Surprise Bonus Episode | The Way: What Ursula K. Le Guin's Favourite Book Uncovered

Introduction

You are officially now listening to an award-winning podcast. Hello, fellow exhibitionists or aspiring exhibitionists. Welcome to the first bonus episode. By popular demand, I concocted a few shorter episodes for those of you who are in need of a quicker, stimulating thought or experience, but also for those of you who finish an episode and have two long weeks of dark, dark, dark longing for the next episode. So my encounter with curator Catherine Lee was full of surprises. I recorded an episode with her that was dedicated to Ursula K. LeGuin's The Carrier Back Theory of Fiction. At the end of the episode, she shared something quite odd, which is that one of her favourite books was also one of Ursula K. LeGuin's favorite books. The way Catherine presented the book also prompted a memory of mine of another reading.

We won an award!

Wonder, Wonder, Wonder, Wunder.

I must announce some fabulous news. You are officially now listening to an award-winning podcast. Exhibitionist has got an award, the Women Who Podcast Award in the category of LGBTQIA Plus. The episode Contemporary Art Exhibitions and Heritage a Safe Space with the curators Gemma Rose Bentley and EJ Scott. I applied with this episode because my guests go far beyond mere issues of representation. They do talk about queerness in art spaces and in curatorial practices, but by showing how necessary it is to bring queer perspectives, because they carry, each one of them, unique and unexplored standpoints through each and every member of the community. It was really moving to see how trans curator E. J. Scott, according to Gemma Rawls Bentley, has enlightened her in regards to trans lives, particularly with his project Museum of Transology, that we talk about in the episode. But it was also moving for me, who consider myself to have been raised by a notion, and my parents also, obviously, to discover that she was curating an exhibition about the sea, which she introduced as a really important element for certain queer people. I had never thought about that. So that's for me an episode that really represents the importance of understanding also that one member of a community does not represent the whole community and that dialogues are always necessary without and within specific communities. As E.J. Scott said more poignantly, not seeing gay and trans lives in museums and heritage spaces because he also works in historic museums. When you're somewhere in the LGBTQIA plus spectrum, is being, and I quote E.J. Scott, historically homeless, unquote. We are living historically a moment of huge openness that is being closed up again in the UK, in my country of origin, Portugal, and many other countries where trans lives are being particularly targeted by incomprehensible policies. So it was important to apply with this one. Anyway, thank you to my guests. It is really truly due to them that the episode got the award, and thanks to you too as well for listening and for being here. On that note,

A new Exhibitionistas adventure

if you ever have felt compelled to leave a note, to subscribe, to donate, to become a member on Substack, to rate the podcast, which you can do on Apple Podcasts, you can also leave a written review. Now would be the time, because I also applied with exhibitionists to the Signal Awards. It does place the podcast under professionals' eyeballs, and that's always a good thing. The algorithm is getting ruthless. It is very hard for independent media to get pushed up there unless there is engagement. It is less ingrained in us here, Europeans, I'm in the UK, this new behavior that is asked of us by independent media, but also by this new life that we're building around research, around journalism, that is pretty much represented by serious podcasting. But all this to say that we are on the good side of the internet. But because we are in so much demand and there's so many more people looking for us and listening to us, this is a job and it is becoming a very time-consuming job. Podcast comments, questions, shares are ways to express yourself. And while doing it, they are a seamless way to promote exhibitionists. Of course, donations, memberships are very, very welcome. There are several ways for you to do it. They're all linked in the show's description. Go there, see what uh tickles your fancy and go with it. But there are also one-off donations. If you particularly love an episode, I have made an effort in keeping it free. I know that some of the episodes that I put out there are useful for someone studying Arsilla Key Laguin or looking into the work of Giuseppe Pinone. So I am really trying to keep the podcast as available as possible, but this bonus episode is also a way for me to introduce little gems, little novelties that will be available to paid members only. It is really important that I can compensate you paying members, you who are playing the game. And so during this summer, I've been trying to understand how I could bring something special to you, and this episode is a good example. This is the beginning of a new adventure with exhibitionisters. There will be a few other things coming up in due time because I am a curator. I'm also artistic director of an art fair. So I have lots of jobs. I have a non-profit in London called Welding. So there's a lot of work to be done. The question I have running currently on TikTok and Instagram is precisely that. Do you read out loud for yourself or for someone else, another adult? I do find that there is something magical about reading out loud, and I am working on something for September, and that's why I am trying to understand if there's other people out there like me who relate to reading out loud. So that sunray on Instagram says, yes, she does read out loud, and she says, I enjoy it most when they they the people I read to are actually listening and reacting appropriately, which is really interesting because it is this connection, it's a different way to connect to people. Robert Boyd Skipper on Substack comments that yes, I do read aloud, quote, for myself, poetry for the sound and rhythm, also dense paragraphs that don't make any sense inside my head, and he also reads to his wife, which is wonderful. But better yet, I got a few comments of some people saying, I don't, but I may start doing it now that you're asking, which filled me with joy because I feel less lonely in this passion that I have for reading out loud, which I will put into action in this episode, by the way. On with the episode. Enjoy.

