Enter anything through anything

If you go deeply enough into writing, it'll take you everywhere you need to go.

-- Natalie Goldberg

When I approach something new, I retreat to my most trusted gates -- text, poetry, story, art, music, theatre.

My acting teacher, Mark Williams, used to say, "If you have ever been very good at anything, I can teach you to act."

I once translated poems from Italian. Once, from Danish. I don't speak either. I found each word in a dictionary and hauled it back like a boulder from the dreamtime, trailing meanings. Then I searched for the English words that create the same vibration. It was like feeling a riverbed with my palms, impossible to see without distortion.

I read once that if you are a poet, you must translate poetry from a language you don't speak.

One of the guys at work said that when I came through, they sent out a warning message, "Don't get lost when talking to Rachel. Remember to interview her." "They didn't get lost," I said. "They got present."

A poem is a moment of presence.

In Kabuki theatre, they speak of "received works." A received work is one vouchsafed to the artist, allowed to come through you miraculously intact. It is not a created thing; but one listened for, transcribed faithfully, blind.