Did You Ask a Good Question Today?
This very beautifully weird thing often happens after you write a book: you read another book that feels like you read it while writing your own book, but didn’t. Or did you? It seems so strange to me that I did not read the compilation of interviews by Jonathan Cott — with the cassette deck on the front cover even! — while I wrote my book Everything Affects Everyone. I often bill my book as being about angels, and it sort of is, but it’s really more about photography, seeing, and conversations — interviews, really. Cott’s book is titled Listening, and it’s pretty darned cool. I mean, Richard Gere gave it the old two thumbs up so what more endorsement do you need?
Among the interviewees are Bob Dylan, Federico Fellini, Richard Gere, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Astrid Lindgren. It’s pretty “guy” heavy, but the interviews took place in the 70s and 80s, which isn’t really an excuse but we all know how things were then.
Anyway, I’m going to quote from the introduction by Cott himself. He talks about learning the the physicist Isidor Rabbi was asked as a child by his mother after school, not the typical, “what did you learn?” but “Did you ask a good question today?”
Cott explains that the journalistic interview was a nineteenth century invention and that the word comes from the French entrevue meaning, “a meeting.” And then this word is derived from entrevoir, meaning “to glimpse, to catch sight of, or to get an inkling of.” Cott then connects this to Martin Buber saying, “all real living is meeting.” And then, he also quotes the psychologist James Hillman saying that “the interview itself is a kind of love…How can one do an interview without love, without imagination working…”
So, if you’ve read Everything Affects Everyone, you can probably see why I was so excited by Cott’s words. I’ve not yet read every single interview in the book, but the Bob Dylan one immediately struck me for being so honestly wonderfully weird. Cott quotes Dylan saying, “The highest purpose of art is to inspire. What else can you do? What else can you do for anyone but inspire them?” There is a point where Dylan says: “Music attracts the angels in the universe. A group of angels sitting at a table are going to be attracted by that.”
The interview ends with Cott saying, “But you seem pretty sure of yourself.” And Dylan replies, “I’m sure of my dream self. I live in my dreams. I don’t really live in the actual world.” And then the reader is reminded of this other great thing Dylan said which I’ve often seen quoted:
“I’ll let you be in my dreams
If I can be in yours.”
So that’s a little taste of the book, but there’s a lot more, in the Dylan interview alone.
And I’m happy to have been reminded to ask a good question every day. And to pay more attention to my dreams. And to let others into my dreams. Most of all, I’m happy to remember that a great part of my life’s work is to inspire. What’s more important than that?
