Interview with a Vampire

A Dialogue with Myself

Host: So why the title? I mean, I know of the movie, but what’s with vampire?

Guest: It’s a thought taken from Nick Cave, whose birthday is today actually. A 13yr old from Melbourne wrote to him asking “In a world ridden with so much hate, and disconnect; How do I live life to its absolute fullest, and not waste my potential? Especially as a creative. Also, what is a great way to spiritually enrich myself? In general, and in my creative work?” It’s a wonderful question, as is Cave’s response -

“Read. Read as much as possible. Read the big stuff, the challenging stuff, the confronting stuff, and read the fun stuff too. Visit galleries and look at paintings, watch movies, listen to music, go to concerts – be a little vampire running around the place sucking up all the art and ideas you can.” 

That’s how I’m trying to live, like a vampire sucking as much as I can while there’s still time.

Host: Interesting. So I guess you like Cave?

Guest: I do. I found his book with Sean O’Hagan, Faith, Hope and Carnage, to be brilliant, one of the best I’ve read in years. Some of his music is still growing on me, but yes, I like him.

Host: I know your father loved Johnny Cash. Cave strikes me as cut from that same cloth.

Guest: Absolutely. And in the same way that the Christian world of my father’s day swooned at Johnny being on “our side,” a slice of the Christian world of now has adopted Cave as the outlaw guy who goes to church but doesn’t identify with the usual religious labels yet says bracingly refreshingly honest things about faith. It’s not surprising, but still incredibly insecure behavior, this needing someone like that to somehow bestow legitimacy on the cause.

Host: So you’re not a fan of the “our side” mentality?

Guest: No. There’s the “human side,” that’s it, just one. But God we love to have an enemy.

Host: Okay, back to you living like a vampire. What are you reading or watching or listening to?

Guest: He’s in some ways a man without a country right now, but I watched the speech RFK Jr. gave when he dropped out of the race and gave his endorsement to former president Trump. His words stirred something in me I’ve not felt from our other two candidates. I heard a clarity in his gravely voice, a voice not asking me to agree but to think. I fear our two parties bank on the gullibility of most citizens.

Reading? I just finished William Maxwell’s So Long, See You Tomorrow. It’s a brief novel focused on loss that demands your attention because it’s quiet. It was my first book by Maxwell, another artful writer thankfully discovered here in the autumn of my life.

And I’ve had John Prine’s The Tree of Forgiveness on repeat lately. Prine’s lyrics are equal part comfort and surprise. I could listen to “Boundless Love” all day long. Maybe we all should.

Host: Those all seem positives. Any negatives?

Guest: Kevin Costner’s Horizon. I’d been anticipating it since first hearing about it months ago. I love a good western, and it’s been a long dry spell in my opinion. I’d read some reviews and heard from others who were not impressed. I hate to say it but I wasn’t either. I’m not giving up on the “chapters” to follow as I believe I know what he tried to do in this first offering. But the way you tell a story is often as important as the story you tell, and the way he starts off was a miss. So I feel I learned something about structure when it comes to storytelling. But as I said, I’ll still be there for parts 2 and 3 and 4.

Host: Any final thoughts, at least for today?

Guest: I’ll give Maya Angelou the mic -

“Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.”