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So a lot of times
when I write poems,

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I become very overwhelmed
with the idea of the reader,

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and I think it gives me writer's
block a lot of the time.

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So it was mind blowing
to hear you say that you

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weren't thinking of the reader.

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Is there any
technique you know of,

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or is that just how you write?

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I don't know.

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I mean, what are some good
exercises to banish the reader?

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I mean, of course, all
writers are going to think

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of-- because it's like,
there's a part of us--

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when you're writing, it
can be a rebellious act.

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It's both a rebellious
act, but it's

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also an act where you're kind
of seeking approval, too.

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So that part of you
that's seeking approval

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is thinking about the
reader and thinking

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about audience and so forth.

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And I think that's
important to do,

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and I think that's important
to think about, also,

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if you're thinking about
writing politically.

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You're thinking, who
am I privileging?

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Who do I want to write to?

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And so forth.

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But really, in terms of
being really, really free,

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you have to just completely
exorcise the reader

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from your mind.

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And I don't think I would have
been able to write Dance Dance

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Revolution if I was thinking,
well, who's going to read this?

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Because if I were to think
this while I was writing it,

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I would probably realize
that no one would read this,

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and then that would just
stop me from writing it.

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But I think just know
that the riskiest,

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most ambitious writers who
also failed a lot of times

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but who are remembered are
writers who probably just

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didn't think about seeking
approval and writing

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for a reader.

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I was reading this one article.

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Who was it?

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Christopher Hitchens,
Dave Eggers.

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And I don't know if I
entirely agree with this,

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but it sounds a little
overly grandiose.

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But one thing that he said
was, if you're writing,

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you should write
as if posthumously.

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You shouldn't think about
trends and so forth and just

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think about what you really
need to get done and said

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and so forth.

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It's scary, but it's
also much more freeing.

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And your writing is so
much better for it, too.

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We have time for
one more question.

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I'm not sure if I'm going
to come to a question yet,

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but what I was thinking
about when I read Dance Dance

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Revolution, I had
picked up also the Cloud

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Atlas about the same time.

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So there's that middle part
of the Cloud Atlas where

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it's kind of a new language,
also, or an amalgam language.

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And what I was thinking
as I was reading

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them was that this was
kind of like authors

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just showing off
linguistically, like kind

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of a linguistic guitar solo,
for a really long time,

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and I didn't know how I
was going to connect to it.

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And so I'm wondering,
in your experience

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of writing like that,
what have you learned

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about how you are able--

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because in both the
books, eventually, you

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develop this connection with
the speaker emotionally.

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And I wonder maybe
what you learned

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in writing this on how
you're able to convey

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a connection with the reader
when you're playing around

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with language in this way
that actually makes it harder

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to make that connection.

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That's a very good question.

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And there are a number of
ways I can answer that.

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I mean, in one sense,
I feel like maybe I'm

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putting words in your
mouth, but you're

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talking about difficulty,
I mean, in a sense,

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because with this
jumble of languages,

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it's hard to kind
of clearly connect

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to the characters at first.

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I'll say, first of all,
for me, writing something

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like Dance Dance Revolution or
playing with dialects and so

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forth, for me, it's natural.

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I was saying this earlier today.

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I grew up in a
bilingual background,

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so this sort of mixing and
matching different languages

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was something that felt
sort of natural to me.

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And that felt very
natural to me.

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And for me, when I read poems,
the first kind of poems,

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the poems that I
was introduced to,

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these very heartfelt,
personal lyric poems,

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I couldn't connect to
it, and these were poems

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that you were supposed
to easily connect to.

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And I was like,
but the confessions

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that were being made
felt inauthentic.

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So I think there are different
ways you can connect.

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But to answer it from a
different point of view,

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I mean, Lyn Hejinian was talking
about language of inquiry.

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It was in her book, The
Language of Inquiry,

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and she was talking about
closed texts versus open texts.

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And she talks about just the
way we're used to reading

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and the way we usually--
especially now when

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we're just clogged with blog
entries and just everything.

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We have to just sort of
digest everything really

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quickly and make an
immediate connection.

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And so yes, you make an
immediate connection,

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but then you forget.

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And then she talked
about open texts,

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and an example would be,
you could say, Cloud Atlas,

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my writing.

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I think of someone like,
say, Tender Buttons, Gertrude

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Stein, where she
plays with syntax,

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and it's seemingly
incomprehensible.

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So there's much more,
so you have to work.

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You have to work
to understand it.

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But because you have
to work, there's more,

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and you can give up and be
frustrated and so forth.

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But there's more of an
interactive relationship

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between writer and reader, and
because there's more of an--

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and where the reader
is forced to make

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his or her own
interpretations and so forth.

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But that kind of
writing, for me at least,

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makes much more of
a lasting impact

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because I'm using the effort to
kind of understand and decipher

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and pronounce and so forth.

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And sometimes, I
would just give up.

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Then I'd come back to it.

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I mean, I've read plenty
of poems and fiction

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where I just kind of gave
up and then came back to it,

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and I understood
it and so forth.

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I didn't set Dance Dance
Revolution out to be like that.

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I just wrote it because I
felt like I had to write it,

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but that's my kind of own
understanding and respect

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for writings that can be--

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other poems that can
be indecipherable

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because it's polyphonic
or because it's

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sort of difficult in some way.

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Does that answer your question?

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Cathy, thank you so much for
your amazing performance.

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[APPLAUSE]

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