"I've been left wondering about your sense that you are trying to recreate
the Warsaw walk -- at a guess, that story has some unexpressed thrid thing
going on, a personal relevance to you (polish ancestors, or some sense of
the old country, say) that Stephanie might not get even if she were to read
the same story and do the same walk.

So I worry about literalism (ironic choice of words) if you goal is
recreating that feeling, in that the inspiring resonance of your experience
may need to be significantly translated to be more broadly experienced."

"Interesting. Well, I'm not so sure that that's not true of literature as
well; that is to say, not every piece of writing will resonate with
everyone the same way. In fact, a large part of writing is the writer
trying to convey the resonance *they* feel to the reader; the
surrounding space merely aids the reader in recreating that resonance
for themselves.

A bit cryptic? Email is my least favorite medium for discussing these
things :)"

"> In fact, a large part of writing is the writer
> trying to convey the resonance *they* feel to the reader; the
> surrounding space merely aids the reader in recreating that resonance
> for themselves.

This is the part I'm not sure about -- I'm not sure that when such resonance
happens anything about it is 'mere', and I'm not sure that what space mainly
does is aid in recreation even in those cases where space matters.

I think you have three big elements -- the reader, the writing, and the
external context -- and they interact in unpredictable ways. And I wonder if
"I am in the space the text was written about/for" is not both an
overly-literal (an ironic appellation, under the circs) and rare version of
the effects you are interested in.

As I write this, I am sitting under three Poetry In Motion Centennial Kids
Poetry entries about the subway, which seem to fill your 'about Warsaw/in
Warsaw' test, and of course the pieces, though they are no more than
well-meaning doggerel, are more activated by being in the environment they
are about, but the effect seems less interesting than many or your more
metaphorical takes on the same phenomenon. Kafka in the subway, or Pascal,
might be more energetically open as interpretive linkings between text and
environment.

This, I think, is what I'm trying to get at -- the experience you had was so
personal as to risk unrepeatability except in edge cases, because (I am
guessing) of some personal resonance you felt with both Warsaw and with the
story, but the _feeling_, of freeing text to inform and be informed by
space, seems generalizable. So when I heard you say you were trying to
recreate that feeling, I worried that that approach might be less
interesting than extrapolating from it."

"Sounds like the issue you're having is not with the underlying idea but
rather with the limiting nature of the Warsaw anecdote -- in that that
specific experience may not be replicable, but that freeing text to
interact with its surroundings may lead to interesting things. Warsaw as
an inspiration rather than a destination. The ways in which text in
public space may prove meaningful but unpredictable, and that I should
keep an open mind to how giving text the opportunity to resonate without
predetermining the nature of that resonance.

I agree that yes that example may be overly literal, and that the
connection between words and space may not be immediately evident; that
leads back to serendipity. Ironically one of the things that annoys me
about subways is that the quotes are always, obviously if indirectly,
about subways. I don't think that the text must so literally relate to
the space for it to add meaning.

Which of course begs the question of where on the spectrum -- literal to
random -- these texts must lie. I'm not sure there's a catch all answer.
But I do think it points to the importance of the editorial mind. Who
makes the decision of space? The publisher? The writer? The reader?
Still haven't resolved that one."

"> Sounds like the issue you're having is not with the underlying idea but
> rather with the limiting nature of the Warsaw anecdote -- in that that
> specific experience may not be replicable, but that freeing text to
> interact with its surroundings may lead to interesting things. Warsaw as
> an inspiration rather than a destination.

Yes, exactly.

I may be reading too much into one statement, but towards the end of the
meeting the other day, you said that your goal was increasingly becoming to
recreate the Warsaw experience, at which point my "*DANGER!* *MIMESIS
ALERT!*' bell went off (actually, it took several hours for that to happen.)

> The ways in which text in
> public space may prove meaningful but unpredictable, and that I should
> keep an open mind to how giving text the opportunity to resonate without
> predetermining the nature of that resonance.

Doesn't need to be quite that aleatory either; its more about looking for
non-mimetic forms of text+space=resonance.

> I agree that yes that example may be overly literal, and that the
> connection between words and space may not be immediately evident; that
> leads back to serendipity. Ironically one of the things that annoys me
> about subways is that the quotes are always, obviously if indirectly,
> about subways. I don't think that the text must so literally relate to
> the space for it to add meaning.
>
> Which of course begs the question of where on the spectrum -- literal to
> random -- these texts must lie. I'm not sure there's a catch all answer.
> But I do think it points to the importance of the editorial mind. Who
> makes the decision of space? The publisher? The writer? The reader?
> Still haven't resolved that one.

Right, and the degree to which the editorial control can be relaxed from
'complete control' to 'providing space for the reader to play', as with the
scroll-poetry."