While most people in the arts think they have to be constantly looking forward to be edgy and creative....the real secret of creativity is to go back and remember.
There's a need to dig up the past and analyze it.
I am sifting my memories, the way men pan the dirt under a barroom floor for the bits of gold dust that fall between the cracks. It's small mining-- small mining. You're too young a man to be panning memories, Adam. You should be getting yourself some new ones, so that the mining will be richer when you come to age.
The past is a cupboard full of light and all you have to do is find the key that opens the door.
It's also not unusual for writers to look backward. Because that's your pool of resources.
For people who mourn for old Times Square - hey, there's a ton of places in the city still like that! Get on the train and go visit them!
I've never returned to the locations. I do remember certain days more clearly than others and certain locations with a sense of nostalgia. Perhaps one day, I'll bring my daughter to see them, if she's interested.
For me, writing historical fiction is all about finding a balance between reading, traveling, looking, imagining, and dreaming.
What she wants to do if she can get the time to do it, is not so much to live in the past as to open it up and get one good look at it".
What does the artist do? He draws connections. He ties the invisible threads between things. He dives into history, be it the history of mankind, the geological history of the Earth or the beginning and end of the manifest cosmos.
Somehow the past is a safe place to explore our collective cultural neuroses.
Tom Fort, a BBC radio journalist, starts from the assumption that 'many of us have a road that reaches back into our past'. For him, this is the 92 miles of the A303 - as he subtitles his book, the 'Highway to the Sun'.
My work is like digging, it's archaeological research among the arid materials of our times. That's how I understand my first films, and that's what I'm still doing...
