Guest Posting: The Young Artist
Below is a special treat: A guest posting from fellow Alaskan Amy Crawford.
Tsetserleg, Arkhangai -- The brown hillsides rolling off to the west and east of town, from a distance, appear quaint and well-ordered: pastel-colored roofs on tiny white-washed houses, lines of fences, cute little gers smoking through the day. I always marvel at how things appear from afar: no outhouse smell, no random cow heads or dead puppies on the dusty streets; you don't see that the fences are slatted boards thrown together, old car hoods for fence doors. Which is not without it charm or resourcefulness, and is certainly without pretension.
Amongst these rough dwellings live some of my favorite people, quiet generous souls making somewhere between 40 and 100 US dollars a month, some shoveling coal in the electical plant or washing school floors, some teaching their second language to adorable though rowdy children. And all of them with remarkable talents: every woman can gut a cow, clean the intesines and re-stuff them with vegetables and/or blood; most ride horses and sew deels (the traditional Mongolian dress). Meanwhile most of the men don't think twice about slitting a sheep's stomach and reaching in through the gut cavity to sever the artery; they can repair a 1960's Russian truck with home-made tools, ride a horse bareback. To them it's a matter of course--like vacuuming or driving a car for us.
Then there are those in the back of a ger or house crafting silver jewelry, stitching by hand Mongolian boots, painting, writing. They are quiet artists--no coffee houses to display paintings or read poetry; no art shows or shops to display or sell their work. They work away silently, finding the odd buyer but existing almost entirely in obscurity.
Last night my friend Enkhee (talented in theatre but working at a bar) introduced me to his friend, an aspiring screen writer named Ganholog. Ganholog was born in the countryside but came to this town to attend school; here he discovered TV and movies and studied them on his own throughout his schooling. Unable to afford college, he began writing on his own and now at 25 has produced a screenplay he thinks is worthy of production. He has done this with no art community, no schooling; only the help of his friend Enkhee. He wants to enter this script in US contests; there is no outlet for such a thing in Mongolia.
Aside from a lack of schooling or art community, another major obstacle lies before him: he doesn't speak English. So he hired a Mongolian English teacher to translate; and while Jackie captured his ideas, she writes with the proficiency of a U.S. 8th grader. Which is where I come in: he wants me to "fix" the dialogue.
I sat down with milk tea and read through the 81 pages, and though it was unsurprisingly "amateur," its also clever and funny in places despite the translation problem. Most surprising though was that he chose to set it in the U.S.; the obvious problem of being a bad imitation naturally arose.
Why not write about Mongolia? I asked, and he said he thought that wouldn't be very interesting for foreign audiences. We had a long conversation about what he knows, of what he has the knowledge to write, how to create an authentic piece of work, etc. and the upshot (for me) was that, despite the uniqueness of his life, the myriad remarkable things he could write about, he is stuck trying to imitate a life he has never known or seen. It's a difficult thing to witness: Mongolians are still proud of their culture--just today the "cool" kids at my school were practicing for a performance in which they'll sing an ancient Mongolian song about marriage. What Mongolians have always known they do remarkably well. But those trying to reach into the "outside" world have incredible odds to overcome.
I hope Ganholog will write about Mongolia, but that of course is his choice. And despite the near certainty that his script will never be read, I'll spend the next few evenings going over the script with him, trying to capture the "feeling" of his work so that I may recreate it in English. I suppose the result doesn't matter so much as the process--sometimes a soul just needs to be heard.
Tsetserleg, Arkhangai -- The brown hillsides rolling off to the west and east of town, from a distance, appear quaint and well-ordered: pastel-colored roofs on tiny white-washed houses, lines of fences, cute little gers smoking through the day. I always marvel at how things appear from afar: no outhouse smell, no random cow heads or dead puppies on the dusty streets; you don't see that the fences are slatted boards thrown together, old car hoods for fence doors. Which is not without it charm or resourcefulness, and is certainly without pretension.
Amongst these rough dwellings live some of my favorite people, quiet generous souls making somewhere between 40 and 100 US dollars a month, some shoveling coal in the electical plant or washing school floors, some teaching their second language to adorable though rowdy children. And all of them with remarkable talents: every woman can gut a cow, clean the intesines and re-stuff them with vegetables and/or blood; most ride horses and sew deels (the traditional Mongolian dress). Meanwhile most of the men don't think twice about slitting a sheep's stomach and reaching in through the gut cavity to sever the artery; they can repair a 1960's Russian truck with home-made tools, ride a horse bareback. To them it's a matter of course--like vacuuming or driving a car for us.
Then there are those in the back of a ger or house crafting silver jewelry, stitching by hand Mongolian boots, painting, writing. They are quiet artists--no coffee houses to display paintings or read poetry; no art shows or shops to display or sell their work. They work away silently, finding the odd buyer but existing almost entirely in obscurity.
Last night my friend Enkhee (talented in theatre but working at a bar) introduced me to his friend, an aspiring screen writer named Ganholog. Ganholog was born in the countryside but came to this town to attend school; here he discovered TV and movies and studied them on his own throughout his schooling. Unable to afford college, he began writing on his own and now at 25 has produced a screenplay he thinks is worthy of production. He has done this with no art community, no schooling; only the help of his friend Enkhee. He wants to enter this script in US contests; there is no outlet for such a thing in Mongolia.
Aside from a lack of schooling or art community, another major obstacle lies before him: he doesn't speak English. So he hired a Mongolian English teacher to translate; and while Jackie captured his ideas, she writes with the proficiency of a U.S. 8th grader. Which is where I come in: he wants me to "fix" the dialogue.
I sat down with milk tea and read through the 81 pages, and though it was unsurprisingly "amateur," its also clever and funny in places despite the translation problem. Most surprising though was that he chose to set it in the U.S.; the obvious problem of being a bad imitation naturally arose.
Why not write about Mongolia? I asked, and he said he thought that wouldn't be very interesting for foreign audiences. We had a long conversation about what he knows, of what he has the knowledge to write, how to create an authentic piece of work, etc. and the upshot (for me) was that, despite the uniqueness of his life, the myriad remarkable things he could write about, he is stuck trying to imitate a life he has never known or seen. It's a difficult thing to witness: Mongolians are still proud of their culture--just today the "cool" kids at my school were practicing for a performance in which they'll sing an ancient Mongolian song about marriage. What Mongolians have always known they do remarkably well. But those trying to reach into the "outside" world have incredible odds to overcome.
I hope Ganholog will write about Mongolia, but that of course is his choice. And despite the near certainty that his script will never be read, I'll spend the next few evenings going over the script with him, trying to capture the "feeling" of his work so that I may recreate it in English. I suppose the result doesn't matter so much as the process--sometimes a soul just needs to be heard.
posted by Susanne D. at 2:53 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home