"…I’m just sort of putting my ear against the thing and trying to discern its heartbeat…”
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"…I’m just sort of putting my ear against the thing and trying to discern its heartbeat…”
“When you start out as a writer, you really never know what’s going to happen. Will anyone ever read your work?”
“The universe has been listening to my conversations, threading everything together. It began last April, when I picked up Swann’s Way for the third time in ten years. Each time it surprised me that the resonant moment everyone seems to know about — the moment when the narrator eats a madeleine with tea, and the aroma, the feel of it in his mouth, the motion of dipping and then bringing it to the lips, sets loose a slough of tender and animate memory — happens quickly, on page 60. Each time I’ve thought maybe no one else has ever finished this book either.”
I’ve never had an office, apart from the sad, windowless closet I occupied as a grad student. I don’t own a desk. Some days I work at my kitchen table, but more often I sit on my couch or in bed with my computer on my lap. Music, rather than location, is what grounds me as I write.
“By describing how the practice of writing interacts with the act of listening to music, the essays in “Music for Desks” aspire to a similar magic. These pieces will be exploratory in nature—in all senses about process, rather than result.”
Amy Bonnaffons: “I really liked the idea that even the people who literally carry out the business of death and of transition from this world to the next have no idea what they’re doing.”
