J'Lyn Chapmann "Exploration between Text and Image" [MUSIC] Hello. And welcome to Mindful U at Naropa. A podcast presented by Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. I'm your host David Devine. And it's a pleasure to welcome you. Joining the best of Eastern and Western educational traditions -- Naropa is the birthplace of the modern mindfulness movement. [MUSIC] [00:00:44.03] David: Hello. Today, I'd like to welcome J'Lyn Chapmann to the podcast. J'Lyn is an assistant professor and a director in the MFA in Creative Writing here at Naropa. And itÕs a pleasure to be speaking with you today. So welcome. [00:00:56.05] J'Lyn Chapmann: Thank you. [00:00:57.22] David: So, how are you doing today? [00:00:59.20] J'Lyn Chapmann: I am well. Yes. ItÕs a beautiful weather - its spring time. [00:01:05.04] David: Yeah, itÕs really beautiful outside. [00:01:06.08] J'Lyn Chapmann: ItÕs nice. [00:01:08.00] David: And we're in a room just chatting. Awesome. So, is there anything else you'd like to share about yourself? [00:01:12.20] J'Lyn Chapmann: Yea, I was just going to say that I am from Colorado. I was born here. Not very many people can say that. [00:01:19.23] David: Where in Colorado? [00:01:20.12] J'Lyn Chapmann: I was born in this tiny town on the western side - close to Utah called Rangely, Colorado. [00:01:26.04] David: Oh cool. [00:01:26.12] J'Lyn Chapmann: Yes. I have been at Naropa for close to 10 years actually, but I have only been in this position as professor for three years. [00:01:38.13] David: Ok very cool. So, we talked before and you have a very interesting subject and I am really excited to explore it and what would that be? [00:01:46.17] J'Lyn Chapmann: Yeah, I wanted to talk about text and image today. And just maybe to clarify I am thinking about images that are included in a book of poetry or in a novel. And -- maybe I would even say that clarify it to even say that it could be books that use text as image as well. So not necessarily artists books or books that are art, but just you know books that include images in them. [00:02:20.02] David: Say more about that. Like what do you mean text is image? Like they're actually using writing to make an image? [00:02:26.20] J'Lyn Chapmann: Yeah. Yeah exactly. I mean I think sometimes we take for granted that text is an image you know the letters are images and so there are some writers - I mean there are lots of book artists and maybe letter press artists who are definitely very conscious of that but for the most part when you're just reading a book we sort of take for granted that the text on the page is an image and so there is some -- I am thinking of writers here who keep that in mind even though the - maybe in their book - the focus of the book is what the text is communicating. ItÕs also thinking about text as an image. So, like Rachel Blau DuPlessis is a poet and a critic but she also does these collage poems. So, they are poems, but they are made from collage. And it really emphasizes text. [00:03:24.04] David: Yeah. ItÕs interesting to think that like each letter on its own is just an image. And the combination of letters equals a word and then out of multiple words you get this sentence. [00:03:38.02] J'Lyn Chapmann: Yeah so -- [00:03:38.21] David: Out of images. [00:03:39.02] J'Lyn Chapmann: Yes, and for the most - I mean typically we read the text as if its invisible. You know we're just reading through it to get to the meaning. And so, something that I think poetry does and some kinds of literature but definitely in more overt and obvious ways there are writers and artists who draw attention to the fact that its - they make it visible. They make something that typically is supposed to be transparent and taken for granted. They make that visible. [00:04:10.17] David: Yeah. One book I am thinking about the Ram Dass, "Be Here Now." Where his writing is really big and expressing himself fully through the letters and -- very journal writing style. Not just writing like a college paper or something. [00:04:27.19] J'Lyn Chapmann: Yes. And in that - that's great because those are instances of maybe you know including the process of writing in the text rather than polishing it up, editing it, putting it in a kind of uniform font size. You know shipping it out. All of those things I think are valuable too, but - but then I think there is a kind of strain of writing that shows. It could also be just showing like the handwriting or like the poet C.A. Conrad often capitalizes certain words to give them emphasis in a way that we don't typically do that. [00:05:05.06] David: Yeah, awesome. When do you think text and images were coming together in poetry. Like was Shakespeare using images in his writing? Any other like famous poets or was there like a moment in which the shift happened? [00:05:27.06] J'Lyn Chapmann: That's a really good question. And there is probably someone who can answer this better than I can. But in some ways, it probably has been always happening. One way that I can just distinguish this is that there is maybe a difference between again if we consider text image but then we also consider the form that the text takes. One could argue that its always been happening. Like I think about even like there is this concept of the palimpsest that is often spoken about nowadays as a kind of theoretical concept of in which there is sort of multiple meanings that are co-existent, but I am thinking about the poet Catullus who writes these poems, and, in the poems, he