It’s paying attention to the energy of the piece. If it feels really distant from me, I know that there’s an irreconcilable problem between me and the work, and I need to just put it to the side until it wants to come back to me. If I wake up really excited to work on something, then it’s still present in me. If not, I put it to the side without fearing, because often those things come back much, much better a decade or two decades later. It’s really allowing the work not to just be the work at hand, but the longer process of making something, making a life and making a life in art. So, knowing that even if this story, I tried to do this story when I was 19 and it didn’t work and I kept trying 26 and then 34 and then 42.

I don’t know the answer to that, especially with projects like Seat Assignment or Sorted Books, because both do still feel ongoing. The Sorted Books Project is my longest ongoing project to date, where I’m working in libraries or book collections with other people’s books and trying to work only with what’s there, to draw something out from the book arrangements I make.

I had this sort of…vibe in my head that I wanted to get onto the page. It wasn’t even an image, not even that concrete. It was almost like a song that I couldn’t hear. The spirit of a book that wasn’t yet written, but wanted to be. I felt that way for Jell-O Girls, too. It was an energy I wanted to translate. I knew Aesthetica had come together when I saw and felt the vibe on the page. I don’t know if this makes sense, but I think now, after going through this process of channeling the vibe into a book twice, that there’s no way to force it. It’s a matter of time.

I think that’s an instinct.

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.