Rumours Among the Mute

"I had a very small bedroom and I remember going through periods when I was 18 and 19 where I literally would not leave it for three to four weeks. I would be in there day after day, the sun would be blazingly hot and I’d have the curtains drawn. I’d be sitting there in near darkness alone with the typewriter and surrounded by masses of paper. The walls were totally bespattered with James Dean, almost to the point of claustrophobia and I remember little bits of paper pinned everywhere with profound comments…. Oh, newspaper clippings like “Fish Eats Man”. Probably the most important quote was from Goethe: “Art and Life are different, that’s why one is called Art and one is called Life.” But strangely, whenever I’ve returned to the house and the room I just couldn’t make the remotest connection between how I felt, how I was and the room. It sounds dramatic, but at one point, I thought I could never possibly leave the room. It seems that everything I am was conceived in this room. Everything that makes me is in there. I used to have a horrible territorial complex. I would totally despise any creature that stepped across the threshhold and when somebody did, or looked at my books, or took out a record, I would seethe with anger. I was obsessive: everything was chronologically ordered - a place for everything, everything in its place. Total neurosis. My sister only ever popped her head around the door. But now, it’s totally foreign. It’s strange how things that seem to mean so much, ultimately don’t matter."