actually addresses this idea of the palimpsest as the medium through which poetry is written. So, it the idea of taking a writing surface and using it over and over again. So, before there was paper there was velum - this is actually very difficult to make can't just have like a notebook full of velum and so it would just constantly be reused. So, you would write a poem and then you could write poems between - in any of the open space. And now archeologists will often look at these or archivists will look at these and be able to see that there is multiple writing on it and Catullus actually talks about this in his poetry. So, in some ways we could say that is an image, but William Blake is often cited as one of the first people to kind of do this in a really obvious way in his songs of innocence and experience. And he illustrates them. They are illustrated and his - the images that he uses are - are so - profoundly beautiful. Sometimes when we're just in college or in high school when we're reading these poems - they are extracted from their images and that doesn't seem right, but that's the way that I first encountered them. But more and more people are kind of paying attention to the illustrations that he included. [00:07:34.19] David: Yeah. It seems like - a company of illustrations with pairing with the text kind of gives you more of an idea of what the artist is trying to convey. [00:07:44.00] J'Lyn Chapmann: It can. It can. I mean I think - and this is what's interesting to me is that there are multiple ways of reading this. I don't - I always want to kind of shift away from like the intended way to read. I think we should acknowledge that but there is lots of ways of reading a text and reading an image with a text. [00:08:02.02] David: Can you give me some examples of like different ways of reading something? [00:08:05.07] J'Lyn Chapmann: Yeah. I was thinking about this earlier today - so right now I am - working on some essays that have to do with mothering and so one thing that I wanted to do was sort of bring together not in the writing itself but almost in a kind of to inspire my writing. I wanted to bring together images of the different mothers in my life. So, my grandmother - my paternal grandmother was adopted, given up for adoption and then adopted by her father's parents. And uh - so she really didn't have much contact with her mother at all. Uh - and her mother died when she was in high school I believe. But she was also didn't have much contact with her because her grandparents didn't want her to have contact with her. She was - her mother was American Indian and Hispanic and - and also according to them sort of had this disreputable lifestyle. So - so she hasn't really been in her life. So, this is the back story. So, my - I asked my aunt recently if she had any photographs of her - Rose is her name. And she sent these to me. And so, I was thinking about how there are different ways to kind of read these photographs. One, is that the photograph makes present something that is absent. Which is true for any kind of photograph we have of a person or even of an object. ItÕs this person who is no longer here is now made present in the photograph by having the object of the photograph. But as you know a writer like Rolan Bart who really theorized photography - he would also say that while we are making present this absent subject -- the photograph itself also tells us that the subject is absent. So, there is this like give and take where the absent thing is made present but then the present thing reminds of the absence. [00:10:09.11] David: ItÕs like a substitution. [00:10:10.14] J'Lyn Chapmann: Yeah, itÕs a substitution and a substitution - exactly, the substitution can - itÕs the substantial and significant thing, but it also reminds us of the thing that isn't there. And so, the -- right, so the photograph can be that thing as well as the photograph represents our love for something. Or our - we attach to it. We sometimes fetish-ize it. So, those are maybe two ways of reading it, but I think another way of reading it is also - the inability to actually represent. So, there is this person who is absent from my life, absent from my grandmother's life who is now made present and then absent, but it also shows me that I can never really get to her. I can't have her real body. I can't - I can't know her. And so, the image I think is also - in some ways no just represent what it - what it represents, but it can also represent the total inability to represent anything at all. [00:11:16.07] David: ItÕs almost like with the text and with an image that's the closest you can get with something that is being in place of the actualness of whatever it is you are looking at. [00:11:26.04] J'Lyn Chapmann: Yeah and there is a kind of sadness in that too I think. [00:11:30.19] David: Yeah. LAUGHING. Yeah and there could be beauty? [00:11:33.13] J'Lyn Chapmann: There is. I think -- [00:11:34.23] David: There could be a myriad of spectrum of feelings that can come from - depending on the subject matter I guess as far as coming from. Interesting. [00:11:43.05] J'Lyn Chapmann: You know there is much more that can potentially be said for that, but I think in the way that I am using these photographs that is to me - those are multiple readings of this - this one image. [00:11:56.07] David: Yeah. So, I was thinking about - does one of these ways communicate more poetency? So, if I was looking at an image - does that say more than a text would? And