• About Karen

    Karen Schreck headshot
    Karen Halvorsen Schreck is the author of the historical novel Broken Ground (Simon & Schuster 2016), called a “masterfully written . . . must-read” by USA Today. Her previously published historical novel, Sing for Me, was described as "impressive…a well-wrought and edifying page-turner” (Publisher's Weekly, Starred Review). Karen's Young Adult novel, While He Was Away (Sourcebooks), was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award. She’s also the author of Dream Journal (Hyperion), which was a 2006 Young Adult BookSense Pick, and the award-winning children’s book Lucy’s Family Tree (Tilbury House). Her short stories and articles have appeared in Hypertext, The Rumpus, Belt, and Image, as well as other literary journals and magazines, and have received various awards, including a Pushcart Prize, an Illinois State Arts Council Grant, and in 2008, first prize awards for memoir and devotional magazine writing from the Evangelical Press Association. Karen received her doctorate in English and Creative Writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She works as a freelance writer and editor, teaches writing and literature, and lives with her husband, the photographer Greg Halvorsen Schreck, and their two children in Wheaton, Illinois.

how we love now  / sites to see

the swimming pool in paris

Posted On July 26, 2013

This beautiful film was made by my husband, Greg Halvorsen Schreck.

Here are some notes that he’s made on the film.  I’d be so happy if you’d read and view, or view and read, as you like.

“Below is a link to the film I finished in June, The Swimming Pool in Paris.  I first screened it June 15 at the 2013 CIVA Conference, JustArt; on Justice and Art.  The film is based on a story by John Berger.  I invited John to speak at the conference; his age made that impossible.  As an alternative, he suggested reading one of his stories, on video.  I tried to go to France to film his reading.  It didn’t work out, so I made this film in response to the story John wanted to read.

You can find it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meO4ZCCu_s0

Please watch the film in HD, if you have the connection for it.  The picture is much better.  You can set HD 720p with one of the buttons on the bottom right of the viewer.  If you need to watch it at a lower resolution, it will look better if you watch it on a smaller viewer, not full screen.  The HD 720p version looks great on full screen.

Some notes about the film:

“Love for our neighbors, being made of creative attention, is analogous to genius.”
–Simone Weil (quoted in The Shape of a Pocket)
The story is from Bento’s Sketchbook, How Does the Impulse to Draw Something Begin? (John Berger, Pantheon Books, 2011 pp.120-131).  It is a personal story, of how Berger gave away his Sho Japanese brush to a Cambodian woman, an artist and a refugee from the Vietnam War: the Khmer Rouge, and the American B-52 bombings.  Berger met her at a swimming pool in Paris where they both regularly swim.  The woman, L__, suffers from arthritis; her husband always comes along to help her get in and out of the pool.  In gratitude for Berger’s gift, she makes him a picture of a bird indigenous to Southeast Asia, a mésange bleue (blue tit).
In The Shape of a Pocket, Berger writes of the need to mount pockets of resistance against “the inhumanity of the new world economic order.” Walter Brueggemann calls it the script of “technological, therapeutic, consumer militarism that socializes us all.  …military consumerism cannot make us safe and it cannot make us happy.” (Brueggemann, 19 theses).  One of the means of resisting the script, for Berger, is the process of making art, as a way of sorting through the overwhelming events and images of our time, “a series of exchanges [that] strengthen each of us in our conviction that what is happening to the world today is wrong, and that what is often said about it is a lie.”
The musicians in the film represent artists who act as receivers, who filter the pain, numbness, and joy of existence through their creative process.  I was moved watching the two of them performing with such compassion and grace (Karin Redekopp Edwards, piano and Anne Monson, cello).  Their performance is a prayer, you can see it on their faces.  In their being, they demonstrate the resistance that we are called to, so we can stay human.  That’s what Berger points toward in his writings.
John Berger is my favorite writer.  For me, he possesses a unique voice.  As a writer, a novelist, and an art historian, his prose is beautiful, poetic, and lyrical.  He deeply appreciates the traditional project of art.  He celebrates it’s sensual aspects; he loves beauty and color.  He helps me to look more deeply, quietly, and carefully.  He redeems art as a gift, as opposed to a commodity, or a spectacle.  At the same time, he is relentless in his political advocacy, and in his quest for justice.

Anyway, thanks for watching.”

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  • About Karen

    Karen Schreck headshot
    Karen Halvorsen Schreck is the author of the historical novel Broken Ground (Simon & Schuster 2016), called a “masterfully written . . . must-read” by USA Today. Her previously published historical novel, Sing for Me, was described as "impressive…a well-wrought and edifying page-turner” (Publisher's Weekly, Starred Review). Karen's Young Adult novel, While He Was Away (Sourcebooks), was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award. She works as a freelance writer and editor, teaches writing and literature, and lives with her husband, the photographer Greg Halvorsen Schreck, and their two children in Wheaton, Illinois.

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