How do you
write? What’s your process?
I think for a long time before I actually write
anything. Other people may outline, have
something tangible on paper. I think
about the concept, and where I’d like to go with it. Once I know what something is about, I’m
really close to writing it. Once I get
what I’m really after with a song or a story I’m pretty much ready to say
it. One song I was telling you about
took me over 23 years to write and I hadn't figured it out yet, the point to
the song. There was no chorus, no third
verse. I started working on it in 1975
and didn't finish it until 2006 or seven.
Is that pretty common
with your more popular or profound works? Does it take longer for those to get
from your head to your paper?
Yes, I think that’s true. I've never woken up in the middle of the night, scribbled something down
and said “what a wonderful piece that is.”
McCartney claims for “Yesterday” he woke up in the
middle of the night and wrote it all in three minutes. It was one of his most successful
pieces. That may be true but I've never
done that. I have always had artistic
struggle in order to write.
Which do you prefer
to write, music or fiction?
At one time it was whatever I could, if I could write a
story I’d write a story. It was kind of
refreshing for a while, to be able to shift gears into different genres and say
“I can write a story today” and then you struggle for a while and write a piece
of music. It was very refreshing.
So you write between
genres?
I used to years ago and then when I started concentrating on
music I wrote fewer and fewer stories it seemed. That entertained me for quite a while, and it
still does, but that entertained me to a point where it was more enjoyable to
write music. At one time when I was
younger I was entertained by writing reports.
It got old and I started writing fiction and that went as far as I could
take it I think. There might be something left, there might be a novel left
somewhere but at that point in time I said “this is where I wanted to go with
that.” For me it’s about pushing the
boundaries of my own creative mind, that’s it, if you read one of the stories
you’d say “that’s quirky” and that’s how I like to write. A lot of times, when
you lose that edge, you can’t push that boundary any further, you arrive and
say “that’s what I can do with that.”
So talk about your
fiction for us. Is there an underlying
element to your fiction or a style you like to write in? You've spoken about a Rock and Roll sci-fi,
is that a common vein, music and science fiction?
I think there is one that runs through those two pieces but
it’s not sci-fi and it’s not fantasy. It
is social commentary. There is a guy in
one of the stories who owns a word dump in Madison. He has created a landfill for words people no
longer want to use. In the story people
come filing in from miles around, they’re bringing trash bins and bags and
baskets full of stuff of things they don’t want to say anymore. Swear words, idiotic things and they are
giving them to the dump. In other words
the words become tangible and they are reaching into station wagons taking out
words and letters. They are taking them back to the landfill and putting them
into categories, with lover’s-lane words over here and swear words over there. The owner of the word dump has had problems
with his own marriage, and his wife brings him some trash bags full of words
she’s been gossiping at the local beauty parlor. He opens the trunk and she has bags full of
words she doesn't want to say anymore.
He takes the trash bags out and one of them breaks, and at the top of
the pile of letters is the saying “Donald, I love you”. That’s how this guy finds out; the bag bursts
and reads about Donald. He brings all
these words up and asks “who is Donald?”
She explains that he was never around; he was too busy with his dump and
etc. So he takes her over to the dump
for the words from lover’s-lane and they piece together their marriage in a
conversation from that pile.
In another story, a guy serves fast food so fast that it’s
invisible. The food doesn't exist, the
diner doesn’t exist, but people line up to buy it. It’s a comment about how America can never
get anything fast enough and at this point in time in the story things are so
fast they don’t exist, there’s no more actual experience.
There’s one about nuclear holocaust, about the unaccounted
for nuclear weapons in the world. But
the United States and Russia are still negotiating a peace, underground, after
a nuclear holocaust. It’s called The Underground Holiday Inn. They are negotiating after the world has
already been destroyed. It’s a comment
about how diplomats talk and don’t act towards making the world a safe place. Finally they get discovered by a team of
nuclear experts who find them down there negotiating. This team of experts shows up in their suits,
and there is no radiation this far down.
One expert says “don’t you think it’s a little too late for talk? The world’s been destroyed.” The Russian asks “Well it didn’t happen did
it?” He asks the president of the United States, the president responds “nope,
never did and never will” and suggests a cocktail before a swim.
Sounds a little like
Vonnegut.
Actually, when it came out, Bookslingers up in Minneapolis,
a distributing company, advertised it with Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle so it has, certainly that influence.
So speculative
fiction then?
Yes, it’s like Calvino, the Italian writer. It’s creating a
reality, and it’s tough to do, creating in the readers mind an atmosphere where
you can believe that these things are plausible. It is a very tough thing to do. I kind of push that limit with what I do with
writing, it’s what I can do. If anyone
asks how creative I can be, there it is, that’s all I can do with that. You know on the guitar there are parallels
there. The one clip you mentioned the
other day about that interview on YouTube from the university here, it’s a
finger picking style. I could have used
Paul Simon’s style from way back then, or a folk style, but I chose to make my
own instead. It’s taking something
that’s already existing and making that your own through creative
possibilities. So the guitar became
another outlet for it, the stories reached a point where I decided I couldn't do anymore with those. I may be circling
back to approach it at another point in time but when I stopped writing stories
I had thought I had done what I could do.
Now I don’t know, I am still writing music, but from a creative
standpoint I might reach a point where I've taken that where I can and I've decided
what I’m doing next, I’m going to paint!
Cheever said writing isn't a competitive sport; it’s an act of
self-discovery.
So back to the music,
why did you choose country?
It was easy! My
mother was a music teacher and she played classical music and Broadway show
tunes. My dad was a worked for a factory
for 42 years and all of his relatives where from the south, so you get a lot of
country from there too. He played guitar
too and my uncle Ray would come in with his fiddle and his friends from the
factory would come in with their guitars and there would always be country
music in the background with classical music coming from the radio, and there
is some crossover there.
What advice would you
have for artists, writers, creative types?
What is your stereotypical answer for advice?
As trite as it might sound, imitating other people is not
the way to go. Having people influence
you is almost necessary, everybody gets influence by some artist, but to
imitate a sound or some formulaic route is probably a waste of time. It’s not very fulfilling creatively that
way. You can listen to the radio and say
“oh I like that sound, I’m going to put these two sounds together and I’m gonna
get that” I’m sure people do that. But the most satisfying way to do this is to
do your own creative thinking, and not to imitate what is the latest and
greatest but to test yourself to see if you have any talent for making your own
work. If there is anything that defines
what really is “artistic” it’s when the artist can say “okay I have influences
but those influences did not influence me to the point where it lapsed into
some kind of imitated result. I never
did imitate, I have never imitated. If
you read my work you can see influences but you’ll never see anything quite
like it. That’s because I can genuinely
say as an artist that I own it, it is who I am, and I am it.
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