Pavel Gelman, writer. screenwriter. author of tv series shares his views with «Art& signatures» about the art of writing.
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If one were to watch my dreams, one may conclude that beauty has a limited influence on my consciousness. Dreams are ugly. It is like a child sloppily cut up some pictures and silhouettes from a magazine and mixed them up to form some kind of chaotic and inarticulate narrative.
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The relationship between an author and his plot sometimes resemble the relationship between a rider and a mad stallion, who can throw the rider off and stomp him to death at any moment. Hence, a smart author slowly goes around his plot – takes it step by step and feeds it by hand. And the smartest author forgets about the plot and finds a theme – and the plot itself rushes to it as to the water.
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Someday perhaps a religion will emerge, which will focus on politeness in the way that traditional religions now emphasise love. Humanity is gradually reducing the degree…
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A genius is not someone who has awakened. A genius never wakes up. If he on the other hand, wakes up from this dream, something occurs which is called the genius’ failure. And then, in one single stroke a poetic genius loses his taste, train of thought, speech… But he only woke up for a minute
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The work of any writing person is complicated by the fact that at the same time he is also his own reader. And it’s very hard..
Let’s take a writer who suddenly wrote a banal, vulgar and pompous phrase. (I’m sure it happens to any writer).
The part of consciousness that generates gave the go-ahead to this phrase, but the other part of consciousness should say «no» and turn on the red light.
And this is a wild internal conflict. We must both believe ourselves and not believe.
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There are people whose thoughts seem to settle inside them and become almost a part of their bodies. And there are those whose thoughts fly away from them like soap bubbles (although they may be thorough and deep thoughts), fly away and leave no trace in a person, as if they never existed.
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«Abstraction is the opposite of happiness,» I read from a French philosopher. And I did not write the text, but ordered myself two cakes from a cafe.
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There are two types of motivations to do art. One is to gain social status in this way. The other is to part with social status.»
