My favourite room in my house is easily the top room, which is a bedroom but also a bathroom, with a big, wooden carved bath, two huge fireplaces and a raised bit in the corner for performances. I've had some really lovely parties and poetry readings up there.
I love all the arts - so museums, theatre, music, walks near trees or by the ocean, time with people, psychological readings.
What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man's soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper.
If you actually do cold readings, it's very close to how people actually talk, because you're experiencing these thoughts anew every moment, and trying to make them come out coherently.
I love readings and my readers, but the din of voices of the audience gives me stage fright, and the din of voices inside whisper that I am a fraud, and that the jig is up. Surely someone will rise up from the audience and say out loud that not only am I not funny and helpful, but I'm annoying, and a phony.
I don't like the word 'poetry,' and I don't like poetry readings, and I usually don't like poets. I would much prefer describing myself and what I do as: I'm kind of a curator, and I'm kind of a night-owl reporter.
It's gratifying that it does; I love to give readings.
I go to readings by fiction writers like Alice Walker, and I'm envious of the level of attention they generate.
I just talked to a young lady, a freshman at Santa Barbara. She's taking a course, and Moneyball's one of the required readings. This young lady could dream of one day becoming a general manager.
I do Q&As, not readings.
I like doing the readings and the autographing, but the interviewing gets a little tedious because you get asked the same questions every day and sometimes three or four times a day.
At readings, audience members sometimes ask if I keep writing past the two hours if I'm on a roll, but I don't. I figure that if I'm on a roll, it's partially because I know I'm about to stop.
I'd like to play something classical. I'm in the Strindberg society, and we do readings of Strindberg plays. I'd love to do Nora in 'A Doll's House.' And Chekhov. I have been working back to back on what I call 'regular jobs,' so it's hard to do plays.