I guess this is all subjected, but I am just curious about your perspective on this question. How do you see each one informing you individually. So, if you are just looking at the image - how does that inform you compared to just reading a text about this person? How did they show up differently for you? Like what do you think it is? [00:12:27.21] J'Lyn Chapmann: Yeah, I think that is a good question. You are asking about how I do it personally and maybe I'll just say for a brief moment that I think that we live in a culture that has a lot of images. And so, it often seems like an image gives me immediately than text does. I am just thinking about the internet for instance and how image laden the internet is or how image laden most of our reading material is - you know a magazine for instance. And I think the idea is that the image gives more - its more immediate. We have fluency in reading images and the way that we may not have fluency in reading text, but I also just want to undermine that too. I think for me that is true. I am very attracted to images. I write primarily, and I don't make many images, but I am really attracted to them when I am writing. So, it does come - there is just something very beautiful and delicious about looking at them. But I actually find that if we are to read them - there is a kind of process of reading an image that does not come as quickly for me and yet I really enjoy it. I enjoy reading images. And I think that that's a whole kind of process and there is potentially different kinds of approaches to reading an image, but for me that - that is more interesting. But, so what - what was your question again? Because I feel like maybe I didn't quite get to it. [00:13:55.05] David: I was just kind of thinking like what is more effective? And how - how does each one communicate differently on their own? [00:14:03.18] J'Lyn Chapmann: Maybe effective isn't -- [00:14:06.03] David: Yeah, itÕs kind of like a subjective term and its - I guess uniquely base to the person but how does an image speak to a person differently than a text would in like a general term? [00:14:17.10] J'Lyn Chapmann: I guess in some ways I am not - totally sure. I mean an image can be more effective if for instance you are trying to illustrate you know the rise and fall of the stock market for instance. I mean most of us - probably - I can say that I do not really understand like the vernacular of the stock market, but I can pretty easily read an image of that. I can see that something is rising and falling. So that's extremely effective. There are other kinds of images that are extremely effective too. I mean I am just thinking about - in Longmont somebody's car went out of control and they careened into the First Bank and I saw these images of the First Bank and a tree that he mowed down. And that was actually effective to see like this destruction that he - that created. But also, that nobody was hurt. I mean there was also - it was very effective in seeing that all of this had happened, and nobody was hurt. So, in some ways it is very effective. I really like there is a writer WG Sebald - a German writer who is no longer living, but he uses images in his novels and one of the things that I find so curious about this image is that they are often very pleasing. You know some of them are very well composed. Some of them are - are actually just very amateur, but they're often very beautiful, very interesting but I think one of the reasons that he uses - uses them is that they are not actually effective, and I think his point is to show that somethings really can't be represented. There is this kind of threshold of effectiveness that eventually fails. And, he does that in both his writing and in the images that he uses and to me that is what is so kind of provocative and interesting about him. [00:16:11.00] David: Dancing on the line of threshold of what works and what doesn't. [00:16:15.05] J'Lyn Chapmann: Yeah, and I mean he is often writing about - violence and destruction and the Holocaust and so itÕs very - I think apropos for him to - to kind of find this threshold where there is something - there is something inethicable. There is -- is something that we can't - that can't be represented and that's kind of what I am interested in when we get that point where there is a failure. [00:16:39.14] David: Yeah, like where did it fail? What was the moment? [00:16:42.09] J'Lyn Chapmann: Yeah. Exactly. [00:16:44.15] David: So, I am having this thought where we're talking about text and image. So, a text is something you read and when you - when you are literally reading it in your mind you create an image of what's going on. But then if you see an image you create a text within your mind. [00:17:05.02] J'Lyn Chapmann: That's interesting, yeah. [00:17:05.13] David: I was starting to notice there is a relationship between the two and your brain makes the other. You know I don't want to speak for everybody, but I feel like this is a general sort of thing that happens with us people in our minds is when we see an image you create a story. When you read a story, you create an image. And so, I am starting to notice the relationship between these two. [00:17:28.12] J'Lyn Chapmann: Yeah. I like that. I mean in post modern theory or even post structuralist thought I guess everything becomes text. So, this word text is actually used in a very general way. Anything that can be read or interpreted is considered a text. So, but what you're talking about