Interview with Alexa D'Avalon on Tom Robbins, Tape 12

the chinese are upset the alley in the american press is treated so i think they don't always get him i think that they had a real hard time with the idea of someone being able to be funny and serious at the same time and i don't know why it's like it's either this or that attack they really struggle with that the press it's largely funny are you serious and well i think is both i think he can talk about very deep very powerful things and i think he can also have a really great sense of humor and i think it perplexes people especially the press innocent and it frustrates them because they know they can't get a handle on him and the fact that they can't quite take him i think bugs them one of the essays i don't think he takes the press very seriously as you know reid is declaring that it is not easy to read any thing that they write about him is what really set off at the

factory that the other negative stuff and they take that seriously than you know it disrupts my work was the point so is doesn't bother in his ability to get stuff either isn't letting any given energy still isn't paying attention that's right which is amazing you know we're in a way they are trying to hand them on cellphone look at how this great precedent set violet eyes won't enjoy it people are enrolling in my work and if they're getting out and have a good time great but i care what the process he could do in about twenty years ago iranian thing it was so sorry that they had in the sixties i yeah yeah but as it were quote wrote one book during that period but i think it was a very popular book and it was a memorable book and

so you know when people remember something they amateurs he hold on to it some and his writing is still the way he wrote in the sixties or do you feel that as teachers i think his writing continues to evolve and i think this book is very different from anything he's done before i think it has a very different feeling to it's hard to describe what that is because it's not done yet but town it's a very different energy about it and get it stylistically you can you can always feel a tom robbins book it has a certain magic to it leigh puts this wonderful energy and an end to what he does and he he really understands language and ideas our any place with it in such a way that i don't think any other writer that sound and i think you're always feel that he picked up i'm looking into now he wrote it and you read about you

know gold is it stylistically but i think you might know us that its hands because of the way he works with language i think it he weaves it in such a way out i don't see any other writers doing it in such a way that this book is very different from his release a liar to say that his latest book so our interest is so odd in his newest book is his latest work is well i think all the books are their own entities see now but is his latest book the one he's working on now is so is very much you know i've been very different than anything is imminent but then i would say that about each of them they seemed to have their own voice in and i'm so i don't see i don't see his

writing being you know always that to say it seems so huge huge huge book as its own it's its own story and it's only telling you so the title linda capper us get the blues to look to that you're very area that means that either espn's mina yeah cameras cameras is best known block it it probably was the book that when he really came out as a writer and into our consciousness and maybe that's why i think the first thing that that you're remembered for sometimes people sticky within the place now i think that that may be why that is not i mean maybe it is this the sixties anne and all of that that you now think he's a sixties are airing on the keys so that each book had you know a different place in

history and time and dealt with very very different things so i think though that because that was the navy the for i mean that may be wrong but there's that's why i think maybe is that that was the first one that when he you know was started to become known to the public and maybe that's why we fail cowgirls that was fired i was in a i had to be a character guess i think is an amazing director and as van zandt who did who did the adaptation and down and found in the movie so is really its guesses movie it's not it's it's at ten different times and taro but its guesses vision

and he make choices about what he wanted to focus on and you know the story he wanted to tell as an artist which time i think i really appreciated that they really enjoyed that that the gas took it in and made it is now so i really admired him i think that doesn't centers are very courageous artist because he takes risks and so as a worker and songs and talent and he still taken him he's you feel that work as unknown it's a hard movie to film i think anything of times to do that would be interesting of la plaza is it that you were sort of language and down something i think you could feel any of these bugs but i think they would have to me on the day we have to be their own entity you know they can be the book

they would have to be a story they would have to be their own story it has it would be too hard to take it literally into taking out take the book is that i think some books that are just find stories that are really about language are really about ideas in eternity play those are easy to film you know because you know they are they're not dealing with a lot of layers like tongue that in his book so i think that that sound it's a bit of a challenge but i think can be done and i think i think i'm going to stay at it i think there was a lot of language that was taken out of the book what which some of the a couple of the actors had a difficult time with because it's sort of like trying to it's it's very mannered speech that i think works very much on the

page and i don't think that was it is easy to say so i think sometimes that part was difficult and visually there are some really interesting things going on and i found that so i knew i was out the whooping crane expert cited a lecture on the whooping crane and his final the glasses away again this is this fun doing the character he was years ago but yeah i joined the film i mean to me it was i'm it was a blast today to be on the set at actors were wonderful and i guess an amazing artist actually do that those risk of all of his paintings backers also a painter and photographer and so interesting and i think personally working person that you know probably were were not that easy to to translate from the room that kind of the book that scott so much to it how many years difference is there between the meantime

