TLC #8: The Body Question

Hello! 

You’re getting this email because you signed up to attend The Long Conversation, a live show dedicated to the crafts of writing, reading, and editing, hosted by me, Rachel Jepsen, who is not down on any map.

Our next gathering—and last of this year—is on Friday, December 18, at 5:30 PM EST, where we’ll be going one step further in our ongoing discussion of the body’s role in writing and learning. 

Your assignment is to write for one half hour in response to the following:

What does it feel like to be alive?

Let the prompt go once you’ve begun writing, and follow your self where it takes you. If you’re having trouble getting started, try writing a letter to your own body—here is what I feel about you.

Our reading this week, which I recommend reading before you work on the exercise, is a very short chapter (“Eros, Eroticism, and the Pedagogical Process”) from bell hooks’ Teaching To Transgress, which you can purchase here. A PDF of the chapter is available here.

I wonder, what connections can we make between how hooks talks about the transgressive optimism of a bodied learning, and what we read in Keller’s memoir about the emergent artist’s communal impulse? Does embodied writing make us more likely to connect with others? Why or why not?

Wait a second, didn’t we talk about this with Bob Yagelski? Hmm… is it all coming together because I had a plan all along? Curious.

See you all next week!

Rachel