How does a new work begin for you?

Good question. The novel began with Sten and his story, which then suggested the rest. I always follow that first line and always write organically, in sequence. This allows me to make the discoveries I need to as I progress. I don’t really concern myself with questions of which character takes precedence—again, that lies outside my purview. I see this as a kind of ensemble piece, I suppose, like the novel that precedes it, San Miguel , told from the perspective of three women.

You would think my work would be like Warhol’s and others since I have spent so much time in and around that crowd. Well, I’m not a very good modern artist in the sense that my life is not part of my art. I think that Warhol was idea-driven. He was always looking for good ideas. I’m more intuitive; I respond to what I love. I see something beautiful, and I want to paint it. That’s how I work.

Well, it’s very simple for me. It’s pretty much always the same. I might have certain things swimming around in my head. We all always do. What’s been on your mind lately? You could ask anybody that, and you’d get a couple of answers. But, I always jump in. I always just try to think of a first sentence. Well, actually, I decide firstly if it’s going to be in third person or first person. And then I just think of something, I just get something moving.

No, they are three completely different processes. In film, I try to really blank out my mind when I see the film for the first time so that I have no preconceptions. Early on in my career, I tried to do all this prep or even read the script and write music, but none of it ever survived. And I realized the best way to go at it was to be as blank as I can possibly be. When I’m writing classical music, it’s much more nerve-wracking because I’m starting with nothing! And I don’t have a picture to drive me on. I am wired now, for 38 years, that I see a moving picture, I hear music, you know what I mean? But with classical, I got nothing, and at first that was totally terrifying. But I forced myself into it, and then something develops, and it becomes very liberating. With the rock music, it’s a whole different process. I mean, I can’t do anything until I get the message.

Sometimes I start a story with just a feeling. Often it is a place or an image. A house, a tree, a mountain. A sentence or a phrase. Sometimes it is like a line of music, a tone. Sometimes it is a character. It’s happened a couple of times that I start from one of those places and work for a few days or weeks and one morning I will wake up with a sentence that makes me realize that one of my new characters could be related to one of the characters I wrote about 45 stories ago. Something in my unconscious mind will weave those people together and put them in the same place. Sometimes I find a way to cast an image or tone, attach it to a character I’ve already worked with. Something in me wants to connect layers over time… not just families but friendships over time, over generations. I think a lot about how we build community over time or place. Sometimes it seems that I can’t work on a project really hard without connecting it to this gigantic web that I constructed over the years.

I don’t begin with a material. I begin with a problem. If a material can solve that problem, then I become interested in it. Sometimes it is paper, sometimes timber, sometimes carbon fibre. There are many materials we still don’t use efficiently. I think there is always room to discover new possibilities, every project presents a different problem, and I am always thinking about how to solve it more simply, with fewer materials or a better structure. I think every material has good and bad qualities. The important thing is understanding them and using them appropriately.