i think thirty seven like that twenty five years our identity and shirley think you're twenty five and twenty five i never think about that that's so funny cycle i'd instance really i mean it was just that the people have asked me that in the second and remember as i don't think of him in terms of age or myself really as people get older and you get home well is there i think you're the light needs them or make it still and he's at ninety how i get that wrong how likely to keep an eye on really i mean i feel like that's the good thing is that maybe i can be the one to be you know five he's eighty five and i'm still a ninety six to five seventy maybe i could be a little but i could carry our luggage onto the

airplane you know i could i could be maybe i'm being between the two is the one that you know to be against us so i think it works out i think it's like around seventh and i was glad when mance lifetime and so as i think it because of the age difference could've been very easy for us to miss each other you know to not have met and you know i think it's a blessing in some ways the age difference because for me to be was someone who knows himself who who has some understanding of of love and has a lot of wisdom and has a great sense of humor and knows how to treat somebody he's figured it out and i don't know if it is a little thirty figure now but you know i i think he's already got all the stuff that i was looking for the money

yes yes he's very funny he cracks me up daily multiple times is it is it is delightful and so is making the latin soul is singing to me izzo is dancing for a la just the delights <unk> he just truly does he's got such a sweetness unease we read his book is a lot like his books that kind of the debt and then also in the wisdom but that the joe it that is within him is this what i want with that i just i loved that and fun is that we have a good time together i think that we have said sharon such a wonderful energy between the two of us we travel extensively very trying do you ever

get don't get irritated with each other and you know we call it we don't really have a lot to be you know what it is i think we both felt like that we will finally found each other were granted time together so i know there's not a lot that i really feel like i wanna get into this that you know we don't i don't have a lot to complain about and that may sound like that that there's that i never get your jet lag you're or grumpier and i do and down or that we don't get tired sometimes but that that we don't really get along pretty well and he's you know they're going to find out a lot of the people who travel with them and i don't know if we didn't go on trial that would make it a bit difficult in our time together because we travel article about the good we seem to be pretty in sync with each other in terms of the things we like to do and the things we like to

see iran were both very adventurous and so we've taken on risks some that have worked out well who others that have been pretty scary and down if we got sick together from a trip we're sick for ten months after a last trip to west africa is very scary that we travel well together anywhere where a good team the things that he likes to do i don't want to do in terms of he's that he's good at organizing things you know and i'm not as interested in that and now i'm good at avatar putting things together in terms of you know i don't know his career like making their reservations and getting all that diamond and i can do other things so it's inside were very compatible a distance in terms of traveling as the ice is probably the size and how has that effect it is life at this point on well i think that

it's a little bit more limited right now because he's writing and this book that he's working on now it's been very taxing for his eyes and i think you know like anything maybe i think it's kind of like an athlete who's you're eating a football player who was maybe in us of all of the zillion times in your shoulder is it is more sore and it's harder and i think it's he's used his eyes so intensely for so many years that i don't so you know you just work around it you're trying to find ways to to deal with that and haven't gotten all the answers it like different and on prescriptions for buses in and other things like that and he he can do a lot of extra reading which you know i think that and he really enjoys that that you know he was as two other books on tape and things like that so we work around and listen to music or you know go for a walk or you know do other things

and i just know that wally's writing i tried to not create situations for him where he's getting ahead and try to think of things we can do that american you know i considered going to double feature movies we might you know take a long walk or you know do something now is it just it just has to pay some self meetup that he does not use a computer or a home and this is disastrous for her own home he will he is actually what's funny is history is of various i played with him at the computer on the computer before and he's very good at it he has a real intuitive sense about technology's i think if you have the time to get into it he would actually quite a computer words that has led the timeline now but he i think that for him and the process of writing sitting there without legal pad

and that kind of connection to the senate to the work out to the two words to the ideas in that particular way on it somehow you know it's it's a really it's a connection in in a deeper way i think he would feel very removed if you worked on a computer i think he would feel disconnected from what he's doing that's probably wise eyes get taxed too i mean in that he is so intensely focused and he has that policing right that legal health and the pen and i you know he you know really focuses on each word in each sentence each idea and interview you were someone sends until this perfect he doesn't nick wright really fast and then move around or threatening about the use of paper and throw that he sits and

focuses on one word or one sentence in chile has it as perfect as it can be and then you is art and it is not the process that a lot of people would use but it's something very satisfying for him in writing that way and i admire it because everyone's in the getting faster quicker you know it just you know it's that sort of you know it's out just write whatever and then and then now then you can get it later he edits while he goes along and so it's in markets a slower process i think it's a it's an intense process for him but look at what he ends up with not a quick writer and he hasn't ever throw anything away each thing he mixes at each sentence he makes it as good as he can make it well where is this mysterious

