I guess it’s true what they say, that you never forget your first love. Of your novels,
it all started with Dalva, her unforgettable voice coming to you in dream language:
“Listen to me now, I’ve been waiting for you a long time.” Rather ballsy to attempt to
write in the voice of a woman. But if I heard that voice, I hope I’d find the guts too.
You said that writing in Dalva’s voice saved you from “death by drugs and booze.”
Although you were famous for fibs, I believe you were shooting straight on that one.
Until I dug around a little in that novel’s backstory, I can’t say I’d ever heard Jung’s
question—What have we done with our twin sisters the culture forces us to abandon at birth?
It remains for me a fascinating question to this day, and on occasion results in staring
out the window for easily an hour. Such weighty questions refuse the 15min personal
development window. I confess my initial attraction to Dalva was as this inordinately
strong woman with her devil-may-care attitude. But wrestling with the idea of her as a
kind of twin sister? Then the deeper attraction surfaced. I saw her as one, fully other,
yet still like me, one who from the day she was born had people yelling a name in her
face that was not her own. I loved Dalva at first, but on seeing loved her all the more.
I’ve often said, and did as late as just last week, that I always wished I’d had an older
sister. Maybe I’ve wished for my twin, that her voice would come to me in a dream,
not necessarily for novel purposes (although I’m open to it), but rather for reunion
with this ghost the culture steals. And then I might feel more whole, more at home.