Carrianne Leung | Issue 4

What Story?

Apr 18, 2021

CARRIANNE LEUNG

What Story?, embroidery floss, cotton, 2020

In the beginning, I tried to write. Every day, I woke up with these intentions. I told myself, I’m a writer. This is what I do. Put language to experience. Make meaning. Arrange events and characters into some relatable form to show us we are human. But I will tell you, last March when we closed our doors and stayed inside, I had no words to offer.

I was working on a new novel. It was about a catastrophe that forced radical change in our lives. And suddenly the real world trotted into my story, and everything stood still. My characters stopped what they were doing and looked at me from the screen. What the fuck, Carrianne? What are we supposed to be doing now? I don’t know, I told them. We will just have to wait and see.

I was writing an apocalyptic fairytale. It’s weird right? These two words mushed up against each other like that. Before Covid, I was preoccupied with climate change and climate justice. The edge of the edge. I spent a year wondering what story needed to be told from this precipice. It felt like apocalypse was coming. I was freaked out and angry that not enough was changing to alleviate suffering and to sustain life. But at the same moment, a tenderness, a profound sense of wonder had also entered my body. I think catastrophe is like that. Grief happens before loss does. So, the end of the end also has this fairytale quality about it. Our hopes, desires and dreams also make themselves known in these moments. Beauty too. Someone said to me that fairytales are not real though. But we live fairytales all the time. We don’t outgrow them. We internalize their narrative forms and tropes and we still try to shape our lives into similar meaning. An apocalyptic fairytale was as real as I could get in storytelling. The new book has a racoon narrator. It IS based in Toronto after all, so it is as much a racoon story as a human one. Before the first lockdown, I was set to have a first draft done by last May.

But you know what happened next. Covid-19 appeared, an unexpected character that walked into all our scenes and brought a world to its knees. Covid is quite a protagonist. Some will call it a master villain. Some would call it just a character living its own logic and destiny. There are many ways to tell that story. But for now, we only have the inciting event which is what we call the scene that launches a story, the moment Covid 19 walked into the room. Meanwhile, we are still in the middle of it. This last year has been about bracing for what happens next, and unlike a novel or a film, this middling is a very long one. We may still be in-between meaning.

I think there are some creatives who have been able to hold onto their craft, and I hope it is giving them ground to rest on. Instead of writing, I did something peculiar. Well, peculiar for me. I started stitching and painting. If you know me, you would know that I claim that aside from language, I have no artistic bone in my body. For example, I love the idea of myself as a knitter, but I have never finished a project because scarves look like capes for my dog at the end. I do not like counting. I am not that organized to keep track of rows and purls and such. Yet one day in January, before Covid landed in Canada, I walked into a craft store and bought a bunch of colourful threads and a few patterns. I needed something to do with my hands. It was instinct. Everything I do is instinct. Falling in love, eating cake, choosing what I wear every day. I reach before thinking, and I am so glad that I reached for these threads.

I am a meadow, embroidery floss, cotton, 2020

Without words, I can be very lost. Writing blocks have happened only a handful of times, and what follows is a very sad Carrianne. I am a lump in my bed. I am empty.

So, in my self-isolation, without words, I reached for the threads and then later, I reached for the dollar store watercolor paints that my kid had deep in a drawer. It began with just playing. A couple of friends had their book launches cancelled because of the lockdown. These are important events for us – they are a birth, a wedding, a party all in one. My body not getting a chance to hug, kiss and love up on my writer friends found stitching instead, and I stitched their book covers as gifts. I think it made them happy. It made me happy. And so, I kept doing it. Every day, I thought of someone special and did a piece for them. I have given over 50 pieces of art away.

This art making has kept me grounded and pulled me away again and again from falling into a pit of despair that I could see before me. It has allowed me to hold onto my friends, of all the good things in my life, and most importantly, it has given me another kind of language and storytelling while I waited for the words to come. This has surprised me that I would have this ability and expression. It has allowed me to understand more than ever that art, craft, life are processes that we do with attention and care.

I did eventually go back to the writing the novel. The story suddenly came in a burst. It was like diving back into familiar waters – cold and thick against my skin. The story took on the shades of what has been happening. It’s a strange book written in a strange time. I had never finished a first draft so quickly. When I think of this work, I will always think of the words as also stitched, painted. I will also remember the silence and stillness of this arrested time.

I hope that you are also able to find your language for these times, and to hold tight to the things that sustain you. I have no idea what world we will walk back out to when the pandemic is over. But I like to think that that world is being made right now, in our living rooms, in isolation, on the internet, in our imaginations, and we’ll be ready to face all that comes.