Wallis Wilde- Menozzi
It
is exciting to join a second part of the Notre Dame Review by going beyond the
borders of the physical journal. Writing for the electronic version I feel as
if I am moon walking, taking physical
steps that are qualitatively different in ways I can't quite
understand. I am an American living in
Italy. If one is not colonial( living
as a privileged ex-patriate, or as a shopper, or as a cultural taster of
Italian life) the effects of residing in a small provincial Italian town are shaking.
Ultimately the profound isolation of living outside of one's language becomes
an endless subject of odyssey and borders.
The internet has challenged some of that isolation. In spite of the sagging and near chaotic
Italian mail service, by using the internet, I can have information in my own
language, get into libraries on line, and be reached by other authors in
undreamed of ease. Writing, with the
support of the internet, has opened up what can be called conversation and
sometimes, wonderfully, dialogue. For
example, I met electronically an author who I discovered has poetry in this
very same issue of the Notre Dame Review.
He is working on translations in Italian, and voila, a road opened. He and I effortlessly began entering whole
poems and exchanging ideas on their values and weights. If the experience of near immediate contact
did not exist as it does via the computer, I doubt if we would ever have met (
still only electronically) and taken up
this easy exchange, fully aware now of each other's existence. Being aware of the existence of others will
ultimately change how we see the world.
But
the silent page did work well. It is a
psychological dimension for both writer and reader. The electronic media is more intrusive and alive. It can get into the house like an angel or a
thief or a demanding child. Putting
work on the internet for me is still a
different feeling, a different understanding of the commitment to words. It seems to be about making contact, sending
messages in bottles, exploring, with a rather large possibility of having
feedback from people one would never have encountered via a printed book.
In
this Notre Dame version, I think the initiative is to direct the reader to more
of the author's work. This is a worthy
project because so many writers do have a body of work. Their writing, most of which will never fall
into the zone of best sellers or fame, does have a reason to exist. The best voices, often not loud enough to
get onto a national screen, do go on speaking. Work that leaps at no extra cost
from an electronic page can be a way,
like a dating bureau, of suggesting matches for a reader, who then might
choose to actually meet whole books full face.
Browsing until one discovers an author by accident in an electronic
co-oincidence is a new kind of tourism, broadly democratic and yet a highly
personal adventure. Many readers are
looking for real voices and many authentic voices speak only to a few people
here and there. Like
the tiniest bits
of a root or herb that have potent powers to heal, even over centuries, true
voices are often full of curious energies.
When someone picks one, not knowing what they are looking at, they soon
discover if it was the herb they needed.
A writer can change another person's life. For the time being, I would
like to send readers to my website, as my virtual offering. From Italy
sometimes I find the site,sometimes I don't.
Via Google it seems to pop up quite regularly once I tap out the
address. www.walliswilde-menozzi.com
And
to exit now, what do I say? Strike the
x in the upper right hand corner? Thank you?
Arrivederci? We are are still learning conventions for this medium of
pixels and radiant screens.
Peace. That's how I'll sign
off. From Parma, Italy where the memory
of bombings from world war two still smolders, where civillian deaths from
fires falling from the skies, are
commemorated, I will say peace. We have
the possibility to be far more active in helping others, in dreaming up new
solutions that reach people and help change them in this new technological
world. The internet is a million Trojan
horses.