Influences

I want to think about influence. Who influences you? Who do you lean on, as a designer, artist, performer, curator, thinker, maker? How do you feel about that leaning, that borrowing, that influence? We often hide it for fear of accusations of plagiarism or theft... What if we made it overt?

To help consider these questions, I’m attaching Maggie Nelson's essay, “‘A Sort of Leaning Against’: Writing With, From, and For Others." She likes to highlight her influences in her writing.

So, for this month’s writing, consider the ways in which what you do is in conversation with others, how it’s a form of rewriting, of reworking, or reimagining, expanding and/or contorting the work of others… Can you write an essay that brings this influence or leaning into the foreground?

I am also attaching Lydia Davis' very short piece “Foucault and Pencil." In it, Davis integrates an experience from her daily life - the process of reading - and some semblance of Foucault's thought, however indirectly. She rewrites Foucault in a sense, reinterpreting his dense theory through vary mundane activities.

Here is Lydia Davis reading the essay aloud.

So, the actual prompts are below. Choose one for the month, or, if you have time, do them all!

1. Inspired by Lydia Davis, write an essay that describes some activity that is somehow influenced by another thinker, designer, filmmaker or artist. Like Davis, maybe it's reading. Or making coffee (or bread!). Or maybe it's riding a bike, knitting a sweater, writing an essay. Like Davis, keep is simple. How does the influence of others affect you? What do you feel? Rather than analyze, describe. Then experiment. Davis removed all the pronouns from her essay - why? What can you do with the essay that formally aligns with the concept or artist, designer or thinker you've chosen? How can you fuck with it? Step back, as Davis does, and observe yourself and your engagement. See what emerges.
2. Use one of these lines as a way to start an essay, thereby, in a sense, rewriting the work of someone else:
   1. For a long time, I worried there was something wrong with me as a writer...
   2. You need to engage, and then perform, textually, the alchemy of your body thinking through another’s body....
   3. The stakes have to be high; it has to matter...
3. On page 84 of “‘A Sort of Leaning Against’: Writing With, From, and For Others,” Maggie Nelson writes, “I don’t really think I have much of an imagination at all, at least not in the traditional sense of making stuff up or feeling compelled by things that aren’t there…” She goes on to say what she does have (an intuition for form). This kind of self-analysis can be useful: write a short essay that explores what you do have, and what you don’t, as a writer, maker, thinker, designer… Here, you're borrowing Nelson's structure and rewriting it in relation to yourself...