Catherine Li introduces Le Guin's translation of the Tao Te Ching

But her most influential text to me is the carry-back one, which we are talking about. But then I was looking at myself and I realized I have this book and I've been reading it randomly. It's Ursula Keila Queen's translation of Tao Te Ching. So this book was written about 2,500 years ago. And it was written in very simple like ancient Chinese language, and was getting very more and more popular, especially in Western countries. I think recent decades, especially after uh this book being translated and published around the world. Tot Jin is one of Ursula K. Lequin's favorite book. She even in the introduction even mentioned her dad. This is her dad's favorite book. So when she was a kid, she was wondering why she her her dad was making marks on the book, and her dad was saying because he's marking the part sentence that he wants to be read on his funeral. And then they did write the sentence that he marked from the book on his memori memorial service. And Ursula also said she also wants she also made some notes to be read on her funeral. See how influential the whole text it is for her.

Wow.

Um it's originally written in Chinese, Asian Chinese, so I also have the Chinese version, but because the concept is so different, I guess the whole book, original book must be like a few pages, or I'm just being exaggerating. Because every chapter only has one paragraph. See this is a whole chapter.

The rest is notes.

The rest is not and interpretations uh with even with graphs um and um illustrations to help you understand.

The Chinese book is much more beautiful than for those who who can't watch the video, I can tell you it is really beautiful.

And anyway, so because because um the author Lal Tzu, he was able to use as exactly as Le Queen, he was able to use the most simple language and the most simple metaphors to explain the very original idea of what is this universe about and why we are all leaving this universe and how things are going like this. So Tao Tao means the way, so Lao Tzu also was using the way to incorporate all the series that happened in our universe. And it was the way drive everything to happen, or drive all the energy together, drive all of the energy in and out in this whole universe. And ta means moral, if I translate it literally. So the whole book is about uh helping you to understand how about this world and also understand as a human being what you should do. Um and like keep your moral standard and how you deal with people, how to um how to be a politician, even how to be a businessman. So the whole book was really wise and comprehensive. And and that's why La Queen was so obsessed with this book, and she maybe she's a bit fed up with the current translation on the market, because it will be definitely sounds very heavy if you have to translate it literally to English. And people might get might lost it might have lost the very original, you know, the beauty of the the language. Like Queen was able to use very beautiful reasons or like poems like this. Um and her translation was very original. I guess people might give some critiques on that because it might have lost some meaning. But the thing is some text you you don't have to read it, you just need to feel it. So LaQue was able to translate or reinterpret the whole tag in her long language. And this is really uh a small book as well, and you don't need to read from the beginning. You can just randomly open the page and then you just get a lot of very thoughts from one page.

