Erica Lorraine Scheidt's Blog, page 15

Joe Davis designed this site for me and the goddaughter said, "it's like a secret."

listening:
The Lake Isle of InnisfreeW.B. Yeats
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;and live alone in the bee-loud glade
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slowDropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight's a glimmer, and noon a purple glowAnd evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and dayI hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart's core. Photo: We Will Become Silhouettes by Anna Balecho via M.

I am always very precisely implicated in my films, not through narcissism but through honesty in my approach. Agnes VardaSans Toit Ni Loi via Books vs. Cigarettes

We fought. When my mother and I crossed state lines in the stolen car, I'd sit against the window and wouldn't talk. I wouldn't even look at her. The fights came when I thought she broke a promise. She said there'd be an Indian reservation. She said that we'd see buffalo in Texas. My mother said a lot of things. We were driving from Bay City, Wisconsin, to California, so I could be a child star while I was still a child. Anywhere but Here, Mona Simpson via distraction no. 99Photo: Herschel Supply Co. lookbook via Tomboy Style

I still find it surprising when writers I admire say yes to my interview requests. Andrew Sean Greer is one of those writers. He's our writer, a Bay Area writer, and he's always struck me as someone you'd like to have around, someone who, as he says, is "game for a mysterious adventure."

RQD: What are you working on? What interests you about these characters?

Andrew Sean Greer: I'm finishing the third draft of a novel called "Many Worlds" that is a literary novel set in multiple universes. As for these characters, I finally get to have some people with a sense of humor!

RQD: What art or artists have an effect on your work?

ASG: Poetry and painting has the greatest effect on me; poetry because they are doing the hard work down in the mines, and what they bring up always inspires my own work, and painting because there is something about the intensity of the painted flat surface that mesmerizes and moves me outside all reason. I find portraits to be fascinating. But for intensity, something like Cy Twombly or Serra's recent show of drawings at the Met really do it for me. Big overpowering movement. Cleverness does nothing for me; emotion is all I'm interested in with art. That probably goes for fiction as well.

RQD: What book, story or poem do you return to over and over?

ASG: Now I don't return to things because I love them; I return to them because they help my writing. These are related but not the same. And I'd say Proust and Grace Paley and Wallace Stevens. They always knock my socks off and get me going.

RQD: What are you reading now?

ASG: I'm reading Calvino's Six Memos for the Next Millennium

RQD: What did you read as a kid? What is its impact on your work now?

ASG: I read antique children's fiction--you know, Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, and Tom Sawyer, and the Boxcar Children and all that--that gradually turned into fantasy and science fiction and then turned into philosophical fiction by high school like Camus. Strangely enough, I still find those old books satisfying in ways that sci fi and even Camus are not, anymore. I think it's the quality of the writing and characterization. And the sense of people game for a mysterious adventure!

Drawing: Richard Serra "Late September" 2001

"I do remember disciplining imaginary children in the backseat of my car." Tom Waits on Fresh AirIllustration: "Birds" by Alyson Fox

As I Walked Out

Don't tell me you've never dreamed of this –
of waking in a room with a wide open window,

the air clear and ringing after night rain;
of needing no other reason than a sky

the unbelievable blue of which
sends you flitting deftly through the house

past the year-old jar of nails and flies,
the pile of dishes in the sink, and out the back door

where you're caught for an instant in the brightness
because the future's so much easier than you'd thought –

slipping your heart under the rosebush like a key,
everything you need in the canvas bag

resting lightly at your hipand life as simple as turning left or right.
"As I Walked Out" by Esther Morgan via The Saturday PoemPhoto: Hiroshi Sugimoto from Time Exposed

"I don't know what you are going to do," said Pippi, "but I know I can't lie around and be lazy. I am a ThingFinder, and you're a ThingFinder you don't have a minute to spare."

"What do you say you are?" asked Annika.

"A ThingFinder."

"What's that?" asked Tommy.

"Somebody who hunts for things, naturally. What else could it be?" said Pippi as she swept all the floor into a little pile.

"Oh, all kinds," said Pippi. "Lumps of gold, ostrich feathers, dead rats, candy snapcrackers, little tiny screws, and things like that."

Tommy and Annika thought it sounded as if it would be fun and wanted very much to be ThingFinders too, although Tommy did say he hoped he'd find a lump of gold and not a little tiny screw.

Photo: Cricket via Uncrate

It is a brave and stupid thing, a beautiful thing, to waste one's life for love. The Confessions of Max Tivoli, Andrew Sean GreerPhoto from NYT Archive via Native Kee

There's something about Hannah Moskowitz. She's sorta funny and real. She's written these wonderful books that all the reviewers call raw and poetic and they're right. And she tweets a lot. I started with Break, about a boy who sets out to break every bone in his body. But of course, there's Invincible Summer and you can preorder the hardback of Gone, Gone, Gone now.

RQD: What are you working on now? What interests you about these characters?

Hannah Moskowitz: Right now I'm working on another draft of (what is currently titled) Marco Impossible, my next middle grade book. It's told from the POV of the best friend of an openly gay 13-year-old, so I get to play with a lot of stuff that you don't usually see in MG. There's kissing.

RQD: What other art or artists play a role in your work?

HM: Tom Stoppard, definitely, as far as plays go. Motion City Soundtrack, Death Cab for Cutie, and Bright Eyes for music.

RQD: What book, story or poem do you return to over and over?

HM: Indigo's Star by Hilary McKay. I have no idea how many times I've read it.

RQD: What are you reading now?

HM: Right now I'm working on Now Playing, the sequel to Stoner and Spaz, but it's taking me a while because I'm an English major and I have to read a lot for school. My reading-for-pleasure time is very limited during the school year. It pretty much sucks.

RQD: What did you read as a kid?

HM: I read a TON of Middle Grade from a very early age; my mom used to read it to me when I was very young. And since I still read it, that's the age group that feels so timeless to me. There's a part of me that will always be twelve, I think.

Album cover: Death Cab for Cutie Narrow Stairs