When do you go to bed?
I try to sleep every night. Sometimes I succeed, and sometimes I don’t. I’ve had insomnia for years, and it’s gotten worse as I’ve gotten older, which is weird because that goes against my sense of how things should be. When you get old, you should be tired all the time, and I am. I get in bed at 11 o’clock most nights, but then I can’t sleep. My doctor wants me to go to a sleep clinic, but I discovered by asking other people that all they do at the sleep clinic is study the way you sleep. They don’t fix it.
Is writing clearly delineated from your artistic practice, or do you see any overlap there?
They’re not different things to me. Video is like writing with a camera. Of course, the processes are different but, to me, it’s all the same thing.
How do you procrastinate?
In every way that I can.
Do you watch TV?
Generally not, but in the past couple of weeks I’ve been turning it on, and it’s all crap: either stories about murders that took place in the early ’80s or “Law & Order,” nothing I enjoy watching. I always turn it on hoping it will put me to sleep, and it doesn’t. I just keep switching the channels.
Do you have a favorite novel?
“Two Serious Ladies” (1943) [by Jane Bowles].
What, if anything, embarrasses you?
I’m too embarrassed to say.
When you start something new, where do you begin?
Novels always occur to me out of odd things. Something presents itself as an opportunity. This book I’m working on now has been much more of a mental thing. I didn’t even have a subject, but I knew that I wanted to get at what people pay attention to and what they don’t, and it took me a long time to find the ideal setting for that. Then I thought, “Well, what is it that they’re not paying attention to?”
This content was originally published here.
