THE GHOST INTERVIEW
Mary-Kim
Arnold
10/21/2017
When
Xander first shared the Ghost Hunters Report, I was interested in it in this
sort of ironic way, but then when I read it, it was both more mundane and more
disturbing than I had anticipated.
It
starts with a description of weather, moon phase, and solar activity, on the
date that the investigators visit, and lists all the equipment the team brought
with them, including: Ovilus and PSB-7 Spirit Boxes, dowsing rods, rem-pod and
pendulum.
They document
setting up their equipment.
But
then almost immediately, without warning, the investigators report:
“Dave
and Cynthia went to the basement where they both felt there had been an
abortion clinic at one time.”
It
seems there was a doctor who lived in the home, who may have performed
abortions. The whole basement may have served as a surgery area.
So of
course, I thought about the lives of the women who moved around these rooms.
Being a
woman in America right now, I can’t help but linger on the darker aspects of
these thoughts – about how women move around in space, where we are allowed to
go, where we are not, what we participate in and what we don’t. When our voices
carry and when they do not.
I
wanted to find a way to bring voices of women to this response, both in
consideration of who might have inhabited these rooms before and in
anticipation of who might in the future. So I thought of women writers.
Virginia
Woolf would have been a contemporary of the Tirocchi sisters. I thought maybe
we could invite her into this conversation.
I was
intrigued by the idea of an interview slash séance, inspired by these ghost
investigators. I found these questions, taken from a document called
Questionnaire for Ghosts, and then I set myself the task of using only material
from the writings of Virginia Woolf as responses. I’ve enlisted Matthew Derby
to be the interviewer here.
This is
my response, in honor of the Ghost Hunter Report, but far more importantly, in
honor of the incredible, inspiring vision that Xander and Pippi have for this
house, for making this space for women artists. For acknowledging the long line
of women that we follow, and the ones that we hope to make space for in the
future.
GHOST INTERVIEW: VIRGINIA WOOLF
Do you know what day it is
today?
The day
after my birthday; in fact, I’m 38.
How do you feel right now?
I’m a
great deal happier than I was at 28; and happier today than I was yesterday
having just this afternoon arrived at some idea for a new form for a new novel.
My doubt is how far it will enclose the human heart – am I sufficiently
mistress of my dialogue to meet it there?
The
approach will be entirely different this time: no scaffolding, scarcely a brick
to be seen; all crepuscular, but the heart, the passion, the humor, everything
as bright as a fire in the mist.
Are you in pain?
I’m
desolate, dusty, and disillusioned.
I’m
cynical.
I’m
pretentious.
I’m a
little anxious. My heart in my mouth.
I’m
distracted.
I’m
obsolete.
I’m a
little uppish though, and self assertive.
Do you have any relatives?
How
beautiful they were, those old people – I mean, father and mother – how simple,
how clear, how untroubled. I have been dipping into old letters and father’s
memoirs. He loved her: oh and was so candid and reasonable and transparent –
and had such a fastidious and delicate mind.
How
serene and gay even, their life reads to me: no mud, no whirlpools. And so
human – with the children and the little hum and song of the nursery. But if I
read as a contemporary, I shall lose my child’s vision and so must stop.
Nothing turbulent; nothing involved; no introspection.
Do you have a husband?
Is it
chiefly intellectual snobbery to say that I dislike them?
Do you know who is the current
president of the United States?
Why is
life so tragic; so like a little strip of pavement over an abyss… I wonder how
I am ever to walk to the end.
Do you know any other ghosts?
I
intend to spend the evenings of this week of captivity in making out an account
of my friendships and their present condition, with some account of my friends’
characters; and to add an estimate of their work and a forecast of their future
work.
Do you enjoy frightening people?
Unhesitatingly,
yes.
What frightens people the most?
It is
presumably bad thing to look through articles, reviews, etc., to find one’s own
name. Yet I often do.
Have you ever attacked anyone
using your ghostly powers?
That a
famous library has been cursed by a woman is a matter of complete indifference
to a famous library.
Do you ever remember a moment
when you consciously chose to become a ghost?
Here I
am chained to my rock; forced to do nothing; doomed to let every worry, spite,
irritation and obsession scratch and claw and come again. No one is as
miserable as I am.
Are you tired of being a ghost?
In some
ways, it’s rather like writing.
If there anything I can do to
help you find peace?
I told
you that Shakespeare had a sister; but do not look for her in Sir Sidney Lee’s
life of the poet. She died young – alas, she never wrote a word.
She
lies buried where the omnibuses now stop, opposite the Elephant and Castle.
Now my
belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the
crossroads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who
are not here tonight, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the
children to bed.
But she
lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need
only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh.
This
opportunity, as I think, it is now coming within your power to give her.
For my
belief is that if we live another century or so – I am talking of the common
life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live
as individuals – and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if
we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; if
we escape a little from the common sitting room and see human beings not always
in relation to each other but in relation to reality; and the sky, too, and the
trees or whatever it may be in themselves…
If we
face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is no arm to cling to, but that we
go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality and not only to world
of men and women, then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was
Shakespeare’s sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down.
Drawing
her life from the lives of the unknown who were her forerunners, as her brother
did before her, she will be born.
As for
her coming without that preparation, without that effort on our part, without
that determination that when she is born again she shall find it possible to
live and write her poetry, that we cannot expect, for that would be impossible.
But I
maintain that she would come if we worked for her.
And so
for us to work for a while, even in poverty and obscurity, is worthwhile.
