It was last October during a writing residency at Studio B-12 in Valcourt. A dozen writers gathered for a week in the spectacular Bombardier house, an architectural gem from the late 1960s, planted in the forest, to write. Yes, just that, writing. Everything was ocher and gold around us and the autumn leaves were crisp. While I was occupying the large desk in the central room with the impression of being seated in the heart of the house, several were writing in their room, in silence and in secret in their cocoon of creation.
I had come to fight with a text. One last story to include in a collection, and which resisted me. Coming here, I thought I could find the correct diagnosis and turn her around. But after two days of forcing her, digging into her, I was beginning to realize that she would have the upper hand. My writing gesture was neither nimble nor fluid. I wrote with clenched jaws and persisted, I boxed, got bogged down. I was going to lose; I had to admit it. ” let it die we say in English. Give up, let die. I opened my jaws and looked up.
Outside, a crimson sky took its ease swallowing the blue. It would soon be aperitif time. The yellow of the leaves was going to be covered in gold the moment the first sip of white flowed down my throat. I went out to see the color show.
Jonathan Harnois had set up his writing quarters on the terrace. He was working on the collection of missives that he and Robert Lalonde had exchanged for a whole year and which was going to be published in the spring at the same time as my own collection (minus a short story). We were both pregnant. He was looking for a title to cap their book.
– What do you think of This furious nerve to live ?
– Wow, stunning! It vibrates!
– Or maybe I give you the birds of my throat.
– Gorgeous ! It’s feverish, I love it. Yes!
Each title seemed to spring from a poem. It was as if Jo made the air dance with bursts, flashes, the moving colors of a kaleidoscope. All his proposals thrilled me; I wasn’t going to be of much use to him.
Six months later, I hold the fruit of their correspondence in my hands. It’s a work that makes you want to live stronger, to write true, to highlight each sentence, and which they finally titled You remind me of a breath (Boreal). This exchange, “this thread of intensity”, is a “fraternal rite, a place of meaning sheltered from the surrounding brothel”. There is something almost amorous — affectionate? fiery? yes, it is a fever — in the words and the ideas which are offered and taken.
Of the two writers, the old soul is Jonathan; Robert is embodied in the pages prancing with joy and enthusiasm, appreciative of the work of his correspondent. “I terribly love to hear you and talk to you,” he wrote to her. What a privilege to be able to be this little bird, to interfere with each other and to have access to their exchanges. “If I don’t write, the entire landscape escapes me: the places, the people, the words. I then slip into a kind of bric-a-brac where everything gets tangled up and confuses,” says Robert. Jonathan answers him with questions. “How do you keep yourself in the heat of writing? […] How to keep alive a writing that gives us life? […] I’m happy to stand with you on these questions. »
In Valcourt in October, Robert Lalonde came for a walk and talk to us about writing. He and Jonathan disappeared for a while to discuss the title, I imagine, while my short story was dying and my characters were breathing their last breaths. I made Negroni for everyone, then smoked a cigarette with Robert under the stars in the dark, damp, cool night. On page 88 of their exchanges, in a letter to Jonathan, after the latter had opened up about a series of poems which he wonders if he will ever see the end of, Robert says: “We don’t finish a book, we drop it, we leave it, before slaughtering it. And when it’s too late, stories are left to die in their little tomb of words.