There are others. Writers that I read and loved, and who I assumed were dead. I remember being shocked when I heard Saul Bellow died. What? He had been alive all that time? There is something in my mind that does not believe writers are real live humans. They aren’t people that have regular human everyday lives and go to the grocery store or do laundry. Writers are dead, disembodied, almost mythical.
Writers are Other. Objectified.
I know Edward Albee is alive because I saw him, live and in person, in the theatre watching a production of one of his plays. Not myth-like in the least. It was a moment to remember. It was a moment that I saw a man, a playwright, watching his words.
The more I think about art and artists in their various forms, the more I see those artists as people. People who worked at their craft. People who are doing what they do. No more, no less.
And the less the artist is other, the more it is possible for me to become artist and take the true next step.
