Goodreads asked Trevor Dodge:

How do you get inspired to write?

Trevor Dodge Ache. I write from places that are aching, about things I can't let go of or don't understand or refuse to accept. My teacher and friend Kathy Acker once told me she always wrote from a source of question or problem, and her creative process involved trying to find answers and explanations. Not solutions. Answers. There's a big difference between those things for me. I don't think really art solves problems, but it definitely provides answers.

I think music is probably a good example of what I'm trying to say here. Music doesn't solve problems. It won't heal your broken heart or get your shitty landlord to reverse that no-cause eviction. But music connects you more concretely to the way you're feeling and to the ways others are feeling, and to me that's more important than problem solving. It's more important because art connects us to fundamental processes of understanding, and that's how we ultimately move forward.

Look at our current social-political moment in the United States right now, where the ugly rituals of identity politics have tipped our society even further towards totalitarianism and corporate plutocracy. Art has no solution for this problem. Theodor Adorno told us this a while ago. By creating and sharing, though, we have a chance to understand. Not a guarantee, for sure. But a chance. If we try to ignore the ache, there is no chance.

This probably all makes it seem like getting “inspired” to write is a downer. It’s not. Ache isn’t just hurt. Ache is also joy. Also love. Also accomplishment. Also hope. Ache is your body and mind in sync telling you that you are alive. And being alive is not only worth understanding, it’s also worth celebrating. Almost all of human history has been lived already, but the dead tell no tales, and the machines haven’t displaced us yet. There is still a chance, is what I’m saying. How does Han Solo put it? “Never tell me the odds.” That’s what inspiration is to me. It’s about speaking from out of the void to those who can still hear. If you’re always calculating odds, you’re too focused on solving a problem that you can’t solve. The culture we live in implores us to remain silent in situations like that, because the culture we live in is inherently segregationist and suspicious of its own imagination. Art is action. Solution is reaction.

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