Staying true to my vision, to the word as it comes to me, to my own aesthetic judgments, even when they disagree with the majority culture, is very important to me, and I think important for every artist. It's what we have: our voice, our intuition, the truth as we understand and know it.
The internet, like social media, seems to me to depend on how you use it, where you spend your time on it. I used to be quite anti-social media, but I can see now that it can be a good tool for artists, a way for us to speak to each other outside of standard economies and across languages and borders.
Eros doomed! I doubt it...eros seems to drive most relationships, and not just those between lovers. Erotic energy is a big powerful force, it shakes things up, causes people to break the rules, makes people do crazy things! Reason doesn't stand a chance in its face.
I began to firmly change my mind when I saw how young Egyptians used Facebook, for example, to begin to coalesce their social justice movement in their country. And a good Iranian friend of mine showed me how also in Iran, till the government shut it down, much was communicated via social media. So I'm not against. I use the internet regularly to do research. It's great but you have to use your discernment, especially if researching content.
Every book I've written has been different from the others, and each one seems to have its own timeline, requirements, and formal challenges.
I never feel like I am "using" a voice, rather I am listening to a voice and recording it as faithfully as it comes to me and as I can. I think that the female sex is much maligned, even in our supposedly sexually "open" society. It is the site of a woman's pleasure, and the source of (most) children's entry into the world, and an ancient symbol of power and fecundity, and we are directly or indirectly told in modern times that it's dirty, shameful, ugly, odorous, and to be hidden away.
As DH Lawrence said, the Protestant societies do dirt on sex, it is their dirty mind which aligns sex and a woman's genitals with the debased and soiled. This is something terrible, I think, and to be contended with head-on in art.
It is perhaps true that that sort of sexual energy wanes over time - as the original impetus loses its luster. And then, I suppose, it's on to the next thing. But eros is eternal, like joy.
When I write a book I write the best that I can and so much of that for me is following the book's demands, the subject's requirements - I love books, I always have. They have always been one of the places where I have felt very happy in the world. When I was younger, I loved to read genre fiction - I loved the magic-carpet ride of story! Now I need other things - I need the beautiful particular and strange language and form which brings a writer's book to life in me and speaks to my intellect, and, dare I say it, to my soul.
