WEBVTT

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Could you elaborate?

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On the origins, or
just the structure,

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or what is teacher mode?

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Maybe the-- Is there
privilege in digital hurt?

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Is there privilege in a
digital heart, or is that--

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Hurt, hurt.

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OK, both sound good.

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Well, you could answer both.

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That would be great.

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It is, there is this, you
know, this place right now.

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And it's a very sort of
feminine dominated place

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within sort of the social
media arena that exists.

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And it's-- and I've
read a lot of studies,

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and I've seen this
in my own family,

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in terms of the kind of
currency that's made,

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the value that comes with
this sort of brand mass public

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approval of people
that you've never seen.

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People that, if you
saw them on the street,

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you wouldn't care
one way or another

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what they thought of you.

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But then it becomes this
mass, this intangible sort

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of, kind of, force, right?

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And that's what I was
really thinking about

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and I had a lot of scenes
of real, real images.

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The 1985 pic was real.

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And sort of, I saw
these kinds of things

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and I was trying to
put them together,

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in terms of something that
really should govern our lives.

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And it's so forceful.

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And there's this
phrase, it's called,

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if it's not one thing
it's the mother.

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So, so that shows up a lot.

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And the mother in the
story is the only one

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that is not speaking because
she's also being observed.

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She's also in that
arena of having

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a force working to sort of
bear witness to her existence.

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So she doesn't have that
right, for a lot of reasons,

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to look back.

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So I was thinking about
those kinds of things

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as I put it together.

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I don't know if that's the
answer to your question.

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So, I really appreciate
your writing.

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You are one of those writers
who can say so much complexity

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with really--

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with simple beautiful words--

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Thank you, I appreciate that.

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--which is really nice.

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And I just wonder,
are there particular

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other authors that inspire
you or inspire your process?

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Well, let's go back to
the genesis of things.

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So I was talking, I
was talking to Manuel

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and he said, yeah, he's got
all the weight of religion

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and organized religion
that has shaped him

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and I'm very much the same way.

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I was raised in a church.

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I even taught Sunday
school up until age 20

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or around that age.

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And things like that.

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But I have left for more sort
of spiritual exploration of life

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or whatever that might be.

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But the Bible, those
kinds of textbooks,

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were some of my
earliest teachers,

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because the language
is beautiful.

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It is very ornate
and very poetic,

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and it can go
really long and you

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would talk about Methuselah
and his second cousin,

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and just listing all that.

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So I do, I do like less.

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But then after that I discovered
other writers like David Packer

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and David Smith and
Gabriel García Márquez.

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Recently, I was floored.

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I had a colleague tell me that
to like Gabriel García Márquez

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is like saying you like
Kenny G. It's cool,

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but, and I don't know
when that happened,

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but, so there was that.

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But I do like them.

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I like language that
deals with the fantastic.

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Aimee Bender, she was a
teacher of mine too at USC.

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So I like that kind of thing.

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It can be humorous, but it
can be very, very expansive

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in terms of what the
reach of humanity

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that it's trying to
understand in their language.

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I also read a really cool book.

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It's called The Signs
Preceding the End of the World

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by Yuri Herrera,
and it's very good.

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Yeah, right?

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And it's, and it's like that.

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It's a novel.

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126 pages, something like that.

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But it's sort of, it's
really, really how it moves

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and how it can capture.

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It's not as ornate,
it's not as flashy.

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And it doesn't have a lot of
symbolism, things like that.

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But it's very
accurate, because it's

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a discussion about
intention and people

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and the nature of our choices as
we move through time and things

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like that.

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So yeah, those are a few.

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OK.

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I have two.

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OK.

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OK.

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Unrelated to each other.

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That was beautiful.

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Thank you.

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My first question is, because
everything you read was short,

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I'm wondering, do you
tend to write short?

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And do you ever feel
pressure to write longer?

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I do write all of it.

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So there's a story here, I think
it's 30, 40 pages or something

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like that.

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There's others that are 10, 20.

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So there's a variety.

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But I do love the short story.

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I like reading them
too, just because it's

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a little bit more accessible
in this kind of environment.

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But I do write all of them.

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And I've written certain
stories in both formats,

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so they're saved like
that in my drives.

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I have this one, 500 words, this
one, the same exact same story,

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2,500 words.

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So I'll play with
length, and sort of

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see what I want to do with it.

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And then the game becomes what
journal wants which version

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first.

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And then it becomes
a thing and then

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I'll just walk away
from that point on,

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or I'll steal other
parts from the longer one

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to expand later
into other things.

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So I'm not that precious when it
comes to the story as a whole,

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or length or anything like that.

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I don't have that
kind of, I don't know,

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artsy kind of spiritual
connection to it.

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It's clay to me.

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I'll make it do
what I like to do.

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Yeah.

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What was the second one?

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That was good to hear.

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And second one is, you
mentioned a couple of times

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that you write very
close to your life.

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Do you write, are you
interested, I guess,

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do you write memoir at all?

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Or have you thought about memoir
or anything like that yet?

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There's a saying
that for new writers,

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everything is just thinly
veiled autobiography, right?

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But for me, it's everybody
else's biography.

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So I don't write
about myself as much

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as I write about everyone
else that comes close to me,

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so be careful--

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[LAUGHTER]

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Of what you say and
reveal in my presence.

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Because if I like it, you know,
I like it for a lot of reasons,

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because it feels so real, and
so true and so beautiful and so

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lovely and so tragic.

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I want to mess
with it and see how

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the world might look at this,
and how I can look at this.

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And that could be really
insulting to people

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that are like, I just told
you the most intimate thing,

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[LAUGHTER]

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And then you just
sold it for $100.

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[LAUGHTER]

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So that could be a problem.

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And I don't know if it's
a corrupted moral core

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on my own part.

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I don't know, but I
think it's all fair game.

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It's all beautiful, so
I just, I don't know.

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But, but yeah.

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It's not as always
as close to me.

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The parts about me are always
very small, very subtle.

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Might be the most tragic thing
that shows up in the story,

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maybe.

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And then I could take
other things around it,

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sort of build on those moments.

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And the worst
parts of my life, I

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still haven't to figure
out how to write yet.

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So I'm not there yet
for memoir exactly,

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but whatever that
other word is for when

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you take other people's
lives and write about them,

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and fictionalize
it, I'm doing that.

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[LAUGHTER]

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In large numbers.

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Thank you.

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You're welcome.

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