The Severe Banquet
Diana Quandour wants you to face the shadows in communal experience
If I tried to bake something logical out of the words of Diana Quandour, it would blemish the simmering feel of conversation with her. I promise I took notes. I was even riled up on the inspiring and demotivating quotes I scribbled across my paper, table, my hands. Perhaps my face. I etched her wily wisdom into my wits and my plate. I came out of our conversation confused yet recalibrated. I’m proud to write I all over this because Quandour got to me. I love to admit it came to no surprise when I slowly realised it’s the soul of things she yearns to sink her teeth into.
“In the style of Chekov you can say writing was my first love, prior to painting. It’s like my wife that I hide. Painting is my more lucrative mistress. Because she’s younger and the attraction is visual, immediate.”
Diana Quandour has a drizzled way with words. She knows exactly how to deglaze every darkened corner of the human mind. She unites us all in the absurdity, staring at gnarled marrow with her icy blue eyes. Her red sunglasses slowly turning into devilish horns.
I said I found her words putrid. She liked that.
Unsurprisingly, she’s very good at pairing ingredients you never thought you’d taste together.
“I dabble in music too, which I would describe as the bastard child I had with writing. I’ve made songs with a handful of people where I write/“sing”/co-produce. For example, a song called Double Time, using a notion that exists in the military and in music.” Only she can bring chords to battle. “My great-grandfather was a general in the Jordanian military. My father’s uncle (may they both rest in peace) was the right-hand man to king Hussein bin Talal, he was his personal guard. So I grew up around all that. I was excommunicated a decade ago by that same uncle and moved to America... It really was a good thing to happen to me even though I spent the first couple of years relatively confused. I focused on doing the art thing to move forward.”
She’s added music to her family history, relating to them by speaking language they understand. So they may think. She’s cunning. I love this chiffonade.
I ask about The Severe Banquet. She finds more memories to dry fry. Not just hers.
“I’m excited about a novel I’ve been writing that takes place during the Industrial Revolution, mainly trains and the Westward expansion. I was browsing the Internet and found an archive of old Catskill slang that was used by railroad workers during that time. These words have almost all completely disappeared, and some we still use today like “deadbeat”. Scrolling through it, I thought the language should be applied in a book. So I’ve been working on it for 5 years now. It’s very different from my poems”
She’s accessed the lost memory of things she hasn’t experienced first hand. Forever scheming, she slingshot herself right into it, dismantling and kneading her way into all the nooks of a language abandoned.
I’m eager to begin this meal. She’s braising.
I ask about The Severe Banquet again.
“I would describe my poetry, especially this one, as an exorcism of my experiences. I’ve got demons and if I don’t sit them down for a good meal they will instead devour me.
I shed them through my paintings, my music and my poetry.”
As I start to chew on what it was that brought her to me in the first place I understand her knowledge, her movements and her sharp inquisitiveness make her a collector’s item. Diana Quandour keeps records of things that happen, to her to others to you to me to us.
She beats them together so you think they taste light and fluffy.
What is The Severe Banquet? She’s dredging. Back to painting.
“Painting is a psychotic act. You are essentially ripping a window into immediate time-space and forcing a different view. People can relate to writing through a language that is their own and it starts off more cerebral than being a prompt, sometimes visceral reaction to an image. My poems are visual in that respect, but you have to work for it a little harder.”
She’s tricked me. She doesn’t really need to explain the meal. She knows we’ve all been breathing according to a set menu. The common way now feels al dente. I’m stuck on the main course. Wolfing down her putrid words not a ham sandwich.
Diana Quandour, what is The Severe Banquet?
“The full course meal that carries us through the absurdity of something we all share.”
So it seems we all have a table d’hôte. The ingredients may vary, the length of the courses may change, but we’re all following the same trail.
Just as you begin to think Quandour wants you revel in dark fissures, she forks you right out to remind you to care for darkness and her demons. You’re wondering why it seems this Machiavelian heart-to-mouth took long to gratinate?
“Well, cooking for another person is the highest form of love. Food is essential to survival.”
I’m binge eating off her peeling tenderness.
“I want us all to recognise and accept the murk. There’s a line in the poem that says: One knows he is human /when one can softly gaze/ into thine neighbor’s eyes/ to recognise congruent evil.”
I feel sautéed!
“There’s an unreasonable sweet ending to this existence,” she says. “Mine can’t be too saccharine…”
(Sunglasses or devilish horns:)
“I’ll have a Tarte au Citron.”
[*Swipe pages to indulge]
photograph by: Ceren Aygun (@cerenoir)'The Severe Banquet' courtesy of @dquandourWords: Alexia Marmara feat. an interview with Diana Quandour