Introduction

Michael, hello! This is Andrea and I’m grateful to get to speak with you, however unconventionally, about the questions that you sent. I’m going to answer them just by talking to you. I maybe had aspirations to do something fancier but I think this will be best—both because they’re really interesting questions, and because I have to go to a Super Bowl party, you know, and I don’t know that I have time to Frankenstein something more fun together. So here’s what I’ve been thinking about:

Question 1: What do you pay attention to when you look at an image?

You asked what I pay attention to when I look at an image. And I thought about this a lot. And it’s kind of a gross answer. I think I pay attention to my own reaction, especially when it’s in a more rarified museum kind of environment, where we’re being asked to regard an image and I find that I get really swept up in something, and I think that something is probably my own visceral emotional or associative responses to the image. And I think I try to sort of move around from the totality to give it details, sort of intricate close-up back to the whole picture.

Question 2: How do you curate your experience of memory?

You asked how I curate my experience of memory. I think: through narrative, through story. Presumably there is so much that I have encountered and that I remember, somewhere, that without that narrativizing it would be completely overwhelming. Just too much information, just an infinite amount of memory, right? So the curation of memory is through storytelling, and I think stories come from culture and we tell the stories of the culture through our own particular lens and that is what allows us to avoid being completely overwhelmed by our memories which I’m sure are, again, just infinitely abundant.

Question 3: What is your definition of detachment?

My definition of detachment—that’s a really good question. There’s a word, ‘equanimity,’ that I’ve been thinking about a lot. I don’t think it’s the same thing as detachment. But when you ask about detachment I automatically think of its opposite, which is attachment, and the attendant suffering or difficulty facing the loss of things we’re attached to and the persistence of things we’re maybe not attached to. So I think I associate detachment with almost a positive state of mind, but the more proactive way to say it might be equanimity, balance, and perspective, I suppose.

Question 4: Where have you felt the most comfortable in the past week?

Where I’ve felt the most comfortable in the past week—this is a great question. I’ve had moments of real comfort and happiness at the piano this week. I’m doing a project where I improvise every day and record it. And the last two days of improvisation have been really wonderful, and I don’t know why that is. But it’s been a place of engagement and comfort, and maybe even healing and nurturing, I think, in the last couple of days.

Question 5: What is something that fascinates you, but that you suspect might dreadfully bore your friends?

What is something that fascinates me, but that you suspect might dreadfully bore your friends? Oh, I think all manner of inner conditions. I guess I only know my own. And I’m pretty fascinated by them, and I think it must be insufferable to others to hear me talk about what I dreamed about, and why I think what I think is what I think. So those kinds of internal realities are probably pretty boring to others. Though I think that there are ways to make them legible and interesting, though I don’t necessarily know how to make them legible and interesting. I once had someone tell me that they hated hearing other people’s dreams. And I remembered telling so many stories about my dreams, and becoming very sheepish and embarrassed about that. So that whole category of experience, I think, is very fascinating to me—especially in this kind of sort of self-focused way—but must be just a real [laughter] real problem for anyone who’s unfortunate to be my audience at that time.

I really hope that this has been helpful, Michael, and I hope that it’s been what you’ve needed for your project. It’s great to get to connect, and I hope that our paths cross soon and often. Bye-bye.