I think in some ways exemplifies that. That there -- we're always kind of circulating among these different texts. Whether itÕs an image that we read. Or a text that we imagine. I mean the word imagine has image in it. [00:18:06.07] David: Yeah, itÕs like externally given to us differently, but we can internalize something out of it. So, and itÕs how we internalize it differently you know through the composition we're looking at or reading or whatever. When does text and image have its place separately? When does - like when does an image say more than a text would? For instance, you're talking about the like kind of car crash in Longmont where you understood it more when you saw the images instead of like reading the article. So, when - when are they more potent than the other? Is there moments where they work well? [00:18:48.08] J'Lyn Chapmann: Maybe to give an example of this there is the John Berger who -- wrote a really wonderful book, "Ways of Seeing" that is often taught in schools because itÕs such a - sort of efficient distillation of the way text and image work. In this book he has some textual essays that are illustrated with different images and then between these he has what I would just call image essays. One of the things that he talks about in this book is the difference between nakedness and nudity because he is looking at a lot of Renaissance paintings where there are lots of nudes and naked people. And so, one of the things that - and then he kind of digs into this idea uh by talking about the female body and objectification and the different between a naked female body and a nude which we see as a kind of genre of painting. And so, he has these image essays where he sort of begins if I remember correctly with nudes from Renaissance painting and sort of gradually starts to kind of come into the modern era with advertising that uses some of the - the vernacular of these paintings. So maybe some of the same shapes or the same colors or the same positionings and he is also a Marxist writer. So, one the things that he is I think also trying to show is that the body becomes commodified. It becomes a commodity. I find this very effective. I don't think you need - its effective because it doesn't use any language. ItÕs really just decontextualizing some of these paintings and some of these advertisements. So, taking them out of the museum or taking them out of the magazine or off the television screen and putting them next to one another and they start to communicate with one another - on their own. They don't really need us to do that. ItÕs just in some ways just moving them around and putting them in a different area. That to me is much more effective than somebody sort of dictating what meaning arises. It allows us to do that. [00:21:02.07] David: Totally. Ok so I have like - I have like two questions. I kind of want to stick them together somehow. So, I am going to - freestyle it and see what happens. [00:21:10.17] J'Lyn Chapmann: That's fine. [00:21:13.12] David: So, in your class you - you talk about the text and image and you explore this and here at Naropa we have like a contemplative model of education. And I'm curious with the like contemplative model and with the like eager minds and this - this topic. How do you extract a deeper meaning through this modalities? How do you extract you know when you're like staring at a picture and a text in a contemplative lens - how can you see more of it than just like if you were to look in a comic or something? [00:21:47.02] J'Lyn Chapmann: Yeah that's a good question - I think, well looking at images has always been I think a part of devotional practices for one and contemplative practices and on the other hand I think there have been contemplative practices or religious practices that are very opposed to looking at images. So, to me that suggests that images have this value and significance. So, itÕs not a totally new concept and I think the images also have this mirroring affect just as anything is that we look at or that we pay attention to. I think it can actually be a process of coming to be self-aware to look at something. I think that looking at something closely also requires time and patience. And duration. Which is something that we don't do a lot in this culture. So, the classroom and maybe even particularly the classroom at Naropa provides a space to do this. To look carefully. To self-examine and to also do all of this without judgement. I don't think that itÕs that effective to look at it - an image with judgement. Although I sometimes just ask my students to get that out of the way. You know what do you expect of this? [00:23:06.23] David: How does one look at something without judgement though? [00:23:09.06] J'Lyn Chapmann: I mean I don't think that you necessarily can. Yeah. DAVID: ItÕs so hard. [00:23:13.20] J'Lyn Chapmann: Yeah. Absolutely. I mean some things that can help that though uh as I was talking about with John Berger is to extract an image from its context. And that always can be really surprising. So, you take an advertisement and you take some element of that out of the advertisement and then you see something very differently. You see it in a different light. So that's a way to do it. But I think also spending time with it. So, there is a series called the Face. ItÕs a book series. And Ruth Ozeki - are you familiar with this? [00:23:50.00] David: Yeah. [00:23:50.07] J'Lyn Chapmann: Yeah. So, she stares at her face. I am not sure for how long