Q and A with Noelle Gulden, Associate for NNPCW

Noelle Gulden

What makes you laugh?

• My husband.  At least once a day he makes up a song about something and sings it to me as if he were trying out for Broadway.
• My little sister.  We understand each other in a way that makes us profoundly hilarious to one another, and  completely nonsensical to everyone else.
• Napoleon Dynamite.  Or even better, my husband impersonating Napoleon Dynamite.

What music captivates you?

• Sigur Ros (a haunting band that hails from Iceland)
• Ben Harper (especially his slower stuff)

What book do you consider to be the best you've read? (The kind that when you finish you wish you'd never started it because you want to go back to the beginning and read it with fresh eyes and soul but you can't because you have already read it.)

• Too many to choose from.  Books are my first love. Right now, I’d say The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.  Amazing characters.  Disturbing story.  Makes you think on every level: spiritual, political, personal, social, etc. And One Hundred Years of Solitutude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  Profound.  Also disturbing.

When/where are you most creative?

• In nature.  (Especially where trees and water are present.)
• When I have my camera in my hand.
• Among other creative people, especially women.
• When my husband reminds me that I need to take time to be creative, and helps me create the space to do so.

What is your favorite poem?

• Again, too many to choose from. Right now, I like anything by Denise Levertov.  (Especially her poem about St. Augustine and his inability to see women as equals — I can’t remember the name of it.)
• And “Marriage” by Wendell Berry.  (How honest he is about our tendencies to hurt one another!)

Wild words from a wild woman you love:

• My life—thank God—is full of wise (and wild!) women.  The wisest of them all have been the many who have reminded me to take care of myself while trying to “save the world” (which for me means achieving lasting systemic changes where unjust systems and structures have taken hold).  Other equally wise women, however, “rub raw the sores of discontent,” keeping me balanced so that I don’t loose sight of that about which I am most passionate, and so that self-care does not spiral into self-indulgence.