Oracular Transmissions reviewed in Los Angeles Review of Books

Much, Much Love: On Etel Adnan and Lynn Marie Kirby’s “Oracular Transmissions”

By Sophia Stewart

In the exchange of information between intergenerational friends, the elder usually shares knowledge acquired from the past and the junior shares knowledge acquired in the present. (In my experience, this often takes the form of a lopsided trade of hard-won wisdom for the latest lingo: I correspond with an author 30 years my senior, and they’ve taught me countless lessons about living and working as a writer; I’ve taught them the etymology of the slang term “bodied.”) Yet the relationship between Adnan and Kirby, both established artists, is generally more reciprocal, though Kirby certainly draws from 90-year-old Adnan’s well of experience. On a visit to the Nasrid Palace, Kirby senses “whispers from another time” filling the space. “What do you hear from the past Etel?” she asks her friend.

Most moving is the artists’ genuine, unrestrained affection for each other. Both women sign off with “much love” (as well as the occasional “much, much love” or “much, much, much love”). “Little angel,” Adnan calls Kirby in one email. “I’m waiting for your next move, where you are going to, wherever you will go something will happen, Lynn Kirby way.” Their mutual admiration at times overwhelmed me — to see two accomplished women, two authentic artists, care for one another in this way feels rare and beautiful.

When Kirby’s Alhambra Project finally opened in San Francisco in 2016, she exhibited her correspondence with Adnan as part of the installation, turning their words into a visual presentation of found poetry. Phrases plucked from Alhambra Exchange flashed as video stills on a screen in white san-serif text against a cobalt background, like the blue signal that plays before a VHS tape. “I wish we could see the moonlight over the Alhambra together,” reads one of the stills, printed in Oracular Transmissions to blanket a whole page. I revisit this page often; I imagine Lynn Marie Kirby and Etel Adnan, shoulder to shoulder, bathed in moonbeams. It’s an image that encapsulates the whole of their correspondence — wistful, intimate, and suffused with love.

Read the full review in Los Angeles Review of Books here.