Free What Would Lynne Tillman Do? by Lynne Tillman Page A

poem, The Arab Apocalypse . Her paintings have been exhibited internationally and are included in various museums and collections. Adnan’s plays have been produced in San Francisco, Paris, Caen, Argentina, Dusseldorf and Beirut, her poetry set to music by composers such as Gavin Bryars, Henry Threadgill, Tania Leon, Annea Lockwood,and Zad Multaka. Her latest books are In The Heart Of The Heart Of Another Country and The Master Of The Eclipse .
    After I heard her read that night, I made contact with her. I saw her twice in NYC, when she was on her way to Paris. I phoned her there a couple of times, and we maintained an infrequent correspondence. I read her books. Her partner, Simone Fattal, who is the publisher of the Post-Apollo Press, always sent me her new books; and Etel always signed them affectionately. Having the chance to talk with Etel Adnan for Bidoun, at length and in her home in Sausalito, was a gift.
    LT: You’ve written that you can never separate experience from theory.
    EA: We don’t just speak out, we order our thinking. If you call that theory, you can’t escape it. If one means, rather, that one speaks with pre-decisions, that this is my way of speaking, I will conform everything to that style and approach, it is not only bad, but it also doesn’t work. It is why, sometimes, my work seems to go in many different directions. It could be harmful, but I can’t do otherwise. But to do that doesn’t mean not to have direction in one’s thinking or to be lost. I want to accept things as they come and see what to do with them.
    LT: One’s own experience of the world might always fall into a category or theory one believes.
    EA: I accept contradiction when it happens. Today I may say something philosophical: if I can talk of the idea of Being separated from objects, then I can also say there is no Being outside manifestation. One month later I might write its opposite and be aware of it. That doesn’t bother me, because I seek new connections. Of course, you must have some few points of reference in your life.
    LT: War is a enduring point of reference for you.
    EA: I have become politically nonviolent. I’ve reached the point that, for myself, it is right. I will not compromise that. On other matters I feel a kind of absolute, if we can use that word. I do not accept the sexual abuse of children. But I have very few of those absolutes. Everything else is in flux.
    LT: I admire various kinds of writing, if I feel there is an intelligence behind it, that the language is closely handled, in whatever form the writer chooses.
    EA: I don’t privilege one approach to another. I don’t privilege it within my own works. Some people are prisoners of the decisions they make.
    LT: It’s fascinating in Sitt Marie Rose , your novel about the Lebanese Civil War, which started in 1975, the varieties of style and forms you chose. First, what does “sitt” mean?
    EA: Sitt is an Arabic word, used in Lebanon and Syria mostly, and Egypt, to mean “madam”; it’s not formal. A girl of five years old in conversation can be “little sitt so-and-so.” Sitt can also be for married or single women. It’s a colloquial way to address a woman. It carries some respect.
    LT: How did Sitt Marie Rose come about, when did you write it?
    EA: I wrote it before the end of 1976. The event it’s based on occurred in early ’76. The Christian Phalangists kidnapped a woman whose real name was Marie Rose. People immediately recognized her when the book came out.
    LT: You wrote it in French.
    EA: I was in Paris and had read in Le Monde about Marie Rose Boulous’ being kidnapped. I knew she was already dead. I became upset, wanted to write it down; as you are a writer, you know one discovers through writing matters that wouldn’t occur to you otherwise. I wanted to find out—all cultures include violence—which forms the Lebanonese culture has taken. We don’t know any human group in history that hasn’t been violent. I don’t