i think he knows what works i think he just hasn't really good bye with art with visual arts with design without language he knows what works he really hasn't a wonderful sense that way and he knows when things don't work it's very clear to him and so there's a decision about what he does it's not i mean i think people have this idea that he just you know what writers was a somewhat because he's so he is wild any is outrageous and he is fine and he is that all those things and he's incredibly focused two in his very disciplined so he doesn't just oh i have oh when then i'm gonna get up in a riot at midnight he's down every day at the same time and really focuses in hand and so i think that that focus has made him excellent employer and made him excel and better

at what he does but he also within that focus he goes wild that's what it is that he has that he has like parameters that he sets out but then he goes to the ring with you that he can go to an extreme it's it's like i'm setting up a structure and then went in that find a going as far as you can go and finding the extremes and down take your thought process in going as far as you can but he builds the structure around any does that with everything i think does he and now it's pretty much been thank you really have to have been there i mean i really they might say you know what is common here i mean that's about it i mean really is so when he's made sends its that's the way he wanted it to be

so nothing less changes you like tiny little changes but they're very small adjustments how do you push the boundaries legacy when he do and people don't seem to be able to why does tsa i think jesus came into the world with this i mean i think as a child he was like this from what i hear and our heat it could now uses to me as his spirit and his life and so much to express hear so much together and summers to share and i think he helps people he takes us to new places in the way we think and i think he helps to see where we're going in terms of that you know honestly of the collective and that's you feel that pressure do you recognize that he has done something more has to be readily real

pressure to stand to be more productive build a timer to see it at several county yes i think i think that i don't know he does anymore then the neighbors steer i mean i think that we are more of an awareness about our own mortality these days i think that he's the kind of person that will probably never retire and so therefore he's going to keep going in and connecting with these ideas of his in his imagination he has four hour long he's going to be here and you know i think for hand it will be an ongoing thing he'll always be doing something anna and you know that any change in terms of what he wants to do next are or what he wants to do in the

future you know so who you know who knows he may he may change his mind about the novel i don't know who wants to be a field to another war but i think that there is an awareness and he's done quite a body of work and see it and so i've i think you always write a nice cannot see him saying i want to do this anymore is it so much who he is well it is a matter so certainly there is a book heal the problem he says i think i wanna stop now and yell stop for a while and help get arrested in the opec into it and he can always up the idea is to start

coming in a startup in a character and pretty sand he's back in his room going at it writing reading this i know what's that process cause i'll see it kind of start to percolate his mind and i think unless something is going to be born here or i can see that say any cell are writing to him how lucky for him that he got together with you how lucky for me ha ha how lucky for both of us i mean really he's very special and we do not take that for granted and leto do you have any advice for people and it permits allowing be kind be kind to each other you know it's people think they have it they have forever and you don't know i mean any maybe that age difference maybe that's the one thing that gives to me is this recognition that

it's very know who knows i mean we we have an abundance of life and it was very quickly so enjoy each other and we look at each other how on together laugh give each other space to express yourselves in delight in one another one and that was the point of being together yes travels back you know take each other's hand and walk through to gather support each other in that it's not that it i mean we've been through sometimes a cooler sec with that africa and then we were terrified and you know we your work through it together and an animation you i think more deeply minded that i know active can identify with each other you know it seems like it's just about working inside out and that's all it's about that's what

it's about the list certainly is not what i want it's kind of it's a great day and your request to assess the nest is the very un it you like to say that we can cover anything because it going to invest like to visit but i am married to a long area where it around the house that mistrust has spread campuses and his own fiery playful it prevents light reading how would you describe it give prairie too busy your character's writing but this epa or any of the critics and we cover their popularity particularly the readers first cast secretly making a movie is trying to gather does a strange relationship your life what you do have the dowager live longer than citizens there

we go yeah and i didn't have anything in mind because i've never talked about him to anybody report hope i was a little bit nervous because i never talk about him our time together and they're our life together always been very very private with services i was a big deal you know is it just me because i know i had i had no idea those area but i do not not nervous i was a nurse a value because i felt very comfortable with you and on that show i guess because i don't know i was i was felt like that and they're protected we have to be utilizing that goes in with all the people who have a really good year it the cnn see us out here like to see any protective yeah and i am but i felt okay with you and

it was like that i maybe sensitive to too alison thanks beef fb