it is. ItÕs a very long time. I can't remember the logistics of this, but she looks at her face in the mirror and I have asked - I think itÕs like something like 8 hours or something. I've asked students to do this with their own faces where they just - for not as long. I've asked them to do it for a couple hours. So, in the process of looking Ruth Ozeki is thinking about her family. Thinking about different practices - artistic practice, Japanese artistic practices. She's thinking about her own life. Her own writing. I think the same thing can happen with image where you just look at an image for an extended period of time and what you start to see are not the composition of the image, but you start to see the colors. You start to see shape. You start to see shadow. Uh - so you have like these sort of elemental aspects of an image and then it transforms into something else. And if you're sort of taking note of these things - you know writing notes, reflecting - itÕs actually can be very transformative. It doesn't just transform the image, but it also transforms the person who is looking at the image. [00:25:02.12] David: Yeah. I did this thing when I was younger where I would say a word over and over and over -- [00:25:07.06] J'Lyn Chapmann: Yes. [00:25:07.06] David: And there was a moment where it like it literally made no sense to me. [00:25:10.09] J'Lyn Chapmann: Yes. [00:25:11.00] David: The word the. You just say the over and over. What - like what -- [00:25:15.20] J'Lyn Chapmann: ItÕs just the repetition. [00:25:16.20] David: ItÕs a combining word. It just combines things together. And I was like I don't understand it anymore. What is the? [00:25:21.19] J'Lyn Chapmann: It starts to seem like another language. I mean in some ways Andy Warhol did that with images where he would take a really well known image - like Marilyn Monroe's face and he would just repeat it over and over and over again. And so, it starts to become somebody else you know all of the significance of this beautiful movie star starts to kind of degrade in some ways and it becomes a different image or the Campbell soup can instead of like whatever it is on a - you know whatever it represents to us when we see it in a grocery store. It starts to become something else. And in some ways now it has this - totally entrenched meaning - Andy Warhol and the factory. But - yeah, itÕs this idea of like repetition and duration can actually be really enlightening I think. [00:26:11.14] David: So, I have one more question for you. Since you know so right now we are exploring the medium of audio, right? So, we - we were talking about text and image and obviously there is a relationship there between those two compositions and I want to talk about like is there anything you want to say about their sibling audio? [00:26:29.06] J'Lyn Chapmann: Yeah, that's - I mean that's great. [00:26:32.02] David: Because audio can create a text or an image within your brain. [00:26:36.17] J'Lyn Chapmann: Yes, and when we're talking about poetry for instance or any kind of lyricism it is about the audio. ItÕs about the way something sounds. And sometimes - one of the things that I think happens when you concentrate on text and image and literature or you know in a book - it becomes very much about the object. You know it becomes about the page. And so, I think one of the things that can sometimes wither away is the way that it sounds. Because we become so focused on the way something looks. The poetry and writing I think in lyricism are also about sound. So, one of the ways that we've kind of done this in my class and that I like to do it is to bring in some - like kirsch fitters who did like a lot of like sound poetry and he would - you know if you look at his page its actually very imagistic. There's a lot of like repeated letters and a lot of strange constructions. But you can also hear him reading this and so the sound of that is also very strange. These words that don't seem like they're even pronounceable - he pronounces and so I like it when these three things are sort of happening simultaneously. [00:27:55.22] David: Yeah. And there is this idea of me and you can read the same poem, but itÕs going to sound different. The reflection of our voice. The - who we are behind it. And just how we read it is going to be different and the spacing between words and so it could create a different image in people's minds. That could be a fun little practice. Everyone read the same thing and see what comes up for you. [00:28:19.01] J'Lyn Chapmann: Yeah its bringing the body - I like that example because its bringing the body back into the poem and which is what I - I mean that's another sematic practice altogether is to bring the body in and to feel it and to have it perform and to do it. You know to do the praxis of the poem. [00:28:38.02] David: Yeah, awesome. So, this was really fun. I really appreciate you speaking with us today. It was like a really fun topic to explore and just thank you for uh -- [00:28:46.03] J'Lyn Chapmann: Well thanks for having me. ItÕs great. [00:28:48.21] David: So, that was J'Lyn Chapmann to the podcast. She is an assistant professor and the director in the MFA creative writing. So, I would like to thank her again. Thank you. [00:28:58.14] J'Lyn Chapmann: Thank you. [MUSIC] On behalf of the Naropa community thank you for listening to Mindful U. The official podcast of Naropa University. Check us out at www.naropa.edu or follow us on social media for more updates. [MUSIC]