Do you find it hard to read your work aloud to an audience?
I used to find it very hard, but I learned a trick when I was acting. When you do an acting monologue, often it’s terrifying—you have all these expectations, everyone’s judging you, etc. That tends to separate you from the audience. But there’s another way. You can include them. You can make them privy to everything going on with you—make eye contact, talk to particular people, and so on. Everything changes when you do that.
If you could have a dinner party and invite anyone dead or alive, whom would you ask?
Lincoln, Shakespeare, Jesus, Walt Whitman, Anna Karenina, Freud. Lincoln would get along with everyone, of course. Shakespeare too, though he’d probably hit on Anna. I hope Whitman wouldn’t get tiresome. Freud and Jesus would probably go off in a corner and get into it.
What do you hope people will take away from your writing? How will your words make them feel?
I got one Amazon review about Breathing or Two which nailed it. It said, “It’s the kind of book that makes you deeply interested in things you never thought about.” I could’ve kissed that guy. It’s exactly what you hope for—to shine a light in some dark corner of someone else’s psyche.
What’s the reason for your life? Have you figured out your reason for being here yet?
There’s a line in a Rumi poem, “No one knows his name until his last breath goes out.” Meaning, nobody knows why they’re here. Precisely. The more I read about finding your purpose and passion in life, the more I want to give up reading. I have no idea. I don’t want to have an idea. I’d rather discover by doing. As Miss Frizzle says, “Make mistakes, take chances, get messy.” Most of my life I had a lot of ideas and those were almost always the ideas of other people. God save me from my ideas about myself.
How do you feel about self-publishing?
It’s democracy in action. Which is a good, good thing, since the country we live in isn’t a democracy anymore. Down with the gatekeepers, down with the gates. Or, as Walt Whitman (a self-published poet) said:
No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them,
No more modest than immodest.
Unscrew the locks from the doors !
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs !
Whoever degrades another degrades me,
And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.
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Genre – Non-fiction / Memoir
Rating – G
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Website http://wolfpascoe.com
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