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Interview: Paris Mentis August 9, 2005
1. How long have you been a resident in Siskiyou County?
About thirty-five years.
What brought you here?
I came up here with a friend of mine to climb the mountain. I was living in the Bay Area at this time but I grew up in a small town and went to college at the University of Iowa. So, when I came back to San Francisco I just realized that the city wasn't my place anymore. I was drawn back to Mt. Shasta because I just fell in love with it. I got a job my first day in town and I have been here ever since.
2. Can you give a short explanation of your specialty or your artistic medium?
Creative Writing. I do some poetry and I have written some screen plays. But, mostly novels.
3. How long have you been making art (professionally and unprofessionally)?
Ever since I was a little kid I was drawn to the language of books. Before I could even read I would open up a book and I would just look at the pictures and wonder what these words would say. I was just fascinated with words and I always have been. The rhythms of words, the way they are structured, the patterns of language and the stories that are woven and put together through words and language. I was drawn to that but I never thought I had the talent to be writer. To be a writer requires a lot of serious discipline because you have to get up in the morning and face a blank sheet of paper. It is not a collegiate sort of art, like music or theatre where you are dealing with other people. It takes a lot of discipline to sit and write. Then maybe you get a buzz, you get a high, and you think, 'Oh boy, this is great!' and it's going real well. Then the next day you look back and say, 'What a bunch of garbage! This is terrible.' So you face these highs and lows all the time. It is a very difficult medium to work with.
4. Is art your full time career?
No. I have to support myself. Siskiyou County is a difficult place to survive in so you become a jack of all trades. A lot of artists do that. I have taught part time at COS as adjunct faculty. I also do house painting, gardening, and landscaping.
5. How have you learned your art? Have you had any formal art education? If so, where, when and for how long?
Just by doing it and by reading. To be a good writer you have to read a lot and I was always reading. I have like fifty boxes of books. I have accumulated a lot of books in my life and people say I should get rid of them but that is like getting rid of a friend.
6. Have you had any special mentors that have influenced you and your style?
Mostly people who I have read, like Nikos Kazantzakis. I really like his writing. I love the Russian writers like Dostoevsky. I have always loved Henry Miller, Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, the American writers. Also the Existentialists, I like that. I could just go on and on.
What sort of aspects or influences have you drawn from these writers?
Well, the idea of being a writer and what it is to be a writer, to commit yourself to something like that. Their lives and how they suffered through it and how even if they were successful as writers they weren't necessarily successful as human beings.
7. Do you feel like art in Siskiyou County has any prominent trends or patterns? If so, how do you see your own art in relation to these?
I haven't really noticed. Most of the people in the arts here tend to be in the visual arts. Partially that is my fault because I am such a recluse. I don't get out much.
8. Are there any other things you would like people to know about the relationship between your art and the place that you live?
It is a great place to write, especially when it is snowing outside. Otherwise I like to be out in it and not figuring out how I'm going to describe it.
9. If you had to describe your style in a few words how would you do this? First 5 words that come to mind?…
Well, probably more modern and a little on the minimalist side. I don't try to go on and on and give long ornate descriptions.
10. What is it about making art and the creative process that you find most interesting or are most passionate about?
Well, I think it is an avenue into understanding yourself. It is kind of a journey into your own sub-consciousness and into your own interior processes. You learn about who you are through writing and at some point you have to realize that even though you may fail at it commercially, at least it has been a discipline. I guess not a whole lot of people do end up writing. So you may have the gratification that you did end of doing it.
11. Do you teach art in anyway or are you interested in being a teacher?
I taught at COS as adjunct faculty. I taught comparative religions and philosophy. I am interested in teaching writing but I don't think I would like to do it in an academic setting. I find academia to be very restrictive. I like stuff that is much more creative and flexible.
12. Will you take a little time to tell people about your novel, Plato's Cave?
It works on several levels. The story line in itself is concerned with a Greek-American Classics professor who is accused of stealing a Mycenaean sword from the tomb in Mycenae. In order to clear his name he travels to Greece and he becomes immersed in the murky world of antiquity thievery. In the novel, the main character Mark Severra, meets people but they are all facades. You don't know who these people really are. Are they really drug dealers, are they revolutionaries or are they terrorists. This reflects the whole idea about Plato's Cave. The name Plato's Cave refers to a simile in the monumental book by Plato called The Republic. In this simile there is a group of people tied up in a cave and there is bonfire behind them and it casts shadows on the wall. They see those shadows and they think that is the real world. One guy escapes and goes out into the sunlight and discovers the real world. He goes back down to tell these people and they think he is nuts. That is Plato's point. He says that the world of becoming,
the world that we live in here is just a shadowy, murky world of strife and anxiety. He says there is another world out there
that is the world of being. It is up to us in our own internal journey to move from this world of ordinary day to day affairs
to a higher reality that exists within our own minds. Each of us has a spark of the divine in us and that is what we are
supposed to find out. That is what we are here for. My book, in a way, is an internal journey that this guy is making of self
discovery as he goes through this adventure. In my story, many of the females are metaphors for Greek goddesses guiding him
on his journey.There is a lot of stuff in there about Gods and Goddess and I even have a lot of
archeological details. If you know mythology you will pick that up.