On images and inspiration
Photographs that never made it into the books, but told their own story.
I have a box of photographs that will never become covers. They did not fit any of my books. But I cannot throw them away, because each of them has already told me something important.
The pictures that did not make it in
Here is a window on the third floor, the curtain drawn back a hand's width. I took it by chance, on the way home. A year later, the hero of my book was looking out of that window. He never appeared in the frame, but he was there.
Here is the empty platform of a small station. Here is a cup on a windowsill, the tea gone cold. Here is the back of a man walking towards the sea.
I do not know why I took them. At that moment there was no idea and no plan. Something in me simply stopped and said: look once more.
Where inspiration comes from
People ask me where I find inspiration, and I do not know how to answer. It seems to me that it does not come from anywhere. It accumulates. From windows like these, from cups and backs, from things that hardly seemed worth noticing.
The image appears before the meaning. First you see, and only then do you understand what you have seen.
When I sit down to write and the text will not come, I take out this box. I go through the pictures. I am not looking for anything in particular, I just look. And at some point one of the photographs begins to speak.
Sometimes it speaks of what is not in it. That is the most interesting part.
I do not know whether any of these pictures will ever become a cover. Probably not. But that is not what they are for. They are there to remind me, some morning, what attention looks like.
