared on reading lists for courses at Princeton and Yale.

Interested in the visual arts, Rakow received two residencies at Whale & Star in the studio artist Enrique Martinez Celaya where she was commissioned to write the first book-length treatment of the artist’s work, MARTINEZ CELAYA, WORKING METHODS.

Mary is a beloved editor and writing coach.  Always on the look-out for serious writers, she enjoys working with those just starting out and those with publications and accolades.

For inquiries please visit maryrakow.com

© Mary Rakow, 2023

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