It's true, I recently had the pleasure to speak with Spencer Fleury and Jihoon Park about their new books, The Shitbird and Stickman at The Brooklyn Rail and you can check it here. You also can read some excerpt below. Cool? Right on.
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Rail: This may be because Dolly Parton died as we were working on this, though building off Spencer’s comment that writing is hard, and maybe even Jihoon’s reference to his therapist, do you feel the act of creating can also be healing and that art itself can provide a salve, or at least an escape, for those consuming it?
Fleury: The healing process is itself an act of creation, or at least re-creation, of the self. When I was working on the stories that eventually became my story collection, I Blame Myself But Also You, I kept coming back to a mantra I picked up somewhere along the way: turn pain into art. Not every artist does that, but it’s what I tried to do, and I think that’s what makes for the most interesting art. That, of course, is a separate question from whether art can have healing effects on those who enjoy it. I think it’s obvious that it can, and I think whether it does or not is completely disconnected from the artist’s motivations or intentions for the work. People will take what they need from art, wherever they happen to find it, and I think that’s a beautiful thing.
Park: I love Spencer’s point about healing being art and creation, I completely agree. If we talk about art in the broad sense, to do anything creatively and skillfully over time, it’s really the ultimate antidote to our existential struggle for meaning: to love passionately, to be kind and accepting thoughtfully, to care for others and yourself skillfully in novel ways. For me personally, writing this book was a way to heal by looking inwards and accepting certain Jungian shadows in my being for the better. Again, building on Spencer’s answer, I hope that readers of my book, as with all art, take away something healing from my book, whatever it may be, despite the thorns it has.