A QUESTIONAIRE

 A few years ago,  some of the pieces on this blog were published by an interesting website called Wild Culture. They asked me to fill out a questionnaire and here it is.

1. What is your first memory and what does it tell you about your life at that time and your life at this time?

My earliest memory is of my mother bending over my crib with a cigarette in her mouth. This image is so emblematic of our relationship that I sometimes feel I must have made it up. But it has the feel of a real memory. (Talking about how we know the different feel of a memory, a dream, a fantasy, would make a great conversation.) My mother never really saw me and, needless to say, I've struggled all my life to accept what she could give me and learn what I can give myself.

2. Can you name a handful of artists in your field, or other fields, who have influenced you - who come to mind immediately?

Ruth Rendell is the first that comes to mind and I'm sure it's because of her incredible productivity which I'll never have. Dickens who could create a full character in only a few sentences and wasn't afraid of sentiment. And many other; if I'm moved by a book or painting or sculpture, it's probably burrowed into my brain and set up its tents there.

But most of all Helen Keller. That moment when she connects the signs that Annie Sullivan is making on the palm of her hand, to something real, water. That is the most moving scene I can imagine. With that connection, with the learning of words, she realizes there is a life outside her. In that one moment, she is given the world.

3. Where did you grown up, and did that place and your experience of it help form your sense about place and the environment in general?

I grew up in Teaneck, New Jersey, a bedroom suburb of New York. It was perfectly ordinary and in high school that became the problem. My friends and I worked to "Ban The Bomb" and instinctively knew that racism was wrong. Those things gave me a sense of the world beyond my town. I couldn't wait to leave it.

4. If you were going away on a very long journey and you could only take four books - one art book, one fiction or poetry, one non-fiction, one theory or criticism - what would they be.

Only four books??? Well, Shakespeare, of course, because he would keep me endlessly occupied. The art book: Michelangelo. The power in that stone feels holy to me. Non-fiction? Hmm...Maybe Norman Mailer's Armies of the Night because it's about the time of my time, and reminds me of youth and ideals and the sense that we could do anything - even levitate the Pentagon. Or, one even better, Varieties of Religious Experience by William James. His voice is the most generous and tolerant I know of, and always inspires me. As to theory, this stumps me, so I'd probably choose someone I haven't read before.

5. What was your most keen interest between the ages of 10 and 12?

I devoured Nancy Drew and anything else that came my way. And I also loved to build models of cars and planes which turned out not to look at all like the picture on the lid.

6. At what point did you discover your ability with writing?

I always wrote, although I ad no sense that what I wrote was any good. I couldn't call myself a writer because writers were in some universe beyond me. But one memory stands out. I was pretty much grown, 19 or 20, and I have having one of the elaborate fantasies I often had, when it occurred to me that I was writing fiction. This must be what writers do, and I was doing it. Wow!

7. Do you have an "engine" that drives your artistic practice, and if so, can you comment on it?

Mostly, my engine sputters. I've done my best work when nothing was pushing me to do it. But there have been long silences. I wish I was one of those writers who work at it every day (Ruth Rendell, Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates - she can't really be human! - and many others.) I guess I have my own pace and nothing changes it.

8. If you were to meet a person who seriously wants to do work in your field - someone who admires and resonates with the type of work you do, and they clearly have talent - and they asked you for some general advice, what would it be?

To a young writer: read, read, read. Think about a book's language, structure, how the characters are drawn - in short, read to learn how a writer creates a book.

9. Do you have a current question or preoccupation that you could share with us?

My current question is how to get freer and freer of the things that block me, in life and in writing. And how best to get that journey down on paper.

10. What does the term "wild culture" mean to you?

Wild culture...free and unafraid. The sound of a flamenco dancer at fever pitch. Untameable art and ideas. Subversive. Sets off the wildness in all of us.

11. If you would like to ask yourself a final question, what would it be?

By final question, I assume you mean on my death bed. I think it would be something along the lines of, did I do the work I was meant to do? Was I as willing as I could be to learn the lessons of change. And most naturally - why is life so short?

OZYMANDIAS AND A TASTE OF HONEY

I sometimes find myself in an Ozymandias moment, thinking about our misguided belief that the more power we accumulate, the greater the monuments we construct, the more we will be guaranteed some kind of immortality. "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings, Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" In Shelley's poem, those words are carved on a fallen pedestal, half buried in obliterating desert sands. That is the irony, that despite our boasting and pretensions, our arrogant belief that what we build will signify lasting fame, through time and the unfolding of history, everything can, and probably will, be brought low. 
     There are times, though, when the poem leads me in another direction, something quite the opposite of arrogance and futility. I think about the fact of death, that we all know we are walking toward it, and the likelihood that all we are and have and know will be covered over by those shifting sands. And even so, and nonetheless, we do build and look for the meanings of history. We project vast systems of beliefs and morality. We create art . We procreate, we cultivate compassion, we sacrifice, and above all,  we love. 
     It's that I come back to again and again - the grandeur of the human spirit, our capacity to create the deepest meanings right along side our knowledge of what's coming, to find and believe in those meanings despite our knowing that death is ahead.
     Tolstoy tells the story of a man who is being chased by a dragon. The man sees a well and jumps into it, thinking to save himself. But by the time he's already falling, he realizes there's a monster at the bottom waiting for him. He grabs at a branch growing out of the wall and hangs on to it, between the dragon above and the monster below. Soon the man notices there is a white mouse and a black mouse nibbling away at the base of the branch, and he knows that sooner or later the branch will give way and he will fall. But then he notices there is a drop of honey on one of the branch's leaves, and despite the certain fate the man knows awaits him, he reaches out to lick the honey. 
     There it is, our glory: we reach for the honey.