Mary Gaitskill
Still Waters in Bushwick is a world where kindness is the norm and words can actually be trusted. Children have great natural kindness, and Stephen Haff has created a place where it can come out and be itself. I was grateful for how receptively the kids listened when I read to them, and how they listened to each other read. Anyone who has spent any time with children, or even remembers being one, knows that kids listen not only or even primarily to words, but to the layered emotional meaning in the sounds of the voice and the expression of the body; too often in the lives of kids, all kids, everywhere really, the meaning of words and the more fundamental meaning kids can perceive in the speaker don’t match up at all; this creates of world of mistrust and confusion in which it becomes hard to be kind or to receive kindness. When the words and the meaning in the voice of the speaker are true to each other, that is a very different world, one that is developmentally invaluable: The safe and playful world Stephen Haff has created is one such invaluable place. The kids showed this not only in their listening, but in their writing about their special, private objects, about their loved ones and most incredibly, about their dreams which some of them were able to shape into strong and strange stories. They were not only sheltering in this place, they were actively creating it, with the artful play of their minds and hearts, and with their words, written and spoken. It was wonderful to see and be part of.