Yeah. Sorry, it's fascinating. It's so interesting because her dad is a figure that I'm really fascinated by because and her mum, because her dad was called Krober, and he was uh uh one of the first uh founding members, I think, of the Department of Anthropology in uh Berkeley in California. And so he had a really weird th encounter, which was that he knew about this man called Ishii, who was the last member of a Native American community that was decimated by the white settlers that came to California because of the gold rush and then disease, etc. And he was found with his three members of his family, and three years later he appeared in a slaughterhouse somewhere in Oroville, I think. And his her dad uh heard about him and invited him over to the university, gave him a job, and recorded his stories. And uh Ishii was always ill because he couldn't handle the food, the bacteria, the viruses, whatever. So he was he was sad, you know, though it was um it was a complex situation uh to have him over there at the university. I think it wasn't he wasn't accepted by everyone, etc. And then so he passed away and Ursul K. Le Guin's dad was quite affected by it. Um he went on working as an anthropologist, and then his wife raised the kids and at 50 something decided to write Ishi's Life. Wrote because for her husband it was too painful. As she was writing it, he even passed away, and so she wrote this book that became a sort of a bestseller with the story of this man that she carried so that the husband collected that he had a hard time telling because he had lost a lot of the history of his people. He was the last person of the um what was the name? I think I wrote it here somewhere. What was the name of his community? Uh Yahi. I think he was a Yahoe um a Yahoe man. Yahee, exactly. He was part of the Yahoe community, and he because he was living in hiding, they had to live in hiding for about 50 years, half a century. They lost a lot of their rituals and their ceremonies and their stories. So he only had what he had. Her dad and another anthropologist collected the stories, the story was too heavy for him to carry, and so the wife then took on the story and published it as a book. And so the story of Ishii in the way that it is told, I mean carried from one person to one person to one person, is out there thanks to um this encounter, as you said, to put it in a very simple word, because it's a bit more complicated than that, but it was an encounter, and then suddenly they were carriers of this story. And it's interesting that her father was so into Lao T and so that that's quite fascinating, anyway. Stories. Thank you so much for this.

I mean, I should read about this because I I mean the funny fact is I can understand La Queen's language than the original text. Because original text is so so old, so old and even with interpretation, but La Queen's language is so close to our daily life and she used the most modern concept to to interpret. Therefore, I mean that was such a pleasure to to have LaQueen um translation. Um yeah. That's all, I guess.

Thank you so much.

Joana reads from The Wave in the Mind and the Tao Te Ching

Wonder, wonder, wonder.

