A Quote by Mark Barrowcliffe
I was staying at the Konchucos Tambo lodge, next to the Huascaran national park, near Chavin. Sitting here on its veranda, I was beginning to see where all those Latin American magical realists get their inspiration from: they don't need to make anything up; they just write down what's around them.
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I live near Thompson Square Park, and there are a lot of colorful people I see in the park - a lot of different personalities and homeless people - you get to know them. And every now and then, there is suddenly someone who is no longer around, and you're just like, 'Wow,' but you never really know what happened to them.
I think when you write songs, you write about people... People are the source of my material. And London is a wonderful place to be for people. So, the next time you're sitting in a park somewhere, and you see someone like me looking at you, don't phone the police. I'm just writing
The inspiration to write? Perhaps it's not so much inspiration, as a NEED to write. I get itchy and guilty and dissatisfied when I haven't written for a while. Ideas come to me and need to be written down.
I run from Horatio Street down just past Battery Park City and back. It's amazing to run and see the Statue of Liberty and the ferries coming in. People think if you're not near Central Park, there's nowhere to go, but there's a whole ecosystem happening down here.
I turn sentences around. That's my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and I turn it around again. Then I have lunch. Then I come back in and write another sentence. Then I have tea and turn the new sentence around. Then I read the two sentences over and turn them both around. Then I lie down on my sofa and think. Then I get up and throw them out and start from the beginning.
The Americans only like things they can label, even if it kills them. Think of those poor Latin American writers. Some of them are very good. But the "magical realism" label has absolutely ruined them. The critics are like tourists who return from a trip saying they've "done" Machu Picchu: "Okay, we've done magical realism," so now we can throw it out.
Write down five things you love to do. Next, write down five things that you're really good at. Then just try to match them up! Revisit your list once a year to make sure you're on the right track.
Once you have your character sitting right there in your head, all you really need to do is wind them up, put them down, and simply write down what they do, say, or think.
When I was starting out, science fiction was a little genre over there, which only a few people read. But now -- where are you going to put, for example, Salman Rushdie? Or any of the South American writers? Most people get by calling them magical realists.
The point is that we are among those who cannot get their mouths around all the little Yeses that add up to tacit acceptance of a world run by crackpot realists and subject to blind drift. And that, you see, is something to which we do belong; we belong to those who are still capable of personally rejecting. Our minds are not yet captive.
I don't worry about inspiration, or anything like that. It's a matter of just sitting down and working.
Although I have guitars all around, and I pick them up occasionally and write a tune and make a record, I don't really see myself as a musician. It may seem a funny thing to say. It's just like, I write lyrics, and I make up songs, but I'm not a great lyricist or songwriter or producer. It's when you put all these things together - that makes me.
One of my struggles is that I'm a glutton. There's always those very simple, long, old-ass things, but they're very real to me, and I'm sitting in them, and they're swirling in my mind all the time. I tell people about it and they think, "Why don't you just go and make some money, go get a big-screen TV, or look at the Internet." Or they say, "Go create some introspective art." I just want to explode. I don't know how everybody else is able to walk around so calm. It's amazing to me when I see people walking so calmly down the street. I envy them, but I also kind of hate them.
My earliest memory is a picnic in the park near our house, which was next to Wimbledon Common. Why on earth we went to a park when we lived so near the common is a mystery, but it had formal gardens and lawns - perhaps it was that very difference that took my parents there.
Gods, religions and national boundaries are absolutely imaginary. They don't tend to exist. As soon as you pull back half a mile and look down at the Earth there are no national boundaries. There aren't even national boundaries when you get down and walk around. They're just imaginary lines we draw on maps. I just get fascinated by people who assume that things that are imaginary have no relevance to their lives.
I looked to many, many filmmakers. I was influenced by the Neo-Realists, and by the Cuban, and the Latin American cinema, the '70s, European experimental work. And fortunately, all those influences gave me the strength to think, "I can make my way. I'm a creative person, I can try to create a way that is uniquely mine because I've seen so much, and I've experienced so much."
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