Sven Birkerts on Becoming Magnetized

The Art of Living and Writing in a Receptive State

Hello friends!

I’m so pleased to welcome to Writers at the Well one of America’s most honored and respected essayists, Sven Birkerts. Sven is the author of eleven books of essay and memoir, including The Gutenberg Elegies, Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age, and most recently, The Miró Worm and the Mysteries of Writing.

I first met Sven while studying at the Bennington Writing Seminars, a program he then taught at and later directed. As a fellow ponderer, I instantly became enthralled by the depth and introspection of his work. What a thrill, then, when Sven accepted the invitation to be interviewed on Writers at the Well. I hope you will enjoy this deep dive into Sven’s creative process, his respect for life’s “magnetized” moments, as well as the seemingly fallow ones.

Sven, can you describe the underground streams that fill your well? Are they related to memory, inquiry, desire, something else?

All of the above, of course. But how do these things come together, combine? I need to wind back a number of decades. I was born to Latvian immigrant parents, and from the start there was a sense, through their stories and references, that there was a life back there; it was spoken of fondly and in detail. So I grew up with a very strong sense of ‘before,’ of something now lost. This had everything to do with my formation as a nostalgist—one who is always and ever susceptible to the past.

Just now, writing this, I realize that my first ‘public’ piece of writing, a short prose piece submitted to the Scholastic Writing Awards contest in the seventh grade, was about a child (me) sitting in my grandfather’s lap and playing with his great white beard while he spun stories from his life. My grandfather had no beard and I never sat in his lap, but there it is.

That sense of loss is at the core of much of my writing, loss being the feeling that drives the impulse to hold and preserve, to recover. Having been, how can it not still be?  This certainly accounts for my affection for Nabokov, especially his Speak, Memory.

This core orientation it is countered by my ongoing sense of living in a world losing its moorings. We are so invested in notions of progress, following the lead of our technologies, that are pushing aside our connection with what came before. Where analog was there digital shall be.

I’m drawn to resistance. I respond to the writers and thinkers who acknowledge the complex layering of the world and of the psyche. Writers who make the case for inwardness and rumination. I aspire to their ranks.

How do you access your well? Does it ever run dry?

I spent many years writing essays and reviews on assignment and for obvious reasons that well could not be allowed to run dry. But that was a different kind of well. I’ve found that I can write to prompts and assignments fairly easily. It helps, of course, that there is an editor waiting and a likely audience. That’s one writing rhythm and that worked for me. But then there’s the other, the—wait for the word—autochthonic, the self-generated. Writing when there is no set task and no potential audience in sight. Most of my writing these last years has been that kind, at the mercy of the unconscious. I don’t go to it, I have to wait for it to come to me. The metaphor—it mostly works—is that of a well that gets drained and is then slowly replenished. For me, writing of this kind, unscripted, is the most gratifying kind writing, but it can also be frustrating. Because not only does the unconscious aquifer need to fill up again, the writer (me) has to wait for a triggering impulse.

I will have identified the basic what, settled in on some preoccupation: memory, childhood summers, relationships, how we live now, whatever. The disposition is there, the desire is there, but until I’m inwardly replenished, not much can happen. But then, inevitably (knock wood) it happens. It’s so often some unexpected thing: a photo falling out of a book, a sudden flash memory of what a friend said to me years ago. Whatever it is, I come to attention, often not even knowing why. I hear the sound of someone stepping on a twig in the distance.

Then, with luck, come words. Words that may or may not be the start, but which have a rhythm and a tone, which hold the feeling—a kind of key signature. This is all mysterious as can be, but that’s how writing, at least the more lyrical kind of writing, works for me.

Can you describe the qualities of that receptive state?

There is no way to cultivate it, not in my experience anyway. I don’t think ‘Oh, I’m ready now.’ There are occasions when I’ll be struck by one thing—an image, a particular memory—and, not long after, another, and I’ll recognize that those things have a certain charge to them. They will in some way relate to things that I’ve been thinking about. And then—doesn’t this happen to everyone at some point?—I’ll feel as if I’ve become magnetized. I’ll notice this, that, and that, and realize that they are all kindred and I’ll feel that something is forming. I get inklings of what it is, and these details I fasten on start to clarify it. The writing psyche searches out what it needs. When the inspiration is on, I feel I’m in a zone dense with possible association and usefulness. Which is not at all the way my daily perception works.

I realize this is an elusive business.

What is the role of attention?

Attention: it’s the core thing. Because you cannot will real attention. You can try, of course. But the psyche is fickle. Attention goes where it wants—there is no should—and doing this it signifies. It is not the road to truth, but is a road. Think of the needle on some sensing machine, how at moments it starts to quiver.

But there are so many other routes depending on what is being written. Attention is what we owe to things as they are, and it is difficult. Everything about how we live is accelerated. To stop the flurry and just pay heed—it is an effort.

What are you currently drawing up from your well?

Well...I have to speak in terms of ‘most recently,’ and in the process describe how it goes for me in general. Most recently, up to a month ago, I was writing short pieces (2-3 pages) that I called “Sketches From Memory.” These started coming to me one after the other sometime this past spring. This was nothing planned. Sudden. It felt like all I had to do was throw down the bucket and something would be there to fill it. No logic, no map. These were memory narratives from all parts of my life—being with my grandparents as a kid, dealing with my parents’ ashes, and everything in between. So far as it can be exciting to sit at the desk every morning, it was exciting. There was a flow that I trusted. Over the course of several months, I came up with maybe fifty of these, enough heft for a small book, not that I was thinking of it as a book.

And then—it felt equally sudden—there was no more. The metaphorical bucket clattered against the sides of the metaphorical well. I was tapped out. And I’ve not written much for the last month or so. In the past, every time the impulse died, I would think it had died forever. But that’s changed. I’ve been through the same basic cycle before, and each time I’ve written again. But when the impulse comes again, it’s something different, not the same vein I was working before.

Of course I wish it was always there. For many reasons, but mainly— psychologically—I feel worthy when I’m writing. I’m not pondering my reason-for-being. And, also important, what I’m working on shapes the day from within, and it accompanies me. What else to say? Right now I’m trying to be patient and hopeful.

Writing these thoughts has reminded me of the pleasure I’m waiting for.

The Miró Worm and the Mysteries of Writing

In his riveting new essay collection published by Arrowsmith Press, Sven Birkerts reflects on fundamental questions every writer grapples with at one time or another: What does it mean to be a writer today, when so many other media compete for audiences? With the humanities seemingly everywhere in retreat, Birkerts probes the singular possibilities offered by a fixed text in a world dominated by social media. Meditating on everything from smart phones to photography, Borges to Dylan, Birkerts proves that “the right words in the right order” continue to offer readers a pathway through the labyrinth.