Garrison Keillor on Writing and Performing
(Mon Sep 10, 2007) [/Misc] #
I've spent many a day tuned in to "A Prairie Home Companion" while motoring through Kansas, Wyoming, and Arizona. Indeed, just hearing Garrison Keillor's comforting voice reminds me how thankful I am to pick up an AM station. (Yes, I have an iPod now, but if you've ever driven through the aforementioned states, you'll appreciate the entertainment value of channel surfing the ol' radio and the sheer joy of discovering something intelligible.)
Now I don't know much about Garrison Keillor. To me he's just a disembodied voice that helps the miles melt away. To fellow motorists (all two of them) he's what causes them to wonder why the idiot they just passed is chuckling to himself. But this weekend our local newspaper ran an electronic interview with Garrison, and two responses struck a chord with me.
On writing:
“Writing is revising. You just keep messing around, cutting the dead wood, forcing the plants to bloom, until whomever you're writing the piece for gets exasperated and then you send it to them.”
On performing on stage:
“Near-sightedness is the secret. The audience is just a big warm blur, very Renoiresque, like a hillside of flowers, and I don't see them as intelligent, critical individuals. I see them as flora. When I talk on stage, I'm talking to a few friends who I imagine are listening to the show (actually they don't, most of them are too busy, some of them have been dead for years). It's the power of illusion. If I actually saw the danger I am in, I would run in terror.”