I learned about Ishii through Ursula Key Le Guin herself. I had read a text called Indian Uncles in a collection of essays by Ursula Key Le Guin called The Wave in the Mind, talks in essays on the writer, the reader, and the imagination. I'm going to read an excerpt from the text where I learnt about the existence of Ishii. With Ishii, a man almost unimaginably vulnerable in his tragic solitude, dependent by necessity, yet strong, generous, clear minded, and affectionate, an extraordinary person in every way, this relationship of friendship must have been unusually complex and intense. My father was consciously, consistently loyal to the idea of objective science, but it was the passions of personal grief and personal loyalty that dictated his message from New York, trying to prevent the autopsy of Ishi's body. Tell them, as far as I'm concerned, science can go to hell. We propose to stand by our friends, unquote. His message came too late. A contemporary anthropologist has said that if he felt so strongly about the matter, why didn't he get on an airplane and come west and see about it? One would think that an anthropologist might be aware that in nineteen sixteen there was a certain lack of airplanes to get on. A telegram was the only means he had to try to prevent a desecration. I know little of the circumstances of the subsequent grotesque division of the body, which reminds me of the way kings and emperors were buried in bits, the head in Vienna, the heart in Habsburg, other pieces in other parts of the empire. Saints the same, and I'm here, a finger there, a toe in the reliquary. It would appear that to the European, dismembering a body and keeping bits of it around is a sign of respect. This is definitely a strain on our American cultural relativism. I leave it to you, anthropologists, to work it out. Kruber, so her father, accepted defeat and got on with the work to be done. I do not think his silence was indifference, but the muteness of undesired complicity and the dumbness of the bereaved. He had lost his friend, he had lost the person whom he loved and was responsible for, and lost him to the same sickness that had killed his wife a few years earlier, tuberculosis, the white sickness, so this was his first wife. Over and over he had worked with individuals who were among the last of their people. One way or another, his people and their white sicknesses had destroyed them. He was silent because neither he nor his science had a vocabulary for his knowledge. And if he couldn't find the right words, he wouldn't use the wrong ones. Not long after Ishii's death, my father took leave from anthropology, was psychoanalysed, and practiced analysis for some years. But I don't think Freud had quite the words he needed either. The scope of his work and writing widened with the years. But at the very end of his life, he returned to Californian ethnology, using his long accumulated expertise to support Californian tribes in their suit against the US government for restoration and reparation of their lands, spending months of testimony and cross examination in a federal courtroom. My brother Ted, who drove him to many of these sessions, recalls the judge's attempts to give the old man a break. Now and then, and Alfred's patient but urgent determination to get the job done. He wrote as little about Ishii as possible. When asked about Ishii, he answered, and when it was suggested he should write a biography of Ishi, he declined. Robert Heiser took the excellent expedient of offering the task to my mother, who had never known Ishii, never been his friend, was not an anthropologist, was not a man, and could be trusted to find the right words if anybody could. I was in the Lowy Museum here with Alfred Krober's little great granddaughter ten years ago, and she showed me the headphones at the Ishi exhibit, where you can hear Ishii telling a story. I put them on and heard his voice for the first time. I broke into tears. For a moment it seems the only appropriate response. I am going to read from this gift that Catherine Lee gave me and from this modern version of it that Ursula K. Le Guin facilitated. One of those small paragraphs that Catherine was describing. It is really a small book. Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin. I opened the page at random and I landed upon number forty-eight called unlearning in Ursula Key Le Guin's translation. Studying and learning daily, you grow larger. Following the way daily, you shrink. You get smaller and smaller. So you arrive at not doing. You do nothing and nothing's not done. To run things, don't fuss with them. Nobody who fusses is fit to run things. It turns out that I had a really horrible morning. I had been trying to steer some changes in my work in a way that was artificial, that required a lot of experimentation, and experimentation requires a lot of freedom and the art of letting go. I didn't have time for that, and still I insisted in pushing the experimentation further. I tried to take a piece of the puzzle and force it to fit into a hole where it didn't belong. I recorded an episode, another one, and when I um stopped the recording and waited for the episode to download, it didn't. It got stuck. I contacted software people of this studio, virtual studio that I use called Riverside. Nothing could be done. The AI didn't work, the technician that replaced the AI didn't work. And so I'm waiting still for an answer. And then I fall onto this 48th paragraph that is really about the art of incorporating methodology and the strategy that you want to adopt in your work, in the plane of your emotions, in your perception of time, in your the understanding of your surroundings, and in the array of gestures that are available to you. So studying and learning daily, you grow larger. Following the way daily, you shrink. You get smaller and smaller, so you arrive at not doing. You do nothing and nothing's not done. To run things, don't fuss with them. Nobody who fusses is fit to run things. As La Kelly Wynne says, my fuss, or my own word fuss, is troublesome to the translators. Paris's quite legitimate translation of it is diplomacy, which would give a stanza I like very much. So she picks up the text again. So I will remind you the text again. Studying and learning daily, you grow larger, following the way daily you shrink, you get smaller and smaller, so you arrive at not doing. You do nothing, and nothing's not done. So something happens. It's not done, it happens. To run things, that's how I understand it. Again, you know, this is me trying. So the second part, the second stanza, would go like this to run things, be undiplomatic. No diplomat is fit to run things. Lao Tzu tells us that most of us wander on and off the way and don't know a sage from a sandpile. So the way is not this ideal that you conquer, and once you're there, you're permanently there. It's always an unstable position that you have to nurture and care for. That's as far as I went. There is a moment where it calls for you. And as Catherine says, it's not really about reading and interpreting the book or the text, it's about feeling it. And I guess that's the hardest thing of all.