It was very weird to be traveling to the US from Norway, knowing that I would be returning "home" to Norway, rather than "home" to the US. The US felt especially foreign to me since I was going to a region that I've only ever briefly visited. Yet at the same time it was really fun: I knew the ropes, as it were, and it's very easy to be a tourist in one's homeland.
I decided I needed the most mindless knitting project imaginable for the trip, so I started knitting a basic ribbed scarf out of the Rowan Kidsilk Haze that I bought earlier this spring. It has been very satisfying to knit, though not the most exciting thing to look at:
I'm knitting two strands together, so the fabric is fairly dense.
I got into Provo a day early in hopes of recuperating a bit before the seminar itself, and in order to get some shopping done. I bought a new digital camera for myself, which I'm still getting the hang of. We stayed in a really decent hotel in the center of Provo, so I did a lot of walking and taking the city bus around town that first day, which was actually pretty enjoyable. This is the view leaving the front entrance of the hotel:
And this is the view out of the window in my room:
I actually really liked the town. It reminds me of so many places I've been in the western states--it combined elements of towns I've been to in Idaho, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico, and of course the mountains are spectacular. What makes Provo, different, however, is the overwhelming presence of the Mormons. Brigham Young University was a fascinating place--it looks and behaves like a serious university, yet at the same time it is a thoroughly religious institution.At the seminar there were a total of eight presentations--three by the editors of the literary history and five by contributors (including me). It was very informal--the idea was for them to clarify the (rather ambitious) goals and theoretical framework of the project and help us shape our individual essays to fit the goals and framework. I got tons of questions after my presentation, and then after lunch got a really in-depth critique from three of the editors. These happen to be three of the most interesting and creative minds in my field (Tom DuBois, Mark Sandberg, and Dan Ringgård for those in the know) so I felt incredibly privileged. I left that session feeling overwhelmed but inspired.
They gave us about four hours off the afternoon of the second day. I napped and puttered for most of it, but then woke up with a totally clear vision of how to restructure my essay. I banged out six pages at lightening speed. They're only asking for fourteen pages total, so I feel that I'm well on my way to having a really kick-ass essay done. I think they really liked my topic, since they've asked me to get mine done early to use as an example for other contributors.
Saturday night they drove us up to Sundance (of Robert Redford fame) for dinner. It was a lovely evening. We strolled around the grounds first and then had a really scrumptious steak dinner. Over dinner one of the participants (John Lindow) started talking about the Getty Villa, which apparently is an exact replica of the villa preserved at Herculaneum after the volcanic eruption there. My simulacrum-detector went off, of course, and it started me thinking about Baudrillard's notion of the hyperreal, and how that might relate to the literary history project. I should back up and say that I'm contributing to a volume on "place" in Nordic literary culture. It occurred to me that the research I started way back in 2003 on the "spel" phenomenon (where communities around Norway put on annual outdoor theatrical reenactments of historical events, including, interestingly enough, the black plague) might be the starting point for a second essay in the volume. I talked to one of the editors about it and he seemed really gung-ho.
Each night I was there I woke up at three o'clock in the morning, which was kind of a pain, but also useful for getting to watch every single episode of Survivor 18: Tocantins online (can't access them from Europe) and also for writing. That last night (or should I say morning) I woke up with a crystal clear idea of how to structure this second essay, which I sketched out in about three pages. So all together I got nearly ten pages of new writing done while at the seminar. That's a pretty darned good result, not to mention the fun of hanging out with a bunch of smarty-pants.
ETA: And just in case my trip caused me to feel even the slightest glimmer of nostalgia for my homeland, there's always stuff like this blog, which collected a smattering of anti-Obama protest snapshots, to keep me eternally thankful for the fact that I live in Norway now.
