HEARTLAND VOICES

 

　Anything you've ever tried to write about and been unable to?

　Yeah. Anything I try to write about, I can't do it. If I try to write about something-"I want to write about horses" or "I want to write about Central Park" or "I want to write about the Grand Canyon" or "I want to write about the cocaine industry"-I can't get anywhere with that. I have to always take it out. It's like that "Hurricane" song. I wanted to write a song about Hurricane Carter, I wanted to spread Really, the essence of it is never what it's about. It's really the message. It really doesn't come out about Hurricane. about you. Unless you're standing in somebody else's shoes you just don't know what it feels like. You don't know what it's about.
　You can go to a movie and say, "What's that about?" A movie is something that gives the illusion of stopping time. You go someplace and you sit there for a while. You're looking at something. You're trapped. It's all happening in your brain and it seems like nothing else is going on in the world. Time has stopped. The world could be coming to an end outside, but for you time has stopped. Then someone says, "What was it about?" "Well, I don't know. It was about two guys who were after the same girl." Or, "It was about the Russian Revolution." Well, yeah, that was what it was about, but that wasn't it. That's not what made you stay there and stare at the screen, at a light on the wall. In another way you could say, "What's life about?" It's just going by like a movie all the time. It doesn't matter if you're here for a hundred years, it still goes by. You can't stop it.
　So you can't say what it's about. But what you can do is try to give the illusion of the moment of it. And even that's not what it's about. That's just proof that you existed.
　What's anything about? It's not about anything. It is what it is.

99~100
HEARTLAND VOICES

Written in My Soul ペーパーバック – 1990/10/22 

英語版    Bill Flanagan  (著)