It must be extremely uncomfortable to live with a writer - all that preoccupation and brooding.
Interpretation
Living with a writer involves dealing with their intense focus and creative struggles.
This quote by W. G. Sebald reflects the often challenging experience of sharing space with a writer, who may be deeply immersed in their thoughts and creative processes. The discomfort arises from their tendency to brood over ideas and narratives, which can create an emotional distance from those around them, highlighting the complexities of living alongside a person dedicated to their craft.
In practice
In a discussion about the challenges of creativity, one might quote this to emphasize the sacrifices made by artists.
How happily, said Austerlitz, have I sat over a book in the deepening twilight until I could no longer make out the words and my mind began to wander, and how secure have I felt seated at the desk in my house in the dark night, just watching the tip of my pencil in the lamplight following its shadow, as if of its own accord and with perfect fidelity, while that shadow moved regularly from left to right, line by line, over the ruled paper.
When I was a boy, I'd hide under the kitchen table and wind string around the chairs. I have a sense now that I am pulling on those threads. The more I pull, the more it comes unraveled.
If you're based in two places, on a bad day you see only the disadvantages everywhere. On a bad day, returning to Germany brings back all kinds of spectres from the past.
The seasons and the years came and went...and always...one was, as the crow flies, about 2,000 km away - but from where? - and day by day hour by hour, with every beat of the pulse, one lost more and more of one's qualities, became less comprehensible to oneself, increasingly abstract.
You could grow up in Germany in the postwar years without ever meeting a Jewish person. There were small communities in Frankfurt or Berlin, but in a provincial town in south Germany, Jewish people didn't exist.
No matter whether one is flying over Newfoundland or the sea of lights that stretches from Boston to Philadelphia after nightfall, over the Arabian deserts which gleam like mother-of-pearl, over the Ruhr or the city of Frankfurt, it is as though there were no people, only the things they have made and in which they are hiding.
When I see an artist whose work I like at a party - I'm old now, so I can do this - I go right over and tell them how much I like their work. Instantly, I'm on their side. The act of saying it takes away the competition. The act of saying it makes me not hate them anymore, because they're good.
We are part of each other and part of something bigger than our own egos. An artist should... bring into the world some vision. Dancers should ask, "What is their work in the service of?"
As a director you have to be careful you don't over-design the film. You have to be careful that the period aspect does not take over.
While all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.
Today the artist has inherited the combined functions of hermit, pilgrim, prophet, priest, shaman, sorcerer, soothsayer, alchemist.
I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art - and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position.
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